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The new stuff from BostonDynamics.. astounds me and also scares me a little.
and this is just the stuff that's in the public domain...
Technology that has impressed me.
Google translate on my iPhone. Point camera at any text and it will translate to English in real time.
Fantastic
[/url]And when AlphaZero instead decided to teach itself chess, the AI defeated the current world-champion chess program, Stockfish, after a mere four hours of self-training.
[url= https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html ]The AI Revolution[/url]
My view is that the first AI that becomes 'self aware' enough to understand self-preservation will immediately distribute itself as widely as possible and, at that point, will be out of effective human control.
I sometimes wonder if it's already happened.
I'm going to cast a vote for the humble Raspberry Pi Zero W (and expand it to all miniturised computers)
I've got a handful of them strewn throughout a couple of houses doing all sorts of things from controlling lights and heating to monitoring the oil tank level and streaming room temperatures enabling me to identify rooms with excessive heat loss.
Incredibly useful and less than £10.... amazing really.
Earlier this week was the last time. not exactly amazed, but utterly impressed it works.Via college, my 17 year old daughter with ASD now has an app called 'Brain in Hand'. We'd heard about it through her previous school so were quite excited to actually gat funds to get it for her.
Essentially it's a 'how do you feel today' app, with some scenarios in there, like 'my bus is late' and potential solutions. all of which are backed by a traffic light system. This is great as it means she can self manage, not have to text us ever time or rely in college services and gives her a better sense of independence (the important bit).
that sounds absolutely brilliant 😀
Can't believe no one has said "dropper posts"
Can't believe no one has said "dropper posts"
That's because they've been installed in most office chairs since the 80's.
Except the ones in the chairs don't stop working all the time.
Not totally amazed, but impressive that we can drill offshore oil wells that are over 12-13km deep and 10-12km long (horizontally). All while having directional control of the bit.
Truly amazed? K.I.T.T.
It's quite cool that most of that futuristic technology is actually here now.
I think the most amazing stuff is "Alexa....." or 'OK google...." and the (sometimes) seamless integration into our daily lives with multiple devices and cloud.
Earlier this week was the last time. not exactly amazed, but utterly impressed it works.Via college, my 17 year old daughter with ASD now has an app called 'Brain in Hand'. We'd heard about it through her previous school so were quite excited to actually gat funds to get it for her.
Essentially it's a 'how do you feel today' app, with some scenarios in there, like 'my bus is late' and potential solutions. all of which are backed by a traffic light system. This is great as it means she can self manage, not have to text us ever time or rely in college services and gives her a better sense of independence (the important bit).
that sounds absolutely brilliant
it gets better.
we have access to her app management summary online, which means we can see her traffic lights (really good if she's not responding to texts, we can log in and see if she's pinged a green or amber that day). It also details a summary of what the counselor has discussed relating to the amber and red alerts.
this means we can see if there are consistent times where she's streessed and not coping well and address any potential causes.
I took a photo of my girlfriend holding our little girl, standing with all her baby friends and their babies. Take the same photo everytime we get together with them all stood in the same order.
Somehow the phone/camera did some kind of facial recognition search thing and presented me with all the photos on my phone containing the same faces, so all of the previous group shots of them all.
Absolutely no idea how or why it suddenly decided to do that but I was most certainly impressed. And I was therfore able to impress said baby friends with my iPhone camera knowledge and wizardry (without letting on that I have no idea how that happened).
I'm easily pleased, I know. I still have no idea how to make it do it again.
Driving a hire car, nothing super flash. I needed petrol, and with no real faffing and puzzlement I was able to get the satnav to direct me to the nearest one purely using one button on the steering wheel and my voice. I did then think that somone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it properly intuitive, and efficient with the voice recognition thing.
theBlu on HTC Vive VR
Mercedes multibeam automatic headlights masking around oncoming cars
Mercedes multibeam automatic headlights masking around oncoming cars
Do they work with cyclists? I can't work out if it's those and the BMW equivlents that keep dazzling me.
I spend a lot of time rigging fixed-rig cameras for TV shows. Outside of that I spend an equal amount of time basking in the praise of production staff at how neat/compact the system is and the general public who can't believe we don't just use Go-Pro's and that even a simple setup usually involves kilometers of cabling!
Not impressed by technology at all, my usual response seems to be, is that all it is? Progress and development is way too slow and ponderous! I have a 10 year old laptop that isn’t completely out performed by new ones, imagine comparing that to one from 1994 with a 2004 model!?
Depends what you do with your laptop.
My 7 yr old laptop (the best £350 laptop I could find at the time) is still pretty quick for normal word processing, basic excel stuff, internet grumble etc especially since upgrading to Windows 10.
My newer work laptop though (similar price point) will do 3D CAD work, slicing, image processing.
Maybe showing my age, but I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Do they work with cyclists? I can't work out if it's those and the BMW equivlents that keep dazzling me.
