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Old McDonald Had A Robot: New Machines Pick Plants; Prune

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers did his robot counterpart pick? Soon enough, science may have the answer.

Automated farm machinery is using technological developments to expand mechanizing the farm industry in many interesting ways. As singularityhub.com reports, pepper-picking, plant-pruning, soil-testing, and crop-health-monitoring robotics are now entering the farming field. Much as industrialization occurred in factories last century, now difficult and dangerous farm jobs can soon be outsourced to mechanical farmhands.

Thanks to telepresence aided by affordable sensors and computerized vision, machines like the pepper-picking WP5 robot can autonomously select and harvest ripe pepper plants. Other tools like ground-based transponders and radar (with a bit of pre-programming by driving the perimeter) can allow for self-driving tractors to tend to fields. Yet another bot, the Wall-Ye, is capable of caring for vineyards by pruning vines and testing soil. Even drones are in on the action, monitoring large fields from above for irrigation problems and threats to plant health.

The farms of the future may just allow humans to sit back and enjoy the fruits of the earth...as long as the robot workers haven't risen up to usurp it from us by then.

Wall-Ye the wine-bot does everything except bartend. Maybe that'll be in Model 2.0.

A Mule With Fuel: New Cargo Robot Aids Marine Missions

The United States Marines now have a whole new definition for the term "hauling ass." Their tests on a sturdy, cargo-toting robotic mule have been moving along successfully.

As reported by the BBC, the USMC is currently testing the new robo-creature during the Rim Of The Pacific (RIMPAC) international joint exercises in Oahu, Hawaii. The motorized mule is known as the "Legged Squad Support System (LS3)" but has been nicknamed "Cujo." It operates by following a sensor strapped to a human operator's foot.

Created by Boston Dynamics as a corollary to their projects creating robotic dog-type critters, Cujo can carry 400 pounds of gear for missions up to 20 miles. According to kpbs.org, its attendant humans were impressed with its skills.

Marine Lance Cpl. Brandon Dieckmann said, "I was surprised how well it works. I thought it was going to be stumbling around and lose its footing, but it’s actually proven to be pretty reliable and pretty rugged...

"There are times when it is going to fall over, but most of the time it can self-right and get back up on its own. Even if it doesn’t, it can take one person to roll it back over. The way it is designed is that you can easily roll it back over.”

While Cujo is impressive, one wonders if they're trying to work their way up to full-sized mechanical battle elephants, like a futuristic Alexander The Great.

Kick ass! The majestic LS3 mules romp in a pasture.

From Tech Plant To Tech For Plants: Old Sony Factory Becomes High-Yield Hydroponics Farm

Meeting the world's growing nutrition needs is an important challenge of the future. Now, using techniques catered to plants' specific growing needs while concurrently saving space and increasingly yield, hydroponic farms might be a wave of the future.

In Japan, as reported by Gizmodo, an old Sony factory has been converted into a highly efficient and productive hydroponic greenhouse. At 25,000 square feet (half the size of an American football field), this factory produces 10,000 heads of lettuce a day thanks to its innovative design and well-regulated environment. 17,500 special LED lights made by GE improve the growth time of the resident lettuce plants by 250 percent.

Plant physiologist Shigeharu Shimamura explained, "We want to achieve the best combination of photosynthesis during the day and breathing at night by controlling the lighting and the environment."

The 18 plant cultivation racks rise 16 levels high, improving productivity per square foot by 100 percent as compared to outdoor farms. Thanks to tightly regulated temperature and humidity controls, the farm uses only 1 percent of water compared to traditional farms. The business model is so successful, it is already attempting to expand into Hong Kong, Russia, and maybe someday to a futuristic farm near you!

Salad just got much more interesting.

Space Station Sunday: 5,000 Days Of Orbital Colonization (Now With Fresh T-Shirts!)

In an anniversary that beautifully showcases the enduring greatness of man's progress in space, yesterday marked the 5,000th day of continuous human habitation aboard the one and only International Space Station.

