Most grocery store patrons take for granted just what it takes to transport a humble sweet potato out of the ground and into a shopping basket. The slightly-sweet red root vegetable can come in various sizes and flavor profiles but consumers have come to expect a level of consistency. To meet that market demand, sweet […]
A ‘bionic eye’ scan of an ancient, scorched scroll points to Plato’s long-lost gravesite
A research team’s “bionic eye” deciphered thousands of new words hidden within an ancient scroll carbonized during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius—and the new text points to the long-lost, potential final resting place of the philosopher Plato. The 1,800-scroll collection, located in the estate now known as the “Villa of the Papyri,” was almost instantaneously […]
Startup pitches a paintball-armed, AI-powered home security camera
It’s a bold pitch for homeowners: What if you let a small tech startup’s crowdfunded AI surveillance system dispense vigilante justice for you? A Slovenia-based company called OZ-IT recently announced PaintCam Eve, a line of autonomous property monitoring devices that will utilize motion detection and facial recognition to guard against supposed intruders. In the company’s […]
ChatGPT can now see, hear, and talk to some users
ChatGPT has a voice—or, rather, five voices. On Monday, OpenAI announced its buzzworthy, controversial large language model (LLM) can now verbally converse with users, as well as parse uploaded photos and images. In video demonstrations, ChatGPT is shown offering an extemporaneous children’s bedtime story based on the guided prompt, “Tell us a story about a […]
Let this astronaut show you around the International Space Station
Andreas Mogensen returned to Earth in mid-March after a six-and-a-half month stint aboard the International Space Station. To mark his tenure as part of NASA’s Crew-7 mission, the Danish European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut has shared his souvenir from undock day—a guided video tour of the ISS. It’s been a month now since I left […]
Internet use dipped in the eclipse’s path of totality
New data indicates a once-in-a-generation eclipse is a pretty surefire way to convince people to finally log off the internet—at least for a few minutes. According to estimates from cloud-computing provider Cloudflare, yesterday’s online traffic dropped between 40-60 percent week-to-week within the April 8 eclipse’s path of totality. In aggregate terms for the US, “bytes […]
Smugglers melted and spray painted $10 million in gold to look like machine parts
It could have been the perfect crime, had they used better spray paint. Recently, authorities have seized over 320 lbs worth of suspected smuggled gold during a cargo freight search at Hong Kong International Airport, according to yesterday’s customs announcement. Bound for Tokyo on March 27, investigators recovered the roughly $10.7 million haul from within […]
Here is what a Tesla Cybertruck cop car could look like
Tesla’s Cybertruck isn’t even available to the public yet, but concept art for a Cybertruck cop-car made its appearance in Las Vegas on Wednesday. During a presentation by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison at the data service giant’s CloudWork conference, a massive screen showed off the EV’s recognizable, angular design beneath red and blue emergency lights, […]
How cryptographers finally cracked one of the Zodiac Killer’s hardest codes
An international team of cryptographers has published a new whitepaper detailing the massive amounts of work, crowdsourcing, and computational programming that was required to translate a notorious serial killer’s half-century-old mystery message. Although one cryptographer uploaded a video rundown of their methodology to YouTube in 2020, the team’s new whitepaper further shows just how much work went […]
Watch this robotic slide whistle quartet belt out Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’
The slide whistle isn’t known as a particularly difficult instrument to play—there’s a reason they’re usually marketed to children. But designing, programming, and building a robotic slide whistle quartet? That takes a solid background in computer science, a maddening amount of trial-and-error, logistical adjustments to account for “shrinkflation,” and at least two weeks to make […]