STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Soldiers On (Virtual) Patrol

This is not a drill. In fact, it’s a virtual drill. You’re looking at soldiers from the 35th Engineer Brigade of the Missouri National Guard as they use a VR training tool known as the Dismounted Soldier Training System.

The system uses motion tracking to allow soldiers to train in a simulated deployed environment, performing simulated foot patrols and clearing buildings in virtual surroundings. It might look a bit silly from here, but it’s an incredibly affordable way to train soldiers in all kinds of envrironments — without them having to leave their military base.

[MIKA27]

This Python Ate A Porcupine, Which Turned Out To Be A Bad Idea

We all eat the wrong thing sometimes, but this 3.66m-long South African python made a major error. It swallowed a porcupine whole. Spoilers: No, it did not survive.

LiveScience reports that a bicyclist captured these photos of the snake right after it had gulped down its meal. At the time, park rangers speculated that it had eaten something like a small warthog.

But then the snake appears to have suffered a setback. A week after these photos were taken, park rangers found it dead. Apparently, it had fallen off a ledge. But why would that kill a snake? When the rangers opened the snake up, they discovered the answer.

It had eaten a 13.6kg porcupine, whose quills probably pierced its digestive tract in the fall and killed it. In this image, you can see the mostly-undigested porcupine, whose quills lodged in the snake’s stomach, at right.

Now we know who wins when a snake fights a porcupine. Nobody.

[Overproof]

DUNTON HOT SPRINGS RESORT IN COLORADO

Across from Telluride, Colorado lies Dunton Hot Springs, a former ghost town which has been repurposed into an exclusive Colorado resort nestled deep in the San Juan Mountains. Log cabins that are exquisitely furnished, quality food and breathtaking trails free of smartphones.

There are 13 restored log cabins in total built in a circle around a saloon with a dance hall and a bath house. The resort also has eight luxurious canvas tents, an open-air chapel, library and, most importantly, natural hot springs on site. The resort is open year-round, offering top-notch skiing in the winter and mountain trails in the Rockies for the rest of the year, with the resort providing all of the snow-shoeing equipment, mountain bikes, cross-country skies, and ice-skates you could ever want. Of course, there’s also a screening room with access to over 800 DVDs if you prefer. [Purchase]

I want to go here and write a book..Looks amazing!

[MIKA27]

This Ice Rover's Descendants Will Explore Europa's Ocean

The allure of a warm, liquid ocean beneath Europa’s icy surface has inspired science fiction and real NASA missions alike. But if and when we get around to extraterrestrial oceanography, what will our undersea explorers look like?

Probably, a bit like this little guy. Meet BRUIE, the Buoyant Rover for Under Ice Exploration. This autonomously controlled bot is designed to float on the underside of ice sheets, rolling itself around on wheels, snapping photos and collecting data. Last year, BRUIE became the first satellite operated under-ice vehicle, when NASA engineers wheeled it around beneath an ice-sheet near Barrow, Alaska.

Since that successful trial, BRUIE has undergone a series of upgrades, and a second gen version — which looks markedly different from its predecessor — is now almost ready to be set loose beneath the Arctic ice once more. But first, BRUIE’s engineers decided to show it off to tourists at the California Science Center in LA this week while they tested out some new features.

According to NASA:

The new version is longer, has a thicker body and is designed for ocean depths up to about 700 feet (200 metres). The central body contains computers, sensors and communication equipment. On either side of the central section is a “pod,” each with sensors, lights, a camera, batteries, instruments and two motors. The software for this rover is similar to what is being used for Mars Cube One, two communication-relay CubeSats that will launch with NASA’s InSight Mars lander in 2016.

Researchers are currently working to increase the rover’s autonomy and beef up its hazard avoidance, with an eye toward eventually letting the rover survey a frozen lake on its own.

