dgallina
1777
This so much. I had a cat who loved the taste of plastic cable housing & would nibble upon them with his pointy little teeth. But only the most expensive SCSI cables would do. And so I spent at least one lengthy and frustrating week diagnosing random intermittent data transfer failures. Only to eventually find that the external cable had tiny punctures in just the right (wrong) places.
I felt like Kirk yelling at Khan when I realized.
Seems the right place for it (itās actually pretty cool)
RichVR
1781
Serious question. How is a clump of cells a robot?
Well, anything is a clump of material. In this case, itās engineered to carry out tasks (very simple thus far, such as reproduction and repair but potentially much more). The xenobots are automated machines, like any robot in that respect. That the base material is biological doesnāt really seem to change that, but that also means itās not a grey goo analogue. From the other article;
Xenobots donāt look like traditional robots ā they have no shiny gears or robotic arms. Instead, they look more like a tiny blob of moving pink flesh. The researchers say this is deliberate ā this ābiological machineā can achieve things typical robots of steel and plastic cannot.
Traditional robots ādegrade over time and can produce harmful ecological and health side effects,ā researchers said in the study, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As biological machines, xenobots are more environmentally friendly and safer for human health, the study said.
I saw this just a second ago, and saved the link for my class. I think the students might find it interesting, and there is a Vermont connection too.
Thatās a good headline.
It depends how you define ārobotā. From the article:
āMost people think of robots as made of metals and ceramics but itās not so much what a robot is made from but what it does, which is act on its own on behalf of people,ā said Josh Bongard, a computer science professor and robotics expert at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study.
āIn that way itās a robot but itās also clearly an organism made from genetically unmodified frog cell.ā
Significantly less can actually go wrong here than is implied by CNNās headline.
. . . said the scientist in the first 15 minutes of the SYFY movie of the week.
I canāt be bothered to search up a Futurama suicide booth gif, but Iām sure the internet will provide.
That thing looks like it has OTA software updates, a touch screen and a decent sound system.
If it has a sound system, I hope they label the buttons clearly!
CraigM
1791
Hey check out this killer music!
The pod doubles as a coffin. I guess once the user closes it, it never reopens.
Yeesh, burying a body with all those electronics?
Djscman
1793
What could go wrong? You go in the pod and donāt die?
Looks like the new Animal Crossing sleeping pod.
Iām guessing all the expensive electronics and the gas delivery system are located in the base unit, which is likely separate and reusable. I was kind of glad to see the pod part is meant to be buried with the deceased, as I canāt imagine anyone wanting to be the second (or twentieth) person to use the pod.
Every year. They burn every year, and every year someone decides āletās do it againā.
