Gallery: Steam Robots
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Falling under the rubric of functional hacker art, these steam robots are mechanically and aesthetically elegant.
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Usually it's the robots that oppress humans in the popular imagination. A Spanish art show turns the tables, producing fearful machines. By Daniel Terdiman.
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Japan is pretty serious about robotics. If the droids are going to fit in, they probably need to learn the Japanese custom of serving tea.
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The 25th anniversary of scanning tunneling microscopes was marked by an international contest to celebrate the most remarkable images created through this atomic-level technology. See some of the contest's most noteworthy submissions in this photo gallery.
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Customized cars that use commercial logos as a creative palette.
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Gabe: The Penny Arcade store has been updated with some new items. First we've got a brand new zip up hoodie.    It's got a slick PA logo on the front and Tycho's speech from the comic strip "I Hope You Like Text" on the back. We've been getting requests for a zip up like this for a long time. I don't want to sound like a used car salesman but my guess is that these will not last long.     We've also added a new sticker pack. This pack includes Tycho, Gabe, Annarchy, Charles, The Merch, The Fleshreaper, The Fruit Fucker and two bumper stickers.  The sticker pack is $10 but we've got a special deal going right now. If you spend $50 in the store we'll toss in the sticker pack for free.    Also, don't forget that you can now purchase prints of just about all our comic strips. If you're looking for strips with specific characters or games, Pennypacker is a great way to search our archives. I've had a few people ask me what my favorites are or which ones I think would make for especially nice prints. Tycho and I are each working on a list of our favorites but off the top of my head I'd say "The Hawk And The Hare" series would look pretty classy all framed up and hung on someone's wall.     -Gabe out
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Also: Nasa's Mars rovers--'biggest breakthrough' in science in 2004. [News.com Extra]
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A camera-equipped robot, a three-wheeled car and avatars were the subjects of some of this week's video highlights.
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The latest photoshop creation of Army analyst Robot Economist limns missiles in color. Plus: A 17th-century image collection from Rosicrucian Robert Fludd is like a Danger Room, circa 1626. In Danger Room.
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TIME.comix on a pair of outstanding showcases
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To join DARPA airship-bot flotilla 12 miles up Fuelled by a seemingly inexhaustible stream of federal military/security research cash, the US flying-robot industry seems to produce fresh wonders every day.â¦
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Materials that could allow levitating trains and ultra powerful computers to become commonplace are coming of age
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In Japan, a 28,000-square-foot homage to the automaton begins the archiving of man's fascination with robots. Take a look at some of the specimens. By Brian Ashcraft from Wired magazine.
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MIT's Martin Culpepper shows how to build simple machines that move with nanometer precision.
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In the past couple of years, robots have started to move around and work independently. Just don't expect them to look, walk and talk like C3PO in the Star Wars movies -- rolling and beeping like R2D2 is more like it.
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Tycho:  As suggested by Gabriel's recent communique, pokemania is not only going strong but has burst, like some foul canker, and the infection has spread.  It's true that I have built a so-called "Leaf Deck," but this is because I was fairly certain they would beat me up if I didn't.  Now he's hauling in his case of Next Quest figurines each day, as I myself once hauled a tacklebox of Necrons, only I need to stress that it was more awesome when I was doing it, because Necrons are unkillable harvesters of flesh and not some kind of weird fox or living scarf.  It's absolutely fucked that I have spent almost fourteen years trying to reveal the subtle glories of table gaming, only to be cast down time and time again.  However wise my counsel, it apparently lacked that crucial munchkin component.    After I completed Half-Life 2: Episode Two - perfectly acceptable entertainment, but nowhere near the revolutions found elsewhere on the same platter - I started to wonder how they would deliver the third episode to the same platform in the next year or so.  I doubt they'll have another four games to accompany it, but who knows:  they're a bizarre company where extraordinary things happen.  Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and Episode 3 might look pretty nice on there together.  On the PC, of course, one simply clicks a couple times to get whatever they want, and then leverages Valve's fairly incredible community implementation to get things done.  You could accomplish all of this using only the tip of your nose.      On the Playstation 3, even with Valve's distaste for native development, there's already several precedents for direct delivery of individual titles.  On the 360, where Arcade is Microsoft's only concept for delivering titles in their entirety, the hundred and fifty meg limit falls hard around some titles, hemming them in.  But there's a weird (read: psychotic) eyelet where where larger-form product can escape: as content drops for retail titles.  I was surprised that there was no option for this in The Orange Box itself.  Now that Valve is in a position to write a game once and then compile it to different platforms, a retail release - called "Steam," and including two or three catalog titles - could be delivered as an anchor for their considerable franchise power almost in  perpetuity.  After years of fairly positive digital delivery experiences through Steam, I have to say that I found purchasing a Valve product in a retail context almost unpleasant - and not just because it entails hauling around my considerable bulk.  Retail has been a raw deal for a long time now in developer terms, and I avoid it whenever possible.  I should solicit another piece by an insider here for the post, and I know just the guy.  When he breaks down the way royalties work in the industry, you'll be surprised it isn't just Electronic Arts that's left, selling Electronic Arts games in EA branded stores.
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Plans for new gutter-cleaning robot from iRobot surfaces on FCC Web site documents.