And today they'll get some fresh outfits! As ABC news reports, The Cygnus spacecraft, designed by Orbital Sciences (a private company contracted by NASA for the delivery), launched today from Wallops Island, Virginia. The launch had been delayed thanks to engine troubles, then poor weather conditions, but went up without a hitch. Some 3,000 pounds of cargo were aboard, including food, clothing, and science supplies, which will be transferred to the ISS after docking.

The Cygnus will then be loaded up with garbage accrued from the ISS. The non-reusable spacecraft will be sent back to Earth to burn up in the atmosphere, like a futuristic trash incinerator.

An interesting item on the delivery list is a shipment of antibacterial workout clothes that are supposed to be resistant to unpleasant odors, which allows for fewer changes of clothing (even after the two hours a day of exercise that is required to keep the micro-gravity dwellers fit.) Because when living in an enclosed place with six other people and no way to crack a window for air, smelling nice is important.

Beautiful day for a blastoff!

From The Lone Star State To The Stars: Elon Musk Building Spaceport In Texas

Elon Musk is not just ushering in the future, he's building the stage one of its most exciting stories will play out on. Musk is currently in the process of turning a 56.5-acre parcel of land in Texas into a spaceport.

A spaceport. The origin from which people (regular, if extremely wealthy, civilians!) will be launched into space. The FAA has cleared the site for 12 commercial launches per year. Musk is adding this flagship site to augment his homegrown SpaceX program, which also has sole access to launchpad 39A at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. As reported by Bloomberg Business Weekly, Musk has been working on updating current systems to suit his futuristic desires.

“We need to install dedicated equipment for us that has an autonomous safety system that doesn’t depend on someone pushing a button to do the tracking,” Musk stated. “You install a set of redundant avionics on the rocket that monitor its position, and if it flies outside of an agreed-upon path, it initiates a destruct sequence.”

SpaceX's own Falcon 9 and soon-to-be-seen Falcon Heavy rockets will provide the lift. SpaceX is also in bids to provide rocketry for the military. Across the U.S., Musk has also been heavily involved in creating and promoting electric Tesla automobiles, and has recently begun construction on a major solar panel factory in New York.

Musk's stated goal with SpaceX is to eventually bring human beings to Mars. That's a rodeo we want to ride in.

Soon to be a spaceport!

Bright Lights, Big Toilets, And Ostrich-Caliber Climate Control: The GOP Annihilates Environmental Programs

The GOP, in an unsurprising move, is now overtly making decisions that benefit themselves and detract from environmental legislation. Their recent decisions, passed Thursday night in the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, tear up environmental initiatives and replace them with fossil-fuel-dependent alternatives.

The Huffington Post reported this laundry list of Republican bad ideas. Included in the vote were measures that up funding for coal and fossil fuels (while cutting Energy Department funds for renewable energy by more than $100 million.) The new legislation also bars the enforcement of energy efficiency standards for light bulbs, cuts funding incentives for installment of low-flow toilets, and forbids spending on climate change model development.

This ensures we'll still pay lots of money for coal to keep the wasteful lightbulbs glowing and for more water than the average toilet user needs, and forget about analysis of the state of the climate.

Most shockingly, an amendment made by David McKinley (R-West Virginia) bans spending to "design, implement, administer or carry out specified assessments regarding climate change," because apparently burying our heads in the sand is a viable means of regulating one of humanity's biggest environmental challenges.

With decision makers like these, who needs enemies?

If only.

30+ Resources for Linux Beginners

I'm a relative newcomer to Linux, having installed my first distribution on an old desktop computer just over a year ago to see if I could give it some new life. It was an eye-opening experience coming from Windows/Mac environments where so much is hidden or locked away from the system's ostensible owner. Perhaps it may sound absurd to some ears, but without exaggeration I can say this was the first time I experienced something like freedom while working at a computer. And that is no coincidence. From the Free Software Foundation:

“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”.

