Tech

We can't all be walking talking IT departments. But some people are, and thank GAWD for them. These techy memes will resonate with anyone who's been able to help people with the internet or coding beyond saying "have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?"

Like so many things in our lives right now, stock photography is being revolutionized by artificial intelligence. This technology is so advanced that it can create completely realistic pictures of people. Generated Photos is a company that has AI generated 100,000 images of peoples faces, of all ages and ethnicities, and they're all available for downloading and use on Google Drive. Some of the photos are impossible to tell apart from real people. 

But, advanced as it is, the AI making these faces still has it's flaws and sometimes botches the photos, making the people look just wrong. In the really extreme cases, the AI has created weird hats (for want of a better word) on these really happy people. And they are hilarious. Bless the AI for trying it's best, but these photos will make you ask "Why? Just why?. It seems that photographers don't have to worry about losing their jobs to AI just yet. 

Although the speed at which today's technology is developing may scare some people, it has a huge potential to create life-saving machines. This is one of them. The 'robo-thread' is a small, snake-like robot that can glide through the brain's blood vessels and deliver clot-reducing drugs to treat strokes or aneurysms. Although the idea of a robot snake crawling through your brain isn't the most pleasant of thoughts, this little robot is promising to save lives and replace open brain surgery. 

Retro is a concept we're all familiar with. Interior design, fonts, electronics, homewares, and fashion all pay homage to the trends of the past and constantly recycle old concepts into new ideas. So why not reinvent old-fashioned cars? That's exactly what Mercedes Benz did, reimagining the Mercedes Simplex car from 1902 into it's modern equivalent. And we must admit, it's very cool. 

There's nothing we love more here than some random information. The world is full of interesting things, so why limit yourself to one topic? This article is jam packed with tidbits from very different topics, from evolution to bionic limbs. Absorb that info, my friends. 

Have you ever wondered what the surface of an asteroid looks like? Well wonder no more, because the world has been blessed with pictures of Ryugu, a diamond-shaped asteroid the Japanese Space Agency has a spacecraft hanging around. The photographer is a little shoebox-sized probe named MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout) who bounced around the asteroid and snapped some pics for us. Thanks, buddy. 

Remember when 3D printing became wildly popular overnight and everyone started 3D printing everything? Well 3D printing has just taken on a new dimension. Scientists have just 3D bioprinted a tiny human heart from stem cells. This is big, people. This is huge. 

On September 10th, a Japanese rocket carrying cargo bound for the International Space Station (ISS) was unable to launch after a fire broke out on the launch pad. No-one was hurt, but the whole thing was a little unusual. 

Scientists have just created a soft-bodied swimming robot that is powered solely by light. It could revolutionize water transportation, oceangoing robots and even surgical procedures. 

In the past few decades, technology has allowed us to live a reality that seemed like magic not so long ago. Talking to people on the other side of the planet? Easy. Flying in the air? Done. Man on the moon? Pfft. We did that in the sixties. Since science is getting more confident, and maybe a little egotistical, scientists have thought up a new scheme that sounds quite fantastical to us (although I guess that's what people thought before the internet existed). Scientists want to build an elevator that goes to the moon. Who knows, at the rate of technological advancement today, maybe it isn't so crazy. Lets wait a few years and see what happens. 

For the first time in history, a surgeon performed heart surgery without actually being in the room. Or building. Or town. The surgeon was 20 miles away from their patient, and the surgery was done with the assistance of a robot. Yes, we are officially living in the future. 

Colonization of the moon isn't too far off: plans for permanent lunar bases are already in motion, and the equipment for cheaply transporting people to the moon is in it's first stages of conception. But once we get there, humans will have to live inside buildings (or whatever the moon-equivalent will be called). So, in consideration of this, astronomers on the ISS mixed cement to see what zero-gravity cement would turn out like. 

The world's largest computer chip is called the Wafer Scale Engine, and it's slightly bigger than an iPad. This isn't huge - unless you compare it to the current size of computer chips, which are around the size of a finger nail or postage stamp. Now that's a big difference. And even more impressive is what the world's biggest computer chip will be able to do. 

Robots are no longer a fantasy of the future. For centuries, humans have been hypothesizing about robots. Now, technology is advancing at such a fast rate that our fantasies (or nightmares) are becoming true. Robots are, whether or not we like it, going to continue to be more involved in our lives. So we might as well welcome our robotic overlords. Here are twelve GIFs of some very cool robots that exist today. 

Our boy Elon Musk might be the most cringey billionaire on the scene right now, and we can't help but love the resulting meme content.