Lifeboat Foundation

This week, Neill Blomkamp, the Academy Award-nominated director of District 9, unveiled a short film that he made with the Unity Technologies game engine. At Unity’s event in Austin, Texas, Blomkamp’s Oats Studios showed off Adam: The Mirror, a 6-minute film that was a sequel to Adam, a short film that Unity built as an internally produced showcase demo last year.

Evoking the theme of transhumanism, or the notion that we can live beyond our physical bodies, the film shows an android coming to life and realizing that it was a human trapped in a robot’s body. The film was meant to show off the power of the Unity engine when it comes to making high-quality 3D graphics. But to Blomkamp, it’s also an example of how a game engine can help democratize film, making life easier for independent film makers just as Unity has done for indie game developers.

Continue reading “District 9 director Neill Blomkamp hopes game engines can democratize film” »

Manufacturing will be key to quantum computing, but don’t throw out your current processor just yet.

Building a house by hand can be both time-consuming and expensive. Numerous homebuilders have chosen to automate part of the construction (i.e., by printing the home’s parts) instead.

A new Ukrainian homebuilding startup called PassivDom uses a 3D printing robot that can print parts for tiny houses. The machine can print the walls, roof, and floor of PassivDom’s 380-square-foot model in about eight hours. The windows, doors, plumbing, and electrical systems are then added by a human worker.

When complete, the homes are autonomous and mobile, meaning they don’t need to connect to external electrical and plumbing systems. Solar energy is stored in a battery connected to the houses, and water is collected and filtered from humidity in the air (or you can pour water into the system yourself). The houses also feature an independent sewage system.

Continue reading “A Robot Can Print This $32,000 House in as Little as 8 Hours” »

Chong Liu mixes bacteria and inorganics into systems that can generate clean energy better than a leaf.

Your face is your password, but will this become a mainstream feature for the social network?

Read more

Autonomous driving technologies are already established in mining and agriculture thanks to companies such as Caterpillar and John Deere.