Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100415/0945149023/dailydirt-robots-sea.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100415/0945149023/dailydirt-robots-sea.shtml

The field of biorobotics has created evolving fish robots to help understand the natural evolution of fish. Or... this is actually a direct study of intelligent design if you live in Tennessee. [url]

The Octopus Project has built the world's first entirely soft robot with eight flexible arms that can crawl around underwater. It's not quite as mobile or dextrous as a real octopus, but soft robots are making some progress towards becoming useful. [url]

The US Navy has funded a Robojelly project to make a soft robot that copies some of the characteristics of the moon jellyfish. This Robojelly robot is also self-powered using seawater as an electrolyte to activate its artificial muscles to contract. [url]

To discover more interesting robotics-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100415/0945149023 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110601/01482814498/dailydirt-never-get-involved-land-war-asia.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110601/01482814498/dailydirt-never-get-involved-land-war-asia.shtml

A Chinese aircraft carrier has been spotted by satellites in the Yellow Sea. Some people think it'll still be years before China's navy catches up to the US, but it's pretty hard to say exactly how advanced China's super-secret navy actually is right now. [url]

China is usually known for its Great Wall being visible from space, but there are some other weird structures that haven't been explained yet. These strange formations can be seen via Google Maps, and they *could* be weird pranks like crop circles. Or not. [url]

Submarine technology is supposed to be really stealthy, but what ever happened to the Chinese sub that surprised the USS Kitty Hawk? In 2006, a Chinese submarine surfaced within 5 miles of the US carrier, but foreign subs shouldn't be able to do that... [url]

To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110601/01482814498 Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110112/16182912642/dailydirt-weapons-some-destruction.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110112/16182912642/dailydirt-weapons-some-destruction.shtml

Set your flashlight to "stun" your enemies -- there's a stun ray gun that incapacitates with a really really bright light. It's not even a laser, but it causes "the inverse of blindness" -- disorienting a person from 200 feet away. Just hope that your attackers aren't wearing sunglasses..? [url]

A green laser can be used to temporarily blind pirates on the open water. Sunglasses won't stop these lasers, but maybe more pirates will start wearing an eye patch to save one eye from this laser-induced blindness. [url]

The US Navy is testing a new high energy laser that can destroy small boats at sea. Now they just need to put these lasers on sharks... [url]

Apparently, a cyber-army could be built with just $100 million in 2 years. But an experienced spammer could probably take down that cyber army with a fraction of those resources. [url]

To discover more interesting war-related stuff, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110112/16182912642