“Our work aims to build a bridge between exploring extreme environments in our own ocean and the exploration of distant, potentially habitable oceans elsewhere in the solar system,” said Kevin Hand, a co-investigator for the rover and planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

Today: Aquarium tanks. Tomorrow? Distant alien moons. [NASA]

[MIKA27]

It's Official, Australia Has The World's Best Latte Artist

It’s hard to argue that Australia has an excellent coffee game, a trait which has just been recognised on an international scale.

Cha, who hails from Cafenatics in the Melbourne CBD, beat out numerous competitors before advancing to the final round, where he outdid five would-be latte-making perfectionists from Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan.

What exactly does a latte championship entail? I’ll let the website explain:

For the preliminary round of the championship, baristas produce a single creative latte pattern at the Art Bar, then move to the WLAC stage to create two identical free-pour lattes and two identical designer lattes. Scores from the Art Bar and Stage are combined, and the top 6 competitors qualify for the final round, where they are asked to create two identical free-pour macchiato, two identical free-pour lattes, and two identical designer patterned lattes. The top-scoring competitor in the final round is declared the World Latte Art Champion.

A press release marking the occasion has comments from Cha regarding his win:

Caleb always puts it down simply to practice. “The more you practice and repeat, the better and sharper your patterns become. And, the more confident you become, pouring becomes second nature and you develop steady hands. This lets you work faster with less errors”, he says.

MIKA: Oh yeah, Melbourne Coffee by the way!

[MIKA27]

The World's Tallest Cow Is So Comically Ginormous That It's Hilarious

When you first see Blosom, a cow that measures in at 6 feet 2 inches from the hoof to the withers and is the Guinness World Record’s tallest cow ever, you can’t help but laugh. You don’t scream fake (that’s the second thing you do) or analyse the photo’s misleading angles meant to exaggerate the cow’s size (that’s the 3rd thing), you just laugh.

Blosom is so huge that it makes everything in life seem silly. She just bumbles about the grass and seems almost embarrassed at how big she is. The video below shows her true size without any angling shenanigans.

Blosom passed away last month due to a leg injury but not before Guinness gave her the title of tallest cow ever.

[MIKA27]

Landing A Lockheed U-2 Isn't For The Faint-Hearted

It’s easy to forget just how shallow some aeroplanes are. In this image, you’re looking at a US Air Force Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft as it flies above Royal Air Force Fairford in England earlier this month. As the Air Force points out, the long wings and shallow body mean U-2 pilots have a very small margin for error when it comes to landing without causing damage to the aircraft.

[MIKA27]

Badass Glowing Wing Suit Flight Over A City At Night

Roberta Mancino — wingsuit flyer, base jumper, sky diver and model — pulled off a sparkling stunt: she jumped out of a helicopter in an illuminated wing suit over Panama City at night. The backdrop of the city lights mixed with her glowing suit makes for some arresting visuals. Flying on a wing suit is already crazy during the day, it must be even nuttier in the dark.

[MIKA27]

BIZARRE HELMETS THAT LOOK JUST LIKE HUMAN HEADS

These custom-made helmets are sure to cause a lot of confusion in the world of motorcycle and bicycle fashion. They're cleverly modeled after a shaved human head to create the bizarre illusion of having a head which is actually shaped like a helmet. It's like a whole new level of helmet hair!

Ok, so you can't actually buy these babies just yet. But the concept is pretty fascinating. The helmet's themselves are interesting, but I really want to see a picture of someone modeling these. I think it would be even more interesting if the model had long hair. Can you imagine how odd that would look?

I hope these concepts become reality. I'd love to see these odd fashions speeding by on bikes! To find out more, take a look Jyo John Mullor's website.

[MIKA27]

Turkish Town Disappearing Down Huge Sinkholes

I don’t speak Turkish but I wouldn’t be surprised if the native word for “sinkholes” is Karapinar. That’s the town in central Turkey that has seen nine huge sinkholes mysteriously open in just three months, including one that’s already 70 meters (230 feet) deep. This is an area that has experienced sinkholes in the past but these are larger and deeper and opening faster than ever before. What could be causing the earth to slowly swallow Karapinar?

