This Week in Making: Robotic Christmas Carols and Mark Zuckerberg’s AI Reveal

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This Week in Making: Robotic Christmas Carols and Mark Zuckerberg’s AI Reveal

Merry Christmas. It seems even robots are getting in the holiday spirit this year. So if your plans for today include unwrapping gifts under a Christmas tree (with lots and lots of flowers) perhaps you should be listening to this bizarre Christmas Carol created by a neural network. (And if you’re not, you should still check out the weirdness that is this song).


Autodesk announced that they would be getting rid of their 123D series of design and 3D printing programs. While some features may be incorporated into Tinkercad, Fusion 360, and ReMake, it’s not totally clear at this point which features will be moved to which programs.


VR is quickly moving from its infant phase to its toddler phase. The tools are out there, so its just a matter of time before we have virtual museums to explore filled with virtual art. Who will be the artists? If this sounds like you, then uploadvr has put out helpful reviews of VR art programs.


At the beginning of 2016, Mark Zuckerberg announced that his goal for 2016 would be to create an AI home automation system and just this week he began showing off the results of that work. While the in person performance of Zuckerberg’s Jarvis was not quite so seamless as the video might suggest, and we’re not totally sure if he used any of the suggestions we gave him at the beginning of the year, it looks like a pretty serviceable system.


prosthetic

A reader sent in this blog post about 3D printing a face prosthetic. The final results are really very stunning. Being able to make these kinds of prosthetics quickly and cheaply could really change someone’s life.


catfeeder

Cats can be pretty wily. And if you’re a connoisseur of both cat antics and engineering, you’ll probably love reading about Quinn Dunki’s efforts to modify an automatic cat feeder that his shopcat Sprocket couldn’t steal extra meals from. In my time at Make: I’ve come to think a lot about the use of narrative to describe how something is made. The framework of the epic quest (a hero sets out with a large grand goal, and must first overcome a series of smaller tasks and setbacks) is oddly suitable for how-tos. Usually, the hero is the innovator, but I’m not totally convinced that’s true with this one. At the very least I think Sprocket should count as a collaborator for inspiring such overly-engineered measures.


When People Magazine’s sexiest man of the year is finally a robot instead of another boring, able-bodied celebrity, just remember… we did it at Make: first. #CoverRobot #SexiestRobot

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A typical day for Lisa includes: getting up to see the sunrise, bicycling, interning at Make:, reading and writing short stories, and listening to audiobooks and podcasts for hours while working on projects or chores.

View more articles by Lisa Martin

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