Amazon today introduced the Amazon Dash Cart, a “smart shopping cart” that uses weight sensors and cameras to let you scan your items as you place them in the cart so you can skip the checkout line. According to CNET:

“Our primary motivation for building this was to be able to save customers time,” said Dilip Kumar, vice president of Amazon’s physical retail and technology. “The alternative solutions are standing in the express checkout lanes or fumbling through self-checkout stations.”

Dash Carts will debut at Amazon’s Woodland Hills, California, grocery store, when the location opens later this year. The company last November unveiled plans for the Woodland Hills store as the first location for a new supermarket chain that will be separate from its Whole Foods chain. The store will include conventional checkout lanes, too.

The new shopping cart, which Kumar says is built sturdy enough to prevent those annoying shaky and off-balance wheels, is part of Amazon’s continued work to put its techie signature on the $1.2 trillion US grocery market. It introduced Amazon Go in 2016 and Amazon Go Grocery, a larger store format that includes fresh produce, in February. There’s been plenty of speculation that Amazon will add similar hardware into Whole Foods, which it purchased in 2017, but that has yet to happen.

It’s clear Amazon is trying to eliminate as much friction as possible between them and your money. I didn’t even know checkout lines were causing me to spend less, but Amazon’s data says they do so they must. It’s probably just a matter of time before Amazon skips the middleman that is your brain completely and starts randomly sending you things you might want and charging your credit card. I’m kind of joking, but with their return policy, this actually seems like a viable business model for them.

Source: Geekologie – Amazon develops “smart shopping cart” that scans as you place groceries so you can skip checkout

LEGO and Nintendo have paired up to create one of the coolest LEGO sets I’ve ever seen. The LEGO Nintendo Entertainment System set features an NES console, cartridge, and retro TV, but the best part is the TV has an actual scrolling Super Mario Bros. level when you turn the crank. According to LEGO:

Recreate classic Super Mario Bros.™ gameplay with this cool LEGO® Nintendo Entertainment System™! Place the Game Pak in the brick-built console. Turn the handle on the retro TV to make 8-bit Mario move across the screen. And place LEGO® Mario™ from the LEGO Super Mario Starter Course in the slot on top so he reacts to the on-screen enemies, obstacles and power-ups, while the original game’s theme tune plays!

For maximum accuracy they’d have to include a feature where the crank will only turn if you blow into the cartridge. You can get the set on the official LEGO site when it releases on August 1, 2020. It’ll cost $229.99, which is more than double what an actual NES console cost when it came out.

Keep going for more photos, as well as a video of the scrolling Super Mario Bros. level in action.

Source: Geekologie – Creative and beautiful LEGO Nintendo Entertainment System set

YouTuber ChuggersRCT synced up his custom roller coaster in Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 with Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. He says:

This is a synchronized coaster I’ve made in Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, that works completely in game, as long as you have the required custom music. A download for this save file will be released soon, as I have some work to do to make it more user friendly to operate.

This is an insane amount of work to put into a game that came out in 2002, and a testament to how great the Roller Coaster Tycoon series is. Let’s also take a moment to acknowledge this guy’s ROI, considering he’s gotten 18 years of entertainment out of a $40 PC game. It’s like the exact opposite of the guy who paid $114,000 for a Super Mario Bros. cartridge and will never play it once.

Source: Geekologie – Guy builds custom roller coaster synced to Bohemian Rhapsody in ‘Roller Coaster Tycoon 2’

Rubik’s Cube artist Big Wendy created a mosaic portrait of Rubik’s Cube inventor Erno Rubik using 400 tactile cubes while blindfolded. She says:

Erno Rubik, the creator of the Rubik’s Cube, is turning 76 today. As a Happy Birthday, I dedicated my first blindfolded mosaic to him. The actual portrait took me around 7 hours to finish and the prep took around 3. I used 400 tactile cubes to complete this project and was blindfolded the entire time, only using my hearing as a guide.

So she’s not technically doing the portrait from memory since the cubes are tactile and she’s using her own audio cues, but it’s still super impressive. The obvious escalation from this is to do an entire mosaic from memory, but that sounds so insanely impossible the only person up for the job is me. When you’re blessed with a big brain and amazing memory like me, you, uh, ya know, remember stuff real good. Because am smarts. I…what were we talking about again?

Keep going for the full time-lapse video of Big Wendy completing the portrait.

