Light Start – Asus robot, Samsung advertising, BEAM expansion, and Mankind Divided

Asus’s Zenbo robot wants to stare into your soul – and do other things too

Maybe you can sit through the mini-movie (above) showing off what Asus’s Zenbo robot is able to do. We weren’t able to but that’s because we’re lactose intolerant and this ten-minute advert has a lot of cheese in it. So here’s the short version: Asus has revealed Zenbo, a personal home robot, at this year’s Computex event. They want to install this critter into your home, where you’ll hopefully let it wander around the house, speaking and listening to humans, providing assistance in a variety of ways (like emergency notifications or recipe help while cooking), play music, let you buy items online – using its face, and also let it learn from you. The face that Asus have cooked up isn’t helping but Zenbo has a variety of expressions. One of them should creep you out effectively. The cost of this little guy? Try $599 (around R10,000) when it launches. Will it get here? Perhaps, but expect at least a few guests to kick it when it rolls up to say hi.

Source: Asus

Own a smart Samsung TV? You might be in for some extra advertising

We always feared that this day might come. And now it’s here and… yeah, it’s about as terrible as we were expecting. Samsung are already pushing advertisements through to their smart TVs in the States – Ads that you don’t want, don’t care about and would prefer not to see. And it looks as though that ‘feature’ is going to be going global. The Wall Street Journal reports that Samsung is prepping a European expansion of their smart TV advertising, with both new screens and older models (via a software update) being in the firing line. The end result will be interactive ads above the menu bar, and possibly a few other intrusions as well. It may be worth diving into your settings and unticking as many ‘I’m okay with extra content’ boxes as you can locate in the meantime. If Europe’s due, then we’re next.

Source: Wall Street Journal

This is what the International Space Station’s new BEAM module looks like, all grown up

Last week NASA was attempting to inflate Bigelow Aerospace’s BEAM module on board the ISS. The first attempt didn’t go according to plan and they were forced to take a another crack at it over the weekend. This attempt at inflating an in-space module went a whole lot better but you don’t have to take our word for it. You can see it for yourself in the video above. And, in case you don’t have all day to watch the BEAM expand, NASA have handily contained the process in a 24-second or so video. The future of space habitats? We’ll see once the two-year test period comes to an end. Hey, scientific innovation takes time. Unless you’re Elon Musk, apparently.

Source: NASA (YouTube)

Get philosophical with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided‘s Mechanical Apartheid live-action trailer

First things first: Don’t watch the trailer above if you (somehow) didn’t finish Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Spoilers. Yes, spoilers. Now, go pay a 40-hour game quickly and then come back. Right? Good. This live-action trailer for the upcoming Deus Ex: Mankind Divided sets the stage for what players can expect from the title. An apartheid system for mechanically-augmented people? Hey, mankind has been a lot dumber than that in the past and Deus Ex has always been about conspiracy theories turned up to Eleven. This dystopian future isn’t as impossible as you might think and, as always, the game’s premise – outlined here – asks us to decide what it means to be human. Take note of the narrator, who we’re pretty sure is either Angus Macfadyen or a very good mimic. He’s going to be important on launch day.

Source: Square Enix