🕹 Machine Yearning
Lasagna wings with extra Italy.
In this issue, rollerblades are back in style, an AI is floating around in space, bots are writing their own TV commercials, hotels are banning influencers, and a clapping robot needs your money.
Plus, find your most compatible match with Hinge.
CIMON says… die?
Talk about reality imitating science fiction: IBM, the German space agency (DLR), and Airbus partnered up to send the first floating AI into space. As of July 2nd, CIMON (Crew Interactive MObile companioN) is floating around the ISS, chatting to humans and helping them complete science experiments. If the movies are correct, there's about a 50% chance it will murder everyone on board.
Clap off!
CIMON not your type? Maybe Big Clapper is more your speed. For the low, low price of ALMOST $6,000 (!) you too can have a creepy-looking clapping companion in your house. It's a cheerful, spherical robot that "induces applause" with its gigantic rubber hands. Oh, and it talks, too.
Blades of dorky
Segway is back! Those rolling two-wheel scooter things are still around, but now they have a new product: the Drift W1. It's as though they removed the handlebars, cut the board in half, and thought, 'Hey! We can sell this.' The video is what really sells it, though.
Lasagna wings with extra Italy
You might have heard of machine learning. It's a subset of artificial intelligence where a bot is able to find patterns in large data sets and 'learn' from experience. In this case, that data was over 1,000 hours of Olive Garden TV commercial scripts. Then it was asked to write its own, original script. The result is this hilariously weird restaurant ad.
Bonus: you can try this out with your own content here.
Double utility
These are two of my favourite Mac utilities. Vanilla slims down your menu bar, and Rocket gives you Slack-style emoji in any app.
They're both free to download and use, but like any indie software, if you like it, it's good karma to pay for the Pro version. (They cost less than your venti Mocha Frappucino.)
Following the dream
Just when you thought the influencer trend couldn't get any worse, now they are pissing off hotels, too. Some popular destination spots receive upwards of 20 requests per day for free, week-long stays. As payment, the self-proclaimed influencers offer to post a couple of photos for their 2,000 followers. It's at the point where hotels have official forms and processes for approving requests (requiring a sort of business plan proposal), and other hotels are taking a stand by banning social media personalities altogether.