Monday, December 10, 2012
My Favorite SHow EP06: Traumatic Nipple Injuries And The Technological Singularity
This week's episode of My Favorite show is a bit longer than previous weeks, cause there just wasn't a lot I wanted to cut out. As a result, we cover a fairly wide array of things, from naked Florida news and the whole Korean unicorn lair thing, to the technological singularity. Once again, if you enjoy it, please subscribe on iTunes, ETC. ETC., and feel free to leave any comments or questions about the show/episode in the comments for this post.
In this weeks episode: Fun with Harrison Ford - North Korea gots a Unicorn Lair- Not one but Two women in Florida (separately) take their masturbatory practices to the street- while another is arrested for a topless drive to visit her boyfriend - a fully functional remote controlled transformer - Bill O' Reilly is still a douche bag - Facebook gives us compulsory couples pages - The pentagon creates rules for autonomous war machines - Mind controlled replacement limbs - the technological singularity - A California family drowns attempting to rescue their dog - and a young girl is attacked by a dolphin.
Our Favorite things for the week: Tara gets a tiny rubber chicken, while I geek out about last month's Firefly reunion on the Science channel. But because the Science channel has carefully cleansed any and all worthwhile clips from said reunion from YouTube, Enjoy these bloopers istead.
-CAINE-
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Harvard Researchers Create "Cyborg Flesh"
According to an article in last month's Harvard Gazette, researchers at the university recently managed to successfully merge human tissues with embedded nanoelectronics, effectively creating what's being described as "cyborg flesh". I prefer the term "Terminator Meat", personally. But I doubt that phrase will catch on, given the scientific community's stubborn refusal to admit it's intention to build cybernetic death machines; not to be confused with Austrian Death Machine (see above). Also, now that I've read it back to myself, I've remembered how easy it is to make any phrase involving the word "meat", into something unintentionally dirty. Still, I think either term is technically correct, so use at your discretion.
Whatever you decide to call it, the tissue in question was created by developing what is essentially a rudimentary artificial autonomic nervous system, in the form of "Macroporous nanowire nanoelectronic scaffolds"; from the Harvard Gazette:
The most immediate use for the nanoscaled network of silicone wires and electrodes designed by the team, according to research leader Charles M. Lieber, is in the pharmaceutical industry, where it could be used to more precisely study how newly developed drugs act in three-dimensional tissues. But the development of even a basic electronic sensory system small enough, not only to be embedded into human tissues without distorting cell structure, but that could potentially be an early precursor to a system capable of being integrated directly into the body's own electrical and sensory system, is a pretty spectacular thing.
"The current methods we have for monitoring or interacting with living systems are limited," said Lieber. "We can use electrodes to measure activity in cells or tissue, but that damages them. With this technology, for the first time, we can work at the same scale as the unit of biological system without interrupting it. Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin."
Whatever it's intended practical use or current level of functionality, with even the Harvard Gazette itself throwing around words like "cyborg flesh", one can't help but imagine some future iteration of the technology in question, one day finding it's way on and into the human body in some way, shape, or form. Because one of the main hurdles in trying to fully merge mechanical systems into organic ones, is finding a way to integrate artificial control and sensory systems into the body's own biological ones. And while something that advanced is a far cry from the basic, research based functions of the nanoscale silicone network developed for this project, the idea that we live in a world in which "cyborg flesh" is a reality on any scale, is a pretty amazing thing to consider.
Also, our robot-death-cheetahs look cold, and they want skin.
