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In 2013 Boston Dynamics introduced its ATLAS robot to the public. It was a little creepy because the thing walked around sort of like a child learning to walk around…

Like this…

The only thing making us all feel relatively safe from the narrowing uncanny valley of movement that the robot was able to mimic was that the thing was tethered to a thick umbilical cord of necessary cables that provided electricity and signals.

It also kept the thing safely chained in a lab.

That’s changing…

The cord is about to be cut in an upcoming robot competition to help ATLAS become a completely free-range robot.

Like this…

While we’re excited that ATLAS will be used as a rescue robot in environments too deadly for our soft, fleshy bags of bones to enter and rescue humans…we know it’s only a matter of time before things go awry…

Like this…

[Walyou]

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings012515.mp3

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Picks:

Andrew: Unbroken

Brian: Man in the High Castle

Justin: We Have Concerns

What was supposed to be a hopeful three month mission has quietly stretched into an unbelievable journey.

Opportunity bounced onto Mars back in 2004. During that time the little rover has traveled twenty six miles and transmitted a lot of data back to help us understand the ancient history of that planet and it’s make up.

The video above will let you relive the excitement of the crew that put “Oppy” up there and you’ll probably smile and hi-five your nearest coworker when you those first transmitted photos, from Oppy’s eyes to ours, pop up on the screen.

It’s a pretty awesome moment in the history of space exploration.

[Gizmodo]

That nightmarish thing in the photo above isn’t a screen-used graboid prop from Tremors.

Nope.

That’s an actual creature that lives in our oceans…you know…that giant mass of water that you swim in when you vacation?

Caught off the coast of Australia by a fishing trawler, that thing is a six-foot long monster known as a frilled shark.

Frilled sharks haven’t evolved in almost 80 million years simply because a nightmare is always going to be a nightmare. On very rare occasions frilled sharks are found close to the surface because they’re dying. “Close to the surface” is around 4,000 feet below the surface.

Simon Boag of the trawling company that caught the creature:

“It does look 80 million years old. It looks prehistoric. It looks like it’s from another time! It has 300 teeth over 25 rows, so once you’re in that mouth, you’re not coming out.”

According to a marine conservation society in California there is a report of a frilled shark from 1880 measuring in at 25 feet.

Next time you go splashing around in the ocean for fun just remember…

These live there.

[NatGeo]

Lots of ufologists, saucer-chasers and hunters of little green men became super-excited recently. John Greenewald of the BlackVault.com and his continuous efforts to petition the government via the Freedom of Information Act to release Project Blue Book’s files concerning strange things in the sky paid off in spades as thousands of documents were given to the world.

Greenewald has put all of those reports in The Project Blue Book Collection, an archive on his site where you can sift through all of the files from the infamous UFO project created by the government decades ago.

That excitement was short-lived when those same ufologists, saucer-chasers and hunters of little green men realized that all the secrets they’d been waiting for just aren’t there.

According to a lot of online chatter in the extremely chatty community of extraterrestrial enthusiasts, it’s all gone back to square one because of censored documents and allegedly missing reports of some of the more infamous ufo cases.

Is this just a handout to keep the noise level down on a vast, active community who believe aliens are already living among us?

Is the government holding out on deeper, more pressing secrets?

Or are we just alone on this little freaking blue marble and hoping that we’re connected somehow to something bigger than all of this?

[ABC News]

For those that haven’t seen it or listened to the last episode of WeirdThings where we discuss what happened.

Here’s the video of the Falcon rocket going all Hollywood explosion-ish during its attempted soft landing on the autonmous barge after returning from a resupply mission to the ISS.

According to posts on Twitter by Musk, a shortage in hydraulic fluid used by the stabilizing vanes caused the rocket to land in an almost horizontal position. Once the rocket hit the deck of the barge and leftover fuel in the take ignited?

BAM!

An explosion so awesome Michael Bay just hung his head in shame.

Musk responded to the event with his usual no-big-deal-shrug, a smile and let everyone know what was up via Twitter:

“Next rocket landing on drone ship in 2 to 3 weeks w way more hydraulic fluid. At least it shd explode for a diff reason.”

In two to three weeks we’re pretty sure there’ll be cigars and champagne all over SpaceX celebrating the successful landing of a completely reusable rocket.

[Gizmag]

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/AfterThings011815.mp3

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings011815.mp3

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Picks:

Andrew: Hacking The System starting January 19 at 10/9c on NatGeo

Brian: Hacking The System Live Streaming Party January 19 at 10/9c

Justin: Hacking The System starting January 19 at 10/9c on NatGeo

Two scientists, John Howell and Joseph Choi, of the University of Rochester have taken a couple of lenses, set them in a particular configuration and tah-dah! You can now hide your Harry Potter puppet in plain sight without anyone ever judging you for have a Harry Potter puppet in the first place.

Over the years we’ve talked about and posted several projects that’ve used elaborate and fancy technology to produce some pretty lackluster attempts at a real cloaking device.

Coined the Rochester Cloak, the layout of four lenses allows the viewer to actually look at the object from varying angles while still keeping the object completely invisible.

There are still a lot of limitations and we’re really far from throwing a blanket over our heads and walking out the front door of a house party that’s gone bad.

But then again…this discovery came about because some science-loving dad helped his son with a science project over the holidays.

[Rochester.Edu]

The next time someone goes crazy in the Stanley Hotel and begins hunting someone with an axe in the snow, you could possibly be the level designer.

Because a kid thwarted someone suffering from cabin fever all those years ago, the folks over at the Stanley have decided to crowd-source the refurbishment of their next level hedge maze by having a competition to see who can build a better people-trap.

You’ve got until the end of this month to come up with a design so get to work….

Just don’t overdo it because, “All work and no play…”

[Gizmodo]

Robots. We just can’t stop building them even though countless movies tell us where it’s all headed. Not only can we not stop trying to emulate ourselves mechanically, a small portion of the robotics community can’t stop trying to emulate creatures from the animal world.

One of the latest creations by a group called FORTH (Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas) is a tiny little robot trying to emulate the natural actions of octopi and squid.

The video above showcases the features and development of the robot as it goes from having bare legs to more efficient webbed legs to carrying an object in a couple of its legs (check out the little yellow ball it’s carrying) to going for a swim out among more natural life in the actual ocean.

It’s fascinating and almost relaxing to watch as it pulses through the water.

Relaxing until someone attaches tiny laser-guided torpedoes to it.

[Spectrum IEEE]

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/AfterThings011115.mp3

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings011115.mp3

[podcast]http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings011115.mp3[/podcast]

Picks:

Brian:

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Andrew:

Bond 50: The Complete 23 Film Collection

Justin:

The Martian – Andrew Weir

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Picks:

Brian:

Futurama

Andrew:

Justin:

Downloaded