I remember when the whole Ironman prosthetic arm thing happened my hackerspace was buzzing with “wouldn’t it be cool if” ideas. Much of that had to do with colors, lasers and other custom features. However, none of us were thinking Legos, but we should have been, right? It’s the obvious creative choice for a kid. Well, it turns out a few years ago someone was already making a Lego arm, but now there is this hybrid I spotted on Gizmodo. It’s called IKO and was created by Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar at the University of Sweden back in 2014 in conjunction with Lego Future Lab, and it continues to win awards. Carlos was struck by the psychological and social aspects of special needs children, so he was less concerned with having the perfect practical arm, but more interested in seeing what he could do for a child’s self esteem and imagination.
What if kids could make their own prosthetics and have fun at the same time? Learning. Creating. Being kids.
The system’s cylinder style base allows for a 360 building experience, which really gets kid excited. Carlos tested various Lego kits including a space theme and bulldozer theme and kids went crazy. The best part is that other children see the arm as something fun, not scary like traditional prosthetics. In fact, it encourages children to work together with their ideas. Check out the thesis book to learn more details about the project, and also see how things evolved in this video.
It looks like Carlos is now interning at IDEO, which is no surprise given his talents. What’s not clear is what has happened to his IKO arm. I’m hoping Lego is seriously considering it for their product line. There’s something that just makes sense about introducing kids to robotics and simultaneously helping them with needed solutions. Of course if you have kids of your own and you are interested in getting them started with robotics, you should check out Sparki. This is not going to lead to a prosthetic arm, but it will help make a connection with how moving things and sensors work. It’s a great first robotics kit because it is plug and play out of the box by using it’s remote. Later, you can start playing with some Arduino code, and there are some sample programs included to get you started. Notice that I’ve said this is for your kids, but feel free to borrow it; it’s got great upgrade capability for the experienced bot lover. Did I mention it’s super cute?
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!
Amazon.com appears to be taking small steps to develop its drone delivery program and doing so from backyards in its hometown of Seattle.
On Thursday, one observer tweeted that the online retailing giant would be scoping out his property for its Amazon Prime Air program next week.
“Amazon is coming to my house to scan my backyard for Prime Air drone delivery next week!” wrote Andru Edwards, a Seattle resident who heads up a tech review site, on Twitter. Edwards is also an Amazon video personality, who appears in short online films for the company.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment. Edwards did not immediately respond to emails asking for comment and he deleted his tweet after FORBES contacted Amazon for comment.
Last year a number of major tech companies released information on the racial and gender make-up of their employees. As those companies release 2015 ‘diversity reports,’ we’ll be updating this interactive to see how tech companies compare with the previous years and with other companies in terms of gender and race in their custom-defined ‘technology’ and ‘leadership’ positions.
The family of a six-year-old girl killed in a car accident has reached a tentative settlement with Uber, likely ending the wrongful death lawsuit brought in January 2014. Court documents show that the girl’s parents asked the court on Monday to keep the settlement amount sealed.
The child, Sofia Liu, was killed on December 31, 2013, when Syed Muzzafar was using the Uber app while he was driving. However, he did not have anyone in his car at the time of the accident. Muzzafar, who was also sued and is party to this settlement—was also charged criminally with vehicular manslaughter.
Uber has previously argued that because Muzzafar "was not providing services on the Uber system during the time of the accident," the company is not responsible. Andrew Noyes, an Uber spokesperson, declined further comment when the suit was originally filed. In March 2014 both Uber and Lyft expanded their insurance policy to cover drivers in Muzzafar’s situation.
Standup comedian Eugene Mirman, best-known for his role as Gene on the hit series Bob's Burgers, gave one town in New Hampshire a piece of his mind when they issued him a ticket for backing into a parking spot.
Mirman had been walking around the town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with his girlfriend. Upon their return to the car, he claims he found a slip of paper on the windshield, even though there was an hour left on the parking meter. A closer inspection of the citation revealed the explanation for the ticket: He was "parked in the wrong direction" and would have to pay a fine of $15.
Despite the paltry size of the fine, Mirman was not going to stand for what he deemed a total injustice. He took out a full-page ad in a local paper to give Portsmouth a piece of his mind.
Dear Portsmouth, NH, and Especially the Parking Clerk’s Office,
Last June I had a wonderful day walking around your historic downtown with my girlfriend. I bought two puppets, who turned out to be gay. Just kidding, they’re puppets. We stopped in cute shops, ate a popover and saw Black David Cross. It was nice.
Then — when we returned to our car, on the windshield was a ticket. “What could this possibly be for,” I thought. I paid for three hours of parking (but only used two — you’re welcome, Portsmouth.) Is it a crime in Portsmouth to not use all of the parking you bought? How'd you know I’d be back early? Do you have a PreCrime division? Why are your PreCogs working on traffic tickets? Shouldn’t they be out preventing Street Performers before they happen? But no, I read the violation—we backed into a spot and were being fined $15 for being “parked in the wrong direction.”
