I’m not sure the goal is to reduce fuel consumption. It seems to me like the goal is to give our automakers a way of competing in the future. Europe has always lead in automated-feature development, with the U.S. playing catch-up. But if Europe leads in general Autonomous cars, and if the U.S. doesn’t change…

In an emergency, human response time is way lower than computer response time. In the absolute best case, when someone knows something is coming up, it takes 0.5 seconds to even acknowledge stimulus, and 0.2 seconds to depress the brake. Real world Emergency Response is about 1.5 seconds. The human travels about half…

It’s swinging from forward to backward, and doesn’t need to be particularly strong. If that swing-out was being pulled by a spring, the force of the collision itself might be enough to swing the tray back, even before a human came at it.

The Matrix owes a lot to the climactic battle from Ghost in the Shell, which is still amazing after all of these years.

Miller claims there is no continuity between any of the films, and refuses to use the reboot or sequel terms. He says that it probably takes place sometime after Thunderdome. But Max suddenly has a daughter that he never had before. And he has the one-of-a-kind car that was destroyed in the second film.

For low light shooting, you have to manually set the Fstop & exposure times. Also, you need a tripod, your subject has to be absolutely still, and your lens needs to look like you glued an oil drum to the front of your DSLR. Oh, and don’t breathe or shake the floor.

I’m actually really excited about this for Video,…

Light is a spectrum between 400 and 700nm, not a blend. The three “colors” are a simplification which helps us to generate and manipulate light along that spectrum, but that isn’t the only or the most accurate representation. Admittedly, that doesn’t contain mixed colors like magenta, that can only be seen by…

It seemed like they were bringing Cammy to a place where she was defined by her bad-assery. But, of course, they’re pulling her back towards being the same as the rest of the SF women. Rainbow Mika & Karin already cover the “Young And Super Cute” territory. Laura covers “Young and sexy.” The only slightly different…

Video of the co-driver on the hood.

http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1086723_r…

And another

By the way, the smaller robot is a NAO by Aldebaran.

Adding weight through metal weights, or just using more metal than necessary on certain components, is an old electronics strategy to add the feeling of quality. For example, those mice which have “spare battery holders?” They’re just a way to justify adding weight.

Having been a fan of Tempest for a really long time, this really does look like a sequel to Tempest 2000. The camera moves in the same way. The levels have the same shape. The levels enter the same way. The inspirational lettering twists left and right in the same way. Same power-up triangles. Similar (though…

I did a FAQ on Sim City 2000's roads years ago. They calculated the trip from houses to working tile types, and vice-versa. But weirdly, they only did ranged searches at the start. So the start location looked for 3 tiles away to find a road tile, then traveled along roads until it reached a commercial or…

I suspect any alien life forms that came across us would regard us with the same ethics that we regard lesser life forms on this planet: They'd tell their kids not to torture us needlessly, then they'd club us and eat us.

I've always felt the "ethics" hole in Rama makes no sense. There are evolutionary reasons why…

My personal favorite theory: The conditions required by darwinian evolution to become and maintain dominant intelligent species status prevent excessive growth through competitive instincts matched with technology. Or put more plainly, any species vicious enough to survive and become intelligent, will eventually…

I'd kill for an estimated wheel grip-o-meter. And everything integrated into the windshield in a proper HUD.

The thing that always bothered me about the comic, which the movie got right, is if a giant alien threat killed hundreds of thousands of people in New York City, the rest of the world probably would shrug and move on with their lives. This is similar to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, where life in Japan was…

It seems like there remains an opening in the market for a mature, adult-focused dedicated handheld system. The 3DS is an amazing system, but aimed younger. Phones are powerful, but are very focused on freemium style games. So there remains an opening. Vita has been struggling in no small part because the price of…

I've always felt that if Molyneux were paired with a forceful, strong, and famous-enough-to-go-toe-to-toe engineer... say, John Carmack... his inherent creative impulses could be channeled into reality in a structured and highly productive way. That constraints breed the best designers, and the more successful the…

For the past few phones I've taken a coat hanger, and bent it to have two hooks on top and a phone-sized hook at the bottom. It takes seconds to make, lasts basically until the next phone is available, and provides that "DIY Shiek" that only a bent coat hanger can embody.