24408688
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mattnyc99 writes:
Esquire raises an interesting question on iPhone 5 day: What if Apple stores had cafes? From an analyst cited in the article: "In line with the Genius Bar concept, I could see them taking a part of the store and making it a café atmosphere where customers could interact with technology in a relaxed environment."
22686198
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mattnyc99 writes:
In the wake of a not-that-exciting Comic-Con come some (perhaps premature) reports on the so-called "Death of Superheroes" — what one financial group calls "the top of the (comic book) character remonetization cycle." In response, Esquire.com's Paul Schrodt has an interesting look down Hollywood geek road. From the article: "What happens after The Avengers, or Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie — after we've seen all there is to see of the best comic-book blockbusters ever made?"
21937516
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mattnyc99 writes:
In the wake of the Best Buy "geek" trademarking and Miss USA calling herself "a huge history geek," writer (and self-proclaimed geek) Eryn Green has an interesting piece for Esquire on how so-called "geek chic" is pervading the culture so much that no one appreciates an actual geek anymore. From the article: "The difference between brains and beauty is that you're more or less born into good looks — entitled, if you will. Intelligence? That takes work. If the hallmark of real geekiness — of America — is determination, then we seem too determined to have an entitlement problem."
17193884
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mattnyc99 writes:
About a year ago, we watched live as neuroanatomist Jacopo Annese sliced the brain of Memento-style patient Henry Molaison (aka H.M.) into 2,401 pieces. Since even before then, writer Luke Dittrich — whose grandfather happened to be the surgeon to accidentally slice open the H.M. skull in the first place — has been tracking Annese and a new revolution in brain science for Esquire. From the article: "If Korbinian Brodmann created the mind's Rand McNally, Jacopo Annese is creating its Google Maps... With his Brain Observatory, Annese is setting out to create not the world's largest but the world's most useful collection of brains... For the first time, we'll be able to meaningfully and easily compare large numbers of brains, perhaps finally understanding why one brain might be less empathetic or better at calculus or likelier to develop Alzheimer's than another. The Brain Observatory promises to revolutionize our understanding of how these three-pound hunks of tissue inside our skulls do what they do, which means, of course, that it promises to revolutionize our understanding of ourselves."
14281902
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mattnyc99 writes:
Earlier this year came reports that Felix Baumgartner (the daredevil who flew across the English Channel) would be attempting to jump from a balloon at least 120,000 feet altitude, break the sound barrier, and live. Now comes a big investigative story from Esquire's issue on achieving the impossible, which details the former NASA team dedicated to making sure Baumgartner's Stratos project will instruct the future safety of manned space flight (including Jonathan Clark, the husband of an astronaut who died in the Columbia disaster). From the article (which also includes pics and video shot by the amateur space photographer we've discussed here before): "that's also precisely what makes Stratos great. It's more like Mercury than the shuttle: They're taking risks, making things up as they go along. But they're also doing important work, potentially groundbreaking work. They're doing what NASA no longer has the balls to do. Hell, he'd do it for free. He is doing it for free. Stratos only picks up his travel expenses. Clark looks at his friend, shrugs. 'This is new space.'"
4886219
submission
mattnyc99 writes:
With tensions high on the border, a new commander in Afghanistan, and complaints of civilian deaths from robotic U.S. strikes in Pakistan raising anti-American sentiment, the Air Force is sketching out concepts for new robotic hitmen, reports Esquire.com. Among the new drones (which are all very small) are the Suburb Warrior (loaded with four or five mini missiles for semi-urban environments), the Sniper targeting system ("that can lock on to multiple targets, allowing a single drone pilot to coordinate the attacks of a squadron of robots"), and a backup fleet of flying buggies that act as suicide-bomber snipers. From the article: "Picking through the dozens of systems in this briefing, many of which will be flight-tested within five years, there's a clear set of goals: build smaller, even microscopic drones with smaller weapons that can hunt in swarms and engage targets in the close quarters of urban battlefields. And hunt as soon as possible."
3464441
submission
mattnyc99 writes:
Two weeks after the launch of Google Latitude, your inbox is probably full of requests and privacy advocates probably have even more concerns than they did at first. But some tech pundits are already seeing the bigger picture of a digital lifestyle based around the always-on, GPS-based mobile map. The NYT's always reliable John Markoff, who called for a new Internet on Sunday, has a great piece in today's Science Times about the map as metaphor for a time when "future systems will probably begin to blur the boundaries between the display and the real world." Over at Esquire.com's Tech Therapist, Erik Sofge talks to the geek behind Latitude and offers a similar reality check. From the article: "Latitude will be precisely as annoying as e-mail and social networking sites and cell phones themselves — and just as useful. What won't stop Latitude, or the wider rollout of location-based tracking, is bitching about it. These are juggernauts of free, culture-reorienting technology. And you and me, we are but posts on the massive Facebook profile of history."
3206573
submission
mattnyc99 writes:
This next week marks the anniversary of three sad days in NASA's history: three astronauts died in a capsule fire testing for Apollo 1 exactly 42 years ago today, then the Challenger went down 23 years ago tomorrow, followed by the Columbia disaster six years ago this Super Bowl Sunday. Amidst all this sadness, though, too many average Americans take our space program for granted. Amidst reconsiderations of NASA priorities from the Obama camp as the Shuttle nears retirement, then, the brilliant writer Chris Jones offers a great first-hand account in the new issue of Esquire — an impassioned argument against the impending end of our manned space program. In which camp do you fall: mourner or rocketeer?
