Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 07, 2016

New advancements in the development of exoskeleton

There are some new developments on the exoskeleton front. I consider this one of the next big things, that we'll look in future and think about 2016, as we do now about the first telegraphs in 19 century.

See more in Reddit, too.


Friday, June 03, 2016

Cancer vaccine progress

Apparently there are some serious advancements on the road to the cancer vaccine. In this article there is information about success in one of the trails.

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-making-serious-progress-on-a-universal-cancer-vaccine 

Cicret Bracelet - hopefully the next iteration of the phone



Yet another step into the bright future. This particular invention will be very useful specially for me, I hate to carry in my pockets the brick called cellphone.

Link to their site: https://cicret.com/wordpress/

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

360TB data practically to be stored for forever

This popped up in my news feed some time ago, but I've seen it today discussed on Reddit again, so I thought to share it. Its essentially coin-sized quartz (something like glass) disk, that can store loads of data. Its on stage "proof of concept", but judging by the evolution of other inventions, likely it will turn to be the norm in some not very far future.



http://futurism.com/memory-that-lasts-forever-new-quartz-coin-can-store-360tb-of-data-for-14-billion-years/

Sunday, May 22, 2016


Another step into the future. It seems the progress is accelerating really really fast.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Babel Fish tech


Another dream of the humanity is on its way to become true. I am not going to do a lot of explanations, just watch the video.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Printing of 3D building

View post on imgur.com
 I've seen few years back pictures of this particular building, which is some kind of scaled down castle, but somehow couldn't find back then video of the process and luckily I stumbled today on one in Imgur.
Rudeno's 3d printed house/castle Photo courtesy Andrey Rudenko

A bit more details now. The guy's name is Andrey Rudenko and he is from Minnesota. More or less what he has done is create big 3D printer and use something like concrete for printing material. However this was not so simple, first he had to scale the existing designs for 3d printers and solve a lot of problems, which are non-issue for the smaller printers, but serious obstacles for a big one and as far as I can see he essentially designed and build something completely new. Second he had to create the printing material based on cement with a lot of trails and errors so he could finally achieve the strength, viscosity, speed of hardening, etc. After that he had to (re)make the software for the printer. And there were a lot more issues, that as an hobbyist myself I am sure he had but never mentioned in the articles. 

And finally for these that would like to make a more in dept research I've put a link to his web site.


Sources: 

www.totalkustom.com
ibtimes

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Missing from Internet - Categorised repositories for 3d-printable models

Today's topic is going to be about issue, which is the main gripe and main waste of time and resources in the world of 3d-printing.

The one thing that is missing from Internet are Wiki-type repositories for 3d-printable models. What we have now? For example one of the biggest is Thingiverse, so far so good, but there is catch, most of the models are unfindable or unprintable. So if we can't guess the name that was put on by the creator of the file, the next best thing is to hope that what we are looking for was already found, deemed significant enough and put on some of the more popular list. Once we managed to find what we need (slim chance), we are present with the next problem that there is good chance the model was not optimised for 3d printing and without extensive knowledge how slicers and other programs work is unusable. Other sites are much better organised, but have mostly copyrighted models, which can't be downloaded without paying. And so on, and so on. The lack of properly organised and maintained site means, that the 3d-printing enthusiasts and professionals have to spend on orders of magnitude more time searching then actually working and printing the models.

My vision is to create site for uploading and categorising 3d-printable models similar to Wikipedia. The administrators and volunteers will take care to have all uploaded models categorised and tested for printability. On first thought it may look not very feasible idea, because of the limited number of enthusiast who have enough knowledge on the topic and some other concerns, but I believe that the future will show that such project is going to turn something like Wikipedia of the shapes, free and accessible for all. I picture it in my head as the big repository not only of the shapes of all objects, but in some future where the "Replicator" already exists as place one can find the blueprints for making of all human-created and natural objects.

I believe that the existence of such repository will have the biggest impact on the spreading of the 3d-printing since the creation of the first affordable Reprap style printers.

Soon, once I have a bit more disposable income, I'll start working on the project. Let me know if you have some ideas or are just interested in the topic.

Links:
Thingiverse
Wikipedia

Raspberry Pi Zero - Another step toward the disposable computers

Well, the humanity just made another step toward the future as it was predicted by Michio Kaku. Like he said "[chips] will cost about a penny, the cost of scrap paper. Computers as we now know them will disappear; they will be everywhere and nowhere, ubiquitous yet hidden, just like electricity and running water". Now we have computer that costs $5 and pretty decent to that. And its not only just theoretical step which doesn't have much practical applications like most of the innovations when they are presented for first time, but its actually something that a lot of us need for different reasons. And its certain that the number of these reasons and applications will keep increasing steady over the next years. For myself I'll need few of these for my hobby 3d printing projects. If one can't find reason to own Raspberry Pi Zero, think about it like $5 investment to promote trend and bring a little bit faster the future to us.

If by any chance somebody hasn't read yet Michio Kaku's "Physics of the future", I wholeheartedly recommend to do it.

Sources:
Raspberrypi.org
nytimes.com
Wikipedia
Physics of the Future

Monday, April 18, 2016

Meat without killing animals

Today I came across article about meat grown in laboratory, or the so called "In vitro meat". It explains about the process in which cell from chicken is taken and from it are cultivated big enough chuncks to be eaten. What is different from the previous experiments is that cells from living animal are taken and cultivated, practicaly without harming the animal itself and for any further needs can be used the same culture.

