Real-Life Weirdness

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Dr. Beckenstein

A chess-playing robot broke the finger of his opponent. A seven year old boy.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/7-ye...-playing-robot

And so, it begins ...

(I always wanted to write this).

So, for adventure - rise of the machines? The robot was hacked by another player? Or an over-aspiring "chess mom"? Or the chess mafia because the boy did not lost as demanded?

It's hard to make out because the video quality is absolutely atrocious, but it looks like the robot is taking one of the boy's pieces (bishop, maybe) with its own bishop. To do this, it first picks up the piece it's taking, then grabs its own piece and moves it over, setting it down in place of the piece it took. Rather than wait for his opponent to finish its move, the boy grabs one of his own pieces (I presume a rook, given its initial starting position and the way he moves it) and puts it where his bishop used to be, while the robot is grabbing its own piece to move over there. They basically place their pieces in the same place at the same time, the robot ends up grabbing his finger... and then stops.

It seems unlikely that a robot meant for moving chess pieces would have sufficient grip strength to break a finger simply by squeezing it. My guess is that the boy got his finger stuck and the robot froze up because it detected an error, and the boy broke his own finger trying to get it free. But the robot being overengineered with enough grip strength to indeed squeeze his finger into breaking, or it trying to pull back into a reset position and breaking the kid's finger in the process are also possible. Of course, the more humorous explanation is that the robot got angry at the kind for jumping the gun and broke his finger in retaliation.

One thing's for certain - that kid will wait for his own turn the next time he plays chess!

[Daigoro]

Results of the X-ray analysis of King Tut's space knife.



King Tut’s Meteorite Dagger Has a Mystery Origin Story

[Johnny1A.2]

Here's something that might spark a few gamer imaginations:

Who or What is cutting little holes in the sea floor in straight lines?

Sort of self-explanatory, but the pictures do look weird, and these things are in deep water...

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Here's something that might spark a few gamer imaginations:

Who or What is cutting little holes in the sea floor in straight lines?

Sort of self-explanatory, but the pictures do look weird, and these things are in deep water...

reminds me of Paleodictyon nodosum. Which makes little hexagon patterns under its perfect holes. Which they are also confused about.

[William]

Yyyyeah so we're just gonna make robot parts out of dead spider bodies and call the field necrobotics because the whole "flesh-eating robot" thing wasn't creepy enough.

Necrobotics.

...Necrobotics.

...

I mean, it's robots made out of biological tissue. "Biorobotics" was totally a candidate here. But nah. Nah. We want to make absolutely clear that we are on a mission to deny, violate, and sunder every possible law of God as we create our army of ultra-intelligent AI-directed spider-zombies.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by William

Necrobotics.

Originally posted in this thread about a month ago, albeit in a different article. I do rather like that term, however.

...

For my own entry, an example of the power of memes. After initially bombing during its first run in theatres, Sony decided to bring back Morbius into theatres... and it bombed again. Apparently, nobody at Sony realized all the glowing reviews that had been popping up online were jokes, something that would have been clear from actually reading them (while I haven't seen - and have no plans to see - the movie, I'm fairly confident "It's Morbin' Time!" is never actually stated, for example, yet apparently shows up as a memorable moment in most of the reviews). Someone on Twitter posted something along the lines of "No, Sony, bring it back again - we promise we'll watch it this time"... and attached an image of Lucy holding a football for Charlie Brown.

[William]

Oops. I try to keep track but that one got by, sorry.

Prosthetic limbs with tool attachments custom-designed for tasks and owned by the corporation were a thing in post-WW1 era. They were basically a wearable tool you left at the job site at the end of the day.

The linked tweet has several pictures - and then an interesting turn into how WW1 veterans and their prosthetics became entangled in Nazi propaganda. The tweet itself is replying to someone pointing out that the software-license model for your own prosthetic limbs is a pretty frightening prospect.

[L.J.Steele]

Just heard an interview with Douglas Rushkoff about his book 'Survival of the Richest,' and the tech doomsday plans of the Silicon Valley bros. There's got to be plot seeds galore in there.

[L.J.Steele]

Laser lawnmower

https://gizmodo.com/laser-powered-la...ous-1849500636

This IS a PC plan!

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by L.J.Steele

Laser lawnmower

https://gizmodo.com/laser-powered-la...ous-1849500636

This IS a PC plan!

That sounds like something Leonard of Quirm might have invented, thinking his "using-light-for-yard-maintenance machine" just a harmless toy - and Vetinari would have sequestered, knowing that someone was going to try increasing the power and using it to mow people and villages instead of grass.