Category Archives: Transhuman News

Several facilities in the U.S. and abroad maintain morbid warehouse morgues full of frozen human heads and bodies, waiting for the future. They are part of a story that is ghoulish, darkly humorous, and yet endearingly sincere. For a small group of fervent futurists, it is their lottery ticket to immortality. What are the chances that these bodies will be reanimated? Will baseball legend Ted Williams frozen head be awakened to coach fighter pilots or fused to a robot body to hit .400 again?

Cryonics attempting to cryopreserve the human body is widely considered a pseudoscience. Cryopreservation is a legitimate scientific endeavor in which cells, organs, or in rare cases entire organisms may be cooled to extremely low temperatures and revived somewhat intact. It occurs in nature, but only in limited cases.

Humans are particularly difficult to preserve because of the delicate structure in (most of) our heads. Deprived of oxygen at room temperature, the brain dies within minutes. While the body may be reanimated, the person who lives is often in a permanent vegetative state. Cooling the body may give the brain a bit more time. During brain or heart surgery, circulation may be stopped for up to an hour with the body cooled to 20 C (68 F). A procedure to cool the body to 10 C (50 F) without oxygen for additional hours is still at the experimental research stage.

After a while, he let the bodies thaw out inside the capsule and left the whole thing festering in his vault.

When a cryonic patient dies, a race begins to prepare and cool the body before it decays and then to place it inside a Dewar: a thermos bottle full of liquid nitrogen (LN). The inner vessel of the Dewar contains a body, or bodies, wrapped in several layers of insulating material, attached to a stretcher, and suspended in LN. The head is oriented downward to keep the brain the coldest and most stable.

This vessel lies within a second outer vessel, separated by a vacuum to avoid heat transfer from the outer room-temperature vessel wall to the cold inner vessel wall. Heat gradually transfers across anyway and boils away the LN, which must be periodically refilled. Bodies were originally, and may still be in some cases, cooled and frozen in whatever condition they were in at death, with better or worse preservation, as we shall see.

The early years of cryonics were grisly. All but one of the first frozen futurists failed in their quest for immortality.

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Small freezing operations began in the late 1960s. While the practice of storing bodies has become more sophisticated over the past 50 years, in the early days, technicians cooled and prepared corpses with haste on dry ice before eventually cramming them into Dewar capsules. By in large, these preservations did not achieve preservation. They were nightmarish, gruesome failures. Their stories were researched and documented by people within the field, who published thorough and frank records.

The largest operation was run out of a cemetery in Chatsworth, California by a man named Robert Nelson. Four of his first clients were not initially frozen in LN but placed on a bed of dry ice in a mortuary. One of these bodies was a woman whose son decided to take her body back. He hauled (his dead mother) around in a truck on dry ice for some time before burying her.

The bodies in the container partially thawed, moved, and then froze again stuck to the capsule like a childs tongue to a cold lamp post.

Eventually, the mortician was not pleased with the other bodies sitting around on beds of ice, so a LN Dewar capsule was secured for the remaining three. Another man was already frozen and sealed inside the capsule, so it was opened, and he was removed. Nelson and the mortician then spent the entire night figuring out how to jam four people who may or may not have suffered thaw damage into the capsule. The arrangement of bodies in different orientations was described as a puzzle. After finding an arrangement that worked, the resealed capsule was lowered into an underground vault at the cemetery. Nelson claimed to have refilled it sporadically for about a year before he stopped receiving money from the relatives. After a while, he let the bodies thaw out inside the capsule and left the whole thing festering in his vault.

Another group of three, including an eight-year-old girl, was packed into a second capsule in the Chatsworth vault. The LN system of this capsule subsequently failed without Nelson noticing. Upon checking one day, he saw that everyone inside had long thawed out. The fate of these ruined bodies is unclear, but they might have been refrozen for several more years.

Nelson froze a six-year-old boy in 1974. The capsule itself was well maintained by the boys father, but when it was opened, the boys body was found to be cracked. The cracking could have occurred if the body was frozen too quickly by the LN. The boy was then thawed, embalmed, and buried. Now that there was a vacancy, a different man was placed into the leftover capsule, but ten months had elapsed between his death and freezing, so his body was in rotten shape no pun intended from the get-go and was eventually thawed.

Every cryonic client put into the vault at Chatsworth and looked after by Nelson eventually failed. The bodies inside the Dewar capsules were simply left to rot. Reporters visited the crypt where these failed operations had taken place and reported a horrifying stench. The proprietor admitted to failure, bad decisions, and going broke. He further pointed out, Who can guarantee that youre going to be suspended for 10 or 15 years?