Image courtesy: The Modern Agriculture Foundation
The implications of all this are are pretty serious. First, significant part of the vegetarians don't eat meat because of the moral implications of rising and killing animals for food, and this method solves 100% all of these issues. And second, if the lab grown meat gain popularity it will replace most of the meat from traditionally farmed animals and this by itself will have probably the biggest impact that can be realistically achieved in the quest for saving the environment. The theory is sound, however just like everything else much depends of the realisation of the idea. If the correct methods are used, it could be even healthier and cheaper then the traditionally used meat. And one last thing, seems many people are grossed by the idea of meat grown in lab and again just like everything else the irrationality of the general population may stale the project.

And another thing, just imagine ordering steak of mammoth meat...

Sources:
Israel21c
Wikipedia

Thanks for reading

Quantum computers - End of the Work?

I've been reading the last article about the Google's breakthrough in the field of the quantum computing and noticed that among the excited readers there was a common theme, that the advances in the quantum computing will speed up the development of other fields like machine learning, robotics, etc and this on his turn will make the machines much more capable of replacing humans in their job, which eventually will make the humans not really needed in most of the jobs. And when this happen there are two scenarios, either the world will be filled with starving unemployed outcasts or there will come the paradise on the Earth where nobody works and everybody has everything that needs, because the machines will provide for the humanity.

Now I think, these who propose such future development fail to understand the human nature. Lets first look into the so called "paradise on earth". I discovered that power to provide was already achieved by most of the developed world for these members of the society who can't or don't want to work, not only for their basic needs, but also certain number of luxuries (another question is that for historical, psychological and other reasons, this was applied only in few countries). However happen that even with the need to work eliminated about the same percent of people kept working like always. The key to this question is that there are not really such things as fixed level of needs which have to be satisfied, but rather most of the people compare themselves with these around (or in more recent times with what they see in the media) and based on this observation they position themselves on some imaginary scale of the well-being and try to achieve some betterment. The funny thing is that to cover this additional "improvement" often these people need something like 10% more income and because of this small increase they start to work.  Another point is, we know that the process of decreasing the need for human workers actually started long ago and most of the trades from the past centuries are gone or evolved in art and hobbies, but it didn't decrease the number of working people, because we keep inventing new needs, which require people. However I imagine that just like my grandfather couldn't perceive as work many of the professions in the end of 20 century like writing blog about computer games, I am not going to think is real work something even simpler that will arise in future and the new generations will think they need it. Or even simpler example, just look the richer people, they keep working, often even more then these poorer than them. So the answer is that it already happened and we discovered that in the "first world" the need to work is not really tied to the need to cover living costs and is actually dependent of some kind of innate for H. sapiens need to compete and increase the perceived quality of life and therefore the decrease need for human workers will not decrease the number of the them, because the people look for and need every time something more and something better.

So, lets look into the another case, where the world is split between 1% rich owners of robots, computers and technology and 99% jobless poor people living in gethos. This actually make more sense and it may happen, because we see continuous widening of the gap between rich and poor. However the free access of information and technologies somewhat acts as an equalizer and it may be avoided, but is vitally important to keep in check the entities who try to hinder this, like copy-right and patent advocates, censure and other similar. Just been thinking what would've happened if the patents in the 3d printing which expired recently never been in place. Observing the explosion of the 3d printing technologies last couple of years I can imagine that we may have had already printers closing in to the replicator from Star Trek, if there were no patents. Anyway its likely that in that scenario nothing will change much either, some countries will keep being hugely unequal and others will keep being socialist paradises.

Also I recommend the book "Physics of the Future" by Michio Kaku, where he writes about the issue in very entertaining and scientific way.

Links for additional reading:
Last advancement from Google
Basic income

Friday, April 08, 2016

Airbus A380 crosswind test


Very interesting video of landing and take-off in strong cross-winds by Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner.

Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut


The Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut is an experimental supersonic jet fighter developed by Sukhoi Aviation Corporation. A distinguishing feature of the aircraft is its forward-swept wing.

Source: Wikipedia

Most powerful explosion ever


Tsar Bomba was the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb had a yield of about 50 megatons of TNT. The bomb was tested on October 30, 1961 in Novaya Zemlya, an island in the Arctic Sea. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 60 km high (nearly seven times higher than Mount Everest) and 30–40 km wide. Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage up to 1,000 km away.

Source: Wikipedia

F-22 Raptor


F22 Airshow Demo - Free videos are just a click away
The F-22 Raptor is a fifth generation fighter aircraft. It is claimed by several sources to be the world’s most effective air-superiority fighter.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Exoskeleton from Lockheed Martin


The name of this thing is Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC™). It is powered exoskeleton and should help soldiers, fire-fighters and etc. There are several similar project and I'll post something about them soon. For now it looks like not bad approximation to the creation of true Iron Man :).

Saturday, May 23, 2009

KOBIAN: Emotional Humanoid Robot


Here is the next step toward true humanoid robot (I mean indistinguishable without proper examination. It was presented by Atsuo Takanishi (Takanishi Laboratory), research organization NEDO and Japanese-Italian project RoboCasa.