Category: reader

Japanese and US Piloted Robots To Brawl For National Pride

jfruh writes: Japan may have just lost the Women’s World Cup to the U.S., but the country is hoping for a comeback in another competition: a battle between giant robots. Suidobashi Heavy Industry has agreed to a challenge from Boston-based MegaBots that would involve titanic armored robots developed by each startup, the first of its kind involving piloted machines that are roughly 4 meters tall. “We can’t let another country win this, ” Kogoro Kurata, who is CEO of Suidobashi, said in a video posted to YouTube. “Giant robots are Japanese culture.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Follow this link:
Japanese and US Piloted Robots To Brawl For National Pride

This Free Font Automatically Redacts NSA Surveillance Trigger Words

Some might see downloading this free font called Seen as the digital equivalent of donning a tin foil hat. Except that we know that security agencies like the NSA are intercepting emails and other communications , scanning for specific trigger words that this font automatically crosses out. Read more…

Read the article:
This Free Font Automatically Redacts NSA Surveillance Trigger Words

What It’s Like to Ride This Incredible E-Bike at 40 Miles Per Hour

What happens if you put a 4, 000 watt motor—nearly five horsepower—on a bicycle built of strong, lightweight materials? I’ll tell you: pure craziness, heart-filling joy, and power pedaling at high speeds you could only dream of before. Read more…

View article:
What It’s Like to Ride This Incredible E-Bike at 40 Miles Per Hour

Oh God, Someone Ran Fear and Loathing Through Google’s Neural Network

By now, the entire internet’s realized that Deep Dream, Google’s artificial neural network, is capable of some pretty trippy images . But what happens when you run a movie about acid trips through the acid trip generator ? Fear and Loathing in your worst nightmares, that’s what. Read more…

View article:
Oh God, Someone Ran Fear and Loathing Through Google’s Neural Network

Larry Offers Personalized Legal Help via Text Message

Larry is a service from the folks at Lawtrades that’s designed to give you near-instantaneous legal help whenever you might need it. All you have to do is send Larry a text message (once you’ve signed up, of course), and you’ll get a personalized response, specific to your situation and where you are. Read more…

Read More:
Larry Offers Personalized Legal Help via Text Message

This magic exoskeleton for industrial workers is the future—we know, we wore one

RICHMOND, Calif.—Wearing Ekso Bionics ’ forthcoming exoskeleton for construction and industrial workers is probably the closest that I will ever come to having a real physical superpower. Through the magic of gravity and amazing industrial and mechanical design, a 40-pound industrial tool that I was holding became totally weightless. After just a few minutes, I quickly figured out that if I let the tool go it would fly off into space, as if gravity had no effect on it at all. The Ekso Works suit is slated to hit the market in 2016 in the “tens of thousands of dollars” range. (One financial analyst, Jeffrey Cohen, believes it will cost about $12,000.) Read 36 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read more here:
This magic exoskeleton for industrial workers is the future—we know, we wore one

New Horizons enters safe mode 9 days before Pluto rendezvous [Updated]

Update, 10pm ET: NASA has announced that “There was no hardware or software fault. The underlying cause was a hard-to-detect timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence that occurred during an operation to prepare for flyby.” Science operations are set to resume on July 7. Original story:  In nine short days, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will make history by becoming the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto. Unfortunately on July 4, just days before the team was to send the approach command to the vehicle, an anomaly occurred at 1:54pm EST and communications with the spacecraft were lost. Communications were quickly restored through the deep space network (DSN), with signal confirmation at 3:15pm EDT. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
New Horizons enters safe mode 9 days before Pluto rendezvous [Updated]

Major Government Spying Service Supplier Hacked, 400GB of Data Stolen

An Italian company called Hacking Team , which supplies intrusion and surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies, has been hacked. The intruders have made off with 400GB of data which is now being leaked online. Read more…

More:
Major Government Spying Service Supplier Hacked, 400GB of Data Stolen

From the Wirecutter: The best consumer-grade Wi-Fi extender

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a list of the best technology to buy. Read the full article below at TheWirecutter.com . The winning EX6200 is much bigger than most of the other extenders we tested. The performance is worth it, but the EX6200’s size could affect where you place it in your home or apartment. After spending a total of 110 hours researching 25 different Wi-Fi extenders (and testing 10 of them), plus analyzing reviews and owner feedback, we found that the $100 Netgear EX6200 is the best Wi-Fi extender for most people right now.  It costs as much as a great router and it shouldn’t be the first thing you try to fix your Wi-Fi range, but it has the best combination of range, speed, flexibility, and physical connections of any extender we tested. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View original post here:
From the Wirecutter: The best consumer-grade Wi-Fi extender