The worst fates of all occurred at a similar underground vault that stored bodies at a cemetery in Butler, New Jersey. The storage Dewar was poorly designed, with uninsulated pipes. This led to a series of incidents, at least one of which was failure of the vacuum jacket insulating the inside. The bodies in the container partially thawed, moved, and then froze again stuck to the capsule like a childs tongue to a cold lamp post. Eventually the bodies had to be entirely thawed to unstick, then re-frozen and put back in. A year later, the Dewar failed again, and the bodies decomposed into a plug of fluids in the bottom of the capsule. The decision was finally made to thaw the entire contraption, scrape out the remains, and bury them. The men who performed this unfortunate task had to wear a breathing apparatus.

Out of all those frozen prior to 1973, one body remains preserved. Robert Bedford was sealed into a Dewar in 1967. Instead of leaving the body to meet a horrific fate under Nelsons care, Bedfords family took custody of the capsule, meticulously caring for it at their own expense. The body was handed off between professional cryonics operations, occupying multiple frozen tanks and facilities for 15 years or so. Eventually it ended up in the hands of the founders of Alcor a modern cryonics outfit one of whom wrote a heartfelt, slightly creepy piece about the body.

Credit: Jeff Topping / Getty Images

Alcor is the leading example of the current state of cryonics. While the ugly events above suggest that your remains might well end up as tissue sludge scraped out of a can, the professionalism of companies like Alcor may offer an increased chance for long-term preservation. This 501(c)(3) organization hosts researchers who work on methods to improve the freezing process, possibly increasing whatever slight odds exist that human popsicles will ever be brought back to life. At a more fundamental level, it appears to be stable and to have deep pockets, so there is a better chance that your corpse will be around long enough for some distant future doctor to recoil in horror at it.

The U.S. industry has consolidated around two main organizations. If not Alcor, your other choice is the Cryonics Institute, which has more than 200 bodies stored in giant tanks and accepts dozens more each year. Apparently, ten years ago, head storage alone at Alcor cost $80,000, while full body storage at the Cryonics Institute was only $30,000. There are international options as well. A Russian cryogenics company stores not only people but pets, including one entry under rodents, a deceased chinchilla named Button.

Modern cryonic preparations at Alcor employ a multistep process to prepare the body for storage. First, they begin to cool the body while anti-clotting agents and organ preservation solutions are injected into the bloodstream and circulated under CPR. The body is then transported to the companys main facility, where the original fluid is replaced with chemicals that vitrify turn to glass the bodys organs. This offers some hope for cutting down on structural damage during the subsequent cooling and storage. Then the body is entombed in its Dewar capsule.

That all sounds scientific and careful. But is it really science or just applying scientific tools to a fantasy proposition? Is it possible to freeze the human body and revive it decades later? Currently, its not remotely plausible. Will it ever be? Thats probably an open question. As it stands now, cryonics is a bizarre intersection of scientific thinking and wishful thinking.

Credit: Annelisa Leinbach / Big Think

While cryonic preparation is now more advanced, the laws of physics demand that the structure of the body will break down rapidly after death, catastrophically upon freezing, and gradually over time, even while frozen. Think of how badly frozen food ages in your freezer. If the medical technology of the future becomes advanced enough, perhaps these corpses can be revived. But thats a big if. Lets say your body remains frozen until the 25th century. Then, lets say that future doctors are interested in reviving you. How much work will they have to do to fix you once youre thawed? The answer lies in the condition of the bodies once theyre thawed. Strangely enough, we know something about this.

In 1983, Alcor needed to lighten three cryonauts, reducing them from bodies to simply heads. (In one transhumanist conception of the future, medical science will be able to revive the brain and then simply make a new body or robot to which to attach it. Neuropreservation is cheaper and easier too.) The three corpses were removed from their Dewar capsules so that the heads could be cut off still frozen, so requiring a chainsaw and stored separately. Once the heads were sawed off and put away, Alcor employees got to work medically examining the state of the bodies. They wrote up their findings in great detail.

At first, things looked reasonably good. While the bodies were still frozen, their skin was only moderately cracked in a few places. But once the bodies thawed, things started to go downhill.

The organs were badly cracked or severed. The spinal cord was snapped into three pieces and the heart was fractured.

Cracks appeared in the warming bodies, cutting through the skin and subcutaneous fat, all the way down to the body wall or muscle surface beneath. One patient displayed red traces across the skin following the paths of blood vessels that ruptured. Two of the patients had massive cutaneous ruptures over the pubis. The soft skin in these areas was apparently quite susceptible to cracking.

While the external damage was extensive, the internal damage was worse. Nearly every organ system inside the bodies was fractured. In one patient, every major blood vessel had broken near the heart, the lungs and spleen were almost bisected, and the intestines fractured extensively. Only the liver and kidneys werent completely destroyed.

