A Japanese robotics company has developed a robotic exoskeleton that turns the wearer into a terrifying 8-foot tall robot. The exoskeleton responds to human touch.

Users inside the robot’s huge frame can move their limbs to control the suit’s arms and legs, while buttons on the robot’s hand grips also allow control of the fingers.

The 'Arrive' suit has been designed and demonstrated by a Tokyo-based company called Skeletonics, which says its products are designed to make you ‘feel as if you were a giant’.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Skeletonics/ Daily Mail)

A Tesla valve has no moving parts, yet restricts the flow of gas in one direction, but not the other. Nikola Tesla was granted a patent for it in 1920.  NightHawkInLight demonstrates how the valve works in the most dangerous way he could think of. -via Boing Boing

The Mandalorian premiered on Disney+ in November 2019 and Internet users can’t seem to get enough of one of the characters known affectionately as “Baby Yoda” or also “The Child.”

Unsurprisingly, in true Twitterverse fashion, users have come up with a fresh set of viral memes. They took a screen capture of Baby Yoda sipping from a cup and inserted their own creative captions for the photo, with one Twitter user calling it “the new “tea” meme of 2020.” These posts have garnered hundreds of thousands of Twitter engagements in total. 

me looking over the new baby yoda memes every week despite not having seen the show and having no idea what’s going on pic.twitter.com/7TQzwGJIXz

— charlotte nicole davis (@cndwrites) November 30, 2019

This tweet perfectly sums up how I’m feeling. 

Head over to the original article at NME. 

(Image credit: Lucasfilm Ltd via Twitter)

Okay, let’s face it, dogs are simple animals: they need food, water, shelter, (preferably) a mate and occasionally a bone to chase. Anything other than that may as well be a treat. But today, especially in the cities, we see that they’re one of the most domesticated and humanized animals in existence (on par with cats and other household pets). 

There’s really nothing wrong with showering your dog with care and attention, don’t get me wrong. Let’s just keep in mind that your doggo probably has no idea what Christmas is… other than what they gather from instinctive cues during changes in the season. But who am I to ruin the festive fun? Some people just enjoy setting up elaborate photoshoot sets or dressing up their dogs in (hopefully comfortable) costumes. The Internet sure is one place for pet owners to show off their efforts. 

Check out the original post complete with captions per photo.

Photo: Minnie Zhou / Unsplash

The Nikon Small World in Motion competition celebrates the art of microvideography, that is, bringing us the world of tiny unseen things as they move along, doing their everyday tiny things. The first place winner, shown above, was recorded by Dr. Philippe P. Laissue of the University of Essex School of Life Sciences. It shows an emerging staghorn coral polyp (Acropora muricata). The coral is green and the magenta stuff is algae. It appears to be a time-lapse video, although that isn't specified. I was also really impressed with the third-place winner, by Tommy Gunn and Jesse Gunn.



It shows the carnivorous stylonychia creating a water vortex with its cilia, presumably to draw in even smaller creatures to eat. See, even microscopic animals have fascinating ways to get what they need. You can see the top five videos and honorable mentions here.

When a boy, with her mother, found a 50-yen coin ($0.46) lying on the ground in the park, he insisted that he turn the coin into the police. What’s more, the police responded in a way that impressed the mother.

Japanese mother and Twitter user @amazakeiko learned first-hand how nice the Japanese police can be…

“My son found a 50-yen coin at the park. He said he wanted to turn it in to the police box, so I took him over to one. Multiple policemen came out and listened to his story, then recorded the place and time he found it on an official document. Then they handed him a pencil and said, ‘Can you write your name?’ My son eagerly took up the whole signature space with his big hiragana letters.”

She continued her story in another tweet:

“The oldest policeman said to my son, ‘I’m impressed by your actions today. I’ll always remember what you did.’ I felt really bad for all of the trouble they went through for just 50 yen, but I was really happy to see how seriously the adults listened to my son, and how proud my son looked to be able to write his name.”

I’m really amazed by how the Japanese can pass their values to their children.

(Image Credit: SoraNews24)

Can you spot the snake in the photo? Andrew’s Snake Removal, from Queensland, Australia, posted this photo on Facebook with the caption: 

Ok let's see who's got sharp eyes and who can spot the snake. Bonus bragging rights if you can name the species as well👍🐍fire away.

It took some commenters more than 10 minutes of staring at the photo before giving up, while others were quick to identify the camouflaged, eastern brown snake in the middle-right section. Honestly, the brown twigs lying around just make it all the more perplexing!

Surprise! The original poster uploaded this close-up photo of the snake peeping from the grass. Were you able to spot it in less than 5 minutes? 

Head over to Daily Mail for the full story. 

(Image credit: Andrew's Snake Removal / via Daily Mail)

An "Honest Teaser" means that Screen Junkies couldn't wait for the movie, and decided to go ahead and critique the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker. Since they don't have a lot to go on, this is an excuse to throw out all the Star Wars jokes they can think of.

Polish game developer PlayWay has released a trailer for “I am Jesus Christ”, a game which lets you play as Jesus Christ himself. The trailer indicates that the game “includes miracle-working, crucifixion and resurrection storylines.” As of this writing, the trailer has over 600,000 views.

“‘I am Jesus Christ’ is a realistic simulator game inspired by stories from the New Testament of the Bible,” explains a description on the video game distribution site Steam. “Check if you can perform all famous miracles from the Bible like Jesus Christ. It is a simulation game and you can try to save the world as He did. Are you ready to fight with Satan in the desert, exorcising demons and curing sick people? Or calm the storm in the sea?”

