E-ink sneakers, a home farming robot, and more

ShiftWear™ — Design In Motion

Shoes embedded with eink to allow the owner to customize them.

Home farming robot – YouTube

Many people of today’s generation don’t know where their food comes from, nor how it’s produced. This presents many health problems in today’s society. Farmb…

How This Magic Machine Tricks You Into Seeing Any Car It Wants | WIRED

We go hands-on with the Blackbird, an electric vehicle decked out for movie—or advertising—magic. This ugly duckling can become any automotive swan.

Scientists Create Heart Cells Better, Faster, Stronger | Gladstone Institutes

Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes identified two chemicals that improve their ability to transform scar tissue in a heart into healthy, beating heart muscle. The new discovery advances efforts to find new and effective treatments for heart failure.

Silicon Photonic Neural Network Unveiled

Neural networks using light could lead to superfast computing.

How Virtual Reality Can Boost Retirement Savings – The Experts – WSJ

WSJ Retirement Expert Maddy Dychtwald details research using virtual reality which affected how much test subjects decided to save for retirement.

New Hikari Supercomputer Starts Solar HDVC

New Hikari Supercomputer Starts Solar HDVC

Semiconductor-free microelectronics using metamaterials: faster, can handle more power | KurzweilAI

Illustration of semiconductor-free microelectronic device (credit: UC San Diego Applied Electromagnetics Group) University of California San Diego engineers

Google’s DeepMind AI can lip-read TV shows better than a pro | New Scientist

An artificial intelligence system developed by researchers at DeepMind and the University of Oxford got so good by watching 5000 hours of BBC programmes

Apple Mirror – Smart Touchscreen Mirror – YouTube

Created a fully functioning smart touchscreen mirror based on Apple’s iOS 10. Design includes the time and date in the upper right hand corner and weather in…

A Material From Shapeshifting Planes Could Heal Human Flesh | WIRED

Polyvinylidene fluoride is a material NASA researchers have refined for use in morphing aircraft, which shapeshift in response to their environment. But it can also kickstart the human body’s healing process.

Face electrodes let you taste and chew in virtual reality | New Scientist

Experiments with “virtual food” use electronics to emulate the taste and feel of the real thing, even when there’s nothing in your mouth. This tech could add new sensory inputs to virtual reality or augment real-world dining experiences, especially for people with restricted diets or health issues that affect their ability to eat.

Implantables will be a thing in three years says Greenwave systems’ Jim Hunter | Personal Tech | Techworld

Wearable technology will soon be surpassed by smart devices people can implant into their bodies, according to Greenwave Systems’ chief scientist Jim Hunter.

SAPVoice: Making The Next Moves With Blockchain

In August, the World Economic Forum released a report calling blockchain technology a “mega-trend” that will shape society in the next decade. Indeed, the WEF predicts that blockchains could store as much as 10% of global GDP by 2027.

Good robot design needs to be reponsible, not just responsive

The Good Robot Design Council recently launched with its guidelines for roboticists and academics — on the ethical creation and use of robots.

This Dress Is Made From 3-D Printed Plastic, But Flows Like Fabric | WIRED

The design studio Nervous System has invented a novel process that allows a flowing dress to emerge from 3-D printed plastic. Called Kinematics, their bespoke software combines origami folding techniques with novel approaches to 3-D printing, which push the technology’s limits.

The Gigantic List of Augmented Reality Use Cases

This enormous list of future use cases for augmented reality are likely to arrive within the next 10 to 15 years.

6 Stoic Rituals That Will Make You Happy – Daily Stoic

6 Stoic Rituals That Will Make You Happy – Daily Stoic

Steve Blank Machine Learning Meets the Lean Startup

We just finished our Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley’s engineering school where many of the teams embedded machine learning technology into their products. It struck me as I watched the teams t…

This Analysis Shows How Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook – BuzzFeed News

A BuzzFeed News analysis found that top fake election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories…

Who Will Command The Robot Armies?

Who Will Command The Robot Armies?

Steven Johnson: How play leads to great inventions | TED Talk | TED.com

Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well, not always. Steven Johnson shows us how some of the most transformative ideas and technologies, like the computer, didn’t emerge out of necessity at all but instead from the strange delight of play. Share this captivating, illustrated exploration of the history of invention. Turns out, you’ll find the future wherever people are having the most fun.

On the Move: Terrorism deaths are down worldwide, but way up in richer countries — Quartz

Terrorism in 2015 was relentless. The year began with a deadly attack at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, where armed gunman killed 12 people and wounded five others. That was followed by two attacks in Copenhagen, one at a free-speech debate and another at the city’s largest synagogue. There was a deadly assault at a Tunisian museum (and…