The third body, which had been thawed very slowly, was in better condition externally, with only a few skin fractures and no obvious exploded blood vessels. However, the inside was even more annihilated than the others. The organs were badly cracked or severed. The spinal cord was snapped into three pieces and the heart was fractured. The examiners injected dye into an artery in the arm. Rather than flow through blood vessels and into muscles, most of it pooled under the surface in pockets and leaked out of skin fractures.

The medical examiners extensively detailed the content of the blood, the texture of the muscles, and the extent of the damage. They included pictures. And they earnestly stated their conclusion up front: The tremendous tissue deterioration will require incredibly advanced medical technology to fix. Worse, the probable destruction at the cellular level may require rebuilding the body at the molecular level. Perhaps future medicine might be able to inject swarms of nanobots into your body to repair every bit of tissue, but dont bet on it happening any time soon.

Modern cryonics practices may ward off the horrific failures of the past. And we cant entirely rule out future medicine somehow finding fixes for the terrific damage incurred by the body in freezing, sitting, and thawing. But theres one more hurdle for the future revivification of your frozen form, the last great danger to your immortality: your crazy relatives. Several cases demonstrate the problem.

The family of a man frozen in 1978 eventually got tired of paying for him. The facility offered to cut off his head and store it for free, but the family turned them down. Instead, the body was thawed, submerged in a vat of formaldehyde like a laboratory specimen, and buried in that condition. Two further men were stored by their sons, one of whom had his father thawed, removed, and buried. The other son eventually buried his dads capsule in its entirety with the remains still inside.

Relatives can also go to court and battle over what happens to your corpse. Richard Orvilles family buried him against his wishes and was eventually forced by an Iowa court to dig up his body for preservation. A Colorado womans family went to court to fight Alcor for their mothers head. Alcor eventually got the head, to preserve as best they could. Conversely, another womans will stated that she did not want to be frozen. Her husband froze her anyway, and after a four-year court battle, the State of California ordered that she be thawed and buried.

One particularly well-known family affair is the story of a frozen Norwegian man who was initially stored at a California facility that worked with Alcor. He was removed by his daughter, who stored him in an ice shed behind her house in Colorado. The body was discovered when she was evicted from the property. The small town of Nederland, Colorado now has a Frozen Dead Guy Days celebration every year.

While the chances of immortality may be slim, dozens of people still commit their bodies or brains to cryonics each year. If their remains arent mismanaged or allowed to disintegrate, and if their relatives dont go to court over the body, there is now a good chance that they will remain frozen for decades. Unfortunately, they will come out of the process cracked into a million pieces, and the prospect of putting them back together again is purely science fiction for the foreseeable future. Its a grim practice with ghoulish results; at least it makes for some fascinating stories and a bit of dark humor.

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Horror stories of cryonics: The gruesome fates of frozen bodies - Big Think

Hyundai Motor Group has presented a dramatic vision for a smart city of the future where all the transport is automated.

The innovative concept was exhibited at the World Cities Summit in Singapore, developing an idea first explored by the automaker at CES in 2020.

The latest HMG Smart City is said to be inspired by a honeycomb pattern and is a hexagonal-shaped urban community with a human-centered surface layer and a function-centered underground layer.

Nature is prioritized in the human layer, with parks and forests at the center of the city encircled by buildings, which will decrease in density the closer they are to the greenery.

But its the underground layer where Hyundais thinking gets more radical. This is where the road infrastructure is located. The idea is that all goods and services are transported underground via autonomous mobility to a particular areas automated logistics hub, where autonomous robots make the final delivery.

Travel between respective smart cities is by advanced air mobility (AAM). AAM vehicles take off and land from a series of Hub 2.0 Towers, which combine residential and office areas with AAM ports at the top of the building.

According to Hyundai Motor Group President and Chief Innovation Officer Youngcho Chi, the smart city shows how urban communities can be rejuvenated. In the future smart cities, our ambition is for humankind to live with nature while embracing technology, he said. Our air and ground mobility solutions will redefine urban boundaries, connect people in meaningful ways, and revitalize cities.

We will continue to work with governments around the globe to bring our smart city vision to reality, while rapidly advancing capabilities in future mobility solutions.

The Smart City certainly provides added perspective to some of the ideas and tech announced by Hyundai in recent months as the company looks to a future where smarter, more sustainable mobility will be integral.

Driverless robotaxis are being aggressively pursued by the Group, with a self-driving Hyundai Ioniq 5 co-developed with Boston-based Motional due to start operations in Las Vegas next year and another Ioniq 5 featuring the brands own in-house autonomous tech recently undergoing tests in Gangnam, Seoul.

