Inspired by the structure of shells and grapefruits, a team of international researchers has created what they say is the first manufactured non-cuttable material which they’ve named Proteus, after the shape-changing mythical god. According to SciTech Daily:

The material is made from a cellular aluminum structure wrapped around ceramic spheres and this has a doubly destructive effect on cutting tools. When cut with an angle grinder or drill, the vibrations created by the ceramic spheres inside the casing blunt the cutting disc or drill bit.

“Essentially cutting our material is like cutting through a jelly-filled with nuggets. If you get through the jelly you hit the nuggets and the material will vibrate in such a way that it destroys the cutting disc or drill bit.

“The ceramics embedded in this flexible material are also made of very fine particles which stiffen and resist the angle grinder or drill when you’re cutting at speed in the same way that a sandbag would resist and stop a bullet at high speed.

Sure, it can withstand angle grinders, drills, and even water jets, but have they tried cutting it with, oh I dunno, scissors?! What’s that? Scissors don’t work either? Okay, I’m out of ideas. I guess it truly is non-cuttable.

Keep going for a 3D CT scan of the material, as well as a video of them attempting to cut through it with an angle grinder.

Source: Geekologie – Engineers create first manufactured non-cuttable material

To illustrate the dangers of deepfakes, a team from the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality created a deepfake of President Nixon delivering the real contingency speech written in 1969 for a scenario in which the Apollo 11 crew was unable to return from the moon. The video is called In Event of Moon Disaster and features both deepfaked video and audio. According to MIT News:

The team worked with a voice actor and a company called Respeecher to produce the synthetic speech using deep learning techniques. They also worked with the company Canny AI to use video dialogue replacement techniques to study and replicate the movement of Nixon’s mouth and lips. Through these sophisticated AI and machine learning technologies, the seven-minute film shows how thoroughly convincing deepfakes can be.

You can watch the entire In Event of Moon Disaster video here. The Nixon part starts at about 3:45. It’s fairly convincing, though there are some head nods that seem contextually out of place and the shirt collar feels a bit off. It’s not something somebody would notice if they didn’t already know the video was fake, and honestly it might just be in my head because I’m trying to find flaws. You could play me a real video of a Nixon speech and if you told me it was deepfaked I’d explain in great detail that I can tell because of the pixels. They’re off.

Scientific America has a 30 minute documentary on how the Nixon deepfake was made which you can watch here.

Source: Geekologie – MIT researchers create deepfake of Nixon delivering ‘In Event of Moon Disaster’ speech

Engineering grad student Jeremy Chang (upwdesign on Instagram) built this absolutely bonkers Warhammer Ultramarine cosplay. He applied techniques he learned doing suit simulator research at the University of Maryland’s Space System Lab to add mobility to his suit, including the ability to turn and rotate the arms. The result is one of the most amazing cosplay armors I’ve ever seen. The fact he can move at all is impressive. I fall down the stairs if my sweater is too thick and this guy is walking around in an eight foot bipedal tank.

Keep going for a few more shots and a video of Nardio’s interview with him.

Source: Geekologie – Absolutely incredible Warhammer Ultramarine cosplay

Researchers at the University of Washington have designed a steerable camera small enough to fit on the back of a bug. According to IEEE Spectrum:

With a focus on small size and efficiency, they started with an off-the-shelf ultra low-power image sensor that’s 2.3 mm wide and weighs 6.7 mg. They stuck on a Bluetooth 5.0 chip (3 mm wide, 6.8 mg), and had a fun time connecting those two things together without any intermediary hardware to broadcast the camera output. A functional wireless camera also requires a lens (20 mg) and an antenna, which is just 5 mm of wire. An accelerometer is useful so that insect motion can be used to trigger the camera, minimizing the redundant frames that you’d get from a robot or an insect taking a nap.

The last bit to make up this system is a mechanically steerable “head,” weighing 35 mg and bringing the total weight of the wireless camera system to 84 mg.

The wireless camera system can stream 160×120 monochrome video frames at 5 frames per second for up to 6 hours. It’s not exactly IMAX quality, but still pretty good for something strapped to a damn bug. They can’t actually control the bug itself, so right now it seems like they’d just be getting low quality footage of whatever it is bugs do all day. Go to work? Get yelled at by their spouse? The usual stuff I guess.

Keep going for a few more shots of the camera as well as a video of it in action.

Source: Geekologie – Researchers design super small camera that fits on bugs

Using what they claim to be the largest 3D printer in Europe, the Kamp C Group in Antwerp, Belgium, has recently built a prototype 3D-printed house with two floors. According to New Atlas:

The unnamed project measures roughly 90 sq m (around 970 sq ft) and is the first 3D-printed house we’ve seen with two floors, though we have previously reported on an office building that also had two floors. It was constructed using a COBOD BOD2 printer measuring 10 x 10 m (32 x 32 ft) and, as with other 3D-printed projects, the construction process involved extruding a special cement-like mixture out of a nozzle and building up the basic structure in layers until it was complete. Human laborers then came in and put the finishing touches in place, like the roof and windows, for example.

It was completed on-site over three weeks but Kamp C reckons this could be reduced to as little as two days in the future.

The interior of the prototype home has similar dimensions to a typical Belgian house, though is not actually going to be lived in as it was created for government-funded research purposes and to highlight the possibilities of 3D printed architecture. It includes an entrance hall, two conference rooms, and a kitchen area. Kamp C also added some sustainable and energy-saving extras too, such as underfloor heating, solar panels, and a heat pump. A green roof is planned for the future.