Twelve large sinkholes are known to have opened in Karapinar over the past two years, but the local farmers are reluctant to report them for fear that their farms will be restricted or shut down for safety reason. Some estimates say at least 200 additional sinkholes have gone unreported during this three month period for that reason.

Geologists discovered this sinkhole-prone area is getting progressively worse when astudy was conducted in 2010. It found that, of the 19 large sinkholes formed from 1977 to 2009, 13 of them occurred after 2005. It was estimated at that time that the unofficial number of sinkholes was over 100.

The geology of the area explains some of the sinkholes. It’s near the Karapınar Volcanic Field, which has five cinder cones but has seen no eruptions there for at least 3,000 years. The surrounding plateau is made of limestone which has natural sinkholes dating back hundreds of thousands of years.

What caused the sudden recent increase? Those farmers hiding the sinkholes are partly to blame. The increase of agriculture in this semi-arid climate required thousands of deep wells to be drilled, reducing the groundwater level by 24 meters, most of that in the past few years. Add to that the unusually heavy rains the area experienced recently (climate change anyone?) and you have the ingredients for more and bigger sinkholes.

There’s no word on what the local or Turkish government will do about Karapinar’s sinkhole epidemic but the fact that the farmers are hiding them suggests there will be little cooperation until some farmer disappears.

First the sinkholes came for the cars and they did nothing

[MIKA27]

Town Terrorized by Tens of Thousands of Toxic Tarantulas

A newly discovered species of tarantula is poisonous, can swim underwater and has overrun the Australian town of Maningrida. Time for another killer spider movie?

In 2006, schoolchildren on a field trip in Maningrida, a town 310 miles (500 km) east of Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory, found a spider that spider experts had never seen before . It’s a type of diving tarantula that avoid drowning in the floods of the rainy season by creating its own air bubbles. Once the waters dry up, anything else going after these tarantulas has to deal with their long fangs, which can deliver venom capable of killing rodents and other small animals and give humans nausea and vomiting.

How many diving tarantulas are hiding in this burrow?

Are you scared yet? It gets worse. There’s 25,000 of these toxic tarantulas in Maningrida, an indigenous town with only 2,000 residents on a 6 mile floodplain in the Arnhem Land. That’s over 12 fanged flesh-tearing tarantulas per person.

While the locals are concerned, arachnologists like Dr. Robert Raven, head of Queensland Museum’s arachnological division, are thrilled. Raven has named more than 400 spiders in his 40-year career but says he’s never seen a concentration of tarantulas like Maningrida’s, which he described as “off the scale” and “unbelievable.” Here’s his theory on the large numbers:

Presumably, something is missing that would hammer them or there is something good [like a food source]. It’s one of the beauties of science, being able to say ‘I don’t know.’

Dr. Robert Raven with a male diving tarantula – the females are larger

Dr. Raven would like to study the Maningria tarantula and its venom for medicinal purposes, but recognizes that it belongs to the Kunibídji people who own the land. A partnership could bring them needed resources while protecting them and the spiders.

Raven says he’ll leave the study of these tarantulas to younger researchers who can outrun the local buffaloes and wild pigs. In the meantime, he’s working on naming the spider.

And I’m working on a title for the movie. Diving Tarantulas of Death! Australian Arach Attack! The Town that Toxic Tarantulas Took!!!

Any suggestions?

[MIKA27]

ANCHOR DOUBLE LIBERTY IPA

Just in time for Independence Day comes Double Liberty from Anchor Brewing. The original Liberty Ale was introduced 40 years ago, so it's a fitting time for a new, hopped up version of a classic. Using the same whole cone Cascade hops that helped make the original famous, Double Liberty is twice as nice, with double the hops and the IBUs. The amped up version clocks in at 8.2% ABV, and despite the extra everything, is incredibly smooth and palatable.