Its also earmarked billions of dollars to develop a new type of transport in so-called electric Purpose-Built Vehicles, which range in size from unmanned micro-sized vehicles for deliveries to larger shuttles.

In May, it announced a massive $5 billion investment in its U.S. operation to support its work in robotics, AI tech, AAM and autonomous driving.

And it is becoming an increasingly high-profile presence in the burgeoning eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) flying taxi industry via its AAM offshoot Supernal. It recently unveiled a concept eVTOL vehicle at Englands Farnborough International Airshow and at the same event confirmed a deal with Rolls-Royce to work on electric propulsion and fuel cell tech for air taxis.

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Hyundai Reveals Futuristic Smart City With Automated Transport - IoT World Today

He's not ready to give up.Get Over It

Moving on is hard.

Just ask UK-based IT engineer James Howells, who, almost a decade ago, accidentally threw away a hard drive containing over $180 million worth of Bitcoin and is still clinging onto hope that it's recoverable.

Howells mistakenly chucked the hard drive, which allegedly contains about 8,000 Bitcoin, back in 2013, well before the cryptocurrency shot up in both popularity and value.

By today's standards, whatever's on that hard drive if it even turns on is worth a lot, just under $184 million to be precise.

Since early last year, Howells has been lobbying the Newport city council to let him comb through all of the landfill's trash in order to find it.

Most recently, he claimed to have secured funding and a top-notch, trash-digging team to support the hunt but as the BBC reports, the council has once again rejected his search citing environmental concerns.

Among claims that his newly-assembled team boasts environmental experts, Howells' most recent plea to the council outlined plans to incorporate assistive AI and robot dogs in the effort.

"We've basically got a well-rounded team of various experts, with various expertise, which, when we all come together, are capable of completing this task to a very high standard," the IT tech told the BBC.

To sweeten the pot, Howells offered to put ten percent of the recovered Bitcoin into crypto-based town projects, including a clean energy-powered crypto mining site, a one-time handout to all residents of $61 worth of crypto, as well as access to crypto-based sales terminals in all local shops.

But that's all predicated on Howells finding the damn drive and discovering that it still works. Then there's the fact that the outlook of the crypto market is looking less than stellar these days.

Shockingly, the city still won't let Howells' team dig up the town's landfills.

"Part of this is managing the ecological risk to the site and the wider area," a council spokesperson told the BBC. "Mr. Howells' proposals pose significant ecological risk which we cannot accept, and indeed are prevented from considering by the terms of our permit."

READ MORE: Bitcoin: Missing hard drive could fund Newport crypto hub [BBC]

More on crypto woes: Man Wakes Pregnant Wife to Tell Her He Lost $100,000 on Crypto

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Man Who Lost $180 Million Bitcoin Hard Drive 9 Years Ago Still Trying to Dig Through Trash - Futurism

Googling the term real estate financing metaverse will provide approximately 8.8 million hits. The results are a mishmash of companies that provide financing for metaverse real estate deals, as well as articles ranging from skepticism (Investing in Metaverse Real Estate: Mind the Gap Between Recognized and Realized Potential) to enthusiasm (The Coming Boom in Metaverse Lending for Banks). Previous Weekender articles have also chimed in on the topic, most recently with Buying and Financing LandIn the Metaverse.

But is the industry really at the point in which virtual real estate and financing deals can or even should take place? Not just yet.

In a recent Walker Webcast, Walker & Dunlop chairman and CEO Willy Walker acknowledged that the metaverse is gaining traction. However, Ive been asked whether Walker & Dunlop is thinking about financing real estate in the metaverse, Walker commented. I will be so long gone when Walker & Dunlop starts financing real estate in the metaverse.

According to L.D. Salmanson, CEO of New York Citys real estate data and insight firm Cherre, in the short term two or three years, (metaverse) is a buzzword that provides zero value to real estate owners and operators. He told Connect CRE that at this point, scammers will use it to raise money for nonsense, and visionaries will use it to raise money for things that are too early.

One reason is because of the current state of hardware and software. Salmanson explained that Apple, Meta and Google have their own hardware and software ecosystems and their own virtual reality and augmented reality environments. Using video games as an example, Salmanson said that shared universes are possible across different hardware types if and only if the software developer decides to make this universe accessible from multiple hardware environment.

The metaverse, as it currently stands, isnt a whole lot different. Even if virtual locations are accessible from different platforms, software vendors build their own, non-converging environments. I cant really picture one metaverse, Salmanson said. Rather, I see multiple, siloed hardware and software environments.

Additional challenges include current battery technology that is far behind what we need for this reality to exist, Salmanson said. The costs are also high, and current central processing units (CPUs) and graphic processing units (GPUs) arent advanced enough to support a meta world. The power consumption for these devices is astronomical, Salmanson added.

