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Jan 11, 2014

Burritobox Joins Growing Number of Fast-Food Making Robots

Posted by in categories: business, food, robotics/AI

Written By: — Singularity Hub

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Box Brands has launched the first-ever burrito-making robots at two locations on Santa Monica Boulevard — inside Mobile and 76 gas stations.

The orange Burritobox offers 6 types of burrito, including a breakfast burrito, and several sauces. The customer selects the burrito desired and which sauces from a touch-screen menu, then swipes a credit card. One minute later, the machine dispenses a hot “hand”-rolled burrito.

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Jan 11, 2014

U.S. military look into remote controlled ‘helicopter truck transformers’ that can be sent on rescue missions WITHOUT a driver

Posted by in categories: drones, military

By Daily Mail Reporter -

The U.S. military have commissioned the creation of a vehicle that can drive and fly remotely so it can be sent on missions unmanned

  • New drone is in development to meet the requirements of the U.S. military for a new evacuation vehicle
  • Currently being tested by Advanced Tactics, an El Segundo-based firm
  • Called Black Knight Transformer, it would be capable of both flying and driving and would be operated by a remote

Jan 9, 2014

Intel Aims For Post-Smartphone Era With SD Card-Sized Computer

Posted by in categories: business, computing, human trajectories, innovation

Written By: — Singularity Hub

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Up to now, wearable computing has been a niche market dominated, but for Google Glass, by startups. Yet, with the tiny size and low cost of sensors and chips, wearable computing could be a huge market in which smart sensors in everything from baby diapers to workout gear connect to users’ smartphones, giving them constant insight into how things formerly hidden are operating.

It may sound like yet another techno-topian promise, and before the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show it might have been. But at the annual Las Vegas tech blowout earlier this month, Intel, one of the weightiest firms in the tech industry, endorsed wearable computing with the launch of a new chip designed for it.

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Jan 9, 2014

Pocket Drones Gets $50,000 In Pledges Overnight

Posted by in category: drones

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Hardware Battlefield entrant Pocket Drones blew past their initial goal of $30,000 last night after launching on our stage at CES 2014. The company, run by long-time friends and moderators of the Drone User’s Group, Tim Reuter, TJ Johnson, and Chance Roth, built their drones as an alternative to expensive, bulky toy drones.

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Jan 9, 2014

The Bitcoin-Mining Arms Race Heats Up

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, computing, economics, hardware


Behind this week’s coverJoel Flickinger’s two-bedroom home in the hills above Oakland, Calif., hums with custom-built computing gear. Just inside the front door, in a room anyone else might use as a den, he’s placed a desk next to a fireplace that supports a massive monitor, with cables snaking right and left toward two computers, each about the size of a case of beer. Flickinger has spent more than $20,000 on these rigs and on a slower model that runs from the basement. They operate continuously, cranking out enough heat to warm the house and racking up $400 a month in electric bills. There isn’t much by way of décor, other than handwritten inspirational Post-it notes:

“I make money easily,” one reads. “Money flows to me.” “I am a money magnet.”

Flickinger, 37, a software engineer and IT consultant by trade, doesn’t leave the house much these days. He’s a full-time Bitcoin miner.

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Jan 9, 2014

Researchers Are Making A 3D Printer That Can Build A House In 24 Hours

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, innovation

— Business Insider

Contour CraftingAt The University of Southern California, Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis has built a colossal 3D printer that can build a house in 24 hours. Khoshnevis’s robot comes equipped with a nozzle that spews out concrete and can build a home based on a set computer pattern.

We first saw this on MSN.com. The technology, known as Contour Crafting, could completely revolutionize the construction industry. Discover Magazine’s Brad Lemley explains that workers would lay down two rails for the robot to operate on.

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Jan 9, 2014

We Do Not Need Flying Delivery Drones, Just Smarter Ground Robots

Posted by in categories: business, complex systems

By John O’Donnell — IEEE Spectrum

While the idea of an Amazon Prime Air drone dropping onto my doorstep and delivering my latest purchase might seem fun and cool, the reality is it simply may not be needed.

The only reason delivery trucks—such as the large brown trucks we see everywhere—only deliver to me around 4 p.m. each day is simply the time taken for one driver to take each parcel to an address. I call this one at a time parcel delivery. It’s the same story for the USPS service. Each day our excellent delivery guy comes to our neighborhood and then spends a long time going door to door.

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Jan 9, 2014

Fighting cancer with nanotechnology

Posted by in category: nanotechnology

By Tim Sandle — Digital Journal

http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/3/1/6/7/3/3/i/1/5/3/p-medium/cancer_cells.jpgScientists have developed nanoparticles that carry two different cancer-killing drugs into the body and deliver those drugs to separate parts of the cancer cell where they will be most effective.

Medical research indicates that cancer cells can develop resistance to chemotherapy drugs, but are less likely to develop resistance when multiple drugs are delivered simultaneously. One way to deliver multiple drugs is through nanotechnology.

Jan 9, 2014

With Great Computing Power Comes Great Surveillance

Posted by in category: surveillance
The dark side of Moore’s Law,

Nearly 50 years ago, Gordon Moore suggested that the number of transistors that could be placed on a silicon chip would continue to double at regular intervals for the foreseeable future. Known as Moore’s law, the truth of that observation has made computers cheap and ubiquitous. Cellphones are so inexpensive there are now more than six billion of themalmost one for every person on the planet.

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Jan 9, 2014

How To Make Your Face (Digitally) Unforgettable

Posted by in categories: innovation, media & arts

Thanks to new research out of MIT, you might one day be able to subtly manipulate your picture to make it more memorable — meaning that people should be more likely to remember your face.

According to the research article: “One ubiquitous fact about people is that we cannot avoid evaluating the faces we see in daily life … In this flash judgment of a face, an underlying decision is happening in the brain — should I remember this face or not? Even after seeing a picture for only half a second we can often remember it.”

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