What kind of horse$&it charge is that? It’s illegal to back into a spot? Before I embarrass myself, I want to make sure that Portsmouth is still inside the United States and not considered a part of Iran?
You’re probably thinking, “Well, if before visiting Portsmouth, like everyone else — you’d simply gone to the City Clerk’s Office website, clicked on City of Portsmouth ordinances and looked in chapter seven — Vehicles, Traffic and Parking. Right there in section 7.316: BACK TO CURB, it says, “No vehicle shall remain backed up to the curb.” Similarly, if you had gone to my website before I came to your city and clicked on Eugene’s ordinances, you’d know that in Chapter One under “F%#K You Don’t Steal My Money,” in section 8.215 is says, “F%#K You Don’t Steal My Money.”
But even if I had gone to your website — is states that the online ordinances are not an official copy — that for the official ordinances, I have to call 610-7245. Why no area code? Am I calling from a local payphone in 1986? But instead, I foolishly looked around for signs, both real and from God. I saw nothing, but I heard God’s voice, and he said, “This is f%#cking bull$&it. You need to write them a letter.”
Lastly, as you know, New Hampshire‘s state motto is General John Stark’s celebrated quote, “Live Free or Die,” which he famously said before attempting the first recorded self-BJ. If John Stark was alive today, he would be 287 years old — also, right after learning about cars, General Stark would then be disgusted ti discover that Portsmouth doesn’t even give peopple the freedom to back into a spot — which by your own state’s twisted logic, turns my $15 ticket — into a fight to the death.
With Great Disappointment In You, Eugene Mirman
This isn't the first time Mirman has taken out an ad to express his dissatisfaction. In 2011, he spent $1,100 to buy a full-page ad that called Time Warner Cable an "an ill-run Soviet factory." Mirman toldThe Observer at the time that he "might end up taking out more ads."
Mirman has made good on that promise. Here's hoping he continues.
Think of it as an API for getting information on whether there’s a line at the Department of Motor Vehicles or your favorite coffee shop.We’ve all wondered… but there’s often no way of knowing until it’s too late.
For most Skid Row fans, there’s an incurable emptiness that comes from knowing that they couldn’t score tickets to Sebastian Bach’s wedding to Maria Aquinar, universally regarded as the most metal wedding of 1992. But there’s good news: Sebastian Bach is getting married again. Even better, this day of holy matrimony hasn’t sold out. According to Metal Sucks, you just need $300 and the means to get to the Rockbar Theater in San Jose on August 22.
The Sebastian Bach & Suzanne Le Rock N Roll Wedding Extravaganza will undoubtedly be the biggest general-admission-only wedding reception of the year. Demonstrating Bach’s understanding that weddings are actually for the couple’s loved ones, he’s invited his friends “from the film and music world” so that you can pester them to sign autographs or pose for ironic selfies. Of course, that’s a small price ...
This week, real-life rockstars Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker participated in Rookie Mag’s brilliantly earnest Ask A Grown Woman series. They recorded the video together in Dublin, one of the stops on the current leg of Sleater-Kinney’s reunion tour.
In the clip, Tucker and Brownstein answer questions about how to kindly reject someone, kissing for the first time, coming out, and having a crush on a friend. They even do a kissing demonstration fake out (don’t trust that Rookie subhead), because they’re life ruiners. Their real advice on kissing, however, is actually quite sweet. If you’ve seen Sleater-Kinney live, then this video is definitely a different, quieter, more intimate vibe than their huge rocker stage presence. And if you haven’t there’s still time to do so.
just copy and paste this for everything ernest cline writes
Ernie Cline’s Ready Player One is one of my favorite books. I’ve read it multiple times and the first time I devoured it in a single sitting. So it goes without saying I was very excited about his follow-up, Armada. Unfortunately, while I think it’ll make a great movie, I was ultimately left disappointed.
"My ideal burger is bun, cheese, burger. Sometimes bacon. Ketchup on the side, so I can control it. Pickles — yes! Obviously. And the cheese thing has to be very clear: American cheese only."
'In a city with thousands of homeless people, Postell may be the District’s most academically distinguished. Diplomas, awards and certificates clutter a closet at his mother’s apartment, buried artifacts of a lost life. He holds three degrees: one in accounting, one in economics, and one in law.
On a summer evening, he sits inside a McDonald’s on 17th Street NW, a white towel wrapped around his head like a turban.
Listening to him talk about his life is like dive-bombing into a dream. Everything at first sounds normal. But things quickly fall into disorder. The chronology hiccups. Incongruous thoughts collide.