All told, the idea of buying and financing anything, let alone real estate, in the metaverse is a nice fantasy, but far from applicable right now. As operators and investors, we need to be grounded in reality, Salmanson said. We dont have the luxury of futurism for futurisms sake. Thats for science fiction writers to delight us, not for the immediate reality.

But technology isnt static, and its likely the metaverse wont stay static, either. Salmanson said that as hardware capabilities advance and AR and VR moves beyond the cartoon stage of quality, this could begin to provide rich experiences that can start replacing or enriching every day experiences, he said. But penetration here will be slow.

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Metaverse: The Gap Between Reality and Futurism - Connect CRE

It's definitely not edible.Spooky Spaghetti

Last month, NASAs Perseverance rover spotted an mysterious noodle-like object on Mars.

Appearing to be some sort of messy bundle of string, the object was first captured by the Mars rovers camera on July 12 before mysteriously vanishing just four days later.

NASA was adamant that the stringy object was terrestrial in origin and not some Martians spilt ramen, speculating that its likely "a piece of cord from the parachute or from the landing system that lowers the [Perseverance] rover to the ground."

And now, as it turns out, the space agency wasnt that far off. In a statement on Monday, NASA declared that the unknown object is nothing but a piece of Dacron netting, putting this Mars mystery to bed.

Dacron is a polyester fiber used as netting in thermal blankets, and while it may look unrecognizable now, thats because it "appears to have undergone significant unraveling/shredding, suggesting that it was subjected to strong forces," according to NASA.

When the Perseverance rover landed on Mars in February of last year, its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) hardware flew off to crash a safe distance away. The EDL's impact scattered debris across the Martian surface, and thats where the Dacron netting came from.

Considering that it crashed some 1.4 miles away from the rover, the material has traveled impressively far, likely due to wind, NASA said.

For the most part, a bundle of polyester string blowing around Mars is pretty harmless and amusing, but NASA isnt messing around: team members are investigating photos of the material as it "may pose as a potential contamination source for the sample tubes" in the area where it was found, the space agency said but fortunately, there arent any "immediate concerns."

Theres also a risk of the shredded material becoming entangled with the Perseverance rover itself, but NASA engineers deemed the risk to be "low."

In short, NASA doesn't see the Martian spaghetti as too much of a threat. After all, space debris being discarded on the Martian surface is quickly becoming a pretty common occurrence.

More on Mars: NASA Says It's Sending Two More Ingenuity-Class Helicopters to Mars

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NASA Finally Figured Out What That Weird Spaghetti It Found on Mars Was - Futurism

The Earth's spin is really starting to pick up speed.

As CBS News reports, June29 was the fastest day in recorded history, clocking in at 1.59 milliseconds shorter than the average 24 hours we know and love.

According to a recent study, the Earth started to spin faster back in 2016 and, on average, the days have become shorter ever since.

The rotation change hasn't been enough to render every single day shorter, according to the study's authors, but the impact has been pronounced enough to get the scientific community buzzing.

And if the trend continues which it very well might mankind will likely have to make some changes to atomic time, or the universal way that time on Earth is measured, according to experts.

But that's not exactly easy, especially when the tech industry reallydoesn't want that to happen. Ever heard of the infamous Y2K bug?

Historically speaking, Earth has never kept perfect time. A number of factors, from its magma core to ocean tides, can impact how fast the Earth spins. And as The Guardian points out, our planet has actually spun a bit slower in recent centuries than it has in the distant past.

Though there are some different theories floating around, the study co-authors told CBS that they believe changes in ocean tides are likely to blame for the recent rotation change.

To address the issue of, well, time being wrong, scientists have advocated for the introduction of negative leap seconds rather than adding an hour like we do during leap years, they call for the artificial subtraction of time from the world time clock.

This potential solution, however, may present an entirely separate set of issues. The tech industry overwhelmingly opposes the introduction of negative leap seconds, as they could wreak havoc on system interfaces.

"Negative leap second handling is supported for a long time and companies like Meta often run simulations of this event," Meta engineers Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi told CBS. "However, it has never been verified on a large scale and will likely lead to unpredictable and devastating outages across the world."

Regardless, if noticeably shorter days like last week's anomaly persist, we'll need a fix and like most things, we might not all be particularly happy with what that solution turns out to be.

READ MORE: Earth is spinning faster than usual and had its shortest day ever [CBS News]

More on Earth spinning too fast: The Earth is Spinning So Fast, We Might Need to Skip a Second

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The Earth Is Spinning so Fast, We Might Have to Turn Back the Clock - Futurism

"This is not a faster car, this is a spacecraft."Mind-Numbing

Think and youll miss it: researchers at MIT claim to have successfully created analog synapses that are one million times faster than those in our human brains.