Posted by YouTube user: BostonDynamics
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Quantic Dream: Kara, PS3 Tech Demo
Kara, is essentially a seven minute long animated short film, created by Quantic Dream -creators of the game Hard Rain- to show off their new graphic engine and hopefully, in the case of Kara anyway, the level of voice acting they plan to strive for in their next title. Because that was one of the most common criticism from fans of the game -including me- and those who hated it, alike. And then there was also that bit where you had to control your character during a sex scene... But that was just, weird.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Creepy/Weird Japanese Thing of The Week: Shiri The Emo Robo-Ass
That’s actually the excuse behind this particular bit of creepy. It’s about how the robot mimics emotions, with tactile transformations of…
Okay…Ya know what;
IT’S A ROBOT-ASS THAT TWITCHES AND CLENCHES ITSELF WHEN YOU SPANK AND TICKLE IT! There, ya see what I had to write? Anytime the phrase, “Spank and tickle it” appears in any description of whatever the hell it is you’re doing, it’s not science anymore! It's recreation! And it's creepy.
I feel dirty again.
I’m gonna go now.
-CAINE-
VIA: Gizmodo
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Creepy-Weird-Not Japanese, Thing of The Week: Kiss Transmission Robots From Lovotics
Remember THIS story, about a group of Japanese students who invented a remote kissing machine for the Internet? Remember how creepy we all thought it was, and how you could never imagine why anyone would build such a thing? Well, just in case you thought the Japanese were the only ones trying to make robot humping a reality, I give you: AI researcher Hooman Samani.
Hooman, as you may have guessed by now, has actually invented an Internet kissing machine all of his own, through a robotics project called “Lovotics”. Yes, That’s right- creepy Internet kissing machines have been independently invented at least twice now.
Instead of a little white box with a plastic bendy straw attached to it, like the device those Japanese students came up with. Samani’s remote kissing toys are made to look like cartoon pigs with giant silicon lips. Which I'm thinking is a not so subtle comment on the potential users of the device, but that's just speculation on my part.
So if you happen to be a shut in with a desire to make out remotely with strangers over the Internet, or even if you just happen to have a thing for anthropomorphized pigs, then today, is YOUR lucky day. All ya gotta do now is grab yourself one of these sweet Internet kissing pigs, and one of those iPad fleshlight mounts I told you about -which also turned out to be a real thing BTW- and you can finally live your twisted little monkey dreams of virtually humping your favorite cartoon seductress, or iOS device.
ENJOY!
You depraved little freaks you.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Sense-Roid, The creepy Japanese Device That Hugs You Back
A few weeks ago on Compendium, I shared THIS creepy Japanese kissing machine. Well, in news that’s seriously making me consider adding a “Creepy Japanese Thing Of The Week” post. Students at the University of Electro-Communications in Japan, have designed a pair of vests designed to let people hug and caress themselves. Really? Cause by my count, the last thing people need, is help “caressing” themselves.
Described by it's creators in the video description on Youtube as:
“What type of emotions could be obtained if you were able to hug yourself? When we hug someone, we feel a sense of ease coming from emotions such as belief, security and love. However, it is not possible to hug oneself, who is the closest person. To experience this situation, we proposed a tactile device called the Sense-Roid. The system is composed of a lay figure (In the case of this video, the “lay figure” in question, is a headless, armless, sewer’s mannequin. See, and you thought it was creepy.) with tactile sensors to detect the user’s caressing motion, and a tactile jacket with vibrators and artificial muscles to reflect the caressing motion to the user. As a result, users caress themselves through our Sense-Roid. We believe that this self-caressing experience will enlighten people about the value of caressing.”
The good news, depending on how strong your desire to someday own an interactive humping appliance may be, is that the creators of the Sense-Roid say there are no future plans for the device. And judging by the demeanor of the student demonstrating the invention in the video, it was all meant to be a bit tongue and cheek anyway.
Still, if the adult industry did manage to get a hold of this technology, ugly things WOULD happen. Ugly, dirty, filthy things…
Source: popsci.com
Posted by Youtube user: mlepine
Sunday, February 20, 2011
YaaY, Science Gives us Carnivorous Robots, Wait...WHAT?!
Image credit: The MatrixWell, consider this -The machines have already demonstrated their vast superiority in two of our most important geekly endeavors; Chess, with Deep Blue's defeat of Chess titan Gary Kasparov in 1997, and just this week, with IBM's supercomputer Watson's utter destruction of two of our greatest geek champions on Jeopardy. Sure, Kasparov did manage to win one round and draw three others, but Deep Blue still won, and yes, the humans on Jeopardy DID manage to win the final Jeopardy question, but their daily dollar amounts weren't even close.
