Penguin Mirror (2015) by Daniel Rozin – an interactive artwork featuring an array of 450 stuffed penguins on individual rotating platforms that generates the silhouette of viewers captured with cameras.
Yes. That lovely sound, the time lag, the collective adorbz.
Currently on view at the Bitforms Gallery in NYC, if you’re passing.
(H/T: Graeme Kelly)
The DARPA Robotics Challenge, set up after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, aims to ‘accelerate the development of robots that can respond to man-made or natural disasters’.
This year, a transforming Korean bot won the $2 million prize.
Hurray!
Now here’s a montage of the robots that fell over.
A demonstration (filmed last December) of the ‘laser-art’ system at LasX Industries in Minnesota.
Drawing at a rate of 6 metres per second. an illustration is etched into a chalkboard surface in two stages: first raster mode (like an inkjet printer) and then, at about 1.40, vector mode.
You’ll like vector mode.
Wiiiitchcraft.
*ahem*
The Untethered Miniature Origami Robot, created by scientists at MIT is a 1.7cm square device powered by a neodymium magnet and four subsurface electromagnetic coils that allow the robot to assemble itself like an origami sculpture, walk, climb, carry objects twice its weight, swim in shallow water, burrow and dissolve in an acetone solution leaving nothing but the magnet behind.
The potential, according to the research team, is for medical nanobots capable of killing cancer cells or unclogging arteries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YLxGFLpOl0
A lightweight waterproof quadrotor camera rig that follows and films you, starting automatically when you throw it into the air.
Shipping February 2016 and available to preorder for about €460.
The WHO, on the other hand, classifies radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (the type emitted by wifi routers and cellphones) as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” based on limited evidence associating cellphone use with an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer. “The conclusion means that there could be some risk,” Dr. Jonathan Samet, a medical professor at the University of Southern California and chair of the WHO panel that made the determination, explained in 2011, “and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer.”
And they’ve taken away all the public phoneboxes, Joe…
Scores of Scientists Raise Alarm About the Long-Term Health Effects of Cellphones (Mother Jones)
(image: National Cancer Institute)
With the news that Three is planning to hike the cost of it’s sim-only bill-pay plan by 25% in June, your mind might turn to switching plans.
The National Consumer Agency says that people save an average of €24 a month by switching plans, but few do so.
Enter Daniel McCarthy of KillBiller:
A primary reason why people don’t switch is confusion in selecting the right plan.KillBiller is a mobile application that analyses users’ actual phone usage against all of the plans available from Irish operators.
The app takes details of the calls, messages and data used by you on your phone and, based on this, calculates how much you would have spent on each plan.
Having found the right plan, KillBiller offers users the convenience of switching networks within the app.
Years ago I wrote some scripts to do something similar and the end result was a horrid mess that just about worked. In comparison, what the KillBiller guys have done is slick and actually useful to normal humans.
Killer name also.
Kill Biller is available now on both the Google Play and Apple App Stores.
3 Ireland to hike mobile bills by 25pc just months after €850m O2 buyout
Do you have an Irish app (especially an Android one)? Let us know: Broadsheet@broadsheet.ie