1944239
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mattnyc99 writes:
The brilliant writer Tom Junod has a jaw-dropping profile of MacArthur genius Marc Roth in Esquire's annual Best and Brightest roundup, detailing how this gonzo DNA scientist (who also figured out how to correctly diagnose lupus) went from watching his infant daughter die to literally reincarnating animals. Inspired by NOVA and funded by DARPA, Roth has developed a serum for major biotech startup Ikaria that successfully accomplished "suspended animation" — the closest we've ever come to simulating near-death experiences and then coming back to life. From the article: "We don't know what life is, anyway. Not really. We just know what life does--it burns oxygen. It's a process of combustion. We're all just slow-burning candles, making our way through our allotment of precious O2 until it becomes our toxin, until we burn out, until we get old and die. But we live on 21 percent oxygen, just as we live at 37 degrees. They're related. Decrease the oxygen to 5 percent, we die. But, look, the concentration of oxygen in the blood that runs through our capillaries is only 2 or 3 percent. We're almost dead already! So what if we turn down the candle's need for oxygen? What if we dim the candle so much that we don't even have the energy to die?"
1760697
submission
mattnyc99 writes:
The new issue of Esquire has a long, in-depth, intricate profile of Dean Kamen and his quest to invent a better world. Earlier this month, we discussed Kamen's Sterling-electric car, but this piece goes into much more detail about how that engine works—he got the original idea from the upmodded Henry Ford artifact in the basement of his insane island lab—and about how his inventions often go overlooked, including the Slingshot water purifer that Stephen Colbert made famous but that no one has actually bought yet. Quoting: "To get the Slingshot to the 20 percent of the world that doesn't have electricity, Kamen came up with the idea of splitting it in half. Leaving the Stirling aside, he would try to develop a market for his distiller in parts of the developing world that have electricity but not reliable clean water. 'There are five hundred thousand little stores in Mexico,' he says. 'If we can put one of these in 10 percent of them, that's enough to put it in production.' That may be the killer app for the distiller."
So is this guy all hype with overpriced devices, or is time for someone to take his genius (Segway aside) to the mass market?
1226869
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mattnyc99 writes:
Honda's challenger to the Prius—the Insight hybrid that we discussed so lividly a month ago—got its official unveiling today at the Paris auto show, with insiders confirming it would be cheaper than the world's most popular "green" car while still hitting the same fuel-efficiency range. But the hybrid-electric showdown comes in the midst of a sudden rethink by Toyota about plug-in hybrids. Apparently all the recent hype—over the production version of the Chevy Volt, plus Chrysler's new electric trio and even the cool new Pininfarina EV also unveiled today—has execs from the world's number one automaker, and alt-fuel experts, questioning how many people will really buy electric cars, whether people will really charge them at night to keep the grid clear, whether batteries will make them too expensive and more. From the article: "At $100-a-barrel oil, people really like the idea of driving on electric power," says Michael Brylawski, one of the environmental reality-check gurus at the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), "but a number of challenges remain before these things can make a difference. Early adopters will have problems similar to beta-test computer software users and early cellphone users, but they're still going to love it. For mainstream consumers--the ones who come along in 2015 or 2016--by then these problems will be figured out and scaled up."
1187715
submission
mattnyc99 writes:
Earlier this summer we followed a war robot contest in England. But now, after the Russian onslaught in Georgia, this weekend's TechX Challenge in Singapore takes on a bigger meaning: Can small countries keep up with military superpowers by upmodding existing robots for their own needs and then arming them? Researchers in the Far East seem to be struggling with their A.I. research right now, but this could just be the beginning of the "little guys" fighting back. From the article: "Chan says the agency wants to use more locally developed robots to help in homeland security and counterterrorist operations. The DSTA's goal is to improve robotic artificial intelligence so it can build machines to perform dangerous tasks--reconnaissance, surveillance and the handling of hazardous materials--that American robots already can.... Back at Nanyang Technological University, Michael Lau acknowledges the urgency of the research but says the AI for urban warfare just isn't ready. 'We don't really believe fully autonomous robots are possible yet,' says the Evolution team supervisor. 'How does a robot differentiate between friend and foe?'"
1175401
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mattnyc99 writes:
Over the weekend, we talked about the impending death of streaming music site Pandora thanks to a very backwards fight over royalties. In this in-depth followup for his column at PopMech, Glenn Derene gets to the bottom of just how insane it is that Pandora has to pay record labels for the bad songs that users skip—and, in addition to more impending doom comments from Pandora's founder, gets the (three-member) Copyright Royalty Board to try and defend itself about why the government is determining royalty rates for the music industry. Quoting: "It was uninvited," says Richard Strasser, senior attorney for the Copyright Royalty Board. "I don't think anybody was jumping up and down with joy in the government that they have this responsibility, but the former systems just weren't working out."
1107375
submission
mattnyc99 writes:
There was plenty of chatter last week about an MIT announcement that researcher Angela Belcher had developed a way to create virus-based nanoscale batteries to power mini gadgets of the future. In a fascinating followup at Popular Mechanics, Belcher now says that her unpublished work includes full-scale models of the batteries themselves, and that they could power everything from cars and laptops to medical devices and wearable armor. Quoting: "We haven't ruled out cars. That's a lot of amplification. But right now the thing is trying to make the best material possible, and if we get a really great material, then we have to think about how do you scale it."
824579
submission
mattnyc99 writes:
We got first word of NASA's plan to crash a spacecraft into the moon in February, but the new issue of Popular Mechanics has an in-depth look at the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and its low-cost, lightning-fast mission prep—even after delays have pushed it to late February or early March. Quoting: "Andrews had no budget for an expensive lander to seek water, and conditions in the eternally dark polar craters would kill rovers, with temperatures close to minus 300 F. Instead, Blue Ice and its partners at Northrop Grumman came up with a concept to bring the lunar floor out in the open.... Since engineering precision hardware would break the budget, the LCROSS team had to make existing components work together."
