We can make fun of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, but its bosses are ahead. Way ahead. Their latest feat was legislation granting extraction rights for raw materials from extraterrestrial …
Unilateral actions
“Rare earths,” a list of metals with futuristic names such as yttrium, lanthanum, or neodymium (and 14 others), are used everywhere: from the construction of rockets and turbines to the …
Mapping
Which country the map in the photo below corresponds to is difficult for anyone to guess. It is Bangladesh. So, one would assume it is some kind of meteorological map. …
The “bad eye” and the blessing
Belief in the bad eye, in “counter-magic”, charms and blessings is a hallmark of the primitive mind and of humanity’s earliest, superstitious attempt to “protect” itself from dark forces believed …
At a glance
Would it ever cross your mind that something as commonplace as “I’m looking for my keys—where the hell did I leave them?” could become the subject of “scientific research”? No. …
Big ball!
Online shopping for products in a marketplace with over 10 million stores, free messages, calls and video calls, file sharing (even large multimedia files), social networking for both personal and …
Make way!
Autonomous cars? Yes! Autonomous trucks? Yes! (Read a related comment in b&g issue 3). Autonomous flying machines? Yes! Autonomous ships? Autonomous tankers, cargo, Ro-Ro or warships? Not yet, but it …
far-right misinformation
When the far right tries to “expose” the “system’s conspiracies” and spews racism. According to the text, the photo is staged, the “refugees” (in quotation marks) are plants and have …
Robocop
We will one day remember that the first robot-police officers appeared in 2016 at the edge of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, in Dubai. We will remember that they were launched …
Sewing automata
Can a robotic machine (or a team of such machines) sew clothes? Anyone who has even an amateur relationship with sewing knows that fabrics have lots of whims. Sometimes two …
The metaphysics of cyber-warfare
This is “the bad guy” Sauron, from “the lord of the rings”. ProjectSauron is what the well-known Russian malware fighting company Kaspersky Labs named a new discovery of theirs (almost …
Your robotic pet
Kirobo Mini (the humanoid robot in the photo) is the latest achievement… of Toyota! The Japanese company, famous for its cars, has had an industrial robotics research and manufacturing division …