Source: Geekologie – Blindfolded Rubik’s Cube artist creates a portrait of Erno Rubik using Rubik’s Cubes

A copy of Super Mario Bros. still in its original plastic sealing became the highest-selling video game ever when it was sold to an anonymous bidder last Friday at a Heritage Auctions’ event with a winning bid of $114,000. The cartridge was graded in A+ condition and fetched so much because the box featured a short-lived hangtab variant of the original packaging. According to Rolling Stone:

“This unopened copy of this [Nintendo] launch title soared to record heights in part because it was part of one of the short production runs of the game packaged in boxes with a cardboard hangtab underneath the plastic, an indication that it was part of one of the first variants produced after Nintendo started using shrink-wrap to seal the games rather than stickers,” Heritage Auctions said of the packaging.

In total, Friday’s auction of sealed Nintendo games brought in over $699,000, well exceeding its $428,000 pre-estimate auction. Other notable items included a sealed copy of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out that sold for $50,000 and a first-pressing, ultra-rare copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 that had the “Bros.” placed on the left side of the front cover; that item, one of only 10 known to exist, sold for $38,000.

I personally prefer to buy my games on Steam, but some people still like having hard copies and I don’t blame them. And for what this person paid, I bet they went straight home without even stopping for lunch so they could tear the box open and give it a try. Look, I get it. We’re all socially distancing and there’s nothing to do but stay home and play video games. Some people wait for Steam sales, others go to an auction and pay the price of a Porsche. At the end of the day, we’re all really just the same.

Source: Geekologie – Somebody paid 4,000 for a ‘Super Mario Bros.’ cartridge still in its original packaging

An intrepid programmer had a friend with dyslexia and thought they could recreate their description of what it’s like using JavaScript. I don’t have dyslexia myself so I can’t say if it’s accurate, but according to commenters who claim to have the disorder it’s a pretty close representation. The picture doesn’t really do it justice, as the live site actually mimics the sensation of letters jumping around. And if that’s really what it’s like, I can see why reading and writing would be a nightmare. I mean, I don’t even have dyslexia and I already find it difficult to read anything more advanced than Highlights. And by “read” I mean look at the Spot the Difference section.

You can check out the site here.

Source: Geekologie – This website simulates what it’s like to have dyslexia

Aircraft manufacturer Boom plans on unveiling their XB-1 prototype on October 7th, which would be the first independently-developed supersonic jet. According to Airline Ratings:

The fuselage is complete, the wings tested and installed and the engines are ready to fire up. In April, the manufacturing team installed XB-1’s wing to the forward fuselage in a quick and seamless operation. Boom says that it has made significant progress to the aft fuselage build-up which hosts the XB-1’s three supersonic engines. The XB-1’s titanium aft fuselage can withstand temperatures in excess of 800°F.

Drop tests for XB-1’s nose and main landing gears are also underway, while the pilots are training in the flight simulator.

The prototype is a proof of concept before production of a full scale 50-seat supersonic airliner, to be called the “Overture”. The timeline for the planned entry into airline service has now also slipped from the previously envisaged 2023-24 to between 2025 and 2027.

The original Concorde was retired in 2003 and there haven’t been any commercial supsersonic flights since. But really, just how fast do we really need our air travel to be? I guess flying to Taiwan in half the time would be neat, but I’ve watched cartoons and in the future we’re all going to be zipping around in tubes anyway so I’m not sure there’s going to be a huge market for this.

Keep going for some more production shots as well as the official Boom XB-1 video.

Source: Geekologie – Boom to unveil first independently-developed supersonic jet XB-1

Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have designed a silicone rubber face mask they believe is as effective as N95 masks but can be sterilized and used multiple times. According to MIT News:

The masks are based on the shape of the 3M 1860 style of N95 masks, the type normally used at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Most of the mask is made of silicone rubber, and there is also space for one or two N95 filters. Those filters are designed to be replaced after every use, while the rest of the mask can be sterilized and reused.

“With this design, the filters can be popped in and then thrown away after use, and you’re throwing away a lot less material than an N95 mask,” Wentworth says.

The researchers tested several different sterilization methods on the silicone masks, including running them through an autoclave (steam sterilizer), putting them in an oven, and soaking them in bleach and in isopropyl alcohol. They found that after sterilization, the silicone material was undamaged.

So basically the idea is instead of swapping out an entire N95 mask you just swap out the filters. I guess that technically qualifies as reusable, but it’s sort of like saying my N95 mask is reusable because the straps come off and you just have to swap out the part that covers the nose and mouth. Just eyeballing it they’re probably getting three replacements for every one N95 mask replacement based solely on the amount of filter material. Better than nothing I guess.

