Tech Today w/ Ken May

There’s something surprising about this sea pig fellow’s family… and it’s not that they are a bit wet, porcine and on the salty side.

… oink…

The wee pigs live on the seabed, all pink and podgy tottering around on their wee trotters, slurping up all the gubbins that rains down on the seabed with their piggy snouts. These sea pigs live in odd little herds too, where they bob around eating what not, getting eaten by things and… well… that’s about all we know to be honest. The problem being that it’s rather difficult to stay in touch with piggies that live on the deepest ocean beds, though all is not lost dear reader as thankfully we’ve managed to get to know their relatives. Though as we said they are considered a rather flabbergasting bunch, even when they are at soirees with their salty little hog cousins.

… oink…

Sea pigs are from the holothurian family, also known as the sea cucumbers, a type of echinoderm… that’s right starfish and urchins and what not. The sea cucumbers are found all over the shop, at least all over the shop in the sea, what’s more they have a really rather surprising trick up their sleeve.

… oink…

Gaaaaaah one knows what you’re thinking, you think old Pilkie’s going to tell you that as a defence mechanism they belch their intestines out of their anus. Well yes that is indeed surprising, and is quite often cited as the worst party trick in the sea. Though the sea cucumbers have an even more remarkable trick; they can liquidize themselves. Yes of course many animals can liquidize themselves, it’s just that the sea cucumbers manage to act all alive afterwards. Part of their arsenal of trying to not be gobbled down by something, as if hoiking your wibbly insides out in front of a rapscallion isn’t enough. The sea cucumbers, with the aid of a clever compound called ‘catch collagen’ can turn themselves into a bag of soup and pour themselves into a crevice before acting all solid as if nothing had happened. Remarkable, one is sure you’ll agree.

… oink…oink…oink…oink…oink…oink…oink…oink…oink…oink…oink…oink….

The family of the sea pigs, quite a surprising bunch one is sure you’ll agree… and as for the sea pigs, if you do meet them do tell them to get in touch.

Visit link:
Sea Pigs

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an article at ZDNet: “As expected, Facebook has started displaying ads in users’ News Feeds. You may not be seeing them yet as the company is rolling them out gradually, like it does for all its changes. … Last month, a Facebook spokesperson said the company hoped to ‘show people no more than one Sponsored Story in their News Feeds per day.’ This is no longer the case, as Facebook now says you may see more Featured stories ‘if you visit your News Feed a lot.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read More:
Facebook Adds Ads To News Feed

This year, California-based Ekso Bionics will begin shipping their eponymous product, a robotic exoskeleton that will enable paraplegics to do the unthinkable: Walk. New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital and other rehabilitation clinics in the U.S. and Europe are expected to purchase commercial models once performance and reliability trials are cleared–trials overseen, interestingly enough, by America’s Food & Drug Administration.

Ekso Bionics began as Berkeley Bionics in 2005, and early military cooperation helped the firm produce the HULC, a militarized version of the exoskeleton designed to help able-bodied soldiers tirelessly lug heavy payloads through rugged terrain. Lockheed Martin (whose somewhat creepy company motto is “We Never Forget Who We’re Working For”) licensed the technology in 2009, freeing the company now known as Ekso to begin focusing on its civilian version. The company’s work has since earned it a 2012 Edison Award nomination.

It’s hard not to be moved by the video of an early product tester, a woman who has not walked since sustaining a spinal injury nearly 20 years ago. For some reason Ekso has rendered the video unembeddable, but it can be freely viewed here.

(more…)

View the original here:
Ekso Bionics to Begin Shipping Exoskeletons for Paraplegics This Year

Just stop me when this sounds ridiculous: A tablet. Built for gaming. Like, really built for gaming. With twin analog joysticks. That are permanently built into it. That’s Razer’s Project Fiona. And it’s more amazing than you think. More »

Read More:
I Just Held the Future of PC Gaming in My Hands and It’s Called Project Fiona [Video]

E Ink Holdings is here at Showstoppers to show off a slew of new displays, with Ectaco’s jetBook Color eReader standing among the most notable. First announced back in December, this device boasts a 9.7-inch, 1600 x 1200 display, replete with Triton Color E Ink technology. The WiFi- and 3G-enabled e-reader was explicitly designed with students in mind, with a bevy of educational books, tools and software preloaded. The colors we saw here at CES couldn’t exactly be described as vivid, but, as with most other E Ink laced devices, this e-reader boasts a rather healthy battery life, capable of lasting for “weeks,” we’re told, on a single charge. The jetBook Color has already launched across classrooms in Russia, and is slated to launch on a global scale in the near future. For a closer look, check out our gallery below, along with our hands-on video, after the break.

Continue reading Ectaco jetBook Color e-reader hands-on (video)

Ectaco jetBook Color e-reader hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

Read More:
Ectaco jetBook Color e-reader hands-on (video)

This petite stick of USB-HDMI actually houses a ARM Corex A9 dual-core processor and is capable of running its own OS. But then, you knew that already, right? So what’s new? Well, it’s now capable of running both Android Ice Cream Sandwich and we’ve got Ubuntu running on the show floor. The dongle can connect to these operating systems through the USB connection and while Cotton Candy itself has no internal memory, it can all be stored on micro-SD. There’s still the Ubuntu hiccups that are to be expected, but the prototype device still deals out a Firebox browser and the usual Ubuntu niceties. Marvel at Gingerbread-powered Angry Birds on a MacBook, or widescreen Ubuntu and ICS. They’re all in our gallery after the break.

FXI’s Cotton Candy gets a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich and Ubuntu, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

Read More:
FXI’s Cotton Candy gets a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich and Ubuntu, we go hands-on

Don’t think that Vizio is just going to let its HDTV dominance wane now that it’s making PC’s. No, it’s not nearly done kicking the HD hornets nest. Today, Vizio unveiled a $100 streaming box that puts Apple TV and Roku to shame. More »

See the article here:
Vizio Causes More HDTV Mayhem with the $100 1080p Stream Player [Vizio]

Origin’s been one of the craziest overclocking outfits around for a while now, but its laptops haven’t been really, let’s say, aesthetically pleasing. Its latest rigs got the Ricky Lake makeover treatment, though, but not at the cost of raw asskicking power: they still clock in at a ridiculous 4.5GHz. More »

See the original article here:
Origin’s Insane New Gaming Laptops Are as Fast as They Are Pretty [Gaming]

What’s astonishing is that this is not a photograph of goldfish in a tank. Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori creates three dimensional images of goldfish by painting them, layer by layer, separated by very thin sheets of resin. You can look at them from any angle and they look just like fish. Watch a video at the link demonstrating how Fukahori does it.

Link | Artist’s Website (Google Translate) | Photo: Dominic Alves

See original article:
Amazing 3D Paintings of Goldfish Created with Resin