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…
Category Archives: Technology
the next wave of AI: fast food managers?
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!]
Animatic
This is cool in a creepy “this could really advance science, but what about our impending robot masters?” sort of way. But hey, the “animat” — which is bascially a bunch of neurons on a circuit board that moves a virtual mouse — is still a far cry from Mr. Data.
websites as flowers
or: Let a thousand elements bloom!
Global Spin page graph courtesy of Websites as graphs and htmlgraph.
the moon is a harsh employer
As the Global Spin version of a unicorn chaser, I’d like to point out that Google Copernicus Center is still hiring. [Thanks, Jennifer!]