guest content
“Adam Savage's New Leatherworking Toolbox!”
Wednesday, 28Aug2019 Filed in: Tools
“Adam shares his latest shop upgrade and build: a leatherworking station and storage box for all his leather-related tools! This beautiful wooden box was made in the process of working on his Star-Lord costume belt, and replaces a previous acrylic toolbox. Adam guides us through this toolbox's form factor and its influences.”
Read More...“ How did NASA Steer the Saturn V?- Smarter Every Day 223”
Thursday, 08Aug2019 Filed in: Design & Technology
“I tried Pi-Hole for the first time... (DNS level Ad Blocker)”
Friday, 28Jun2019 Filed in: Technology & Tools
“Google wants to wage war against Chrome users in a potential new update. An update that can disable them all together.... "Out of Safety". So I can either switch over to Firefox again or explore Pi Hole as a Network/DNS level Sinkhole/Ad blocker.”
Read More...“Apollo AGC Part 1: Restoring the computer that put man on the Moon”
Friday, 28Jun2019 Filed in: Technology & Tools
“We embark on the restoration of a very rare and historically significant machine: the Apollo Guidance Computer, or AGC. It was the revolutionary MIT-designed computer aboard Apollo that brought man on the Moon (and back!). Mike Stewart, space engineer extraordinaire and living AGC encyclopedia, spearheads this restoration effort. In this first episode, we setup a makeshift lab in his hotel room, somewhere in Houston. The computer belongs to a delightful private collector, Jimmie Loocke, who has generously allowed us to dive in the guts of his precious machine, with the hope of restoring it to full functionality by July 2019, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.”
Read More...“Thorium - The Future of Energy?”
“There's been a lot of talk about Thorium lately, but what's it all about? Will it be the future of energy?”
Read More...“How Machines Learn”
Thursday, 23May2019 Filed in: Technology
“Few-Shot Adversarial Learning of Realistic Neural Talking Head Models”
Thursday, 23May2019 Filed in: Technology
“We believe that telepresence technologies in AR, VR and other media are to transform the world in the not-so-distant future. Shifting a part of human life-like communication to the virtual and augmented worlds will have several positive effects. It will lead to a reduction in long-distance travel and short-distance commute. It will democratize education, and improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. It will distribute jobs more fairly and uniformly around the World. It will better connect relatives and friends separated by distance. To achieve all these effects, we need to make human communication in AR and VR as realistic and compelling as possible, and the creation of photorealistic avatars is one (small) step towards this future. In other words, in future telepresence systems, people will need to be represented by the realistic semblances of themselves, and creating such avatars should be easy for the users. This application and scientific curiosity is what drives the research in our group, including the project presented in this video.
We realize that our technology can have a negative use for the so-called “deepfake” videos. However, it is important to realize, that Hollywood has been making fake videos (aka “special effects”) for a century, and deep networks with similar capabilities have been available for the past several years (see links in the paper). Our work (and quite a few parallel works) will lead to the democratization of the certain special effects technologies. And the democratization of the technologies has always had negative effects. Democratizing sound editing tools lead to the rise of pranksters and fake audios, democratizing video recording lead to the appearance of footage taken without consent. In each of the past cases, the net effect of democratization on the World has been positive, and mechanisms for stemming the negative effects have been developed. We believe that the case of neural avatar technology will be no different. Our belief is supported by the ongoing development of tools for fake video detection and face spoof detection alongside with the ongoing shift for privacy and data security in major IT companies. ”
Read More...“Adam Savage's Computer History Collection!”
Friday, 10May2019 Filed in: Tools & Technology
“We're back in Adam's cave to check out some of Adam's computer history collection, including recent acquisitions from the early days of digital computing. Adam shares the significance of each piece and why these he loves collecting these artifacts that together tell the story of human ingenuity. ”
Read More...From Star Trek to reality - transparent aluminum
“ALON - Transparent Aluminum - is a ceramic composed of Aluminium, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Transparent Aluminum, was once pure science fiction, a technical term used in a Star Trek Movie from the 80’s.
In the movie Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home, Captain Kirk and his team, go back in time to acquire 2 whales from the past and transport them back to the future. Scotty needed some materials to make a holding tank for whales on his ship, but had no money to pay for the materials,
So Scotty uses his knowledge of 23 third century technology and the manufacturers computer and programs in, how to make the Transparent Aluminum Molecule.
Transparent Aluminum or Aluminum Oxynitride, also known as ALON, is much stronger than Standard Glass and over time will become cheaper to make, but until then will most likely be used for NASA & the Military.”
Read More...“The Strange Story of the Mp3 Player”
Monday, 11Mar2019 Filed in: Design & Technology
“In this episode we'll take a look at the unusal history of the Mp3 player. Some people may think it began with the iPod in 2001 but the story begins back in 1979 with Kane Kramer.”
Read More...“Apple 1984 Super Bowl Commercial Introducing Macintosh Computer.”
Thursday, 24Jan2019 Filed in: Design & Technology
❝Apple Music Event 2001-The First Ever iPod Introduction❞
“Here we see Steve Jobs introducing the very first iPod at a low key event in 2001. The rest is history.”
Read More...Thirty-five years ago today - ❝Steve Jobs presenting the first Mac in 1984❞
“January 24, 1984: Apple founder Steve Jobs presented the first Macintosh computer. The Macintosh 128K.
In memory of a genius. Farewell Steve.”
Read More...“The Personal Computer Revolution: Crash Course Computer Science ”
Wednesday, 23Aug2017 Filed in: Technology
"Today we're going to talk about the birth of personal computing. Up until the early 1970s components were just too expensive, or underpowered, for making a useful computer for an individual, but this would begin to change with the introduction of the Altair 8800 in 1975. In the years that follow, we'll see the founding of Microsoft and Apple and the creation of the 1977 Trinity: The Apple II, Tandy TRS-80, and Commodore PET 2001. These new consumer oriented computers would become a huge hit, but arguably the biggest success of the era came with the release of the IBM PC in 1981. IBM completely changed the industry as its "IBM compatible" open architecture consolidated most of the industry except for, notably, Apple. Apple chose a closed architecture forming the basis of the Mac Vs PC debate that rages today"
Read More...Learning
Monday, 07Aug2017 Filed in: Life Hacks