When I think about why I hadn't begun exploring the GNU/Linux space five, ten or even twenty years ago (yes, I'm old), I'm often reminded of a classic work by philosopher Eric Fromm from 1941: The Fear of Freedom. Fromm argues that individuals seek out authoritarian systems precisely in order to avoid the disorienting and potentially traumatic experience of actual freedom and the responsibilities that come along with it. It is much easier to let others tell you what to think and how to act than it is to think and act for oneself. Anyway, philosophical digressions aside, I've collected a fair number of resources on GNU/Linux since that first install, and thought I'd share some of them here to help orient others who are interested in exploring alternatives to the Microsoft/Apple digital duopoly. Below, you'll find resources on Linux distributions, installation, the command line, as well as how to set up a file server, a development server and conduct remote management. Feel free to leave your own recommendations in the comments!

Distributions
There is a wide variety of GNU/Linux distributions to choose from in the wild. Wikipedia's list of Linux distributions reaches into the hundreds. DistroWatch lists even more. How-to Geek has a helpful article on what a distribution is and how they are different from one another. For beginners, it likely makes the most sense to choose from among those that are the most popular, since it will be easier to find answers to everyday questions.

Installation
Once you've decided to check out a distribution or three, the next step is to install it. There are many options here too: 1) a full install to a specific machine (overwriting the current operating system), 2) a dual boot install that allows you to run a second operating system alongside your primary one on a given machine, 3) a virtual install that allows you to run a second, third, fourth, or fifth operating system on top of your primary one, 4) or even so-called live versions that boot from a CD or USB drive and which you don't install on your machine at all! All the necessary information should be available from the official website and related forums of the distribution(s) you've chosen to explore. For the present post, we'll take Ubuntu as an example:

Virtualization

Perhaps the simplest way to test out and experiment with a new distribution is to create a virtual instance of the system on your current machine. For example, I currently have twelve virtual instances of nine different distributions on my main laptop using the VirtualBox free software package. VirtualBox is an application that allows you to create a virtual environment on your host computer in which you can install a so-called guest operating system that runs on top of your host's system the same way any other software application would.

Note: unless you're running a server without a graphical interface, once you've installed a guest operating system on your machine, you'll very likely also want to install the so-called VirtualBox Guest Additions, which provide a full screen "seamless" mode, file sharing between host and guest systems and other amenities. I have found this process to be a bit tricky in the past, but recently I came across this post on a CrunchBang forum which provided instructions that have worked flawlessly on every single Debian-based distribution I've installed on VirtualBox since (specifically: Crunchbang, Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Kali and Backbox).

Command Line
Despite it's name, the command line terminal is the beginning, not the end! Finding your way around the command line can be intimidating at first, especially for those of us who have only ever used Windows Explorer or Mac Finder to navigate a computer's file system. But I guarantee that after a bit of experience you'll soon be asking yourself how you ever went without it! Would you rather copy and rename 300 pictures from your camera onto your computer one by one in a graphical interface, or with one relatively simple command from the terminal?

File Server
Linux distributions are great for re-purposing old computers. Lots of people have old laptops or desktop machines gathering dust in the closet. These can easily be transformed into file and media servers for your home network.

How to Make an Ubuntu File Server (highly recommended!)
How to Set Up an FTP File Server on Ubuntu
Ubuntu's Official Samba Server Setup Guide

LAMP Stack Development Server
A LAMP stack is a software bundle used for running services like web sites, databases and the like. LAMP stands for: Linux (operating system), Apache (web server), MYSQL (database server), and PHP (server side scripting language). Setting up a full fledged LAMP stack is actually ridiculously easy once you get the hang of it.

Open SSH Server
Once you've set up a dedicated home server of some kind, you don't really want to have to keep it hooked up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. You want to put it in a closet and forget about it, but you still need to be able to dial into it for updates or maintenance. And that's what the Open SSH Server is for. Basically, Open SSH allows for secure login to a remote machine over a given network.

Conclusion
Well, that's all folks! I hope you've found some of these resources helpful. As always, recommendations of your own favorite resources are welcome in the comments, as are suggestions, criticism and angry tirades!

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