Apple's Incredible Post-PC Chip-Engineering Army [Apple]

By Kyle Wagner Oct 11, 2011 11:00 AM 23,127 69

Sometimes it seems like Apple's using tech from the future, and apparently Cupertino has an army of 1,000 engineers working on future post-PC chips to keep it that way.

According to TechCrunch, that represents 5 percent of Apple's entire non-retail workforce. Crazy. But also brilliant. Apple was one of the first to start moving to flash memory for non-phone devices, and that helped them modernize form factor as we know it right now. But also, the every-last-drop graphical performance of the A5, and future chips, presumably, allows Apple to make products that perform well with lesser specs than competitors, such as the rumored 512 RAM in the iPhone 4S.

So yeah, we knew that moving us past the PC era is a huge priority for Apple, but dedicating this many employees to pushing its mobile, tablet, and whatever untold new frontiers might be out there forward shows just how serious they are. [TechCrunch]

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Look at This Incredible $2,300, 30,000 Brick Lego Imperial Hangar [Lego]

By Jack Loftus Oct 9, 2011 2:00 PM 57,867 70

This is certainly the weekend for monster Lego builds. First there was the Battlestar Galactica behemoth early Saturday, and now this afternoon (by way of last Wednesday) we have this 30,000-brick Imperial hanger from The Return of the Jedi.

Simply massive! And the number of minifigs standing at attention for the Emperor and Darth Vader is nothing short of amazing too.

Assembled by Floarida teacher Jay Hoff over the course of six months, this 6x6-foot monstrosity cost an estimated $2,300 to complete. Not bad for a teacher's salary, ol' Hoff! The ambitious teacher-builder displayed the custom kit for Science Discovery Day at his school, where students were encouraged to create their own builds. Something tells me they left with a complex at the end of the day. [New York Daily News]

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This Incredible Space Aurora Video Trumps Any Earth Fly-By—Ever [Video]

This breathtaking time-lapse of Earth's auroras as seen from the flying International Space Station is one of the most beautiful videos I've seen in my life. I can't even begin to imagine the feelings that astronauts must experience when they watch this in real time.

It truly must be the most exhilarating yet most humbling experiences any human being can go through.

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The video was created by our friend Félix Pharand using time-lapse NASA images released yesterday. He employed the same technique used for last weekend's stunning fly-by.

Félix is the anthropologist and visualization expert behind Globaïa, one of the proponents of the Anthropocene geological era. This era begins when humans started to significantly change the surface of our planet using engineering.

It's ironic that, for all the changes that we have inflicted upon our home planet, Earth keeps reminding us how immensely beautiful she is and how insignificant we are compared to her power and the cosmos that surrounds her. [Thanks Félix!]

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How Michael Bay Captures His Most Insane and Incredible Chase Scenes (KERBLOOOMMM) [Video]

If you've seen a Jerry Bruckheimer or JJ Abrams film—like, ever—you've witnessed the handiwork of the Russian Arm. You can thank this robotic, gyroscopicallly-stabilized camera crane for filming some of the most famous car chases in the last three decades.

The Russian Arm was developed by Filmotechnic—which was started in 1990 by Academy Awards Winner Anatoliy Kokush—as a robotic mobile camera crane. It's mounted on the roof of a vehicle to film tracking shots—those of moving vehicles from a moving vehicle—at virtually any angle. The Russian Arm keeps the camera steady while travelling at high speeds, across uneven pavement or off-road using a unique spring and strut design that eliminates camera shake and vibration.

Weighing 300kg in total—including 24kg camera and counterweights—the Russian Arm is comprised of an swing arm and a gyro-stabilized head as well as a mounting platform. The arm can swing freely around the perimeter of the vehicle, as low as a one foot from the ground and as high as 14 feet. The arm itself is about 12 feet long, though a 16-foot option is also available. The head can also pan 360 degrees (in six seconds), tilt along a 200 degree axis and roll along a 270 degree axis.

This entire system is most typically mounted onto a modified Mercedes ML55 AMG with setup and installation usually only requiring about two hours. These SUVs are known for their performance and handling, allowing for a top speed of 115 mph with this system strapped to the roof.

The camera crew—a precision driver, an operator to control the crane arm via joystick, and a technician—all ride in the chase car. The filming director communicates with the camera crew using an iCom system, a secure 50w walkie system that prevents other walkies in the area from listening in on the conversation.

On-board, images from the camera are displayed on one of eight monitors—5 for video assist and another 3 "witness" LCD monitors. The video is recorded and played back using the car's NDT 200 DVR and can be wirelessly transmitted over a range of 300 meters back to the base.

As you can see from the video below, the Russian Arm is a fantastically popular piece of equipment. It's been used in fils like Iron Man 2, Transformers, Mission Impossible 3, The Fast and The Furious, Incredible Hulk, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and by virtually every major automaker. The Russian Arm has even won Academy Awards.

[Filmotechnic - Filmitechnic Canada - Arrimedia]

Monster Machines is all about the most exceptional machines in the world, from massive gadgets of destruction to tiny machines of precision, and everything in between.

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How Incredible Gigantic Gigapixel Photos Were Meant to Be Navigated [Video]

Navigating through a giant, massively detailed photo should be freaking amazing, not confined to a tiny control panel like it too-often is. The Gigalinc project from the University of Lincoln takes all the coolness of humongous photos and lets you control it with Kinect gestures. Awesome.

The project ran this weekend at the University of Lincoln in the UK, so you won't be able to get your hands on it or anything like it for a bit. But this is the kind of stuff we really hope we see more of out of gesture control. [Gigalinc via Petapixel]

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