Now, inventors at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory are building robots powered by Microbial fuel cells, which work by using bacteria to break down the bodies of dead flies and generate electrons which are in turn converted into electricity and used to power the machines. But that's only the beginning, as these scientist ultimately hope to design robots that can turn much larger bits of "biomass", that's us, into electricity, thus ensuring our inevitable demise at the hands of the machines! Okay, so none of these scientists have specifically mentioned feeding human flesh to their robots, but it's CLEARLY implied!!!
All kidding aside, microbial fuel cells are an impressive and unbelievably cool concept. One which could potentially be a real solution to a number of vexing problems, stemming from our ever growing dependence on technology and our need to power it. Besides, even if technology does someday become self-aware, run amok, and ultimately reduce humanity to little more than squishy pink D-cells; I've never really been good with people anyway, so I, for one, welcome our future robot overlords.
-CAINE-
Posted by Youtube user:Crittersinc
Friday, October 29, 2010
Life-like Japanese Robot Mimics Facial Expressions
While there are moments in the video when the robots displays the tell-tale jerky movements we've all come to associate with animatronics, particularly when it nods it's head towards then end. And the intermittent noise of the compressor needed to supply air to power the actuators beneath the android's skin kicking on also detracts rather harshly from the illusion. I was genuinely surprised by the life-like appearance of the robots face and most of all, it's skin.
Like it's predecessors Active-F is a teleoperated android, meaning it is remotely controlled by a human user, and will first be put into public use in Japanese hospitals where the machine will be used to observe patients. What could possibly be creepy about that?
-CAINE-
Source: Gizmodo Also check out the following article on IEEE Spectrum for a more detailed and technical article on Ishiguro's newest creation
Monday, September 27, 2010
This Weeks Compendium
This week on Compendium Of Strange: Art from Bobby Chui and Zdzislaw Beksinski, The transforming owl, guitar bot, Glow in the dark sperm and more. Follow the links provided to see these and all the other posts from this week on Compendium Of Strange.
Of course, if you followed me on twitter or liked my musician page on Facebook, you'd already know all this...I'm just sayin'.
-CAINE-
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Pressure-Sensitive Electronic Skin
Developed by a research group from Tokyo University, E-skin is a highly conductive rubber-like material capable of stretching 1.7 times it's original size without any loss of conductivity. With the ability to be stretched over any rough surface, this new electronic skin could be used for a near limitless variety of applications including as a touch sensitive artificial skin.
The prototype can detect pressures between 0 and 15 kilopascals. -A kilopascal is approximately the pressure exerted by a 10-g mass resting on a 1-cm2 area. 0 to 15 Kpa is equivalent to the pressure experienced while holding a small object.- Because the skin is flexible, it changes thickness in response to pressure allowing built in capacitors to then measure that pressure.
-CAINE-
Read more about this artificial skin at: io9
Thursday, July 22, 2010
FEAR MY ARMY OF ROACH-BORG!
in 2006 artist and Fulbright scholar Garnet Hertz created a robot which, by means of a modified mouse ball, is controlled by a Madagascar hissing cockroach.
I have already begun plans to amass my very own Roach-Borg army which will guarantee me success in my campaign for world domination as Neo-Luddites everywhere will cower in fear of my advanced technology, while the rest of the world retreats in disgust from the icky bugs controlling them! MUAHAHAHAHA!
-Caine-
Friday, July 16, 2010
Rex: A Robot Exoskeleton For People In Wheelchairs.
Rex Bionics has designed a pair of robotic legs which allow people in wheel chairs to stand, walk, and even go up and down stairs. Users strap themselves into the exoskeleton and control it's movement by using joysticks with either hand. Check the company's web site or Youtube channel for more vids.