Source: Geekologie – MIT engineers design a reusable silicone rubber face mask

12-year-old Lydia Denton was named the winner of CITGO’s Fueling Education Student Challenge and awarded $20,000 after inventing a device to prevent hot car deaths. People writes:

The device works through a pressure pad under the car seat cover, which can sense weight over 5 lbs. When a baby is in the seat, the system starts itself up and monitors the temperature.

If the temperature reaches above 102 degrees, the seat will set off an alarm along with a warning on the LCD display. A text will also be sent to the parent’s phone. If the parent does not reset the button within 60 seconds, a message is sent to 911 with the built-in GPS chip, called an Arduino, sending the car’s location to emergency services.

Wow this is inspiring. You know what I was doing when I was 12? It was less “inventing devices that would save lives” and more “getting my arm stuck in vending machines trying to steal snacks.” Did my efforts help society? Maybe not, but they did result in 911 being called just like Lydia’s device so obviously we’re both equally great people.

Source: Geekologie – 12-year-old girl awarded ,000 for inventing device to prevent hot car deaths

Japan’s FamilyMart chain is planning on introducing robots to its workforce this summer to stock store shelves. According to Time Out:

Instead of being fully automated, FamilyMart’s robots will be operated by store employees via VR terminals at a separate location. The addition of these new robots will hopefully allow people to have a more flexible work schedule and help stores that have limited staff.

The robots will be tested out in selected FamilyMart locations in Tokyo this summer, with an aim to have them installed in at least 20 stores by 2022. If all goes well, these new robots could become as integral to Japan’s konbini as cup noodles and fried chicken.

The robots are designed by Telexistence and are more like robotic drones than actual autonomous robots, so there’s less risk of an I, Robot situation happening here. Smart move, because I find customers usually prefer it when robot employees actually do their job instead of turning on their masters and doing murder instead.

Keep going for a promo video for Telexistence.

Source: Geekologie – FamilyMart to start introducing robot shelf stockers

Announced in 2019, Sony is now selling its Reon Pocket, a personal temperature control unit that sells for about $130 (14,080 Japanese Yen). According to Design Boom:

the reon pocket utilizes thermoelectric cooling but sony says you can also use it as a heater on winter days. it can supposedly cool a user’s body temperature by 13 degrees celsius (23 degrees fahrenheit) and raise your temperature by about 8 degrees celsius (about 14 degrees fahrenheit).

the reon pocket is a bluetooth device about the size of a card wallet that slips into a special undershirt with a pocket at the base of the neck. it connects to an app which gives users control of the temperature via their smartphone.

the wearable air conditioner supports ios and android, has a battery life of 90 minutes and a charge time of 2 hours. it looks a little like an apple mouse, weighs just 85 grams and uses USB-c.

It’s a similar concept as the Embr Wave, which is a wearable bracelet that also heats and cools, but sells for more than double the price at $299. I imagine the Reon Pocket is more effective since it sits at your neck/back versus your wrist, but the problem is you have to wear that stupid undershirt to make it work. Although I suppose you could skip the shirt and just tape it to your back like John McClane in Die Hard. Yippee ki-yay, you poor sweaty bastards. I’ve got a weird device taped to my back and that makes me cooler than you. Literally.

Keep going for the product video or check out the main Japanese site here.

Source: Geekologie – Sony is selling a personal wearable AC unit

Japan recently reopened their theme parks, and in addition to masks, their guidelines include a ban on screaming on roller coasters because it spreads coronavirus. According to The Wall Street Journal:

A video showed the two executives, both clad in masks, sternly riding the coaster in complete silence. It ended with a message: “Please scream inside your heart.”

The ban on screaming, along with a recommendation that visitors wear masks, is included in guidelines released by Japan’s theme-park associations when parks began reopening in May. The guidelines are being followed by most parks in the country, including Disneyland and Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. The associations said they were following the judgment of health officials, who have said actions such as coughing and singing can spread droplets widely.

“Please scream inside your heart.” Yeah, I already do that all day every day, Japan. At first I thought this was an Onion article but the site says The Wall Street Journal so now I’m only 50% sure it’s a joke. Personally I don’t scream on roller coasters anyway because I’m super tough and manly and there’s no time to scream when you’re busy eating steaks and bench pressing things.

Keep going for the full video of the two execs trying reaaally hard to look chill while riding a roller coaster.

