On Friday, the FBI shut down three of the world’s most popular online poker sites, replacing their home pages with this message:
via Boing Boing (more info, links to articles, etc.)
… Read More → "FBI shuts down poker sites in online gambling crackdown"Willow Garage has announced plans for the release of their TurtleBot robot kit. The kit is a combination of their iRobot Create, a Kinect, netbook, and gyro integrated together. Read more here at Dangerous Prototypes.
“Researchers investigating the challenges of long-term space flight at the Johnson Spaceflight Center have concluded that the effectiveness of many common medicines is greatly curtailed by extended spaceflight. This could have major consequences for future manned missions to Mars or beyond that would require crews to be in space for long periods of time.”
Read More → "Study shows medicine to be less effective in space"
VANGA, the most feared of the Japan Robot Survival competition robots flew in to California to join the Mech Warfare battles at RoboGames 2011. He will be operated by his builder in Japan over the internet as they battle robots from all over the world.
… Read More → "VANGA, the most feared of the Japan Robot Survival competition robots"
“In a study funded by DARPA, volunteers were asked to play a game called DARWARS Ambush! created to help train soldiers. It was found that those playing with a 2 mA buzz running through their heads played about twice as well as a control group who only got a tiny amount of the juice.”
The algorithm could allow robots and intelligent communications platforms to interact more naturally with humans.
read the article here at Robotics Trends
… Read More → "Device enables computer to identify whether user is male or female"Wired’s got a great list of DIY projects here, separated into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.
… Read More → "A guide to 21 awesome DIY projects"The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a a problem: their antique technology collection includes a bunch of vintage gear that they don’t know a much about, so they want the public to tell them what they’ve got.
via Dvice
Read More → "Feds want you to identify their mystery steampunk tech collection"
Finnish aeronautical engineer Aki Suokas launched a remarkable new single-seat aircraft this week at Aero Friedrichshafen. The FlyNano is made entirely of carbon fiber composite, weighs 154 pounds, can take off and land on water, and only costs $39,000. Oh, and you don’t need a pilot’s license to operate it. via Gizmag
