Month: June 2015

Robot Boost

Researchers analyzed the economic impact of industrial robots, using a panel of industries in 17 countries from 1993-2007. Industrial robots increased both labor productivity and value added. The use of robots raised countries’ growth rates by 0.37%. Robots increased both wages and total factor productivity. While robots had no significant effect on total hours worked, there is some evidence that they reduced the hours of both low-skilled and middle-skilled workers.

Open Hardware

A 180nm implementation of the J2 design costs around 3 cents per chip, with no royalties required. “That’s disposable computing at the ‘free toy inside’ level.

a completely open hardware design can be produced cheaply.
2015-07-13:

Instead of running in fear of obsolescence, open-source hardware developers now have time to build communities around platforms; we can learn from each other, share blueprints and iterate prototypes before committing to a final design. The extra time also allows hardware product development to be leaner — one doesn’t have to burn money to meet a tight schedule. A team of 2 can now take 3 years, working mostly in their spare time, to build a laptop from scratch as a hobby. This is a great time to be developing hardware products, particularly open-source ones.

the only benefit of the slowdown of moore’s law i’ve ever heard of

Hydrothermal Vents

the hydrothermal vents were a relic environment, one we believe resembles what the early conditions on Earth might have been. What we’re doing ultimately is trying to understand how life evolved on the planet. For all of their extremes of temperature, pressure, and other properties, deep-sea vents may have offered a relatively cozy refuge on the violent world of the early Earth. Our young planet was bathed in much stronger ultraviolet radiation from the sun because it hadn’t yet developed a protective ozone layer. That didn’t come along until after the evolutionary invention of photosynthesis pumped a steady supply of oxygen into our atmosphere. One big attraction is the presence of an ion gradient—a key ingredient in just about every known form of life—between the vent fluids and the seawater. The alkaline fluids are basic, with a pH (a measurement of acidity and alkalinity levels) of around 10 or 11, meaning they have a low concentration of protons. Seawater, with a pH of around 8, is less alkaline—that is, slightly more acidic—so it has more protons than the vent fluids. The vent would have acted as a natural hydrothermal reactor. Reactions between carbon dioxide and hydrogen, catalyzed by minerals found in the vents, can form a molecule known as pyruvate. Pyruvate is a precursor of many amino acids, which in turn can link together to create proteins.

Myoelectric Prosthesis

The state of prosthetic hands remains underreported.

2021-11-05: Bionic hands are now good enough for concert pianists.

Although the gloves are not a definitive fix, they work beautifully for now. “It’s a palliative solution that makes small miracles happen”. They’ve given him a new way of understanding his passion. The ability to play a perfect recital nonstop is long gone, but a different sort of appreciation has emerged in its place. A few minutes of flawless playing is magical enough. “For me, 2 minutes I consider a miracle.” Perhaps the most remarkable part is how much they cost: only $300. After what they did for the maestro, imagine the promise they hold for everyone else? They seem ripe for mass production, but Costa is currently only able to make simplified versions on a case-by-case basis for focal dystonia patients and stroke victims. These have been met with varying degrees of success. Perhaps this is out of defensiveness for his creation, but Costa implies that not everyone has the same stubborn desire to get better as Martins does.

Inside a Facebook farm

EVERY MORNING, KIM Casipong strolls past barbed wire, 6 dogs, and a watchman in order to get to her job in a pink apartment building high above the slums in Lapu-Lapu City, Philippines. She is a pretty, milk-skinned, 17-year-old girl who loves the movie Frozen and whose favorite pastime is singing karaoke. She is on her way to do her part in bringing down Facebook.

Reviving Dead Spaces

In a dense city like New York, the residual space beneath the 1100km of elevated transportation infrastructure can no longer be an afterthought. The millions of m2 of these sites, nearly 4x the size of Central Park, arguably encompass one of the most blighting influences on the city’s neighborhoods, yet also constitute one of the last development frontiers

unsurprising OPM hack

the Unix systems administrator for the project was in Argentina and his co-worker was physically located in the People’s Republic of China. Both had direct access to every row of data in every database: they were root

you don’t really need any cloak & dagger theory with rampant incompetence like this