Hrishikesh Thite

the golden state is turning a toasty golden brown all thanks to a record drought. this bottled water moves the drought from a startling thought into a disturbing reality.

The post chris onesto creates water bottles that reflect california’s drought appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

If you've ever noticed that the cakes at the grocery store or chain bakery seem a little too perfect, that's because they were probably cranked out by a machine made by Unifiller. The food service company is the leading supplier of portioning depositors (a.k.a. really cool cake decorating machines).

[h/t: The Kid Should See This]

johnson banks put together this tongue-in-cheek photo series highlighting the elaborate nature of 'how packaging works'.

The post how packaging works by johnson banks appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Get ready for your ears to pop and your stomach to sink just watching this video of the new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner performing a near-vertical takeoff.

The Vietnam Airlines-branded model demonstrates the passenger plane's remarkably agility with a series of graceful maneuvers in the video that the company released as a preview for the 2015 Paris Air Show.

If these aerial antics make you want to keep your feet firmly on the ground, don't worry—actual commercial flights will make use of a slightly more gradual ascent.

[h/t Quartz]

In case just being a headless cheetah robot wasn't scary enough, a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have now given their robot the ability to autonomously detect oncoming objects and jump over them.

This is no easy feat. The robot doesn't just hop, it relies on a visual system that maps terrain using reflections from a laser to spot an obstacle and calculate when and where it needs to take off, and then automatically adjusts its stride accordingly.

"A running jump is a truly dynamic behavior," Sangbae Kim, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, told MIT News. "You have to manage balance and energy, and be able to handle impact after landing. Our robot is specifically designed for those highly dynamic behaviors."

But perhaps most impressive is that unlike how you might assume a robot works, the headless cheetah doesn't necessarily look for the optimal takeoff location, just one that will work.

"If you want to optimize for, say, energy efficiency, you would want the robot to barely clear the obstacle—but that’s dangerous, and finding a truly optimal solution would take a lot of computing time," Kim said. "In running, we don’t want to spend a lot of time to find a better solution. We just want one that’s feasible."

On a treadmill—with very little time to prepare itself—the robot cleared about 70 percent of the hurdles up to 18 inches (over half its height) tall. Out on a track, with room to really stretch its horrifying, sci-fi legs, it improved to clear about 90 percent.

[h/t BoingBoing]

How do you paint a weirdly shaped 3D-printed object with a complex pattern? Take it for a dip in the pool.

A new color technique pioneered by researchers at a computer graphics and visualization lab at Zhejiang University [PDF] involves dipping an object in water while coating it in a multi-colored film. This paints the object in one stroke with zebra stripes, leopard print, or whatever other pattern you might want.

Watch:

It builds on a process called hydrographic painting, which, while similar in concept, isn't terribly effective. The plastic film floated on top of the water, and it was meant to stretch across the dipped object. But it often went awry, creating an inconsistent splash of color or even tears in the paint.

Instead, computational hydrographic printing involves creating a 3D scan of the object (say, a mask) before it's lowered into the water. An algorithm takes into account the way that the plastic film will bend and distort as the object is lowered onto it by a robotic arm, drawing the pattern accordingly. The pattern is then printed out on a regular office printer and then placed on top of the pool of water. The result is a perfectly glued-on pattern, every time.

By dipping the object in the pool multiple times, you can even create a texture to the paint, as if it was painted by hand. (In case you needed to pass off some mass-produced 3D printed wares as homemade Etsy items.)

[h/t: Co.Design]

Along with all of the memorable stories fans are still talking about more than a decade after the show ended its run, The X-Files also gave us a few things to be thankful for that might not be as obvious.

The Internet Archive recently put nearly 2400 MS-DOS games online, and they're playable in nearly any browser. Prepare to travel back in time to when you were just a kid with a clunky computer, and kiss your free time goodbye.

the nokia '215' available in both single and dual SIM versions, is designed to connect and introduce first-time mobile phone buyers to the internet and new digital experiences.

The post $29 nokia 215 is microsoft’s most affordable internet-ready phone appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

the kitchenware keeps the act of draining away from dirty dishes and the bottom of your sink with an integrated funnel handle.

The post anton strainer bowl by caveman factory solves multiple kitchen problems appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.