Light Start – Disney’s Death Star, DJI’s new toy, Hyperloop is a game, and CaptionBot
Brett Venter
What kind of world would we live in if Disney had an inflatable Death Star?
Disney bought the rights to Star Wars, do you really think that they’d be averse to creating their own space station? Robert Bigelow, of Bigelow Aerospace, certainly has ideas in that direction, expressing the hope that Disney or a company like them might sponsor a space station created from the inflatable modules that Bigelow is testing. They’re testing an unmanned module at the International Space Station right now, with plans to put another two modules, which create a total space of 660 cubit metres of volume, into space by 2020. Sponsorships would help the company keep their costs down, which means more people living in space. Now, you might be thinking “Wait, isn’t an inflatable space station kinda dangerous?” To which we’d say, just how durable do you think the ISS really is compared to a massive flying chunk of space rock?
Check it out, it’s DJI’s new super-costly Matrice 600 drone
Right, we know which drone we want next. Such a shame that we’re not going to be able to afford it. DJI have announced a new member of the Matrice family of drones, the Matrice 600 heavy lifter which has been designed with professional cinematography in mind. That’d explain the base-model price of $4,600, or around R68,000. You get what you pay for, though, with a compact battery setup that allows for between 15 and 35 minutes of flight, depending on your camera setup, a completely customisable software setup and DJI’s intelligence features through a series of high-end flight controllers and GPS units – which will drive the price up some. The company have also announced a new Ronin-MX aerial gimbal, which supports a wide range of camera types.
We’re waiting on the first tests of the Hyperloop concept, to see whether we can expect a land-based travel revolution. In the meantime, one of the groups involved in making a prototype for the Hyperloop have made a game that illustrates how hard it could be to have a working Hyperloop. Sorta. There will probably be fewer explosions. The basic web-based game sees you piloting a Hyperloop pod between two bands – take a few knocks too many and Boom! If you’re keen on checking out Flappy Bird levels of difficulty, hit up the source link below and then consider backing the team behind it on IndieGoGo.
Microsoft has a new AI, called CaptionBot, which is awesomely terrible at its job
Microsoft has had a few web-based AI’s released into the wild. There was the one that guess your emotions based on images (which was decently accurate) and one that guessed your age, among others. Now they’ve got CaptionBot, which attempts to tell you what you’ve uploaded. CaptionBot has a little learning to do still, though, as its image recognition could do with some work. It’s fun, though. Enjoy wasting the rest of your Monday morning playing with the upload function. We’ll be joining you, over some coffee.