Just as digital processors need transistors, analog ones need programmable resistors. Once put into the right configuration, these resistors can be used to create a network of analog synapses and neurons, according to apress release.

These analog synapses arent just ultra-fast, they're remarkably efficient, too. And that's pretty important, because as digital neural networks grow more advanced and powerful, they require more and more energy, increasing their carbon footprint considerably.

As detailed in a new paper, the researchers hope their findings will advance the field of analog deep learning, a burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.

By ditching the normally used organic mediums and opting for high tech glass, known as inorganic phosphosilicate glass (PSG), instead, the researchers were able to reach nanosecond speeds, which were faster than the synapses in the human brain.

"The action potential in biological cells rises and falls with a timescale of milliseconds, since the voltage difference of about 0.1 volt is constrained by the stability of water," said senior author and professor of nuclear science Ju Li, in the statement. "Here we apply up to ten volts across a special solid glass film of nanoscale thickness that conducts protons, without permanently damaging it."

"And the stronger the field, the faster the ionic devices," he added.

Because PSG can withstand high voltages without breaking, it allows the protons to travel at ludicrous speeds while also being incredibly energy-efficient.

The material is both common and easy to fabricate, making it not only the fastest option, but also a practical one.

"Once you have an analog processor, you will no longer be training networks everyone else is working on," said lead author Murat Onen in the statement. "You will be training networks with unprecedented complexities that no one else can afford to, and therefore vastly outperform them all."

"In other words, this is not a faster car, this is a spacecraft," he added.

More on AI: Authors Are Starting to Use AI to Quickly Churn Out Novels

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MIT Claims New Artificial Neuron 1 Million Times Faster Than the Real Thing - Futurism

Today the creators of Genshin Impact announced they were starting the Beta test of their next game, Zenless Zone Zero, they celebrated this announcement new trailer. A video with a gameplay recording from the beginning of the game has already appeared on the network.

Once an end date has already been set, you should have time to really develop the game if you need to get into the beta.

Zenless Zone Zero is an upcoming post-apocalyptic action RPG from HoYoverse. The game is quite reminiscent of Jet set Radio and The World End With You.

Zenless Zone Zero hasnt yet been released, so its definitely not enough for at least another year. If the game continues along with HoYoverses previous track, the second test against the next phase of the game will take place towards the end of the year.

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The first 40 minutes of gameplay from the futuristic action game Zenless Zone Zero from the creators of - Game News 24

The life aquatic is now looking even more appealing thanks to Ocean Builders.

The Panama-based company, which specializes in innovative marine technology, has just unveiled a new fleet of pods homes designed for life on the ocean. The singular abodes pair quality craftsmanship with the latest green tech to ensure you can live both comfortably and sustainably on the seas.

The range includes three models that were each penned by Dutch architect Koen Olthius. The SeaPod is built for aquatic living, the GreenPod is engineered for the land and the EcoPod is the environmentally friendly option. Billed as the worlds first eco-restorative floating home, the SeaPod was designed to address the lack of space in desirable seaside destinations.

Every day thousands of people all over the world move closer to the top 15 major metropolitan cities which are within 50 miles of a coastlinea trend that will continue to grow, Ocean Builders CEO Grant Romundt said in a statement.

Essentially, the elevated offshore structures give travelers and residents alike a chance to live on the water in the lap of luxury. Each pod sits nearly eight feet above the waves and offers 830 square feet of living space. The interior, which is spread across three levels, comprises a primary bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and a large storage space. Each home is also equipped with 575 square feet of panoramic windows and a patio for unobstructed ocean views.

These are smart pods, too. Special software allows residents to control everything from the lighting and temperature to shower heat and water pressure. Each pod also comes with a wearable smart ring for the owner. With a simple wave of the hand, you can unlock doors, turn on music and more.

If thats not futuristic enough, a fleet of drones will be used to drop food, medicine and everyday items to the pods, while larger autonomous vessels will carry out bigger deliveries like furniture and luggage. There will also be another self-sailing vessel to collect trash and clean up the area.

As for the eco-restorative part, Ocean Builders says it has developed a way to create a natural habitat for ocean life underneath each home. In turn, this will help create thriving underwater ecosystems.

Weve been motivated by the opportunity to change and challenge the traditional real estate and tourism models and create first-in-class living experiences that can give back to our ocean environment, Romundt adds.

The pods are currently manufactured in Panama and will be located there for the first year. Eventually, the pods will be shipped elsewhere. Available to order from September, the floating homes start at roughly $295,000 and can go up to $1.5 million based on upgrades and customization. Ocean Builders claims it will have the first 100 custom pods either in production or delivered by the end of 2023. It also says the second rollout of 1,000 pods will begin in 2024.