[MIKA27]

SARPANEVA CAST IRON POT

You know you've got a great design on your hands when it makes it onto a postage stamp. Sure, it was in Finland, but that doesn't take away from the great looks of theSarpaneva Cast Iron Pot ($295). Designed by Timo Sarpaneva in 1960, this usable piece of art offers a three quart capacity, a beechwood handle, and oven-to-table functionality that's safe for use on gas, electric, gas electric, and induction ranges, as well as over an open fire — where it looks its best.

[MIKA27]

BOOKER'S CENTER CUT BOURBON

You probably already know that Booker's Bourbon is one of the better choices in the increasingly popular world of barrel proof bourbons. But Center Cut takes things up a notch, not only because it was pulled from a part of the rack house that the late Booker Noe preferred, but also because it was specially chosen by an exclusive group of whiskey experts. Tipping the scales at 127.2 proof, Beam's Master Distiller Fred Noe headed up the tasting panel, and the results are a batch of Booker's that will likely be in greater demand than any other that is released this year.

[MIKA27]

James Cameron's Plan To Fix Solar Panels

When Avatar came out, James Cameron boasted that it would be the first solar-powered movie franchise in history. Now the director, deep-sea explorer, NASA advisor and all around badass has turned his attention to designing cinematic-quality solar panels for the rest of us.

Cameron himself was an early adopter of solar tech: Besides switching to solar energy on his film sets, he has a 50 kWh array on his own Santa Barbara County property. But even he acknowledges the problems with solar panels, and one of the major hurdles keeping them from widespread adoption: They’re just kinda ugly.

“I happen to like the way solar panels look — the more the better,” Cameron told me by phone last week. “But I can appreciate the fact that not all people like them.”

The director’s quest for a better solar panel began by improving upon the aesthetics, but ended up providing a technological advantage. Due to their weight and footprint, solar panels are often designed to stay put. The panels are installed a certain way on-site to receive the peak amount of solar energy, but this optimal placement also means the panels’ performance will plummet at other times of the day. And then of course, there’s the challenge for homeowners whose roofs might not face the best direction or are made from a material that can’t easily support the heavy panels (like the clay tiles which blanket much of Southern California).

So the design needed to be able to track with the sun’s movement throughout the day, increasing productivity, and not rely on a roof’s pitch for optimised installation. “The idea was to unify form and function with this life-affirming image that anyone looking at it would instantly get,” Cameron says.

He chose a sunflower, which, aside from possessing those life-affirming qualities, also lent appropriately biomimetic inspiration: Sunflowers will turn to face the sun throughout the day.

Building a Better Solar Panel

The design began with a sketch by Cameron which was visualised by a CG modeller from Avatar, then realised by a structural engineer and fabricator. The 33-foot-tall “flowers” feature clusters of panels which are individually welded and bolted together; each 28.5-foot-wide flower includes five central panels surrounded by 14 “petals.” Cameron then worked with the solar company Sonnen on the tracking technology, which uses astronomic data to calculate the sun’s position and align the panels accordingly throughout the day.

The first Sun Flowers were installed last month on the Malibu campus of the MUSE School, a nonprofit school focused on environmental learning which was cofounded by his wife Suzy Amis Cameron (Cameron actually presented the concept to her as a birthday present in 2012).

The grid-tied system is currently generating about 260 kWh per day, which provides about 75 to 90 per cent of the school’s power needs, but Cameron believes in the upcoming summer months the panels could supply the full 100 per cent. (He’s looking forward to testing Tesla’s forthcoming Powerwall batteries for storage options, too.) Cameron’s team also developed a dashboard tool that allows students to monitor energy generation in the classroom, with teachers designing lesson plans around the science of solar collection.

Most of the larger solar arrays around LA consist of black rectangular voids arranged on a hillside, which have been a source of contention from neighbours who claim they’re ruining their views. The five Sun Flowers that dot the property at MUSE look almost like pieces of site-specific public art tucked into the chaparral canyon. Just the fact that the Sun Flowers are free-standing and somewhat sculptural is a big step in solar’s evolution.

