Awesomes of the Internets

General
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R2D2 with subtitles

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This is brilliant :smiley:

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Gravitational waves have been detected!

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https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page

One major preoccupation today is how our countless data will survive decades, let alone centuries. With this, I can see massive archival projects to put everything on eternal data storage, so it will still be there for whoever finds it, when the Universe will be twice older.

So that one time we did or wrote that one embarrassing thing will never truly disappear from the Internet, always ready to come back to haunt us- that’s a given today.
But now, it won’t even disappear from History either, so everyone can laugh at us for the next half eternity.
Progress! :grinning:

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Also, lightning in a glass box


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Company in India develops 4-dollar smart phone:

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That was awesome.

Interstellar marines, here we come. :stuck_out_tongue:

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dude that robot will get pissed eventually, stop messing with him :smiley:
Clearly at the end he just got mad and left saying:
“screw you, am out of here”

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Based on the videos, it appears that trolling robots is the primary occupation of people that work at Boston Dynamics.

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That robot was smart to ware his (?) athletic supporter. :wink:

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It’s the Roger Murtaugh of robot prototypes :stuck_out_tongue:
“I’m too old for this shit”

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Now that is what I call good contemporary art.
http://miniature-calendar.com

(Or the Instagram if you just want the image list )

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fun links:

for github users wanting to see the visual their codes make: http://codeology.braintreepayments.com/featured

digital rubik cube: http://iamthecu.be/

a moon tracker: http://www.moongiant.com/

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Vulkan API

Not sure if this has been linked somewhere else, but here goes:

ProtoStar, the First Unreal Engine Demonstration of Vulkan API

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Russia actually lights its rockets with a giant match.
It just works.

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Russia, the very definition of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.

That said though, they are working on a new generation of launch vehicle which may or may not have a more modern lighting mechanism.

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FYI, Falcon 9 uses hypergolics (two chemicals that spontaneously combust when they come in contact). So they pump these two chemicals into the chamber to create a flame, then ignite the engines from that. The Shuttle used a spark igniter system on the pad.

Note that hypergolics are used for thrusters in space. Mercury used monopropellant thrusters (relying on a substance that reacts with a catalyst to produce an expanding gas), while pretty much everything since has used hypergolics. Hypergolics are great for restarting engines on demand, but they’re nasty to handle. And there’s always the issue of having them mix accidentally.

Here’s a little video of a guy doing a very quick explanation of rocket fuel types, followed by a demonstration of a hypergolic fuel mix in a laboratory setting. It’s very tame, so don’t expect big explosions.

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