Don’t speak. Princeton researchers know just what you’re saying — kind of. Alright, so the Ivy league team of neuroscientists, led by Prof. Matthew Botvinick, can’t yet read your minds without the help of a functional MRI, but one day the group hopes to take your silent pauses and broadcast them for public consumption. By mapping highlighted areas of brain activity to words meditated upon by subjects, the group was able to create “semantic threads” based on “emotions, plans or socially oriented thoughts” associated with select neural activity. So, what good’ll these high-brow word association experiments do for us? For one, it could pave the way for automatic translation machines, extending a silicon-assisted grok into our nonverbal inner worlds that churns out computer-generated chatter; giving a voice to those incapable of speech. And if it’s used for bad? More terrifically horrific psychobabble poetry penned by Jewel’s unencumbered mind. Actually, wait. We might be into that.

Princeton neuroscientists map your brain, play words with subjects originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Sep 2011 05:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, so perhaps the specific color here is up for debate, but one thing is clear: the XC2V FLYPMode is one imposing looking vehicle. Also known as the Experimental Crowd-derived Combat Support Vehicle, DARPA has billed this mean machine as the “first crowd-sourced, militarily relevant vehicle design.” After being selected as the winning entry to DARPA’s design-the-next-Humvee competition, Local Motors tricked out the XC2V FLYPMode in just 14 weeks. For now, it is but a “proof of principle project,” meaning we probably won’t see this thing riding dirty in the desert anytime soon, if ever. You can, however, see at least a portion of the beast’s birth in a time-lapse video after the break.

Continue reading DARPA’s XC2V FLYPMode crowd-sourced combat vehicle revealed, now in desert khaki (video)

DARPA’s XC2V FLYPMode crowd-sourced combat vehicle revealed, now in desert khaki (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Jun 2011 12:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Governments cram all manner of bizarre imagery onto the back of currency, so really, what’s a few little QR codes between treasury departments? And heck, who are we to suggest that these new coins from the Royal Dutch Mint aren’t the beginning of a larger barcoded money trend? The mint is celebrating its centennial with two new QR-packing coins, a silver €5 and gold €10. The codes bring their owners to the mint’s website, which promises a “surprise,” once the money is officially available later this month. Some sort of cloud-based vending machine, perhaps?

Dutch coins feature QR codes, promise ‘surprises’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like killing elephants, paper airplane construction is a skill passed from father to son generation after generation — at least until the robots take over. Dr. James Porter knows this and has done us the service of putting together a video showing him manipulating a da Vinci surgical robot to deftly fold a tiny paper airplane. So why not call in the kid and click through the break for all the go-action, daddy. It’s not quite as impressive as robotic prostate surgery but hey, at least it’s not prostate surgery.

Continue reading Surgical robot builds tiny paper airplane (video)

Surgical robot builds tiny paper airplane (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is a good idea, but… we basically already have it. I reviewed Western Digital’s e-ink display-equipped My Passport Studio a couple weeks ago, and although it only had room for a label and some basic data, it could just as easily be a better, larger, more versatile display. The concept here would be fun, but it ignores some really basic use issues.

First of all, look at the picture above. Where’s the memory exactly? It’s just a bunch of glass. And where are the display elements? How are they powered? I know, it’s just a for-fun render of an idea. But like so many other concepts we see around here, there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of thought put into it. I like this one though.

[via Dvice and Core77]

Yeah, should be a good match, they’re on a streak right now. Okay, let’s see: row 122…123…124. Here’s me, and you’re Q, right? All right. Not bad seats, huh? Friend of mine usually goes with his wife, but they had to go down east for some reason this time around. Oh, there’s the peanut guy. HEY GUY! Yeah – whoop, nice throw – AND A BEER! There we go, okay… what’s he saying? Ten bucks? Are you kidding me? Man, give me a break! Fine. God, they really chisel you here, don’t they? Hey, aren’t you going to get one? No? What – are you going to take my picture with that knockoff Casio you’ve been swinging around? Wait a second, is that – MY GOD, IT’S FILLED WITH WHISKEY!

I hope you’ll excuse that little flight of narration. It just seemed like that’s how it would play out.

I mean, I’m not some big drinker, but I am very poor. I can’t afford six-dollar beers, or eight-dollar shots of my favorite middle-shelf liquor! These faux-electronics flasks are pure genius, if you ask me. Yeah, they’ve probably been around for a while at joke shops, but hey, why not order a couple online? The Bevburry is only $11. I would consider these things to be a very practical move. Economical.

And also, you can get tore up.

[via DVice and Geekologie]