io9 
Enter your username and password.
-
more about #engineering more comments → FrankenPC: Wow! I thought pic#1 was a painting. more » phoenix: Very nice. I can think of a number of projects that would benefit from the success of this one - here's to it. more » kolacek: And I quote: "Kids...someday there will be fewer and fewer American workers and you will be paid tons of money for your work skills. And if you th... more » schwap23: I don't think we are going to see jobs eliminated so much as drastically reduced. There are still people making a living from building furniture usi... more » Roklimber: "We already see a future in which the humble contact lens becomes a real platform, like the iPhone is today, with lots of developers contributing thei... more » phoghat: Re: brain wired rat Louis Wu in Ringworld more » twDarkflame: As humanity progress's, less and less jobs are about survival and more and more about entertainment and research. Thats the real "progress" its not le... more » twDarkflame: Augmented Reality will indeed make huge volumes of jobs redundant, as well as reducing humanity's environmental impact. But why wait for a contact le... more » Sunshineyness: I feel like our species has been saying this since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. more » TheGreenRanger: So right around the time of the Columbian Exchange, when everybody is trading goods and diseases and the likes, people start making enough cash to pur... more » SpammerOvTheGods: my augmented contact lenses should come pre-loaded with the following: "possible response: fuck you, asshole". then again, I can do that now. :D #@! more » Ghede: Then there are the technologies that will destroy entire industries. As the cost and speed of 3-D printing decreases and increases respectively, manu... more » My_Latest_Incarnation: Personally, I can't wait for the day when Daleks run Wal-mart. I look forward to the day I can shop there without being disturbed by unattended, screa... more » braak: You are, as usual, completely correct.: What, no RepRap? I think if there's anything that's going to provoke massive economic changes, it's going to be that one. more » Eldritch: No way you're going to be able to replace booksellers or librarians. You can't program a robot with Amazon.com or Wikipedia and call it a day. (Plea... more » -
#environment
Rebuilding A Shoreline: One Of Year's Best Engineering Projects
This is a picture of one of the year's five most impressive civil engineering projects, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. It's a completely reengineered part of the Lake Michigan shore, preventing erosion and creating eco-friendly recreational areas. More » -
#labordayspecial
Inventions That Will End Work As We Know It
In America, we like to celebrate Labor Day by ditching work. But one day you may never have to labor again. Here are four inventions that will eliminate working-class and professional jobs in the next 50 years. More » -
#robotlove
Creepy Robot Kiss Proves Fiction Is Better Than Science
After seeing what it looks like when two actual robots kiss, I must flee back to my happy fantasy world. The only thing that will truly cleanse my eyeballs and soul now is rewatching the movie Robot Stories. [via MAKE] -
#diysatellite
Hobbyist Launches Camera Into Space and Takes Amazing Pictures
John Gordon used a hobby kit to design a computer-controlled camera, then stuck it in a protective box and launched it into space (from Vulcan, Alberta) with a weather balloon. The pictures shot by his DiY satellite are breathtaking. More » -
#spaceporn
Bricks of Glass That Will Melt Into the World's Most Powerful Telescope
What you are seeing are huge chunks of glass slowly being melted down to create a mirror for the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham. It's going to be one of the biggest in the world. More » -
#jetpacks
Water-Powered Jetpack Takes You Up, Up, But Not Away
Raymond Li has designed a "jetpack" that uses water to push the rider into the sky instead of burning rocket fuel. It will certainly let you fly, but don't expect to be taking water jetpacks to work any time soon. More » -
#robotzombies
Will New Intelligent Combat Robots Use Dead Bodies For Fuel?
The Pentagon is funding a company called Robotic Technology, whose main project is developing an autonomous robot called EATR that fuels itself on "biomass." This biomass could include vegetation, paper, and even corpses on the battlefield. More » -
#geophysicalporn
The Best Collection of Engineering Disaster Photos You've Ever Seen
Giant structures reduced to rubble by disaster? You can't look away. Two engineering professors have created a great archive of disaster photos, along with lessons about what went wrong - and how to get it right next time. More » -
-
#retrofuturism
What Happened To Russia's "Flying Car" Program?
For nearly four decades, Russian engineers tried to set up a a flying car public transportation system in Moscow and other parts of Russia. We've got the history and future of their dream, in pictures. More » -
#triviagasm
10 Best Robot Crotch Shots (And One Boob Shot)
With everybody talking about that up-skirt shot in Transformers where we see Devastator's, um, wrecking balls, it's time to consider the fine history of robot crotches in pop culture. We've got the ten best moments of robo-nethers in history. More » -
#conceptart
The Megastructures Where You'll Live in Space
Where will you live when we move from our savage planetary existence to interstellar life on massive, engineered structures? We've got a gallery of concept art featuring some gorgeous, awe-inspiring ideas. More » -
#chartporn
Where the Robot Revolution Will Start
This chart from engineering research journal IEEE Spectrum shows you what the robot-to-human density is in several industrialized nations. Now you know where to look for the robot workers revolutionary front. More » -
#badscience
Computer-Generated Paper Accepted for Prestigious Technical Conference
A prankster who submitted a computer-generated research paper to the International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering discovered that not only was his fake paper accepted - its "author" is to chair a panel. -
#megarobots
Meet Your New Robot Overlord: The Autonomous Mining Truck
So you already know about autonomous aerial vehicles being used in combat and surveillance — they're little planes that look almost like toys. Not so with the next generation of autonomous vehicles. A group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon have just won a contract to create a robotic system that would make this badass 797B Caterpillar mining vehicle into an autonomous hulk with no driver on board. This is clearly one of Skynet's minions in the making. More » -
#madaerospaceengineering
Israeli Students Design "Batsuit" That Lets You Fly out of Airplanes
In Batman and countless other caped superhero movies, there's always a moment when our hero jumps from a plane or high building and uses the cape on his suit to fly safely to earth. Now a group of space engineering students at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology say they've got a working model of a real-life Batsuit. The main problem isn't flying, though. It's reducing the pain. More » -
#megaindustry
The Pyrotechnic Tragedy of Sheffield's Hyperbolic Cooling Towers
Over the weekend, an industrial-age legend was blown up — literally — in Sheffield, England. The Tinsley water cooling towers, two hourglass-shaped, 250-foot-tall structures, were built almost 70 years ago as part of a long-demolished power plant. Several local artists tried to convert the abandoned structures into art projects, but the lonely hulks were instead blown up by a company that is replacing them with a biomass power station. Thousands of people gathered to watch the towers blown up, and now you can see the tragic carnage too. More » -
#robohygenicengineering
The Real-Life Trash Robots Who Inspired Wall-E
For the past decade, a lot of our worst trash emergencies have been handled by robots who might just be the forebears of Wall-E. Toxic sludge, dangerous barrels of chemicals, and even the dust poots on your floor are being scrubbed up by semi-autonomous robots. And researchers are working on even more sophisticated bots to reduce the massive pollution build-ups and even more toxic goo we're likely to unleash in the future. Below, we introduce you to six tidy garbage bots whose progeny are likely to inherit the planet. More »
