Category: Engineering

Business Culture Engineering

Thiel Fellow’s Elegant Sleep Tracker, Sense, Crushes Kickstarter With $120K In A Few Hours

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As reported on TechCrunch. by Kim-Mai Cutler   When I first took a look at Sense, a smart sleep sensor launching today on Kickstarter, it reminded me of two things. Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium and Google’s old, discontinued Nexus Q product. “Those are two of my favorite things,” said James Proud, a former Thiel fellow who went on to found a startup behind the device called Hello. “I wanted to create something that didn’t feel like a piece of electronics that you don’t…

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Culture Education Engineering

University library starts ‘drone loan’ program for students

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As reported on Engadget. BY STEVE DENT  There’s good news if you’re a broke University of South Florida student who’d like to take an $1,195 DJI Phantom 2 Vision UAV for a spin: you can now sign one out from the library. Before you start preparing some kind of water balloon-dropping scheme, however, there are a few caveats. First off, all use will be supervised by library staff and you’ll have to take a course in drone operation…

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Culture Engineering Entertainment

Our New Favorite Mad Scientist Builds A Terrifying Wrist-Mounted Flame Thrower In His Garage

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As reported on TechCrunch. by Greg Kumparak Insane garage mad scientist Colin Furze promised three absurd X-Men themed projects by the end of the month — and man, has he delivered. First came his ridiculous, automatically extendable Wolverine claws. Then came his Magneto boots, which let him walk upside down across the ceiling. His last project, though, might be the most dangerous of the lot: wrist-mounted flame throwers.     Built in homage to flame-tossing baddie Pyro, the system…

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Engineering

Build your own robotic bartender with Arduino and a 3D printer

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As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS You can certainly buy a ready-made drink mixing robot if you’re flush with cash, but wouldn’t you rather spend that money on the drinks themselves? Yu Jiang Tham thinks so — he recently designed Bar Mixvah, a robotic bartender you can build yourself with $180 in parts. The key ingredient is an Arduino Nano microcontroller that takes your requests through a web-based interface. After that, it’s mostly a matter of 3D printing the frame…

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Engineering Entertainment

How a lost letter delayed the rebuilding of 1 World Trade Center by a year

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As reported on The Verge. By Chris Schodt A year into the biggest project of their career, a lost letter made the developers of 1 World Trade Center start from scratch. Vanity Fair has a preview of the new documentary 16 Acres, which chronicles the challenges and conflicts that surrounded the redevelopment of the iconic structure. Months after the cornerstone for 1 World Trade Center had already been laid, security concerns from the New York Police Department halted construction and…

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Art Culture Design Engineering

Students build a robot arm you control with the wink of an eye

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As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS Want proof that you don’t need big, specialized equipment to produce a mind-controlled robot arm? Just look at a recent University of Toronto student project. Ryan Mintz and crew have created an arm that you control using little more than a brainwave-sensing headset (which is no longer that rare) and a laptop. The team’s software is smart enough to steer the arm using subtle head movements, such as clenching your jaw or…

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Automotive Engineering

To make a car, Audi had to blow one up

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As reported on The Verge. By Aaron Souppouris The exploded car of Ingolstadt About an hour from Munich, Audi basically runs a city. Its headquarters are situated in Ingolstadt, a city of around 125,000 people. Audi employs over 35,000 here, an enormous complex housing corporate offices, research and development centers, production lines, and a large museum and visitors’ center. Today I’m standing in one of the many innocuous buildings, in front of the company’s new TT…

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Culture Engineering

IBM’s Watson supercomputer will soon be your personal shopper

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As reported on Engadget. BY MARIELLA MOON Watson had been a doctor, a geneticist, a game show contestant and even a chef in the past. But now IBM’s supercomputer has a new career: personal shopping. IBM has partnered with digital commerce firm Fluid to develop a cloud-based app called Expert Personal Shopper (XPS), which uses Watson’s brains to answer buyers’ highly specific questions. In short, the computer with many hats now plays the role of a sales associate when you’re shopping online.…

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Apple Culture Engineering Environmental

New Apple Campus 2 Video Shows Eco-Friendly Aspects Of The “Mother Ship”

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As reported on TechCrunch. by John Biggs The company will supply 1,000 shared bicycles at the new HQ and will use 30% less energy than the typical office building. It will also include solar and other renewable energy sources. Built in the “fruit bowl of America,” the new 2.8-million-square-foot space will house 13,000 engineers and be finished in 2016. Below are some more shots of the amazing new space.  

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Design Engineering

Hitachi is building the world’s fastest elevator: 95 floors in 43 seconds

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As reported on Engadget. BY MARIELLA MOON In 2016, Hitachi will take over Toshiba’s title as the maker of the fastest elevator in the world. The Japanese company’s slated to install two lifts that move at a swift 45mph inside China’s Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre, currently under construction. Apparently, you can reach the 95th floor (the building will have 111 floors in all) straight from the ground in just 43 seconds on one of these zippy elevators —…

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