We're all aware that big tech corporations store an insane amount of information about us, but it's probably safe to say that most of us weren't aware of the sheer vastness of it all (think literal millions of pages per person). Dylan Curran, Director of Technology at VFT Solutions, took it upon himself to investigate the amount of information that Google and Facebook have about him, and let's just say...what he found is unsettling to say the least.
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There's a subreddit called r/techsupportgore, and its name perfectly describes its content: people who fix computers upload photos of the nightmarish scenarios they find themselves in. From melted extension cords to server rooms that look like a jungle, some of these hardware disasters are so bad, you can't help but feel for the folks who have to fix them. So continue scrolling, check out the pics, and don't be surprised if you cringe to the brink of passing out after only a few of them.
This one goes out to the heroes of every office, school and setting in need of general administration. The computer savvy, the IT people, the tech support and tech workers who know more about computers than everyone else and make Karen from accounting and Dave from sales look like the useless cave people that they are. But honestly, if you know literally anything about computers you'll probably get most of these. For more, here are excruciating moments of tech support gore as well as the story of a tech support worker whose manager threw out 40 computers not knowing what they were.
As millennials on the older side of the generation, we were actually lucky to have experienced life before the internet was used for everything. It's definitely built character and probably lent us a little extra resourcefulness. Sometimes we feel like our grandparents talking about walking a mile in the snow to school when we talk about the days before smartphones, and this little text exchange between a post-millennial and an older, wiser person will show you exactly why.
If you ever needed a meme to describe the amazing feeling of helping an old person with a computer, this is it. 'Tehc' memes feature everyone's favorite Mr. Meme and are coming for our self-satisfied tech moments. You know, feeling like a hacker when you open the Task Manager. Teaching a kid cousin how to force quit. These are all basic, but gratifying moments for anyone who uses computers. There haven't been a ton of these, but like Stonks and Helth, we expect to see 'em for a while.
Meet Bellabot! Probably the coolest, and most definitely the cutest, robot to come out of this years tech expo.
Bellabot was revealed at the 2020 Customer Electronic Show (CES), in Las Vegas. Developed by the Chinese company PuduTech, this robot cat waiter who has got the tech word buzzing -- and cat lovers, as well!
Picture this: the year is 2020, you sit down at a regular restaurant, and instead of interacting with a sassy waiter you interact with a sassy cat robot. Who wouldn't want that?
Story via Telegraph
Remember that big box of Lego you had as a child that was filled with hundreds of different styles of Lego and twenty Lego men and women from Darth Vader to scuba divers? Trying to sort those boxes would have been impossible. That's probably what Daniel West experienced before he built his Universal Lego Sorting Machine from Lego. It uses artificial intelligence to sort the Lego pieces and we all want one for our ahem nieces and nephews.
Want to read some more interesting articles? Have a look at this story about the very strange fish that washed up on a beach in California.
This article was originally reported by The Verge.
Apple has a habit of making products that look like everyday household items, but do not act like them. In the latest installment, Apple has released a new Mac Pro that nods to it's past designs, except for one very noticeable feature: it has a cheese grater on the front. So, like any sane person would, the peeps over at iFixit tried to grate cheese on the Mac Pro. The result? It isn't so great at grating. Surprisingly. Want to read more about technology? Have a look at this article about some new airplane seats that could revolutionize flying.
We all know that there's high comedic value in fails. Especially when the things that are failing are not meant to fail... like robots. Simone Gietrz makes robots that have potential but were never really meant to succeed, and watching Simone "use" them will make you laugh harder than anything else you have seen today. Promise. You should probably just watch all of her hilarious videos on her YouTube channel. If you like to watch things exploding, check out NASA's test megarocket fuel tank exploding with liquid nitrogen. It's pretty cool.
Do you ever see tiny things and wonder how on Earth they were made? What, did faries make them with tiny fairy hands? In the case of the Sigma fp, the world's smallest full frame camera, we have video evidence that it is not being made by fairies (although the video might just be a front... we will investigate more). The workers in these videos do have to seem nimble hands, though. If you're interested in seeing how a tiny camera is made, continue reading!
The word 'robot' generally has negative connotations attached to it, but MIT's mini cheetah robots are absolutely adorable. MITBiomimetic Robotics students recently took the dog-sized robots out for a play on the university lawn, and the result was way cuter than we expected. The robots aren't designed to just be cute and play soccer - they were built with the purpose to save lives with elderly care, deliveries and emergency response.
The mini cheetahs can run up to 5 miles per hour, flip themselves over if fallen, and they're relatively cheap to make and repair. Controlled with remotes, the agility of these robots has not been seen in robotics before. The next hurdle for the team is to build cameras onto the robots, enabling them to walk around without being remotely controlled by humans. But for now, they're delighful to watch.
With every job comes a slew of misinformation about what it is you do all day. Wouldn't you believe it, Law and Order SVU isn't actually a terrifically accurate depiction of what forensics specialists do all day. Here's a smattering of the dumb conversations people have to have about their jobs.
Most of the time, life doesn't go as smoothly as we want it to. Life has nasty little surprises around the corner. But there are some things that will always work like clockwork: machines. There are no nasty surprises with machines. No getting caught in the rain without an umbrella. No parking fines on your windscreen. No dropping your toast on the floor face down. None of that. Mechanical things are dependable. Predictable. So here are ten mechanical GIFs of things working that will satisfy your innate desire for order.
We've already made fun of the iPhone 11 once before, but honestly there are so many good memes coming out of it that we couldn't resist bringing you even more of them. And let's face it, we're all way too poor to ever afford this new Apple installment with its stupid cameras, so making a mockery of it seems like the proper thing to do.
