e474 — Scientists With Lasers

Games At Work dot Biz

Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

Published 29 July 2024

Michael R and Andy get together to talk through this week’s stories while Michael M is away.

The cohosts start things off with a discussion on scientific discoveries stemming from tiny backpacks placed on giant (relatively) hummingbirds. Continuing the flying theme, next up is an article dealing with a drone that may well fly ‘forever’. Then a couple of stories about robotic dogs used cleaning and clearing obstacles.

Next up in this science-themed episode is a treatment on lasers and mathematics. NASA uses lasers for communicating with the international space station. An older Games at Work episode references the “sharks with lasers” from Austin Powers. And then a discussion on USA Swimming using mathematics to improve the Olympic swimming team’s performance. The team also dives into Bonnie Tsui’s book Why We Swim.

Rounding out this episode are points about Google’s use of reCAPTCHA and releasing VR source code.

What robots have caught your attention recently? Any other intriguing uses for lasers? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[e-mail] (our home for now) and let us know!

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot. All rights reserved. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

Robotics

BBC Wildlife Magazine article: Mini backpacks on giant hummingbirds? Wacky scientific experiment leads to two astonishing discoveries

BBC Wildlife Magazine article: Secrets Revealed by Bird ‘Backpacks’

The Register article: Chinese researchers create four-gram drone that might fly forever

404 Media article: DHS Has a DoS Robot to Disable Internet of Things ‘Booby Traps’ Inside Homes

Electronic Frontier Foundation post: EFF Awards 2024

New Atlas article: Watch: Vacuum-footed robot dog cleans up the beach

Lasers and Mathematics

The Verge article: NASA fired its space lasers to communicate with the ISS

Games at Work e164: Addictive AR

The Atlantic article: USA Swimming Has a Secret Weapon: Linear Algebra

Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui

Swim Swam article: “Why We Swim”: A Review of Award-Winning Author Bonnie Tsui’s Book

Google

The Register article: Forget security – Google’s reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit

hackster.io article: Google Drops Its Blocks VR Building Project — But Releases the Source Code to All

Gaming Exploits & Creativity

PC Gamer article: Baldur’s Gate 3 dev says it’s Larian’s philosophy to ‘fuel and reward’ player creativity: ‘They found a way to exploit the game, let them have it, it’s awesome’