Harvard researchers have inspired themselves from various animals such as starfish and worms to create what can only be defined as one of the creepiest robot we’ve ever seen.
This particular robot (which comes from George M. Whitesides’ lab at Harvard) distinguishes itself by being capable of several unique gait styles including walking, crawling, and slithering. Each of these gaits is controlled by pumping air at up to 10 psi into a succession of limbs, inflating and deflating elastomer compartments to provide temporary structure and rigidity. In addition to slipping through gaps, the robot can make it across things like felt cloth, gravel, mud, and Jell-O (don’t ask).
Do you have what it takes to be one of Borderland’s fiercest fighters? Gearbox is offering up a pretty cool opportunity to be the “face” of Lilith for Borderlands 2! Aside from being *the* live action representation of one of my favorite characters, it’s also a paid gig! So here’s a chance to earn a little extra cash and be a geek girl hero to hundreds of thousands of adoring fans.
Application Requirements:
You must be female, between the ages of 18 and 30.
You must able to provide your own transportation and be on-set in the Dallas, TX area for testing and shooting during the first three weeks of December.
You do not need to have any past acting or modeling experience, but you will be expected to follow direction and exhibit a range of facial expressions and emotions for the camera.
We will choose a candidate that has sufficient plausible resemblance to the character Lilith from the video game Borderlands.
Facebook has agreed to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission that it lied to customers about its privacy policies. The agreement means it will now be forced to ask first before changing any privacy settings.
The agreements comes after an investigation by several online privacy advocates, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). Making the agreement does not involve formally admitting any wrongdoing, but Facebook is legally obliged to stick to the agreement. The potential penalty for any violation is $16,000, though it appears that could apply to each individual affected user if Facebook did breach the deal.
The FTC complaint that brought about the agreement lists seven instances when Facebook misled customers about its privacy policies. The most prominent was the December 2009 change when the company increased the range of options users had for controlling who could see particular types of information, but introduced the change by setting a lot of info to publicly available by default and then leaving users to put it back to a more private setting.
Other claims Facebook made that proved to be untrue included app developers only having access to info that was needed for the app (in fact they could access most other personal data); not sharing personal data with advertisers; certifying the security of supposedly “Verified Apps”; and complying with rules on data transfers between the United States and European Union. The company also failed to inform users that setting privacy to “Friends Only” meant data was shared with developers of apps used by those friends. And claims that photos and videos were inaccessible once an account was closed were also false.
The settlement not only legally forces Facebook to stop misleading customers over privacy and security, but changes the main principle of its privacy policies: in the future it can only make changes that affect privacy once a user has explicitly authorized the change. The company must also ensure that once an account is deleted, the user’s content becomes inaccessible after 30 days.
As part of the settlement Facebook must also establish a privacy program that will be independently audited every two years until 2032.
With Facebook agreeing to the deal, the FTC has unanimously agreed to approve it. It will now go through a 30 day public consultation (which appears to be little more than a procedural nicety) before being confirmed and taking effect.
While the settlement is a major public relations black eye for Facebook, it seems likely the company decided to stop fighting the issue and settle now, rather than have the case still active and frighten potential investors if and when it goes public.
Say you’re into trading cards but you’d like something a bit more realistic to work with. Or, you’re a sexy geek and you’d like to know more about real-life sexy geeks. Great! Len Peralta’s Geek a Week project is for you. The idea is simple: each week, Peralta releases a trading card design for a successful geek from TV, the internets, literature, tech… pretty much any arena in which you’d find geeks succeeding.
Though Peralta has surpassed the initial “52 geeks, 52 weeks” challenge, he’s still going. The latest installment is Jamie Hyneman, who joins his Mythbusters friends Adam Savage, Grant Imahara and Kari Byron, who all have cards as well. Here are some of our faves from the set.
(front and back are side-by-side; click to see a larger version. You can also click on the first card and then click on “next” to see them all in the proper order.)
So Ferdk16, you’ve been entertaining our readers with your awesome metal interpretations of various video game songs in the past year, but the question remains: When is your album coming out? :)
Since it’s a well known fact that pizza is one of the geek’s dish of choice, I thought you guys would appreciate this simple guide explaining on how to reheat your leftover pizza to make it even better than when it was when it was delivered to your door.