Bring on the life aquatic.

Click here to see all the photos of the SeaPod and EcoPod.

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Forget Yachts. These Floating Homes Will Give You a Luxe Eco-Friendly Residence on the Sea. - Robb Report

Whether youre an artistic type, an analytical problem solver, or in a dynamic field that requires a refined touch, youre likely to find numerous benefits in 3D printing. 3D printers have been on the market for a long time, and somehow people are still finding new uses for them.

Created back in the '80s with the intention to advance prototypes in manufacturing, 3D printing has since made an incredible impact on countless other industries; be it in dentistry, medicine, education, automotive, and really everything in between. By layering materials (such as plastic, metal, carbon fiber, resins, and many others) over each other and fusing them together with methodical precision, a 3D printer can easily create your desired pieces while you sit back, relax, and brainstorm about what youll print next.

I began my 3D printing journey several years ago when I bought a Monoprice open-frame printer. Since then, Ive been able to use 3D printing as an artistic release, as well as engineer things that have had a direct benefit to my life and others. Early on, as I was getting out of my car, I noticed a small plastic piece of my door handle had fallen off. I didnt know what it was, or how to even search for a replacement online. After taking some measurements, I was able to replicate this piece with my 3D printer and in a matter of hours, had replaced it with ease something I would have never been able to do by hand.

Whether Im creating bag tags for the youth soccer team I coach to create a sense of unity, prototyping useful tools with friends, or experimenting with new designs, having a 3D printer has paid for itself many times over. Lately, Ive been testing out the Anycubic Photon M3 3D printer, and have been thoroughly impressed by the speed, silent printing, and incredible detail its capable of. Having tried out several models and builds, I can say without a doubt that this is a 3D printer seasoned professionals would appreciate, and newcomers to the resin-printing field could happily take a crack at.

Specs: Dimensions: 10.6 inches L x 10.1 inches W x 16.7 inches H Weight: 15.4 pounds Compatible Materials: Resin Print Volume: 6.4 inches L x 4 inches W x 7.1 inches H Print Speed: Up to 50mm/h

Anycubic has made a name for itself among the 3D printing community as one of the leading manufacturers for DIY printing. Though theyve been around since only 2015, theyve become known for developing top-of-the-line 3D printers for home use and for regularly improving their users experience.

The Photon M3 comes equipped with just about everything youll need to get started, however Id suggest adding on the resin itself to your order. In addition to the printer, Anycubic included gloves and a mask for safety purposes, a scraper, a screen protector for the LCD monochrome screen, a resin vat, tool kit, USB memory stick (as this printer doesnt have WiFi compatibility), a user manual, and a funnel so you can pour your material back into the bottle when youre finished with it. In terms of what you get for the price, the box was surprisingly full.

The 3D printer itself came together in a breeze. In fact, it took me longer to remove the packaging and initially check out all of the items than it did to assemble the printer, needing only four hex bolts and three thumb screws. Just a few minutes later, Id finished setting up the leveling and Z-offset wizard, and was ready to take it for a whirl.

The Photon M3 is the first resin 3D printer Ive tested, and it differs greatly from any fused deposition modeling (FDM) printer out there. While filament, used in FDM 3D printers, is a solid material that often comes wrapped around a spool, the Photon M3 uses resin. Resin is a liquid solution that solidifies after photocuring with UV light.

Comparatively, the Photon M3 can do far more in terms of pristine, unrivaled detail than any FDM printer could. 3D printers that use filament often build from the bottom up, melting and depositing layers of whats essentially plastic strings of material. This method, though popular, often doesnt produce the high-quality detail that resin does, and can lead to stringing (when artifacts and small strings are left on your printed piece, even after cleaning it up).

How the Photon M3 differs from this is, firstly, that it builds itself upside down (from the top up). The resin, like filament, goes on one layer at a time, but is cured between every layer for optimum efficiency and quality. I have never been able to create a realistic LEGO brick with an FDM printer, but with the Photon M3, I was able to print several compatible pieces that could seamlessly clip on to my other LEGO, despite a little bit of elephant foot. No matter the level of detail or difficulty, with every piece I threw at the Photon M3, the end result was always a clean, smooth, and slick structure. It truly seems like theres nothing it cant print.

Not only is the 3D printer amazingly speedy and quiet, but I was honestly astounded by the level of detail the Photon M3 was capable of. Having tested it out with some Settlers of Catan tile models and comparing them to the same file printed with an FDM printer, the comparison was mind-blowing. Not only is the Photon M3s finished product clean and smooth, the tiniest details were visible which was especially impressive on a tinier model.

