warning: you might be afraid to sleep or go into the woods after watching this video.
I just wanted to freak you out, I don’t have anything to say.
via: Geekologie
Check this out:
“ All the buildings on Treasure Island will meet the gold standard of the U.S. Green Building Council, further reducing energy consumption.”
Taken from the recent article in Popular Mechanics revealing new plans to use San Francisco’s Treasure Island as a testing center for new green building developments and ideas.
That’s what they said, ALL the buildings. That’s pretty sweet.
Some of the other new features planned for Treasure Island’s green makeover include completely redesigning the infrastructure of the island to taking into consideration the amount sun and wind exposure unique to the location.
Sometimes it blows my mind that city planners hadn’t taken any of this into consideration when they had originally designed the city. What did they study in school and what were they getting paid for? I mean, granted they didn’t think about the effects of global warning, use of fossil fuels, etc. when the island was built in 1939 but even the Ancient Greeks knew about building their homes to receive winter sun and summer shade.
The article goes into more details as to the some of the projects they already have planned for the island. I’m really exited about this since I visit the Bay Area quite often. I’ve actually never been to Treasure Island myself but I’m thinking this will be great excuse to go on my next trip and get some “before” shots taken.
From Robots.net:
Kim Goossens and marev sent us links about a new Japanese “wine-tasting” robot; one from the BBC Technology NewsYahoo’s AP wire service. As it turns out, the new NEC robot doesn’t actually taste wines, cheeses, and other foods. Instead, the Health and Food Advice Robot determines the chemical composition of wines and foods by using IR light from an “optical tongue” to determine a unique “spectral fingerprint” for each food. The articles note that the robot can only accurately identify a few dozen wines out of the thousands on the market. It also made a few interesting identifications during the demonstration: “Some of the mistakes it makes would get a human sommelier fired - or worse. When a reporter’s hand was placed against the robot’s taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon.” If you really think you need a robot that can guess the name of foods and wines you show it, expect to pay “about as much as a new car”. They hope to eventually get the price down to $1,000 and make the robot’s guesses more accurate. For more information, see the NEC System Technologies news release.
