Serious ... it's a flying car, and I'm not kidding! The future is here - Flying cars are a reality.
"An ambitious firm has revealed their plans for a new type of personal air transport vehicle that takes off and lands like a helicopter. Will the idea fly?
... Many of us have wished for a personal flying machine to lift us out of infuriating traffic jams and deposit us on our driveways. With recent advances in materials, power sources, and automation, those dreams may become reality more quickly than many of us realise, as I’ve discussed before. Earlier this month, US aerospace start-up Terrafugia unveiled the TF-X, a concept design for a radical new type of personal air transport vehicle. So I talked to Carl Dietrich, co-founder of the company, to find out how it might work."
WTF!? ... you can "print" your own gun from a 3D printer. Doesn't just prints the gun ... the actual gun can be fired too!
"The world's first gun made with 3D printer technology has been successfully fired in the US. The controversial group which created the firearm, Defense Distributed, plans to make the blueprints available online.
The group has spent a year trying to create the firearm, which was successfully tested on Saturday at a firing range south of Austin, Texas.
Anti-gun campaigners have criticised the project. Europe's law enforcement agency said it was monitoring developments. Victoria Baines, from Europol's cybercrime centre, said that at present criminals were more likely to pursue traditional routes to obtain firearms."
It's crazy how small this thing is ... and it actually flies like ... hmm, like a fly.
"Scientists in the US have created a robot the size of a fly that is able to perform the agile manoeuvres of the ubiquitous insects. This "robo-fly", built from carbon fibre, weighs a fraction of a gram and has super-fast electronic "muscles" to power its wings.
Its Harvard University developers say tiny robots like theirs may eventually be used in rescue operations.It could, for example, navigate through tiny spaces in collapsed buildings. The development is reported in the journal Science."
WTF?! ... A movie created using single atoms. Seriously! ... it's atomic!
"Dubbed "A Boy and His Atom" and certified by the Guinness World Book of Records as being the smallest movie ever created by mankind, International Business Machine Inc.'s (IBM) scanning tunneling microscope (STM) technology demonstration is generating an Oscar worthy buzz.
I. Directed by Tunneling Electrons
While the eventual goal of the IBM team is to use the STM or its successors to manipulate atoms to form tiny components like memory or transistors, IBM focused on as more light-hearted proof of concept.
In a one minute animation consisting of 242 frames of stop motion animation, with each frame measuring roughly 45 x 25 nanometers, the IBM researchers create a vivid scene of a boy befriending an "atom", then engaging in activities like "dancing, playing catch and bouncing on a trampoline."
Great for spying I suppose ... I mean what else can you do with it, really?
"A digital camera that functions like an insect's compound eye is reported in the journal Nature this week. It comprises an array of 180 small lenses, which, along with their associated electronics, are stretched across a curved mounting.
The prototype currently has few pixels, so its images are low-resolution. But the device displays an immense depth of field, and a very wide-angle view that avoids the distortion seen in standard camera lenses.
The development team, led from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, believes its new imaging system could eventually find uses in surveillance and for endoscopic investigations of the human body."
Very interesting ... I wonder how much it REALLY costs?
"A giant-mantis robot with hydraulic legs has been unveiled by a designer who spent four years creating it. Matt Denton, from Hampshire, estimates his "very expensive toy" has cost him hundreds of thousands of pounds. He says a mining company and a marine research organisation are now interested in his design and he hopes it might be used at science fairs.
During its development the machine had one outing, at a music festival, where Mr Denton says it was well received. "It's an entertainment vehicle," he said. "But I hope it will inspire people."
The project was only initially intended to take 12 months, Mr Denton, who usually specialises in small-scale animatronics for the film industry, said."
"A camera able to create 3D images up to one kilometre (0.62 miles) away has been developed by a team in Edinburgh. Physicists at Heriot-Watt University developed a technique which uses lasers to scan almost any object.
With extra research, the camera's range could extend to 10km (6.2 miles), the team said. It will primarily be used to scan objects such as vehicles - but is unable to detect human skin.
The reason is that skin does not reflect the laser in the same way as most other objects - meaning for those wishing to evade the camera's gaze, stripping naked is an option.
Beyond capturing images of objects, the technology could also be used to keep track of the movement of rocks, or foliage growth."
Engineers have managed to create a dragonfly drone to fly not only forwards but backwards ... making the darn thing look and feel really real!
"Amid the growing swarm of small commercial drones being launched into the skies these days, Festo's new dragonfly-inspired BionicOpter truly stands out. Equipped with four independently adjustable, motorized wings made from carbon fiber and foil, the ultra-lightweight craft (less than a third of a pound) is capable of flying backwards, moving laterally, hovering in place, and gliding. Essentially, it seeks to combine the best features of a helicopter and a glider, and is controlled via a smartphone interface.
"For the first time, there is a model that can master more flight conditions than a helicopter, plane and glider combined," Festo boasts in its brochure for the BionicOpter. Visually, the craft looks uncannily like an oversized version of the real insect, with a body of about 19 inches long and a wingspan of just over 27 inches. Check it out in action in a video Festo released yesterday."
Raspbmc’s update this month offers a few fixes and features. Here’s what’s new:
XBMC 12.1 which brings:
Improved AirPlay visibility for Mac OS and iOS 6.x devices.
General OMXPlayer and performance patches
Also added:
Audio popping via analogue is finally fixed (thanks Dom!)
I understand a lot of you wish to build your own modules. This has been made easy as kernel headers have now been included.
Pulse Eight’s libCEC library is upgraded to bring improvements to bring improved compatibility and bug fixes
Fix a bug where disabling the firewall may not be working.
Reduce stuttering when playing internet streams.
Added additional DVB firmware.
Fix for a security vulnerability that could allow users on the same network segment to gain control of the Raspberry Pi. Thanks to Justin Kelly for finding this. This does mean that you will now need to enter a username and password for Samba shares, which, by default, is pi:raspberry.
Fix for some issues with apt-get (thanks to Alfredo Pironti)
Improved libRTMP library compatibility for playback of Internet streams.