And here’s the other benefit to Cameron’s design: The panels sit high above the ground and are shaped almost exactly like a beach umbrella, meaning they can also provide necessary shade to those standing below. These could be easily plopped into a sunny backyard and would also be ideal for a park.

The Case for Open-Source

Rather than launch a solar startup himself to put these into production, Cameron is working to make all the design documents for the Sun Flowers open-source. He’s filed a patent to prevent someone else from claiming authorship of the project, and once that’s procured he’ll post all the information publicly. (I would guess that one might follow him on Twitter for the details.)

In fact, this is not the first time Cameron has given away his solar-generating ideas. He designed a similar concept (a kind of hydraulic-powered folding solar panel) that could be deployed from a trailer for mobile power generation, a concept which he passed along to FEMA for use in emergency response centres.

Making Hollywood More Sustainable

Cameron’s call for more sustainable film production seems like an impossible dream, until you hear him talk about all the simple ways technology can help Hollywood leave a lighter footprint. Recently, Cameron has championed the use of drones over helicopters for capturing aerial footage, including organising adrone-based camera contest in New Zealand.

With the advances in quadcopter platforms and lightweight HD cameras, drones are a no-brainer. “You can get world-class motion picture quality for a thousandth of the energy,” says Cameron. But he’s also in favour of strict FAA drone regulations — Cameron’s a helicopter pilot himself and worries that it’s only a matter of time before a drone flies through a rotor blade and kills the human inside.

Perhaps the biggest way Cameron is changing the production landscape is by building a truly “green” screen: retrofitting a suite of sound stages in Manhattan Beach, California, into an eco-friendly studio lot with renewable materials, a composting program and its own bike share. The centrepiece is a one-megawatt rooftop solar array that he estimates will eventually reduce a production’s power bill to zero.

“It did cost us a little bit of money, but it all pays for itself,” he says. Imagine that — instead of expensive and highly inefficient location-based shoots, his nimble crews are building infinite digital worlds powered by the sun.

While Cameron’s larger goal is getting the film industry to think more responsibly, there’s no reason his ideas couldn’t spark change in the broader community. Avatar was once the top-grossing film of all-time; Cameron has a platform unmatched by other solar advocates (actually, are there any famous solar advocates?). Perhaps its only a matter of time before you’ll see Cameron’s perky Sun Flowers popping up across the country.

[MIKA27]

A Lawn Dart Slingshot Is A Good Reminder Why They're Still Illegal

t’s more surprising that lawn darts weren’t banned until 1988 in the US, instead of the day after they first went on sale. And if you need a good reminder as to why you can no longer easily buy a set, Joerg Sprave built a lawn dart slingshot cannon that explains why.

YouTube is filled with videos of people getting hurt playing with regular darts, and it’s surely not a recent phenomenon. So why anyone thought that making darts larger and heavier would be a good idea will forever remain a mystery.

[MIKA27]

Huge Helium Leak Balloons Earthquake Fears in Los Angeles

If the oarfish, purple giant sea slugs, dolphins and tuna crabs washing up dead on the shores of southern California didn’t scare you, maybe this will. Geologists monitoring a portion of the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin have found unusual leaks of helium-3 (3He), a sign that the fault is much deeper than they previously thought. How deep? Deep enough to produce a magnitude-8 earthquake. Are you scared yet?

UC Santa Barbara geologist Jim Boles was sampling gas from two dozen oil wells between Los Angeles and Newport Beach, a 30 mile stretch. He found that the deepest wells, over one-third of those he analyzed, showed the presence of helium-3 and carbon dioxide (CO2) which carries the helium-3. This combination of gases indicates that the fault reaches deep into the Earth’s crust to the mantle. It also shows that the Newport-Inglewood fault is in a spot where two tectonic plates collide.

