Agility Robotics introduces Cassie, a dynamic and talented robot delivery ostrich Today, Agility Robotics, a spin-off of Oregon State University, is officially announcing a shiny new bipedal robot named Cassie. Cassie is a dynamic walker, meaning that it walks much more like humans do than most of the carefully plodding bipedal robots we're used to seeing. This makes it better at handling the kind of diverse and complex terrain that we walk over all the time without even thinking, a talent that's going to be mandatory for robots that want to tackle the different environments and situations that they'll need to master to be actually useful around people. IEEE Spectrum

How UPS trucks saved million of dollars by eliminating left turns UPS, the world's largest shipping and package delivery service, has trucks deployed all over the world, delivering as million as 15 million packages each day. And these UPS trucks apparently never take a left turn. In the US, and other countries where you drive on the right side of the road, right turns are free, but for a left turn you need to wait for a green light. The idea is simple - removing the turns means less idling at signals, and less fuel consumption... Gadgets 360

PayPal increasing several fees starting in March Buying and selling items on the internet is about to get a bit more expensive if you use PayPal to transfer money. The San Jose-based digital payment platform announced it will be increasing some of its fees starting on March 29, 2017. Among the increased fees is a currency conversion charge increase from 2.5 to 3 percent on top of the exchange rate established by PayPal's bank. Meaning customers will pay three percent more than the bank's currency conversion difference when exchanging money internationally. MLive.com

TeraHertz transmitter delivers 105Gbps wireless speeds via single channel A team of Japanese scientists have developed a TeraHertz (THz) transmitter that is capable of transmitting digital data at a rate of 105Gbps (Gigabits per second) over a single channel using the 300GHz band, which they claim could power a future generation of Mobile Broadband and Satellite links. ISP Preview

Most of the web really sucks if you have a slow connection A couple years ago, I took a road trip from Wisconsin to Washington and mostly stayed in rural hotels on the way. I expected the internet in rural areas too sparse to have cable internet to be slow, but I was still surprised that a large fraction of the web was inaccessible. Some blogs with lightweight styling were readable, as were pages by academics who hadn't updated the styling on their website since 1995. But very few commercial websites were usable (other than Google). danluu.com

33C3: Edible soft robotics Certainly one of the more entertaining talks of the 33rd Chaos Communications Congress was [Kari Love]'s talk on her experiments in mixing food with function. In [Kari]'s talk at the 2016 Hackaday Supercon, she talked extensively about working on soft robotic for NASA. At the 33C3, her focus was twofold: on a fun side project to make mobile robots out of stuff that you can eat, and to examine the process of creative engineering through the lens of a project like this. Hackaday

Excessive radiation inside Fukushima fries clean-up robot A remotely-controlled robot sent to inspect and clean a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant had to be pulled early when its onboard camera went dark, the result of excess radiation. The abbreviated mission suggests that radiation levels inside the reactor are even higher than was reported last week – and that robots are going to have a hell of a time cleaning this mess up. Gizmodo

​​​​​Millimeter-scale computers: Now with deep learning neural networks on board Computer scientist David Blaauw pulls a small plastic box from his bag. He carefully uses his fingernail to pick up the tiny black speck inside and place it on the hotel café table. At one cubic millimeter, this is one of a line of the world's smallest computers. I had to be careful not to cough or sneeze lest it blow away and be swept into the trash. IEEE Spectrum

How to setup a secure VPN server on Raspberry Pi or DigitalOcean Today we will talk about setting up your own VPN server. Don't these tutorials already exist? Possibly yes, but they are kinda blurry, and I will try to address all the issues you might run into. I think most people reading my blog or googling the topic have a fairly good understanding of what it is, but for those of you who doesn't, here's a quick recap... HSP.dk

Intel Celeron/Pentium/Core i3/i5/i7 - Nvidia vs. AMD Linux gaming performance Five AMD/Nvidia graphics cards tested on five different Intel Kaby Lake processors from a low-end $40 Celeron CPU to a high-end Core i7 7700K is the focus of today's Linux benchmarking. Various OpenGL and Vulkan Linux gaming benchmarks were run to see how the Radeons and Nvidia Linux performance evolves from a Celeron G3930 to Pentium G4600 to Core i3 7100 to Core i5 7600K to Core i7 7700K. Phoronix

Intel invests $7 billion in next-generation semiconductor factory in Arizona Intel Corporation today announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete Fab 42, which is expected to be the most advanced semiconductor factory in the world. The high-volume factory is in Chandler, Ariz., and is targeted to use the 7 nanometer (nm) manufacturing process. It will produce microprocessors to power data centers and hundreds of millions of smart and connected devices worldwide. Intel

This tiny terminal was France's version of AOL When the internet went mainstream in the United States around 1995 or so, many of its benefits had already embedded themselves deep into French society – but not through the internet. That was thanks to a fateful decision by France Telecom to replace the country's telephone books with a videotex-style system that could hold far more information than the actual books could. Vice

Mission possible: Self-destructing phones are now a reality Self-destructing gadgets favoured by the likes of James Bond and Mission: Impossible's Ethan Hunt have taken one step closer to reality. Researchers in Saudi Arabia have developed a mechanism that, when triggered, can destroy a smartphone or other electronic device in as little as 10 seconds. International Business Times

World of Warcraft gold can now be used to buy other Blizzard items It has been almost two years now since Blizzard began letting World of Warcraft players pay for their monthly game-time subscriptions using in-game gold rather than real money. Now, Blizzard is expanding that effort by letting players indirectly trade WoW gold for in-game items in other Blizzard games like Hearthstone and Overwatch. Ars Technica

The state of residential solar power Don't panic, but we will need to generate approximately 15TW of usable energy from renewable (carbon-neutral) sources by 2050 in order to stabilize the atmospheric CO2 concentration. And purely in terms of available energy, solar power has the greatest potential for meeting this requirement. Ars Technica

Ford bets $1B on self-driving car startup Ford Motor is betting $1 billion on the world's self-driving car future. The Detroit automaker announced Friday that it would allocate that sum over five years to a new autonomous car startup called Argo AI, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., and will have offices in Michigan and California. USA Today

Why has Cameroon blocked the internet? Cameroonians have little doubt that pulling the plug on internet services for about 20% of the population is an intentional act by the government. The two regions affected, South-West and North-West, have seen anti-government protests in recent months. BBC

Steam Discovery 2.0 analysis: Valve shares latest metrics Steam's primary goal is to connect consumers with content creators. Along the way, there are a number of challenges for different content types, such as connecting with friends, connecting with communities, and connecting customers to the most relevant games to buy and play. This blog post explores how Discovery Updates 1.0 & 2.0 have affected customers' abilities to find great games, while also examining the growth of user investments on Steam... Gamasutra