“Charleston,” he says, “I owned property there, in the city proper. The cotton fields were past the city limits. The cotton fields: They were past the city limits. I picked cotton once in my life. But the cotton fields were past the city limits. I lived within the city. We had property there. We inherited the property. Shortly thereafter, I drove to San Diego, California. I was in love with a girl.”
But these pronouncements always arc back to a single idea. It anchors Postell in the turbulent waters of his schizophrenia. Postell, he tells himself and others, is an educated man. He worked hard. He did right.'
Alfred Postell — who totes his belongings in white plastic bags, haunts the intersection of 17th and I streets NW and sometimes sleeps at a church — studied law alongside US Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold. All of them graduated from Harvard in 1979.
DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THOSE BOOKS ARE PUSSYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOK AT THOSE BOOKS BEING PUSSY;S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOW THATS WHAT I CALL “INTELLECTUALLY STIMULATING”…!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS WILL… REALLY MAKE YOU THINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Welcome to the excellently weird world of informal naming systems: here’s how we’re naming all the newly-discovered places on Pluto after Cthulhu, Balrog, Meng-p’o, and other dwellers from the underworld.
by Maddie Stone on Gizmodo, shared by Annalee Newitz to io9
Early this morning, NASA rolled out the highest-resolution image of Pluto to date , taken 16 hours before today’s historic flyby. Tomorrow, we’ll receive a new set of images at a resolution ten times higher. And Pluto Christmas is just getting started, because it’s going to take NASA 16 full months to download all the data New Horizons collects this week.
"It is like being screamed at by thousands of people. I don't know what the experience is throughout history, probably some kind of genocide. I can't think of anything that's equivalent," he said.
Our analysis identifies many passages in "Watchman" that survived the transformation into "Mockingbird," both revised and nearly untouched. The commonalities help illuminate the relationship between the two books, which will surely be studied for decades to come.
Planned Parenthood is under investigation in Louisiana after a video surfaced claiming to implicate the organization in a scheme to sell the body parts of infants. The video was produced by the Center for Medical Progress, which calls itself "a group of citizen journalists dedicated to monitoring and reporting on medical ethics and advances."
Every year, MLS fans get up in arms about the commissioner's picks for the MLS All-Star game. Don Garber picks whichever two marketable players didn't get voted in, everyone's annoyed that their favorite MLS player didn't get the nod, and then we forget about it because it's just an all-star game.
But this time around, the commissioner's picks have a hilarious wrinkle -- neither has ever played a single MLS game. Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, who could both make their league debuts this weekend, were Garber's picks to make the squad.
And thanks to Garber, we'll probably get to see the famed Lampard-Gerrard midfield one last time. Maybe this is the game where they'll finally be able to play together.
In the news
Your goal of the day is this volley from a friendly between Bolton and Paderborn. (r/soccer)
Jordan Henderson is also messing around in friendlies and notched a Rabona assist. (Who Ate All The Pies?)
The section in which nothing should be taken seriously. It's rumor season, so this section will be expanded, and as the summer rolls on, it will probably be bigger than the actual news section.
New Horizons has obtained impressive new images of Pluto and its large moon Charon that highlight their compositional diversity. These are not actual color images of Pluto and Charon—they are shown here in exaggerated colors that make it easy to note the differences in surface material and features on each planetary body.
The images were obtained using three of the color filters of the “Ralph” instrument on July 13 at 3:38 am EDT. New Horizons has seven science instruments on board the spacecraft—including “Ralph” and “Alice”, whose names are a throwback to the “Honeymooners,” a popular 1950s sitcom.
One of my favorite music pages uploaded a really transphobic song today and it just so happens that I’m writing a video about trans women as punch lines. I’m fucking pissed
“Meant to poke fun at people who have a problem with it” WELL HOT DAMN you’re actually making fun of trans women smh
Yep. What a fucking piece of shit. i’m so annoyed.
Somehow, it’s always the minority’s responsibility to “broaden our minds” or “be more accepting.” Somehow, white, straight, cis boys never need to expand their perspective or consider others’ experiences.
(Sent to all the American Politics faculty at Columbia, including me)
RE: Donald Trump presidential candidacy
Hi,
Firstly, apologies for the group email but I wasn’t sure who would be best prized to answer this query as we’ve not had much luck so far.
I am a Dubai-based reporter for **.
Donald Trump recently announced his intension to run for the US presidency in 2016.
He currently has a lot of high profile commercial and business deals in Dubai and is actively in talks for more in the wider region.
We have been trying to determine:
If a candidate succeeds in winning a nomination and goes on to win the election and reside in the White House do they have to give up their business interests as these would be seen as a conflict of interest? Can a US president serve in office and still have massive commercial business interests abroad?
Basically, would Trump have to relinquish these relationships if he was successfully elected? Are there are existing rules specifically governing this? Is there any previous case studies to go on?
Lastly, what are his chances of winning a nomination or being elected? So far, from what we have read it seems highly unlikely?
Super Opinionated.
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!
