Hasta La Gadget!

OK, so basically, self-replicating robots are a no-no when it comes to robotics, because you don’t want them to start taking over the planet and exterminating humans. I for one, don’t welcome our robotic overlords.  iRobot and Raytheon recently filed a patent which could be the source of something scarily robotic. Thankfully, this isn’t exactly what they’re after, but it wouldn’t take much to make so-called “von Neumann machines” a reality with this device in hand.

The patent for the Robot Fabricator is for a machine that would allow products of all sorts to be autonomously constructed. Its capabilites would range from the creation of seed components to the assembly of finished products without any direct human involvement.

While we’re still quite far from the scenario of what happened in the Dune novels by Frank Herbert, in which machines enslaved humanity, things could still go very wrong very quickly. If such a device got into the wrong hands grippers, robots could be popping up everywhere. Scary, huh?

[via 3Ders via DVice]

We had plenty of nice things to say about the HP Envy Spectre XT when we reviewed it last year, but we were already looking ahead to the HP Spectre XT TouchSmart, which steps up to a 1080p touchscreen. Well, here it is, and with 10-point touch and the same all-metal design as its predecessor, this 15-incher looks mighty promising. But is it worth $1,350 — or more, if you want an SSD? Head past the break to find out.

Filed under: Laptops, HP

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While there have been many different apps that have tried to be what Instagram is to photos but for videos, this new one is backed by Twitter, making it immediately interesting to the Twitterati. Sharing and recording looping vids is nothing new, but the constraints and functions make Vine, which is still a bit buggy, cool to use.

The app makes recording and creating short, looping animations a cinch, but there are still plenty of bugs that need to be ironed out. It’s also no surprise to me that some of the first videos on Vine featured some adult content, but its editors have been quick to act and there are plenty other clips featuring playful cats and sunsets as well.

Fortunately, since it’s backed by Twitter, it will hopefully have more interesting content, and an update that makes it more stable very soon. You can get Vine for free at the iTunes App Store. It’s only available for iOS currently.

[via Uncrate]

If you must fail while launching a rocket, you hope it gets destroyed in a fiery ball of fire. At least that makes for a good show worth a few million dollars. Sadly, the people from Sea Launch didn’t even get that from their Zenit-3SL rocket, which failed miserably today at 6:56am GMT, after lifting off from a floating pad south of Hawaii. More »

This week the folks at ASUS have had a bit of a leak in their pipes with both product images and details surrounding their next Android tablet, the ASUS MeMO Pad 10. This machine (product number ME301T) works with a 10.1-inch IPS LCD display with 1280 x 800 pixel resolution and a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor under the hood. Oddly enough, inside this machine you’ll find just 1GB of ram, and that display resolution is less than what we’ve seen on devices like the Transformer Infinity from last year – could this be a budget-minded machine?

What we’re seeing here is an extension of NVIDIA’s plan to push down-clocked versions of their processors to machines that are then priced so low that the competition cannot possibly compete. And it’s not the first time this has happened. We saw this strategy working in the Google Nexus 7 tablet also manufactured by ASUS, and that tablet has been selling like hotcakes since birth.

This ASUS MeMO Pad 10 will be busting out with 16GB of internal storage, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean right out of the box, and both front and back-facing cameras. The front facing camera will be 1.2 megapixels while the back will be 5 megapixels strong, and you’ll have a microSD card to store all the media you collect – at the moment we’re not sure what the max card size is that you’ll be able to plug in there, but we’re expecting 32GB.

BONUS: This tablet has been tipped more than once before with basically the same specifications – looks to be a lock!

This tablet will be working with a microUSB port instead of the larger port used on previous ASUS tablets and will have a microHDMI port as well for working with your HDTV. This tablet has been tipped to be appearing for between 329 to 389 Euro, this meaning a direct conversion to USD would still be above $500 – not exactly wallet friendly. We must expect that this price will be modified for the US market or that the device wont be appearing inside our borders – we shall see!

Also of interest is the fact that this machine has appeared in press photos in blue and white while the listings found thus far have also shown red and pink casings available at launch – wild stuff! Expect this tablet to appear at Mobile World Congress 2013 more than likely!

[via Android Community; via Tablets Magazine]

ASUS MeMO Pad 10 Smart revealed in product leak is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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