CYBER DUMP 59 / HOMEMADE CHIPS, VR THEME PARK, AI PHONE CALLS, ROBOT WAREHOUSE
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Welcome to Cyber Dump number 59, your look at what's happening in this insane age of technology that we live in. As always, all source links mentioned are below.

- Youtube link
- Archive.org mirror
- Torrent

DIY

Starting off with an awesome bit of DIY. Sam Zeloof has created a integrated circuit in his home garage, using a lithographic technique. This could be the start of a new age where hobbyists will be making their own chips from scratch at home. There's a full writeup on Sam's website.

http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/

VIRTUAL REALITY

A couple of weeks ago, a full virtual reality park opened in Guizhou, China. The Oriental Science Fiction Valley park has a bunch of different VR only rides, and it looks interesting. I hope there's an intense cleaning regime with all those people using the headsets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0lLul87Dvo

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Incase you didn't see this, last week Google showed off their Duplex AI assistant, which during a demo, called a hair salon and arranged a booking on behalf of the phone's user. The crazy thing is that employee at the salon had no idea she was talking to an AI. This seems like an important milestone. Go and watch the video for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5VN56jQMWM

In other AI news, youtube channel two minute papers explained the findings of a recent scientific paper. Researchers found that an AI which was tasked at beating certain games began in a way, dreaming about them, imagining completely new scenarios, essentially training itself, before playing them again with improved skill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvjCu7zszbQ

AUGMENTED REALITY

I thought this was in interesting use-case for augmented reality. WatchBox, an online watch retailer has started a new service which pairs a paper template with it's app, so you can try on watches in augmented reality. I've got a feeling this kind of this is only going to increase in the future.

https://www.vrfocus.com/2018/05/watchbox-offers-ar-for-try-before-you-buy/

HOLOGRAMS(ISH)

Researchers at Queen's University showed off their TeleHuman2 hologram-like telepresence system. The remote location captures the person using a bunch of stereoscopic cameras, and an array of projectors displays the image on a curved screen. It's kind of crude, but perhaps the start of something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNHWPB0he2k

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

Researchers at MITCSAIL have been testing a self driving car system on country roads. Other systems use 3D maps to estimate the position of lanes, curbs and signs etc, but since many county roads don't have that corresponding data, this system analyses the changing conditions on the fly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZpwQluW6mY

ROBOTICS

Boston Dynamics uploaded a new clip of their Atlas robot, this time getting some running training in before the robot uprising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjSohj-Iclc

Ocado, the food retailer also showed off their automated warehouse in Andover. This place can handle up to 1100 robots at once, and the collective bots can complete 3 million routing calculations per second, meaning customer orders can be picked and packed in 5 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeMTZd68fOU

THIS WEEK ON NODE

This week I showed you the latest iteration of the Pi Plug, the little adapter which turns a Pi Zero W into an always-on headless server, suitable for a bunch of use cases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1p-kd6U_Qo

SEND LINKS TO

If you see an interesting technology link, send it to links@n-o-d-e.net

Thanks:
Chris VL
Syns
Boofa

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BY NODE