Lifeboat Foundation

Analyzing expressions is an increasingly hot topic among tech companies.

It’s not clear what it plans to do with it yet, but Apple has gobbled up a startup whose technology can read facial expressions.

The tech giant has reportedly acquired Emotient, a San Diego-based company that uses artificial technology to detect emotion from facial expressions, Apple confirmed to The Wall Street Journal. The company’s technology has primarily been used by advertisers, doctors, and retailers, though it’s not clear what Apple AAPL 0.66% plans to do with it.

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So-called ” asteroid mining” company Planetary Resources is built on the belief that asteroids and other objects in space are loaded with resources that we can take advantage of, both here on Earth and as we begin to explore space in earnest. The essentially infinite supply of rocks floating through space, filled with valuable minerals that we’ll eventually run out of on our home planet, sounds like a great resource to take advantage of. But the idea of mining, processing and building with alien metals also sounds like a massive and daunting undertaking.

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As you know, DEF CON 24’s theme is “Rise of the Machines”. To help you get up to speed on some of the ideas that inspired the theme, and get you thinking about the looming conflict between human and machine intelligences, we’re going to post some books, movies, and other media you might want to check out in advance of the con.

This is the first book post — there will …be more. If you have others you think would be worth looking over before the con, share in the comments!

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“[H]alf the people in the world cram into just 1 percent of the Earth’s surface (in yellow), and the other half sprawl across the remaining 99 percent (in black).”

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An Aging Suit: This Exoskeleton lets you know what it feels like to get older.

Interesting use of the latest tech being shown at the largest consumer electronics show in the world CES 2016.

Continue reading “This exoskeleton lets you know what it is to age” »

More Videos by Wonderful Engineering.

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Yelling at stem cells.

Acoustics experts have created a new class of sound wave — the first in more than half a century — in a breakthrough they hope could lead to a revolution in stem cell therapy.

The team at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, combined two different types of acoustic sound waves called bulk waves and surface waves to create a new hybrid: “surface reflected bulk waves”.

Continue reading “Researchers ride new sound wave to health discovery” »

Up until now, everything we’ve ever used in space has been brought there from Earth. Planetary Resources Inc. has long-term ambitions to mine the infinite resources space provides. In the mean-time, they’ve proven its possible by 3D printing material derived from an asteroid.

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Imagine if your clothing could, on demand, release just enough heat to keep you warm and cozy, allowing you to dial back on your thermostat settings and stay comfortable in a cooler room. Or, picture a car windshield that stores the sun’s energy and then releases it as a burst of heat to melt away a layer of ice.

According to a team of researchers at MIT, both scenarios may be possible before long, thanks to a new material that can store solar energy during the day and release it later as heat, whenever it’s needed. This transparent polymer film could be applied to many different surfaces, such as window glass or clothing.

Although the sun is a virtually inexhaustible source of energy, it’s only available about half the time we need it—during daylight. For the sun to become a major power provider for human needs, there has to be an efficient way to save it up for use during nighttime and stormy days. Most such efforts have focused on storing and recovering solar energy in the form of electricity, but the new finding could provide a highly efficient method for storing the sun’s energy through a chemical reaction and releasing it later as heat.

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