Jim Boles points to the location of the Newport-Inglewood fault

According to Boles’ report in the current edition of “Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems,” these discoveries are surprising because the Newport-Inglewood fault is over 40 miles west of the plate boundary of the San Andreas Fault System and previous studies indicated that it was not deep enough to be a high-risk fault. As a result, Boles includes this warning:

This paper shows that the mantle is leaking more at the Newport-Inglewood fault zone than at the San Andreas Fault, which is a new discovery.

You read that right … leaking more than the San Andreas Fault. Based on that, the U.S. Geological Survey has increased the chance of magnitude-8 earthquake occurring in California in the next 30 years from 4.7 percent to 7 percent.

What’s worse, the southern portion of the San Andreas Fault from central California to the Mexican border hasn’t had a major quake in over 300 years and is overdue. This new discovery of the depth of the Newport-Inglewood fault increases the possibility of two or more faults quaking at once, magnifying the seismic energy and destruction.

NOW are you scared?

[Fuzz]

James Cameron's Plan To Fix Solar Panels

Instead of mounting panels on your roof, use solar panel roof tiles. Convert your entire roof into a solar array. Sure, it won't work for all roofs, but it's better than a huge solar panel flower.

[MIKA27]

PINOCCHIO BARRIQUE BOTTLE

The Pinocchio Barrique Bottle let´s you replicate the effects of aging wine in barrels at home! Experience the thrill of being a producer of your own favorite drink. It´s in fact an oak bottle, that behaves like a large barrel, but now you can keep it at home because of its regular size. It´s made from European oak, with a machined alluminum top and bottom, it´s this oak that gives your drink it´s unique blend and taste, the fact that it´s porous lets the alcohol breathe and changes its organoleptic structure, making it smoother and with a more subtle taste. It´s very easy to use, just fill it with some warm water for at least 12 hrs (to inflate every pore and achieve the transpiration impermeability status) and then fill it with the alcoholic beverage you want to design yourself, store it in a cellar, or just away from light, and wait, leaving it to mature for three to 15 days, or longer, then enjoy the unique taste you made yourself. Its makers claim 10 days in the Pinnochio Barrique Bottle will offer the benefits of six months in an oak barrel.

[MIKA27]

BEXAR APPLE WATCH STRAP

Apple's first-party straps for its watch are well made, but tend match a certain modernist aesthetic. If you're looking for something a little more rustic for yours, consider this Bexar Apple Watch Strap. Precision cut from American bridle leather, saddle stitched, and finished with rounded hardware, it's available in tan or a handsome medium brown, and with your choice of watch-matching black, stainless, or aluminum hardware.

[MIKA27]

MICRO DRONE 3.0

Three years ago if you wanted a drone to take high-quality video, you had to shell out tons of cash and rely on a big, bulky flyer. With the Micro Drone 3.0 from Extreme Flyer, you get 720p HD quality video, all attached to one of the smallest drones on the planet. Video can be streamed directly to your smartphone, and works with live streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat. And to help you concentrate on getting great footage, this quadcopter is incredibly stable, flying consistently thanks to motion sensors while it soars up to 300ft, through 45mph winds, with a battery life of around 8 minutes per charge.

[MIKA27]

Google's Top Hit For 'Greek Bailout' Is An Indiegogo Campaign To Fund It

What’s the top hit for a Google search of “Greek bailout”? Depressingly, it’s not a thorough economic analysis of how to get Greece out of debt. It’s a goofy Indiegogo campaign to crowdfund €1.6 billion. And the campaign is fast approaching €1 million.

Yes, everyone’s heart seems to be in the right place in this instance. But a crowdfunding campaign is not going to fix Greece’s problems. Even if they raise that €1.6 billion ($US1.8 billion) that they’re looking for (minus Indiegogo’s 4 per cent cut off the top, of course), the money won’t even scratch the surface in helping to alleviate their problems.

The campaign was started by a 29-year-old man in London named Thom Feeney, who is understandably tired of politicians mucking up the world’s economy. Feeney figured that a crowdfunding campaign might be the answer. Sadly, it’s not the answer. Not even close.

