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Category: habitats – Page 103

Singularity Hub’s Top Articles of the Year

As 2018 draws to a close and we start anticipating the developments that will happen in 2019, here’s a look back at our ten most-read articles of the year.

This 3D Printed House Goes Up in a Day for Under $10,000 Vanessa Bates Ramirez | 3/18/18 “ICON and New Story’s vision is one of 3D printed houses acting as a safe, affordable housing alternative for people in need. New Story has already built over 800 homes in Haiti, El Salvador, Bolivia, and Mexico, partnering with the communities they serve to hire local labor and purchase local materials rather than shipping everything in from abroad.”

Machines Teaching Each Other Could Be the Biggest Exponential Trend in AI Aaron Frank | 1/21/18 “Data is the fuel of machine learning, but even for machines, some data is hard to get—it may be risky, slow, rare, or expensive. In those cases, machines can share experiences or create synthetic experiences for each other to augment or replace data. It turns out that this is not a minor effect, it actually is self-amplifying, and therefore exponential.”

Enormous 18th-Century Ice House Re-Discovered Under London Street

Archaeologists in London have re-discovered a subterranean ice house near Regent’s Park. Dating back to the 1780s, the egg-shaped cavern was used to store ice, which was imported from as far away as Norway.

Made from brick, the structure would have been one of the largest of its kind at the time, according to the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA). The egg-shaped chamber measures 25 feet (7.5 meters) wide and 31 feet (9.5 meters) deep. Archaeologists with MOLA found the ice house, also known as an ice well, along with its entrance chamber and vaulted ante-chamber, during preparations for the development of the Regent’s Crescent residential project.

Launch to the International Space Station

Click on photo to start video.

LIVE ROCKET LAUNCH: Watch as NASA Astronaut Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency, and cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko of Роскосмос launch to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The crew will orbit Earth in a Soyuz spacecraft for six hours before docking to their new home and beginning their six-and-a-half month mission aboard our orbiting laboratory. Launch is scheduled for 6:31 a.m. EST, with live coverage starting at 5:30 a.m. ESTune in!

This robot cafe in Tokyo is remotely controlled by disabled staff, and it’s incredible

Being waited on by robot is something that we all imagine might be possible in the distant future, but one cafe in Tokyo is already offering just that… with a twist. As Fast Company reports, a visit to the “Dawn ver.β” will put you face-to-face with robot waiters that take orders from customers and deliver food to their tables.

It’s all very futuristic, but the twist here is that the robots aren’t powered by AI or some advanced automation system. Instead, they’re controlled remotely by human staff with severe disabilities working right from their own homes. The cafe, which is the result of a partnership between the Nippon Foundation, Ory Lab Inc, and ANA Holdings, is already a big hit, and its creators have big plans for the future.

Elon Musk says there’s a 70% chance he’s going to move to Mars

Elon Musk wants humans to make it to Mars. With his company SpaceX at his back, he’s pushed forward with some incredibly bold claims about what is possible for mankind on the Red Planet. He’s shown off concepts for Mars settlements and even called out scientists who say climate engineering on the planet is impossible.

Now, in an interview with HBO’s Axios, Musk doubles down on one of the more off-the-wall claims he’s made during his years in the spotlight. Mars, he says, will be his eventual home, and he estimates his odds of moving to the planet at a generous 70%.