So let me get this straight. They can print out two story houses but I still live in a ripped cardboard box under the bridge. Sure, maybe my investment in magic beans didn’t pan out the way I hoped, but I’m not asking for much. I don’t even need two stories. Heck, I don’t even need one story. At this point I’ll settle for a new 3D printed box.

Keep going for a few more shots of the house as well as a video of it being put together.

Source: Geekologie – Europe’s largest 3D printer prints an entire two-story house

Japanese artist Takahiro Shibata designed this face mask that mimics a steaming bowl of ramen when your glasses steam up. He writes:

I made a mask for people with glasses.
The more cloudy your glasses are, the hotter you can see the ramen.

Ease of use, no better than this.

Ease of use, no better than this indeed. Now design me one that has actual ramen in the mask and then we’ll talk. Some people feel too dignified to eat out of a horse feedbag. I am not one of those people. I am the opposite of those people.

Keep going for the full Tweet and one more shot of the delicious-looking mask.

Source: Geekologie – Artist designs ramen facemask to match your steamed up glasses

This sexy creepy looking fish was caught in Malaysia by an Indonesian Twitter user with the translated caption, “Her lips are hotter than mine.” The fish looks super Photoshopped, but National Geographic reports it could actually be a real triggerfish that lives in tropical seas around the world. They use their gross human-teeth to flip over crabs and sea urchins to get to their soft underbellies. As for the lips? They use those for smooching. Luscious, steamy, smooching. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some throwing up to do.

Keep going for the full Tweet which includes an additional image of the oddly arousing fish. I mean, normal not-arousing fish.

Source: Geekologie – Creepy fish caught in Malaysia with human-like mouth and teeth

This is the closest picture ever taken of the Sun. It was released from the Solar Orbiter mission led by the European Space Agency and was taken using the orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager instrument. According to Nature:

The pictures, taken by the ultraviolet imager on 30 May and released on 16 July, were captured 77 million kilometres from the Sun’s surface (Earth is about 150 million kilometres from the Sun). A daring NASA mission called the Parker Solar Probe has flown even closer and will get within just 6.2 million kilometres during its mission — inside the corona itself — but the environment is so harsh that it does not carry a camera facing the Sun. Meanwhile, on Earth, the Daniel K. Inoye Solar Telescope in Hawaii has taken higher-resolution images of the Sun than the orbiter, but these do not fully capture the star’s light, because Earth’s atmosphere filters out some ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths.

Scientists are excited about the potential of the Solar Orbiter, an international collaboration that launched in February and carries ten instruments to image the Sun and study its environment. The spacecraft will eventually switch its orbit to study the Sun’s polar regions for the first time. “We’ve never been closer to the Sun with a camera, and this is just the beginning of a long epic journey with Solar Orbiter, which will take us even closer to the Sun in two years’ time,” said Daniel Müller, the mission’s project scientist, at the briefing.

Well there’s definitely a lot more detail than the time I stared at the sun with binoculars. I couldn’t make out the corona or solar flares or anything. I mostly just saw burning and pain. And weirdly now I can’t see anything at all.

Source: Geekologie – This is the closest photo of the sun ever taken

Tai Star Valianti set a Guinness World Record for the most Jenga blocks stacked on one vertical Jenga piece, beating his own previous record with 485. For reference, a normal Jenga set comes with 54 pieces, so this guy managed to fit almost 9 sets onto a single vertical piece. Which is pretty impressive, but what about the time I stacked 6 pancakes. Where was Guinness then?? Wait, what? That’s not impressive? That’s just breakfast? Yeah, but it was delicious.

Keep going for the full video of Tai building his insane Jenga tower.

Source: Geekologie – Man builds world record Jenga tower

YouTuber Jose Argumedo took the 1941 Fleischer Studios Superman cartoon ‘The Bulleteers’ and upscaled it using Waifu2x, an image upscaler that uses deep convolutional neural networks. Waifu2x is trained on anime (as evidenced by the name) and it works remarkably well for any animation and even pixel art. Just look at the results. It looks better than any remastering I’ve ever seen and was done completely with machine learning. It’s like looking at those botched art restorations but with the before and after images reversed.

Keep going for the full upscaled video, as well as what the original quality looks like.

Source: Geekologie – Fleischer Studios ‘Superman’ upscaled to 4k using neural networks

Stuff Made Here’s Shane made a robot to cut his own hair and he did it the hard way, bypassing trimmers and other shortcuts and going for scissors. That’s right, he designed a robot to cut the hair on his head with scissors. Scissors. If there’s any doubt that that’s exactly as dangerous as you probably think it is, just look at his expression. That’s the face of a man who doesn’t fully trust his creation. Like the time I filled a folded pizza with donuts, hot dogs, and jalapenos. Was it delicious? Obviously. Did it betray me the next day? Obviously.

Keep going for the full video explaining the build process and showing a timelapse of the entire cut itself. Spoiler alert, he doesn’t die or lose an ear.

Source: Geekologie – This guy made a robot to cut his own hair with scissors

A craftsman from Wales put together this whiskey fountain using Jack Daniel’s bottles. According to the maker:

“In the video, I am videoing a Jack Daniels waterfall feature that I made from scratch with everything recycled apart from the pump inside! It’s amazing what you can do when stuck in lockdown.”

Don’t say nothing good ever came from the lockdown. Also, what exactly is happening to all that whiskey? Is it still considered a fountain if the whiskey pours directly into a human mouth? I’m, uh, asking for a friend. A sad alcoholic friend.

Keep going for the full video of the fountain in action.

Source: Geekologie – Homemade Jack Daniel’s whiskey fountain

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