“I was fed up of the Greek crisis going round in circles, while politicians are dithering, this is affecting real people,” Feeney told CNBC. “While all the posturing is going on, then it’s easy for the politicians to forget that.”

And while Feeney might be absolutely correct that politicians created this mess, I might humbly suggest that politicians are going to have to fix it. Putting aside everything else, the infrastructure of internet crowdfunding can’t even handle the incredible amount of interest in this story. The campaign’s website has been spotty, with Indiegogo noting yesterday that they were experiencing connectivity issues.

But more importantly, the €1.6 billion is just the beginning of what Greece owes. The amount Feeney is raising on Indiegogo is for a loan from the IMF that the country just defaulted on yesterday. They have more payments due in the coming weeks to other creditors and in all likelihood they’re not going to be able to pay those either.

The sad truth is that however noble the intentions of the contributors, this crowdfunding campaign is not going to help Greece. Greek’s banks are closed, and everyone is understandably panicked about next steps. But if you look at the percentage counter in the upper right hand corner of the Greek Bailout Fund you can see why this problem is going to have to be solved by governments: Despite raising nearly a million euros, percentage-wise the campaign is still “0 per cent funded.”

[MIKA27]

This Exoskeleton Rig Makes Factory Workers 10 Times Stronger

Folks in manufacturing jobs are subject to labour that can literally be back-breaking. But this exoskeleton prototype — one of the first designed specifically for industrial work — could make objects with exhausting heaviness feel up to 10 times lighter.

Engineering and research institute Fraunhofer IAO held the first live demo of its Robo-Mate exoskeleton prototype last week. The exo enhances the capabilities of three parts of the human body: arms, trunk (that’s your back and spinal cord), and legs.

Researchers say the arm modules make a 30-pound car seat feel like 3 pounds; the trunk modules protect the spine from slipped discs and twists when lifting heavy items; the leg modules prevent workers from exerting extra energy when squatting, forming a “seat” with stiff stabilizers worn along the inner thighs.

Robo-Mate’s been in the works since late 2013 and has involved engineers from 12 research facilities from seven European nations. The researchers used software that simulates worker behaviour, and they were able to pinpoint the moments of particular exertion on the body. This helped them build the most suitable exoskeleton possible.

Still, Wernher van der Venn, a professor at Zurich University of Applied Sciences who worked on Robo-Mate, admits it might, well, freak people out. “The prototype is functional, but its appearance is still off-putting,” van der Venn says. “You can see all the technology and the wires. It’s probably a bit scary for people.”

Work on the exoskeleton will continue until 2016 — with the ultimate goal of creating a manufacturable prototype. As long as we can get used to the idea of looking like Iron Man, exoskeletons could give us Iron Man-like strength in the not-too-near future.

[MIKA27]

The New Steve Jobs Trailer Is All About Seth Rogen's Woz

Today there’s a new trailer for the other other other Steve Jobs movie, the one starring Michael Fassbender. But this trailer gives us the first real look at Seth Rogen as Woz… and damned if I’m not going to see this movie just to watch him.

Don’t get me wrong, Fassbender as Jobs is an inspired choice — even though he looks nothing like him, he feels a lot more like him than other Jobs we’ve seen before. The first trailer didn’t reveal much, to be honest, but now we’ve got a taste of what Apple’s story might be like with some Aaron Sorkin dialogue, Danny Boyle direction, and, most importantly, some Seth Rogen Woz. I got chills during the opening scene hearing him trash-talk Jobs (“What do you do?”) This Steve Jobs movie is gonna be good.

[MIKA27]

Watch An F-16 Shoot Down A Drone In The Air

Here’s a video showing an F-16 shooting down a drone in the air and popping off flares in a live fire exercise. One day, the drones will probably start fighting back as revenge for all these training exercises but until that day comes, let us enjoy the amazing powerful flying machines controlled by humans that allows this to happen.