TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

An Everyday Robot contemplating its life choices and the problem of stairs. I've been monitoring the impending robot uprising for years in this blog (you're welcome) and, while iRobot is making some progress toward putting robot vacuum cleaners into every home, Google is taking it to the next level. Which doesn't mean they've decided to attach laser guns to internet connected vacuum cleaners to kick off an early robot Armageddon, fortunately. Their big idea is Everyday Robots , a robot helper for your home that can learn and help with almost anything. From the Everyday Robots website: Our vision is to build robots that will be as transformative to the physical world, as our computers are in the digital world. But to get there, we first need to take on the hardest problem in robotics — building robots that can learn how to help us with just about anything. Google's robot basically looks like a mobile pedestal with cameras on the head and a fairly substantial robot...

Courtesy of Colouring the Past (which I believe is a Facebook Interest group for people who like restoring and coloring black and white images and film footage from history) this image of Ford's, 1959 Levacar Mach 1 concept vehicle came through my newsfeed and sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. The Ford Levacar Mach 1 Concept Vehicle (1959) and the toy model kit the public could buy. Image source: Colouring the Past . Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my interest in the promise of 'flying cars' which, if the film Back to the Future II is to be believed (yes I know it's not a documentary), we should've had by 2015. It's at least fascinating to learn that Ford founder, Henry Ford, thought hovercars might be the next evolution of personal transport. Mark my words: a combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile, but it will come. - Henry Ford 1940. How Ford's Levapads work. Image: Curbside.tv The Ford Levacar did actually wor...

Tesla Optimus Prototype One, Development Platform. September 30th finally rolled around along with Tesla A.I. day and the unveiling of not one but two Tesla Optimus Robot prototypes. Which was quite a bonus since we hadn't heard anything much about these robots when I wrote about them in July of 2022. Before revealing the first prototype, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, made a point of managing everyone's expectations, just in case anyone was thinking they were about to see anything close to the actual human concept 'robot' we saw last year. I honestly don't think anyone was expecting that. Prototype One - Development Platform The prototype that walked out on stage, for the very first time without ever being tethered to anything (apparently), was still incredibly impressive despite not being streamlined and highly refined in its capability. It walked quite well - eerily similar to the first generation robots in the 2004, Will Smith movie, iRobot , and even did a bit of a dan...

Photo by Chris LeBoutillier Following on from my previous post,  Regardless of Whether You Believe in Climate Change You Should at Least Believe in Better Environmental Practices , I made a passing reference to the con that is carbon offsetting. In simple terms, it allows companies to continue to produce carbon emissions so long as they fund environmentally 'friendly' initiatives elsewhere. The whole concept has matured into the Carbon Credit/Offset scheme where companies can literally buy and sell carbon credits so they can claim 'reduced carbon emissions' or even 'net zero emissions' without actually reducing emissions at all. Ever since I first heard of the concept of carbon offsetting and how it worked, I've said it was a scam. You don't need to do any research at all to know it is.  To make an analogy, imagine if every week I empty my household trash onto your front lawn. It's a dick move. You wouldn't like it, and you'd expect me to cle...