I myself don’t know what to feel about this game. What are your thoughts about this one?

(Video Credit: IGN/ YouTube)

In May 2009, three months after the launch of a website called Texts From Last Night, Google searches for the term “drunk text” spiked up for the first time. The website was founded in February 2009 by friends Lauren Leto and Ben Bator, who were recent college graduates living in Detroit at that time.

The city’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, was at the center of one of politics’ first big sexting scandals (unrelated to the corruption charges that later put him in prison), and the pair were inspired. They made a Blogspot site and started posting screenshots of the weirdest texts they got from their friends, anonymized but tagged with one clue: an area code.

“Three months after it launched was finals week everywhere,” Bator says. “I think people were condensed in libraries at different colleges around the country. It was also Cinco de Mayo week. People started reposting the texts with a link to the website, and it blew up. By that point, everybody had something up there from their area code. That made it relatable. You felt like you knew the people who submitted, or you wished you did, or you were glad you didn’t.” At its peak, Texts From Last Night regularly had up to 20 million unique viewers a month, Bator says. But most of the company’s revenue came from selling a 99-cent app—mobile websites were so bad in 2010 that people actually paid for it. It was a million-dollar idea at a time when the country was flailing.

Now, the term “drunk texting” has become a familiar face, which we’ve come to know over the past decade.

Know more about its history over at The Atlantic.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

The early 1990s — Nestled in the heart of Tokyo is an office building, where you would find a handful of developers working tirelessly, year after year. These people were so dedicated to their work that they would sleep under their desks and seasons would change and they would not notice it. After over five years of working, this small team of developers were able to create one of the most successful games in history of Sony’s PlayStation.

The game, Gran Turismo, a realistic racing simulation, would become the single best-selling title for the first PlayStation console with over 10 million units sold. It also birthed a series that has grossed more than $4 billion in revenue. With seven Guinness World Records (including most cars in a racing game, achieved by Gran Turismo 6 with a total of 1,237) and a collective sales total of over 80 million units, Gran Turismo has made a mark in both the automotive industry and games industry, becoming PlayStation’s best-selling exclusive franchise of all time.

It continues to be a labor of love for the team at Polyphony Digital, which expanded from its original five developers to a team of more than 170 today. But it all started with a scrappy, dedicated team making real a boyhood vision of project director Kazunori Yamauchi.

Find out more about Yamauchi’s life, and the desire that drove him to develop Gran Turismo, over at The Washington Post.

(Image Credit: Sony Computer Entertainment)

With eight movies down and one to go in the Skywalker saga, Reuters did some serious number crunching to bring us the stats on all the lightsaber duels so far. Keep scrolling down bring up charts on each film, such as who fights who, how many minutes they battled, how many times their lightsabers made contact, and who won. In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker appears as a winner on both the light side and the dark side. There are also charts for each trilogy, and for the series as a whole. Who won the most duels? Who has the highest win percentage? Which is the longest fight? How many duels were a draw? After all that, we get an explanation of how the filmmakers made the lightsabers and gave them their distinctive sounds. -via Digg

A family of five in Savannah, Georgia, USA, were alerted to a fire in their house last Friday by their household pet, Sammy.

A dog named Sammy was being credited with sensing danger and, as a result, helping to save a Georgia family of five from a fire that caused extensive damage to their home.

Savannah firefighters said the household pet's loud barking alerted the five family members to the raging fire in the rear of the home early Friday. They had been sleeping.

“They all escaped unharmed,” Savannah Fire Rescue said.

Good boy, Sammy.

Read the original news article.

(Image credit: Savannah Fire Rescue via Fox News)

We’ve all been there. Some more than others have a tendency to overuse (and even abuse) the word ‘sorry’ in situations where it’s not exactly necessary. So, how can we determine when it’s more appropriate to issue an apology or just take a moment to quietly and honestly self-reflect? Such decisions can be crucial, especially in corporate or organizational settings. 

According to the post,

There’s a time and a place to apologize. But if you’re not at fault, here’s what you should do instead.

Sean O’Meara, coauthor of The Apology Impulse: How Business Ruined Sorry and Why We Can’t Stop Saying It, gives us some suggestions. For the full story, read the original article here.

Photo: Tim Mossholder / Unsplash

Sleep apnea is a common sleep disorder that affects up to 17% of men and 9% of women aged 50 to 70. It also affects 10 percent of men and 3 percent of women aged 30 to 49. Treating this sleep disorder could make a huge difference in the lives of many people. There is a problem, however: the American health system often makes it hard for people to get care, and the same is true in this case.

Obstructive sleep apnea is when the upper airway collapses during sleep, leading to periods of, well, not breathing. About 24 million Americans have sleep apnea and don’t know it, research suggests, and many who do know don’t get treatment.

The consequences can be severe. It’s a leading cause of vehicle accidents, as apnea-afflicted drivers fall asleep behind the wheel. Snoring and sleep apnea are on the same spectrum and are associated with Type 2 diabetes in adults. Treatment is associated with improvements in insulin resistance. Having sleep apnea, and not treating it, increases the risk of postoperative cardiovascular surgery complications.

Treating sleep apnea improves sleep duration and quality. People who sleep better are much happier and healthier in general. Reducing snoring also helps partners sleep better.

Know more about the treatment for sleep apnea over at The New York Times.

(Image Credit: Reed Saxon/ Associated Press)