Category Archives: Technology

Blue Origin reveals its rocketship

Space, Technology

From MSNBC, via Boing Boing:

After years of working behind closed doors and locked gates, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has finally lifted the curtain that shrouded Blue Origin, his space tourism venture.

Among the goodies now displayed on Blue Origin’s Web site are photos and videos from the venture’s maiden test flight in November, as seen from the ground as well as a rocket-cam … pictures from the West Texas launch range and Blue Origin’s production facility in a Seattle suburb … and even the Blue Origin coat of arms, emblazoned with the motto “Gradatim Ferociter” (Step by Step, Courageously).

NASA and Google team up

News, Space, Technology

Apparently NASA and Google have solidified a year-old relationship that uses Google technology to index and deliver NASA content.  From Ars Technica:

In the first of many tasks that will be worked on by the new alliance, Google will work with the ARC to make NASA’s information available on the Internet to anyone who wants to see it.

Sounds like a great partnership to me.  Google Maps Mars?  Hubble Image Search?  Maybe even a searchable archive of communications transcripts like the ones Glen worked on?

first images of SpaceShipTwo, inside and out

Art, Space, Technology, Travel

Gizmodo has posted the first images of SpaceShipTwo, the ship being built by Scaled Composites for Virgin Galactic flights starting next year.  (Ships, rather.  The VSS Enterprise is the first to be named, but a total of five are on order.)  It’ll hold two pilots and six space tourists, with big comfy seats (for soft landings after weightlessness) and sizeable portholes for earth viewing.  From the images released so far, it’s going to be just as beautiful as SpaceShipOne.  Perhaps moreso, because this time I can picture myself inside one…

the next wave of AI: fast food managers?

Business, Food, Humor, Oddly Enough, Science fiction, Technology

Sure, we always hear about our robot overlords, but who would have thought that the next wave would be… dun dun DUNnnnnnn… a chicken restaurant manager?

Hyperactive Bob, the kitchen production management computer system from Hyperactive Technologies, is now being licensed to Zaxby’s, a fast-food restaurant chain with locations in the Southern states. … This artificially intelligent computer system not only takes orders, it gives them as well.

Hyperactive Bob is frighteningly close to Manna, a science-fictional system proposed by Marshall Brain in his novella-length story of the same name. In the story, Manna is a PC-based system that makes use of sensors around the restaurant to gain information; it then instructs employees. … Hopefully, no one will tell the makers of Hyperactive Bob about the Manna story; it has too many practical suggestions for the enslavement of humans.

This isn’t really a surprise to anyone that’s seen how much fast food restaurants have come to resemble factories. However, it’s good to note how interested corporate chains are in reducing the role of pesky, unpredictable humans.

[Thanks for the links, Adam!]