A Crummy Commercial

Interesting article from IEEE Spectrum : https://spectrum.ieee.org/ukraine-ground-drones Yikes !  Killer machines flying AND rolling around ?  No, thank you ! The vision of killer robots reminded me of this Philip K. Dick story, The Defenders : https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28767 It was dramatized on the NBC old time radio show: X-1  (note that the story isn't quite the same as the Galaxy  original but the essence is there): https://archive.org/details/XMinusOne560522052TheDefenders Spoiler alert:  The story starts years after a doomsday nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union.  The remaining populations of both sides have retreated below ground to escape the radiation.  Both sides use robots called:  Leadys  to continue the fight above ground.  However the robots of both sides stopped fighting without ever telling the humans and instead created fake war news and video on how the war was continuing.  In the meantime ...

Interesting article in IEEE Spectrum : https://spectrum.ieee.org/familiar-machines-and-magic It's not a pet or a friend, it's a robotic familiar ?  The first thing I thought of was Jiminy Cricket - but this robotic familiar is trying to help humans become better rather than trying to turn a puppet into a real boy :) Here's the company site:  https://www.familiarmachines.com/ I dunno, seems like a mechanical pet or artificial friend to me.  And with real pets or friends you feel bad when they die.  This thing will eventually die.  I've heard that the Sony Aibo, the robotic dog, was beloved by it's owners and now that Sony doesn't support it anymore, they feel bereft when nothing more can be done.   They were called Artificial Friend (AF) in this book:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klara_and_the_Sun I shudder to think what kinds of short videos will be made by teens for social media - the poor familiar ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.co...

Boston Dynamics revealed the new electric Atlas robot: https://spectrum.ieee.org/atlas-humanoid-robot Some of that twisting and rotation is kinda creepy - but it doesn't have the football player look like the now retired hydraulic Atlas: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9EM5_VFlt8 although the sight of hydraulic fluid spewing out like blood in a samurai movie swordfight is also creepy.   But since this electric Atlas is something that will be sold, maybe there still is a chance ? Here are some previous posts on this idea: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/06/dust.html https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/01/robot-nfl.html https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/01/maybe-robot-football-idea-isnt-quite.html Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

 You know how it is, you are completely clean.  You take a rocket ride millions of miles to the next planet, Mars.  Landing is OK. landing was A-OK   Your mission is going pretty well until:  Dust storms !  It happened to NASA's lander, Insight: that rusty brown color of Mars But didn't Hanna-Barbera solve this problem almost 60 years ago ? 10-7-1962 Jetson's Night Out (yes, I was 7 years old when I saw this) Just a little whisk broom on an arm, how hard could that be to add to the next lander ? Seriously, maybe after landing people on the moon again and Mars we can finally solve the problem of cleaning here on earth.  Because if it isn't solved there's gonna be trouble up there.  Some speculate that any time outside will be dealt with with an extension of the Japanese custom of removing your shoes, just remove your entire suit and leave the dust in the airlock. Incidentally, as far as football, why don't we have robot pro football ? The Ringers i...