Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Limbs

The latest installation of The New York Times’ video series “Robotica” examines the ongoing development of mind-controlled prosthetic limbs. The video follows the life of 59-year-old Les Baugh—who lost both of his arms in an electrical accident when he was a teenager—as he helps Johns Hopkins University engineers test the latest technological marvel, Modular Prosthetic Limbs (or M.P.L.). After strapping on two robotic arms, Baugh …

Send Video Reactions with Gather App

Convey real personality with the brand new group messaging service

In the age of Snapchat and selfies, nothing conveys an appropriate reaction like one’s own face. That’s the premise behind group messaging app Gather, launched today for iOS. Gather lets users send what they’d normally send to friends or family—screenshots, GIFs, YouTube videos—and receive a brief circular, live-action video reaction right back. The video is tiny enough (about the size of your thumb print) that …

Compiling Public Photos into Time-Lapses

Millions of photos are taken each and every day—many of them coming from the same scenic points at popular tourist attractions—and now, a team of developers from Google and the University of Washington have found a way to put those obligatory shots to use: through time-lapse imagery. By scanning image databases like Flickr and Picasa, the researchers were able to sort thousands of images by …