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Kilobots — Cheap Swarm Robots Out of Harvard 121

Posted by Soulskill from the keep-wil-wheaton-away-from-these dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news of a research project at Harvard into controlling large swarms of small robots. This article describes what they call Kilobots. (Which, for clarity's sake, have nothing to do with killing. Yet.) Quoting: "They're fairly simple little robots about the size of a quarter that can move around on vibrating legs, blink their lights, and communicate with each other. On an individual basis, this isn't particularly impressive, but Kilobots aren't designed to be used on an individual basis. Costing a mere $14 each and buildable in about five minutes, you don't just get yourself one single Kilobot. Or ten. Or a hundred. They're designed to swarm in the thousands."
Science

Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All 269

Posted by Soulskill from the act-now-while-supplies-last dept.
cremeglace writes with this excerpt from ScienceNOW: "You've heard the controversy. Particle physicists predict the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes, which they say would be a fantastic discovery. Some doomsayers fear those black holes might gobble up the Earth — physicists say that's impossible — and have petitioned the United Nations to stop the $5.5 billion LHC. Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole." That said, they estimate the required energy for creating a black hole this way to be roughly "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum"; though if one of the theories requiring compact extra dimensions is true, the energy could be lower.

Comment Re:don't forget.. (Score 1) 171

by SwedMiro (#27103975) Attached to: Game Developers Becoming Similar To Hollywood Studios?
Well...that was sort of the point of my argument. People tend to forget that the entry barrier of the games market is still there as long as marketing is a fact. We will see more of the indie-games than we used to, but the market will still be dominated by large entities that have the money to build and entertain IP:s. Your attack on copyright and "monopoly proctected sectors" is like fighting windmills. What you have to do is to start a political movement to change the system. Markets work within the institutional boarders they are given.

Comment don't forget.. (Score 5, Informative) 171

by SwedMiro (#27103451) Attached to: Game Developers Becoming Similar To Hollywood Studios?
the marketing! I know I will be cursed, booed, spit on and generally carried out on a rail after being dipped in oil and feathers, but i work in marketing. The need for large entities in the business will still be there since marketing costs a lot of money. Sure you can self-publish a game but it will almost certainly drown in the flood of games that are released. A bad game with marketing will almost always outsell a good one with no marketing. The almost part will always be the luck factor.

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