Last week in New York City, Neal Stephenson spoke at an event promoting his latest book, Termination Shock. But at question time, some folks were eager to know his reaction to Meta-nee-Facebook’s recent embrace of the metaverse, the virtual reality setting of his much earlier work, 1992’s Snow Crash. Stephenson seemed amused by the situation, […]
Once upon a time, if you wanted to install a piece of software, you just stuck an executable file on your hard drive somewhere and went on your merry way. But as computers became more complex, so did installation procedures, which led to problems like “dependency hell,” as different applications dueled over conflicting system configurations. […]
Global solar energy supplies are growing rapidly, with nearly 10 times as much solar capacity installed today as there was a decade ago. Leading the boom is the photovoltaic (PV) panel, which converts sunlight into electricity using semiconductors. But even as the glossy rectangles become increasingly cheaper and ubiquitous, solar PV alone can’t solve the […]
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of Steve Jobs, a tireless tech visionary, an extraordinary innovator, and the cofounder of Apple. When he died on 5 October 2011 at age 56, he left a lasting legacy. Jobs’s innovations made a profound impact. He redefined computing, enhancing the user experience, and created products […]
It’s become painfully obvious over the past few years just how difficult fully autonomous cars are. This isn’t a dig at any of the companies developing autonomous cars (unless they’re the sort of company who keeps on making ludicrous promises about full autonomy, of course)— it’s just that the real world is a complex place […]
Maybe flow batteries aren’t always everything they’re cracked up to be. A new technology from Australia is certainly raising this prospect, offering a novel approach to stationary energy storage—whose packaging at least harkens back to the old, familiar car battery. Flow batteries use liquid electrolytes held externally in tanks and which circulate through the cells […]
Few people have seen their handiwork influence the world more than Bill Mensch. He helped create the legendary 8-bit 6502 microprocessor, launched in 1975, which was the heart of groundbreaking systems including the Atari 2600, Apple II, and Commodore 64. Mensch also created the VIA 65C22 input/output chip—noted for its rich features and which was […]
.cf_videoshare_referral { display: none !important; } Illustration: James Provost Old consumer electronics often have enough room for major upgrades. Like vinyl and cassette tapes, cathode ray tubes are experiencing a comeback in some circles. Retrogamers want to experience old titles on the fuzzy displays they were designed for. And makers have been deconstructing them for […]
.entry-content .tisubhead { color: #999999; font-family: verdana; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 1px; margin-bottom: -5px !important; text-transform: uppercase; } .tiopener { color: #0f4994; font-family: Theinhardt-Medium, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 1px; margin-right: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; } Illustration: iStockphoto THE INSTITUTE How many times have you been to an IEEE conference and didn’t see someone like you […]
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!): ICRA 2021 – May 30-5, 2021 – [Online Event] RoboCup 2021 – June 22-28, 2021 – [Online Event] […]