Lifeboat Foundation

We humans take for granted our remarkable ability to predict things that happen around us. For example, consider Rube Goldberg machines: One of the reasons we enjoy them is because we can watch a chain-reaction of objects fall, roll, slide and collide, and anticipate what happens next.

But how do we do it? How do we effortlessly absorb enough information from the world to be able to react to our surroundings in real-time? And, as a computer scientist might then wonder, is this something that we can teach machines?

That last question has recently been partially answered by researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), who have developed a computational model that is just as accurate as humans at predicting how objects move.

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Faraday Future just unveiled a crazy 1,500-horsepower Tesla Motors competitor.

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Imagine an apartment where you could whiz down a 1,000-foot ski slope from the roof to the sidewalk.

This daredevil’s dream building might eventually be a reality. Called House Slalom, the 21-story residential complex with a ski slope could be built in Kazakhstan.

The design by Shokhan Mataibekov Architects was a finalist in the residential category at this year’s World Architecture Festival awards. If the proposal gets the green light, it would be the world’s first residential building with a ski slope.

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LG’s rollable screen.

A scoop from CES

LG gave Dave Lee a first look at its foldable, rollable screen — it says it could revolutionise the way we use TVs.

Continue reading “Hands-on with LG’s foldable screen” »

A new app turns an iPad into a 3D-scanner to help people remodel their homes.

It’s to be shown off at the CES tech event in Vegas this week. But if you want all its features they don’t come cheap.

Watch the full video and check out our other CES coverage: http://bbc.co.uk/ces2016

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After the acquisition of Phenix Systems, 3D Systems has been slow to roll out its metal 3D printing technology, an issue raised in a class action lawsuit against the company. Nevertheless, the company has been making progress and, today, 3D Systems announced the availability of their newest system, the ProX DMP 320.

Continue reading “3D Systems Displays New ProX DMP 320 Metal 3D Printer at CES 2016” »

This technique could clean oil spills using magnets.

Credit: MOTHERBOARD

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It’s really sexy.

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Some people take the new year as an opportunity to contemplate their goals; Alan Lightman, writing in the January issue of Harper’s magazine, takes the opportunity to contemplate the creation of the universe.

It’s a topic too vast and unimaginable for most of us to wrap our brains around, but Lightman brings his considerable skills as both physicist (he teaches at MIT) and novelist (“Einstein’s Dreams”) to introduce us to a “small platoon of physicists” who focus on figuring out such things as what happened at the very first moment of the big bang, whether time or anything else existed before it, and exactly how we distinguish the future from the past.

And they expect, sometime in the next 50 years or so, to have some real answers.

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