From the billionaire who wants to build an 80,000 person colony on mars, create auto-pilot cars, and envisions the a steel tube that will get 28 passengers from LA to San Francisco in 35 minutes, comes this awesome video. Check out Elon Musk’s out of this world rocket skills.
Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google released a new book on Tuesday, which he co-authored with a former US State Department terrorism adviser. “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business,” offers compelling arguments for a few interesting predictions.
An intelligent billboard set up in London has facial recognition tech built in that lets it scan passersby for gender – if a woman stops to take a look, it plays a 40-second video clip. Dudes only get a link to the advertiser’s website. It’s like they’re trying to send a message or something.
Nobody has any idea where they’re planning on getting funding from – but like a kid with an extended birthday wish list, NASA has unveiled some amazing concepts of future, eco-friendly aircraft, which they’re calling “greener flying machines for the year 2025.” Assuming they’re still here then.
Five days into 2012 and we’ve already got fancy new technology. A team from Cornell University have developed a light-distortion device that can mask events as if they hadn’t happened; they managed to use light distortion to hide an event for 40 picoseconds. Which, granted, is 40 trillionths of a second, but the research is groundbreaking in the extreme.
Akio Toyoda, Toyota’s president, described the freshly-unveiled Fun-Vii as “a smartphone on four-wheels,” which sounds like something you would say to describe a car with lots of gadgets. Except Toyota’s new concept car, unveiled ahead of the Tokyo Auto show is like a smartphone on four wheels because it has giant touchscreen doors.
VW are proposing a new technology that will allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel at speeds up to around 130km/h, and let the car’s system temporarily take over. Look, it isn’t exactly Knight Rider, but it’s good that VW’s looking after people who want to multitask while cruising down highways.
Researchers at the University of California have put together tiny robot brains that replicate the long term memory function in rats; using this, they could switch long-term memory on and off with a button. Which means ‘electronic memory’ and the possibility of knowing stuff without having to learn stuff is suddenly a real thing.
Man, when was the last time a Facebook App was actually useful? I mean, Facebook is inherently a timesink, and this app isn’t so much useful as it is creepy, but semantics. The Breakup Notifier does what is says on the tin – it lets you know the second your crush isn’t in a relationship anymore.