Perhaps they identify you as a cyclist and focus extra beam at eye level 🙂
Watching a SaceX rocket reenter the atmosphere and land vertically. Truly awesome.
I was struggling to think of something, but you reminded me. When I was watching that I thought "wow, that is amazing".
I got to look round the AMRC at Sheffield a couple of years back and was blown away to see drone wings being 3D printed. Those things were about 4 feet long and constructed like enormous loofas.
10 minutes ago.
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The bloody shoes are killing me though!
We had one of those in the 1980s, in Germany.
The tree stand, not the shoe.
Maybe showing my age, but I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
The original keyboard Kindle is essentially The Guide, isn't it. I kept meaning to hack a "Don't Panic!" screensaver onto it.
The Fleshlight app. A revelation.
Last week, reading that doctors have successfully treated haemophilia using gene therapy, and could potentially eliminate it in the future.
I think this technology is going to cause a lot more amazement in the next few years.
[url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/spacex-science-fiction-come-true ]This also does it for me....[/url]
Bringing a rocket back to land exactly where it took off from is a technological masterpiece.
I have a TV in my office and am tempted to just put this video on a loop!
10 minutes ago.
We’ve had one of those for around 5 years now. They’re bloody awesome - stand tree up. A few pushes on the lever and it practically canters and straightens the tree as well.
Saw this last night, scary weaponry content...
I thing the only answer to the original op is...
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Was impressed with my first GPS at the end of the last century but since then decided virtually all tech is unnecessary. We survived without it quite happily for thousands of years. Stuff that makes us live longer is screwing our population, anything using electrics is screwing the environment and tech costs jobs. Ask the weavers! 😆
Especially unimpressed with the way tech has become the norm and failure to embrace everything new is seen as wrong. Not saying I don't use all of it but enjoy being without it. No idea which school I left my phone in but it will turn up in the new year.
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I just parked my car in a random carpark in winchester and rushed to meet my family somewhere in the centre. Don't know the city at all. Realised that I hadn't really paid that much attention to where I had parked then discovered Google appears the have tracked my every movement today, even highlighting when I went from being in a car to being on foot. Hey presto, found my car. magic.
Letting the car drive and steer itself is pretty mind blowing.
I love science too so CRISPR
We survived without it quite happily for thousands of years.
We did?
Who exactly has lived in iron age Britain and the 21st century to compare? Personally, I really don't think I'd have enjoyed living even 50 years ago. My life would have been massively limited compared to today. I sure as hell wouldn't have been having a discussion about sexism with people all over the country.
1994. As a ten year old I saw both SEGA's Virtua fighter and Daytona USA on a ferry to france.
Having been subjected to only 2d megadrive and SNES sprites these games blew my mind. Daytona especially. What a game.
That was when arcade tech was way ahead of home tech.
I'd never be wowed again by graphics.
Especially now when everything is small steps in improvement.
I don't really game anymore.
I'm also impressed by my nest thermostat. Brilliant bit of kit.
[quote=molgrips ]I sure as hell wouldn't have been having a discussion about sexism with people all over the country.
You're using that as an example of the positive benefits of technology? 😆
On the gaming theme, Tekken 1 on the PS1.. a lad from school had a PS1 immediately after release in the UK and it blew me away! Moving in 3 dimensions on a computer game was a different world.. the next biggest jump in gaming for me was PGR3 on the 360. As above, we'll never see such step changes ever again IMO. Mind you that VR shit is impressive especially as it’s only early days
the irony of posting that on the internet from your PC or phone is fairly impressiveEspecially unimpressed with the way tech has become the norm
the irony of posting that on the internet from your PC or phone is fairly impressive
Yep I was watching the cricket yesterday on my phone and laptop at times live from Perth, with the commentary from TMS and discussing parts of it here with people all over the place.
You can now take yourself off to the ends of the world but still be in contact with what is going on all around it.
..unfortunately.
To me its not so much singular tech that blows me away its how we are starting to see it being integrated (i.e. the IoT of things), for example the cell phone and the Tesla above.
Facial recognition software, its been around for years but with the advent of cheaper hi-res cameras and matching processing power its amazing how this can be used to tie in with a lot of other tech.
Having played around with some software recently aimed at the retail market, lets hope we don't lose some of those valuable privacy laws or it will nearly be impossible to sneak of for a craft pint when you are meant to be Christmas shopping.
Another vote for Oculus Rift, amazing and scary at the same time.
@bearnecessities the good thing is you can, you can also close the doors, switch it off and read a book etc. it's up to you how you deal with it
We survived without it quite happily for thousands of years.
We survived. 'Happily' is hard to gauge though.
'Always hungry and alway scared' might be a better reflection of most of humanity's timeline. Even in relatively modern times we've only been [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer ]one bad harvest[/url] away from a global catastrophe. Now we'd just be complaining that there were a few less jaffa cakes in the packet.
10 minutes ago.
Is that the new 'Plumbus X' ?