20 people were injured at what was supposed to be a delightful if dopey promotional event for the new LG G2 in Korea. The plan had LG release balloons filled with 100 vouchers for free phones. Apparently no one thought it out any further than that.
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Bradley Jones is suing his former employers because he was repeatedly tasered on the job, leaving him a broken paranoid mess. Good god, this poor guy.
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Theoretically, a perfect robot face would look normal. But until we reach utter perfection, everything that falls even slightly short is horrifying. Take, for instance, this robot visage powered by ravenously hungry slime mold. It’s surprisingly functional, and unsurprisingly nightmarish.
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Stealing computers is bad—everybody already knows that. And stealing from a church (or any non-profit institution for that matter) is extra bad. But if you must steal a computer from a church—especially one you’re a member of—don’t call up the software blocking company and ask if they’ll remove the porn filter. As Troy Ridling of Owasso, Oklahoma found out the hard way, you’re not going to like the answer.
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Nothing feels worse than getting a speeding ticket in the mail. What. The. Truck. As if they weren’t bad enough as-is, a report from the Washington DC metropolitan area suggests that the cameras used to catch you might not be playing by the rules. In fact, the camera contractors might be fudging the evidence to make sure you can’t challenge the tickets.
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The Viteo Shower is a portable outdoor shower that sprays water from below. It’s not just a fancy name for a hose, either. At least we think.
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Because every company with even just a three-legged rat in the copyright race basically just shotgun sprays Google for takedown requests these days, Microsoft accidentally but very hilariously asked Google to censor… Microsoft.com. That’s got to be even worse than HBO giving Google a takedown request for VLC
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Archenemies for decades, video games and exercise are about to unite. Atlas is a cheap, new “walk-around” virtual reality system that uses markers you put on the ground to track your movements as you play with an Oculus Rift headset. Protagonist is Kickstarting Atlas to get real-space VR into the hands of developers, so they can build games that ditch joysticks and actually let you run-and-gun.
Here’s how startup Protagonist’s Atlas system works. First you find an open space. If you’ve got a huge living room it could work, but you’re better off in a garage, on a basketball court or in a warehouse. Then you lay out the location markers. You can print them at home, but Protagonist plans to give out vinyl ones that stick to the floor so they don’t get displaced. Then you strap on your Oculus Rift VR goggles, an optional Razer Hydra-equipped gun or sword, and the Atlas chest mount for your iPhone.
Fire up the Oculus and Atlas iPhone app, and step into the future. The patent-pending Atlas positioning system maps the markers and uses your phone’s accelerometer and gyroscopes to know where your are. Play with Atlas and when you walk forward your in-game avatar walks forward, too. Chasing aliens or exploring dungeons could become an alternative to going to the gym.
“I’ve wanted a Holodeck since I was a kid,” says Atlas inventor and Protagonist founder Aaron Rasmussen. He’s no stranger to making sci-fi dreams come true. Back in college, Rasmussen was the first person to make an optical-tracking sentry gun. He stitched together an automatic BB gun and a video camera with some home-made machine-vision software to make a weapon worthy of defending your fort. “The military came to my dorm room. I thought that only happened in movies,” he tells me. Since then he’s built and sold a robotic machine tool company called USMechatronics, created the Blood Energy potion drink sold in IV bags, and most recently sold a ghost detector that connects to your iPhone. (It’s detected zero ghosts to date.)
Real-space VR systems have been around for well over a decade but have been reserved for big research institutions. That’s because there weren’t wide-field-of-view head displays with low-latency, head-orientation tracking for under $50,000, and the positioning systems were clumsy and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lucky for Rasmussen, the Oculus Rift took care of the first problem, freeing him up to reimagine real-space positioning. Unlike the Virtuix Omni VR treadmill, Atlas not only lets you walk, but also run, jump, crouch and move around like you do in real life.
Right now Rasmussen is the only one working on Atlas full-time out of the four-person team, but that will change if it meets its $125,000 Kickstarter goal to manufacture the chest mounts and refine the software. The plan is to get the system and Unity integration assets to developers so they can start building first-person shooters, fantasy epics, and educational exploration games. “Someone should do Jurassic Park,” Rasmussen says.
I’m pretty excited about meatspace/virtual reality hybrid games and their potential to help us avert a Wall-E future where we just get fatter and fatter watching our screens. The technology will take some time to trickle down, but Atlas could eventually become a distinct industry parallel to console gaming.
“We’re really living in Year Zero of virtual reality,” Rasmussen giddily tells me. “We’re going to to see more wearable technology become consumer products. As developers work on games, we’ll work on a consumer version that kids can get under their Christmas tree. My vision for the system is something you and some friends bring to a racquetball court, play a high-intensity game for an hour, and get a workout.”
Kickstart Atlas if you want your games to make you sweat
So I was on vacation last week, and came back to the usual mountain of 700+ emails and piles of junk from PR companies Katamaried all over my desk. There was also this.
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It’s one thing if your phone bursts into flames and cooks up your leg-meat real bad
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