Written By: Cameron Scott — Singularity Hub
Box Brands has launched the first-ever burrito-making robots at two locations on Santa Monica Boulevard — inside Mobile and 76 gas stations.
The orange Burritobox offers 6 types of burrito, including a breakfast burrito, and several sauces. The customer selects the burrito desired and which sauces from a touch-screen menu, then swipes a credit card. One minute later, the machine dispenses a hot “hand”-rolled burrito.
Written By: Cameron Scott — Singularity Hub
Up to now, wearable computing has been a niche market dominated, but for Google Glass, by startups. Yet, with the tiny size and low cost of sensors and chips, wearable computing could be a huge market in which smart sensors in everything from baby diapers to workout gear connect to users’ smartphones, giving them constant insight into how things formerly hidden are operating.
It may sound like yet another techno-topian promise, and before the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show it might have been. But at the annual Las Vegas tech blowout earlier this month, Intel, one of the weightiest firms in the tech industry, endorsed wearable computing with the launch of a new chip designed for it.
Joel Flickinger’s two-bedroom home in the hills above Oakland, Calif., hums with custom-built computing gear. Just inside the front door, in a room anyone else might use as a den, he’s placed a desk next to a fireplace that supports a massive monitor, with cables snaking right and left toward two computers, each about the size of a case of beer. Flickinger has spent more than $20,000 on these rigs and on a slower model that runs from the basement. They operate continuously, cranking out enough heat to warm the house and racking up $400 a month in electric bills. There isn’t much by way of décor, other than handwritten inspirational Post-it notes:
“I make money easily,” one reads. “Money flows to me.” “I am a money magnet.”
Flickinger, 37, a software engineer and IT consultant by trade, doesn’t leave the house much these days. He’s a full-time Bitcoin miner.
By John O’Donnell — IEEE Spectrum
While the idea of an Amazon Prime Air drone dropping onto my doorstep and delivering my latest purchase might seem fun and cool, the reality is it simply may not be needed.
The only reason delivery trucks—such as the large brown trucks we see everywhere—only deliver to me around 4 p.m. each day is simply the time taken for one driver to take each parcel to an address. I call this one at a time parcel delivery. It’s the same story for the USPS service. Each day our excellent delivery guy comes to our neighborhood and then spends a long time going door to door.
by Ingrid Lunden — Tech Crunch
Gaming giant Zynga has started to accept the cryptocurrency as a payment option for those buying tokens for virtual goods on the web versions of FarmVille 2, CastleVille, ChefVille, CoasterVille, Hidden Chronicles, Hidden Shadows and CityVille. It makes Zynga the first major gaming company to accept Bitcoin.
— 3D Printing Industry
Two-thousand-and-fourteen is already looking like a great year for 3D creativity. Assembled 3D printers are coming out priced at under 500 euros, new low-cost high-quality 3D scanners are launching and, if that weren’t enough, the first SpaceGlasses are going to be delivered in July.
By Graham Templeton — Geek
3D printing is attractive to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons, but in general its supporters talk about the economic and efficiency benefits; it can build things faster and easier than competing methods, bring down manufacturing costs and remove the need for large amounts of international shipping. That’s usually what you hear in defense of 3D printing — but now, Italian food corporation Barilla is looking to 3D print their art.
Michele Wessel — Guardian Liberty Voice
Apple Inc. and Google have invested heavily in robots over the past year, giving the impression that the tech giants see robotic technology as the way of the future.
Apple Inc. has been reported to be investing a significant portion of its $10.5 billion in capital expenditures for 2014 into a variety of robots. This response is likely as a result of a leveling off in sales of their devices as other companies like Samsung infringe upon their territory in the world of electronics innovation.
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Overmanagement by Mr. Andres Agostini
This is an excerpt from the conclusion section o, “…Overmanagement…,” that discusses some management strategies. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:
BEGINNING OF EXCERPT.
Question: What other contemporary issues particularly concern you? Do you find signs of
hope or resistance around these issues that, perhaps, you finding heartening?
Well, we can make a long list, including the things we’ve talked about, but it’s also worth
remembering that, hovering over the things we discussed, are two major problems. These
are issues that seriously threaten the possibility of decent human survival. One of them is
the growing threat of environmental catastrophe, which we are racing towards as if we
were determined to fall off a precipice, and the other is the threat of nuclear war, which
has not declined, in fact it’s very serious and in many respects is growing. The second one
we know, at least in principle, how to deal with it. There is a way of significantly reducing
that threat; the methods are not being pursued but we know what they are. In the case of
environmental catastrophe it’s not so clear that there will even be a way to control of
maybe reverse it. Maybe. But, the longer we wait, the more we defer taking measures, the
worse it’s going to be.
It’s quite striking to see that those in the lead of trying to do something about this
catastrophe are what we call “primitive” societies. The first nations in Canada, indigenous
societies in central America, aboriginals in Australia. They’ve been on the forefront of
trying to prevent the disaster that we’re rushing towards. It’s beyond irony that the richest
most powerful countries in the world are racing towards disaster while the so-called
primitive societies are the ones in the forefront of trying to avert it.
END OF EXCERPT.
Please see the full article at http://lnkd.in/bYP2nDC