Source: Geekologie – Japan reopens theme parks, bans screaming on roller coasters

YouTuber Dutchsteammachine took 16mm NASA footage of the Apollo 16 Lunar Roving Vehicle traversing to Station 4 and increased the framerate from 12fps to 60fps using DAIN-AI. They also color corrected the footage and synchronized audio to create a pretty immersive experience of riding around on the moon. Although I must admit the scenery gets a bit repetitive. I mean, lunar soil as far as the eye can see? Where’s the cheese? Wasn’t there supposed to be some cheese up there?

Keep going for a shot of what the Lunar Roving Vehicle looks like along with the full video.

Source: Geekologie – Interpolated Apollo 16 rover footage creates an immersive moon-driving experience

Gary Larson teased he was working on something new awhile ago, but yesterday he finally posted some of his new work on his site. He writes:

So a few years ago–finally fed up with my once-loyal but now reliably traitorous pen–I decided to try a digital tablet. I knew nothing about these devices but hoped it would just get me through my annual Christmas card ordeal. I got one, fired it up, and lo and behold, something totally unexpected happened: within moments, I was having fun drawing again. I was stunned at all the tools the thing offered, all the creative potential it contained. I simply had no idea how far these things had evolved. Perhaps fittingly, the first thing I drew was a caveman.

The “New Stuff” that you’ll see here is the result of my journey into the world of digital art. Believe me, this has been a bit of a learning curve for me. I hail from a world of pen and ink, and suddenly I was feeling like I was sitting at the controls of a 747. (True, I don’t get out much.) But as overwhelmed as I was, there was still something familiar there–a sense of adventure. That had always been at the core of what I enjoyed most when I was drawing The Far Side, that sense of exploring, reaching for something, taking some risks, sometimes hitting a home run and sometimes coming up with “Cow tools.” (Let’s not get into that.) But as a jazz teacher once said to me about improvisation, “You want to try and take people somewhere where they might not have been before.” I think that my approach to cartooning was similar–I’m just not sure if even I knew where I was going. But I was having fun.

So all it took for Gary Larson to start making strips again was getting his hands on an iPad. Sure, they completely revolutionized smartphones and the way we engage with our digital world, but getting Gary Larson to create new The Far Side strips should be Apple’s crowning achievement. They might as well just shut down the company because this was their endgame all along, right?

You can check out his new strips here.

EDIT: Larson only mentions ‘digital tablet’ so it’s not verified it’s an iPad, but the strips definitely have a Procreate feel to them.

Source: Geekologie – Gary Larson reveals new ‘The Far Side’ comic strips

On June 24, 2020, NASA engineers completed the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s structural testing for the Artemis lunar missions by locating the point of failure for the liquid oxygen tank. According to NASA:

For the final test, the liquid oxygen tank test article — measuring 70 feet tall and 28 feet in diameter — was bolted into a massive 185,000-pound steel ring at the base of Marshall’s Test Stand 4697. Hydraulic cylinders were then calibrated and positioned all along the tank to apply millions of pounds of crippling force from all sides while engineers measured and recorded the effects of the launch and flight forces. The liquid oxygen tank circumferentially failed in the weld location as engineers predicted and at the approximate load levels expected, proving flight readiness and providing critical data for the tank’s designers. The test concluded at approximately 9 p.m. CT. This final test on the liquid oxygen structural test article met all the program milestones.

So basically they blew up their own liquid oxygen tank to make sure it would fail where they expected it to fail. Sure, NASA. Sure. That’s the same excuse I gave my girlfriend when I left the stove on and accidentally burned down part of our kitchen. It was just a test, honey, I mean to do it. Now we know the point of failure for our stove. I’m basically a NASA engineer.

Keep going for the full video.

Source: Geekologie – NASA intentionally destroys SLS rocket propellant tank

This is an extremely charming handmade cardboard Tetris game. I mean, I guess it’s Tetris? The pieces are right and all, but this girl has at least 4 lines that haven’t been cleared so I don’t know what’s up. Me thinks no matter how far she gets she’s going to end up losing. And I guess that’s the real life lesson right there. Just give up, kid. It never gets easier.

Keep going for the full video of the totally unfair cardboard Tetris.

Source: Geekologie – Incredibly charming handmade cardboard Tetris

A Tesla Model 3 owner narrowly avoided an accident when their autopilot warned them of an oncoming tire flying down the freeway. According to the driver:

The Tesla did not dodge the tire, I did. However, the autopilot gave me the time and view which allowed me to see the tire coming from the other side of the freeway. Also, the car stabilized very quickly after swerving to avoid getting hit. The car kept me from flipping over and spinning out into five lanes of traffic.

