From Al Jazeera:
Thursday's launch brings the growing Asian power closer to matching the US and Russia and comes at a time when budget restraints and shifting priorities have held back US manned space launches.
The module's name, Tiangong, translates to "Heavenly Palace".
Neil Armstrong addressing the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology:
We will have no American access to, and return from, low Earth orbit and the International Space Station for an unpredictable length of time in the future.
For a country that has invested so much for so long to achieve a leadership position in space exploration and exploitation, this condition is viewed by many as lamentably embarrassing and unacceptable.
A lead, however earnestly and expensively won, once lost, is nearly impossible to regain.
José del R. Millán from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland has created a telepresence robot able to be controlled by people suffering from Locked-in Syndrome.
While disabled humans have been controlling computers with their brains for some time, the innovation is in how the system shares tasks with the human. Millán's robot is designed to maneuver and avoid obstacles on its own mimicking humans intrinsic locomotive skills. This allows the human to focus on higher level goals like choosing a target.
The researchers recruited two patients whose lower bodies were paralyzed and who had been bed bound for 6 or 7 years. The researchers trained the patients to control the robot for 1 hour per week for 6 weeks. With the instructions being transmitted over a wireless connection, the patients didn't need to leave the hospital and were able to control the robot in Millán's lab at EPFL, 100 kilometers away. At the end of the training period, the researchers instructed the subjects to drive the robot to various targets, such as furniture, people, and small objects, around the lab for 12 minutes.
Inspiring work.
Alex Blumberg for This American Life:
Why would a company rent an office in a tiny town in East Texas, put a nameplate on the door, and leave it completely empty for a year? The answer involves a controversial billionaire physicist in Seattle, a 40 pound cookbook, and a war waging right now, all across the software and tech industries.
What a depressing story.
I've been following Nathan Myhrvold for the last few years since his TED talk. It's sad to discover all the really cool things he's been working on are funded by patent trolling. I cannot understand how a guy who considers himself an inventor can sleep at night ruing the lives of other hard working creators.
Software patents are bullshit, end of discussion.
Vicon has released an updated version of their Revue memory capturing camera based on Microsoft's SenseCam technology. The MP3 model has a 3 megapixel camera, 8GB of storage, 24 hour battery life, and a much lower price tag (the previous model was close to 1k).
The SenseCam was developed by Microsoft Cambridge and popularized by Gordon Bell in his 2009 book Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything.
I want to buy one of these so badly. But before I do I'm going to try to make my own with an old SD1000 and the Canon Hack Development Kit.
This week, GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons caused a stir by posting a video of himself killing an elephant in Zimbabwe. Previously, Parsons had upset feminists with his ultra-sexist advertising. It seems like perhaps Parsons and his company aren't necessarily the type of people with whom we'd like to do business, which is why GOOD has decided to pull all of its sites from GoDaddy.com. If you'd like to join us and let Parsons know you don't give money to colonialist misogynists, follow these 10 simple steps.
I've moved all my personal domains to Namecheap and will be moving my company's domains and SSL certificate within the next few weeks.
Bob Parsons can go to Hell.