Throwflame bills the The Thermonator robot as “the first-ever flamethrower-wielding robot dog”. It is now available for purchase for $9,420.
The Thermonator is a quadruped robot with an ARC flamethrower mounted to its back, fueled by gasoline or napalm. It also has LIDAR for mapping and obstacle avoidance, an onboard camera for first person view, and laser sighting.
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While other states are recovering from all the things that happened during Covid, Oregon went from being one of the #1 places to move to now one of the 8 states that is now losing population as people move away.
The picture is even a little worse than a one-year metric because this isn’t a one time thing. Oregon, and the city of Portland, has lost population for 3 years running. The state demographers have been using their own numbers and ignoring US Census data; and have been wrong (3 years in a row) saying these were only blips and incorrectly predicting quick rebounds.
Demographers are now starting to sounding economic impact alarm bells and the state faces the possibility of losing a seat in congress. Some have pointed out that this is exactly how rust belts formed in the NE.
Oregon now has the dubious distinction of ending up on a recent Visual Capitalist chart.
MelGeek has created this beautiful numpad that reminds me of some of the cool, clean designs coming from Teenage Engineering.
It looks like it would pairs with their Mojo68 and Mojo84 mechanical keyboards really well.
I’m glad we’re still seeing some beautiful industrial design going on. While Apple has done a good job elevating computing devices, I think we have a TON of room yet to go. I think some of the older pc’s from the 50’s and 60’s were things of beauty we still haven’t reached.
Tech Tangents talks about how preservationists use tools like GreaseWeasle to back up disks.
It helped me a lot when learning how to back up and write my own disks.
Update: Using a Greaseweasle and a 5.25″ floppy drive turned out to be critical evidence/court records on a nearly 50-year-old floppy disk last written to in 1993 using a DEC PDP-11.
When I was learning to drive tractors, I first learned on a John Deere 720, then on a John Deere 4020
The 4020’s had a synchro-shift transmission that I liked to think had 3 ‘zones’ that consisted of a high/low forward and a reverse. As you moved down the tree, those high/low/reverse combos got faster and faster.
Did you ever drive one? How did you work it out in your head?
Worf: They are Klingons – and it is a long story. We do not discuss it with outsiders.
How to reconnect your Steelseries headset after swapping it between systems.
Even though this headset is supposed to work without their Nova 7 Bluetooth dongle, I found you had to connect to the system with the dongle first. The buttons you press are also not intuitive so this was very helpful.
The $1 Trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (text) passed by President Biden in Nov 2021 included a little clause that I think might surprise everyone.
ALL cars sold from 2026 onwards must include a drunk driving detection system in order to use the vehicle. It might mean a passive system of some sort that analyzes your driving – or could include something as invasive as a breathalyzer. There’s increasing evidence this may not be possible by 2026, but it’s something to keep in mind.
SEC. 24220
(1) Advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention
technology.--The term ``advanced drunk and impaired driving
prevention technology'' means a system that--
(A) can--
(i) passively monitor the performance of a
driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify
whether that driver may be impaired; and
(ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation
if an impairment is detected;
(B) can--
[[Page 135 STAT. 832]]
(i) passively and accurately detect whether
the blood alcohol concentration of a driver of a
motor vehicle is equal to or greater than the
blood alcohol concentration described in section
163(a) of title 23, United States Code; and
(ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation
if a blood alcohol concentration above the legal
limit is detected; or
(C) is a combination of systems described in
subparagraphs (A) and (B).
Someone always wins the lottery every day – but the reality is when you decide what kind of game you’re going to make you’ve already decided how much money you’re going to make.
I love how Chris Zukowski from ‘How to Market Your Game‘ gives very realistic and honest evaluations of the game industry using data.
Regardless of the effect of marketing, in this video he shows that the financial success of your game is dependent on a bunch of different factors that are determined LONG before you even write the first line of code.
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