Boston Dynamics is putting Spot to work. The company has announced a new leasing program for its Spot robot (formerly SpotMini), which is aimed at construction, entertainment, and other automation-friendly industries. But is the world ready for this semi-autonomous quadruped?
Recently on the Fat Man on Batman podcast Marc Bernardin brought up an exciting idea for a new Batman Beyond movie. Kevin Smith was completely for it.
Batman Beyond originally premiered January 10th, 1999. That makes it 20 years old now. It’s hard to believe that time has gone by so quickly. Batman Beyond was one of the best animated series for Batman besides well, Batman the Animated Series. It followed Terry McGinnis as he navigates becoming Batman after Bruce Wayne suffers a heart attack and can no longer do the dirty work on the streets. Bruce before that point was fighting in a mech suit trying to keep up with all of Gotham’s atrocities.
When starting to create the movie, Gray said “Ad Astra” would be a “science feature fact” film and that he would endeavour to make it the most realistic space movie yet created. He admitted he had to adjust that vision as production continued. “A lot of times when you start working on a project, you start to say unbelieveably dumb things,” he joked.
Brad Pitt says his new space movie “Ad Astra” won’t have a clear position on whether humanity is alone in the universe.
Researchers have made news in letting their AI ambitions play out a formidable game of hide and seek with formidable results. The agents’ environment had walls and movable boxes for a challenge where some were the hiders and others, seekers. Much happened along the way, with surprises.
Stating what was learned, the authors blogged: “We’ve observed agents discovering progressively more complex tool use while playing a simple game of hide-and-seek,” where the agents built “a series of six distinct strategies and counterstrategies, some of which we did not know our environment supported.”
Launched into space in 2004, Rosetta embarked on a 10-year journey through the cosmos. By 2014, the spacecraft reached its destination, made orbit, and successfully landed its lander module Philae.
A short film cataloging the Rosetta mission to comet 67P, providing a visual spectacle of its landing on the comet’s surface.
The Martian frontier is yours in Occupy Mars — the upcoming (as of today: Coming soon) highly technical open world simulation game about Mars colonization from Polish indie game developer Pyramid Games. In the game you will be able to “build and upgrade your base, discover new amazing regions, conduct mining operations, retrieve water and generate oxygen, grow crops, fix broken parts, learn how to survive on Mars!”
Here is the newest cinematic trailer of the game and beautiful HD images from it. Note the SpaceX’s Starman style spacesuit and ITS v2016 Starship.
Panasonic has introduced what may be the first vacuum-panel-insulated refrigerator in the world. The 17.7 ft3 (501 l) NR-F503TE refrigerator-freezer, introduced in late 2008 in Japan, is insulated with Panasonic’s U-VacuaIV vacuum panels that consist of multiple layers of glass fibers and aluminum films sealed into a vacuum panel. The refrigerator-freezer uses 350 kWh per year, according to the company’s Japanese website (about 25% better than the U.S. federal standard). A larger, 21.3 ft3 (603 l) model, the NR-F603T, uses 440 kWh per year. EBN was unable to learn what type of refrigerant is used except that it is “non-CFC.” Whether the product will be introduced in North America is also not known.
Space Engine is a free-to-download, procedurally generated simulator that’s ten years in the making. Despite the incomprehensible size of the game’s universe, it was developed by one man. But now, he says, he can’t do it alone.
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ðº That time where it rained for two million years.
Fyodor R.
At the beginning of the Triassic Period, the world was hot, and very dry. But then 234 million years ago, it started to rain and didn t stop for two million years. This period of intense rain called the Carnian Pluvial Episode killed of many of the early reptiles and set the stage for the dinosaurs to take over the world.
