Technology

Build your own Alexa using Raspberry Pi. Their Echo series of speakers are straight out of science fiction. Ask one a question and it will find the answer for you. It can make jokes, play music, book dentist appointments, or score cinema tickets.

Hacking is to the cyberpunk genre what axes are to movies set in isolated hotels nestled among the majestic Colorado Rockies. It’s an essential aspect of the plot, a much loved blade in the Swiss Army knife skill set of the protagonist, and provides a handy Deus Ex Machina get out clause when faced with an impossible situation.

With a small-living future looming closer and closer, it’s kind of terrifying how, in some ways, the living standards of the cyberpunk world are actually better than ours. After all, the core appeal of the genre is “high-tech, low-life.”

Perhaps no one’s artistic trauma manifests more materially than the work of Amy Karle. Born to a biochemist and pharmacist, Amy grew up with a rare and dangerous genetic disorder known as aplasia cutis, the missing of skin on the scalp.

Does CyberPunks.com run adverts? I genuinely don’t know.

I, along with millions of other internet dwellers, use adblocking software to ensure that my eyeballs aren’t assaulted with exhortations to buy the latest piece of Apple or Sony crapware that’s only marginally different from the previous model of Apple or Sony crapware you already own.

If dystopian literature warns of anything, it is this. Privacy is an incalculably precious freedom and we sacrifice it, even in direst need, at our own peril. As a whole, people have taken this to heart. We take our privacy seriously.

I took Introduction to Aeronautical Engineering offered by DelftX, and Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python from MITx. But I’m never going to build an aeroplane, and it’s very unlikely that the people auditing the online engineering courses will build a bridge. At least I really hope not.

NASA has been talking about the moon a lot lately. The idea is to send the first living, breathing humans to touch foot on the ground since 1972. This is not merely to collect some rocks and come back like we’ve done before, but rather to build a permanently inhabited colony. As one official NASA video phases it, “We are going to the moon, to stay.”

These are the tools I carry for some rather specific tasks. The things you work on may require other tools, or more specialized versions of similar items. Remember, there’s no point in carrying around a bag of tools you don’t know how to use, so take some time to acquaint yourself with each one–especially those that can burn or cut you or the things around you.

A rep from Elecrow, a Hong Kong-based electronics company, reached out to us regarding their latest Kickstarter for the CrowPi2, an all-in-one solution to STEAM education. So, as always, when someone offers to send us something cool in exchange for a fair and frank review, we asked them to provide us with the deluxe model so that we could do more “extensive” and “unusual” testing.  And, as always, we were told no.