Something to note is that your builds will be a little smaller than you may be used to, with a maximum build size of 6.4 inches L x 4 inches W x 7.1 inches H. For comparably priced filament printers, you would expect at least a couple extra inches to work with, but this is easily made up by the level of detail your models will showcase.

The way the Photon M3 accomplishes these near-exact masterpieces is down to the cleverly crafted screen, plate, high-functioning software, and of course, the use of resin. The build plate dips into the resin vat at your current build level, then the screen projects what one layer will look like. After completing this layer and setting it with UV light, it lifts up and goes back down to do another layer; this process repeats until the build is finished.

Something that sets this 3D printer apart is its LCD monochrome screen. Where other resin printers often employ a laser projection, the screen mounted on the bottom of the Photon M3 exposes each layer and then prints them on in succession. This feature, incorporated with the user-friendly software, led to a higher-quality surface finish and enabled impeccable detailing.

The included screen protector is such an important component here, as it keeps your LCD screen scratch-free and allows for a longer lifespan. The LCD is so essential to the entire operation that you want to ensure its protected. If your screen protector becomes damaged, you can easily strip it off and put another one on whereas the screen itself would be a bit trickier to replace.

The front LCD screen and fully compatible Slicer software are also a very nice touch and I found it super easy to use. Once youve inserted the USB drive and you select your file to print, the screen shows you a preview of what the build will look like something Ive not experienced with any 3D printer before. This is especially helpful for those of us who have a poor file-naming convention. Even though the Slicing software wasnt the typical Cura that I was used to, it was easy to navigate.

Laser-Etched Print Bed: Anycubic put a lot of thought into every aspect of this 3D printer, down to its special design of the print bed. This crucial piece of the Photon M3 is laser-etched to create a strong adhesion and keeps your builds from falling off as theyre printing. This is especially handy for heavier models that are more likely to lean or fall out of place, however it is very difficult to remove smaller items from the print bed if theres a large surface area in contact with it.

Printing Capabilities: At 50mm/h, the Photon M3 is wicked fast. At this pace, it only takes two and a half hours to print a 12-centimeter-tall model, which is significantly faster than other leading 3D printers. And for its unbelievable speed and accuracy, the volume at which it operates is incredibly quiet. This may be partially due to the fact that there are very few moving parts in this printer compared to others. Theres only one screw that moves the plate up and down, whereas with a typical filament printer, there would be more armature, and youd need to maintain the belts and ensure everything is lubricated properly. With this in mind, the Photon M3 requires very little maintenance and gives you more time to focus on your creations.

Something thats undeniable about this 3D printer is that it stinks. Literally. Because of the fumes, you wont want to be in the same room while its running unless you have an air purifier, so its important to place it in a well-ventilated space that youre able to walk away from for some time. Thankfully, you can place the hood on it while it runs to keep in some of the smell, as well as to protect your prints from outside UV lights.

Another drawback thats specific to using a resin 3D printer is that youre stuck with a solid build volume. Filament printers can be specified so that your infill is only 10 to 20 percent for example, so youre able to make a hollow shape and save your materials for purely visible and structural aspects. Because of the way a resin print needs to be supported, you cant make any hollow pieces this would also lead to trapped, uncured liquid inside. This makes resin printing more costly, as youll go through more material. Although its less economical, youll always end up with a flawless, durable model.

Finally, resin printing is messy. When you pull your piece out of the printer, its steeped in a liquid that you will need to clean off in a water rinser. To make this step easier, you can get water-rinse resin or high concentrated isopropyl alcohol. Once your item is clean, it needs to be cured in the same machine. Its very easy to wipe off, but youll be messier than if you were to use a filament, and will want to ensure youre working in an area that can get a little dirty. For the print quality though, this is a fair tradeoff.

While the Anycubic 3D printer is extremely efficient and capable of replicating some of the most complex designs, you may want to consider adding on a few more products to make your experience the best it can be.

AirPure Air Purifier Water-Wash Resin Extra Screen Protectors

Overall, my experience testing the Photon M3 3D printer was great. Id wholeheartedly recommend it to those looking to add resin to their arsenal or newbies in the resin field, but its not necessarily the best pick if youre completely new to 3D printing. This is an excellent choice for making toys, figures, or models for Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop games.

Anycubic is really ahead of the game. I didnt feel like I was really giving anything up, and for such high speed, precision, and low cost, Im blown away.

As told to Mia Huelsbeck

This post was created by a non-news editorial team at Recurrent Media, Futurisms owner. Futurism may receive a portion of sales on products linked within this post.

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Review: Create Your Own Miniatures with the Anycubic Photon M3 3D Printer - Futurism