Collaborate Disseminate
Among brain researchers there’s a truism that says the reason people underestimate how much unconscious processing goes on in your brain is because you’re not conscious of it. And while …read more Continue reading The Real Science (Not Armchair Science) Of Consciousness
IBM has come up with an automatic debating system called Project Debater that researches a topic, presents an argument, listens to a human rebuttal and formulates its own rebuttal. But …read more Continue reading Death Of The Turing Test In An Age Of Successful AIs
For many of us, our passion for electronics and science originated with curiosity about some device, a computer, radio, or even a car. The subject of this book has just such an origin. However, how many of us made this discovery and pursued this path during times of hunger or …read more
Continue reading Books You Should Read: The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
For the first time, a robot has been unionized. This shouldn’t be too surprising as a European Union resolution has already recommended creating a legal status for robots for purposes of liability and a robot has already been made a citizen of one country. Naturally, these have been done either to stimulate discussion before reality catches up or as publicity stunts.
What would reality have to look like before a robot should be given legal status similar to that of a human? For that, we can look to fiction.
Tony Stark, the fictional lead character in the Iron Man movies, …read more
There’s a battle going on in academia between the scientific journal publishing companies that have long served as the main platform for peer review and spreading information, and scientists themselves who just want to share and have access to the work of their fellows. arxiv.org launched the first salvo, allowing researchers in physics to self-publish their own papers, and has gained some traction in mathematics and computer science. The Public Library of Science journals focus on biology and medicine and offer peer review services. There are many others, and even the big firms have been forced to recognize the importance …read more
Transformer oil has long served two purposes, cooling and insulating. The large, steel encased transformers we see connected to the electrical grid are filled with transformer oil which is circulated through radiator fins for dumping heat to the surrounding air. In the hacker world, we use transformer oil for cooling RF dummy loads and insulating high voltage components. [GreatScott] decided to do some tests of his own to see just how good it is for cooling circuits.
He started with testing canola oil but found that it breaks down from contact with air and becomes rancid. So he purchased some …read more
Continue reading Measuring The Cooling Effect Of Transformer Oil
3D models drawn in Blender work great in a computer animated virtual world but don’t always when brought into a slicer for 3D printing. Slicers require something which makes sense in the real world. And the real world is far less forgiving, as I’ve found out with my own projects which use 3D printed parts.
Our [Brian Benchoff] already talked about making parts in Blender with his two-part series (here and here) so consider this the next step. These are the techniques I’ve come up with for preparing parts for 3D printing before handing them off to a slicer program. …read more
Continue reading 3D Printering: Blender Tips For Printable Objects
What’s a hacker to do when Halloween’s over and a new source of ideas is needed for more hacks? Make something for Christmas of course. That’s what [Dario Breitenstein] did when he made his Advent calendar both as a decoration and to help instill some Christmas spirit.
Designed in SketchUp, it’s a WS2812 LED strip mounted in a clean looking walnut enclosure. The light diffuses through 3D-printed PETG lids with vinyl over them to outline the days. Naturally, it had to be Internet-connected and so an ESP8266 based WEMOS D1 mini board fetches the date and time from an NTP …read more
Continue reading Advent Calendar Tracks The Days Until Christmas
As hackers, our goal is to reuse something in a way in which it was not intended and [Rulof Maker] is a master at this. From his idyllic seaside location in Italy, he frequently comes up with brilliant underwater hacks made of, well, junk. This time he’s come up with a wind-powered pump to move air through a hose to a modified scuba mask.
The wind turbine’s blades look professional but you’ll be surprised to see that they’re simply cut from a PCB pipe. And they work great. The air compressor is taken from a car and the base of …read more
Want to sound great on a Piano using only your coding skills? Enter Piano Genie, the result of a research project from Google AI and DeepMind. You press any of eight buttons while a neural network makes sure the piano plays something cool — compensating in real time for what’s already been played.
Almost anyone new to playing music who sits down at a piano will produce a sound similar to that of a cat chasing a mouse through a tangle of kitchen pots. Who can blame them, given the sea of 88 inexplicable keys sitting before them? But they’ll …read more
Continue reading Piano Genie Trained a Neural Net to Play 88-Key Piano with 8 Arcade Buttons