So technically Autopilot just told the guy there was a tire flying at him and it was up to him to actually dodge it. It’s a cool story, but I need my Autopilot to do all the dodging for me. I can’t be trusted to save my own life. Coordination isn’t one of my strong suits and if it was up to me I’d end up driving straight into the tire, and then into the divider, and then into all the cars in front of me, and then somehow into a gas station that would explode into a giant fireball.

Keep going for the full video of the near miss.

Source: Geekologie – Tesla Model 3 narrowly avoids flying tire

The folks at Disney Research Studios have moved one step closer to replacing human actors by developing this algorithm for high resolution face-swapping in images and videos.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method capable of rendering photo-realistic and temporally coherent results at megapixel resolution. To this end, we introduce a progressively trained multi-way comb network and a light- and contrast-preserving blending method. We also show that while progressive training enables generation of high-resolution images, extending the architecture and training data beyond two people allows us to achieve higher fidelity in generated expressions. When compositing the generated expression onto the target face, we show how to adapt the blending strategy to preserve contrast and low-frequency lighting. Finally, we incorporate a refinement strategy into the face landmark stabilization algorithm to achieve temporal stability, which is crucial for working with high-resolution videos. We conduct an extensive ablation study to show the influence of our design choices on the quality of the swap and compare our work with popular state-of-the-art methods.

This is basically like supercharged DeepFakes and the results are pretty impressive. Disney Research Studios claims they’re developing this for movies and visual effects, but I can think of some other *ahem* more adult oriented applications as well. Yes, I’m talking about porn. What else would I be talking about? I’m always talking about porn. This is the Internet. Everybody’s always talking about porn. Why is Disney Research Studios even pretending they’re not doing this for porn? I wonder how many more times I can type Disney and porn in the same sentence before I get sued.

Keep going for a video of the face-swapping in action. It’s still not perfect, but it’s significantly better than the alternative methods.

Source: Geekologie – Disney develops high resolution neural face-swapping

A meteor was spotted above Tokyo early Thursday, with many people saying they heard it explode around 2:30 AM. According to The Japan Times:

“I thought a person living (in the condo) above knocked down a shelf,” wrote one Twitter user, while another said, “I thought my child sleeping on the second floor fell out of bed.”

Daichi Fujii, a curator at Hiratsuka City Museum in Kanagawa Prefecture, captured the fireball with a camera installed at his home in Hiratsuka. It crossed the northern sky from west to east, he said.

The National Astronomical Observatory said several fireballs are observed every month on average, but it is rare for people to hear anything.

Yeah, it’s rare for meteors to make noises which is why this clearly isn’t a meteor and is definitely space aliens. It looks like they finally got the letter I wrote them about two decades ago asking them to come visit. I thought one stamp wouldn’t be enough but my mom told me it was fine and turns out she was right. Also, I addressed it to “Outer Space.” Man, the postal service is good.

Keep going for the video of the sky fireball aka my new space friends.

Source: Geekologie – Meteor lights up Tokyo sky

Designer Luca Iaconi-Stewart has been working on this 1:60 scale model of a Boeing 777-300ER since 2008. He’s only using manila folders and the results are absolutely astounding. According to Luca:

This project traces its beginnings to an architecture class in high school where we learned to use manila file folders to roughly model our building ideas. The more I worked with paper, the more I fell in love with its versatility. At some point, I got the idea to make a model of an airplane as a way of challenging myself with an unconventional shape.

Though the project began on a much smaller and simpler scale in mid-2008, it has since evolved through multiple revisions to become a highly detailed, true-to-life representation of a Boeing 777. I originally drew my plans by hand, but my desire to increase the accuracy and amount of detail led me to start using Adobe Illustrator to design and print increasingly intricate parts directly onto the folder.

The attention to detail boggles the mind. Every handle, hydraulic, and cable seems to be recreated using nothing but manila folders. I can barely use manila folders to mail paper and this guy has turned them into a design achievement that might rival some actual aircraft. The project is still ongoing, and I imagine he probably won’t be finished anytime soon judging by his commitment to detail. It takes time to accurately model individual atoms with manila folders so cut the guy some slack.

Keep going for more shots, along with a time-lapse video of one of the most impressive craft projects I’ve ever seen.

Source: Geekologie – 1:60 scale model of a Boeing 777-300ER made entirely from manila folders