The researchers say that it will all be possible by 2045. So, who will be first?

[via Plastic Pals via Engadget]

The Russian robot has no legs, just like R2, and is designed to connect to a crane operated on the space station. SAR-400 would be remotely operated by the controller wearing a head mounted display, jacket, and gloves that would relay the movements directly to the robot’s body. One of the most interesting things is that the Russian robot has tactile feedback.

The gloves that operator wears will squeeze the hands to allow them to feel the tool the robot is using in their hand remotely. That same feedback sensation can also alert the operator if the robot’s hand becomes stuck while working outside the space station. I have to wonder if there’s some R2 tech in the SAR-400, given the similarities between the two robots.

[via PlasticPals]

They were made by Katya Malakhova, who really does live in St. Petersburg, Russia – so she has every right to call them Russian stacking dolls. While they’re a one-off she made for herself, I can only hope she’ll see how popular they are and set up shop on Etsy or somewhere.

What I love most about these (besides the pointy bat ears on the cowl) is that they remind me of another Christopher Nolan flick, Inception. But instead of a dream within a dream within a dream, you get a bat inside a bat inside a bat… the hero Gotham deserves… we need to go deeper.

[via CollabCubed via Obvious Winner]

According to the Russian, the object is an organism with the body of a scorpion or a crab, a disc shape and a back flap that changed position from one shot to the next the probe took. Life on Venus is hard for most people to imagine, since the surface of the planet can reach temps of 464°C, and the gravity is nine times that of Earth.

A scientist that works with the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University doesn’t believe the Russian is seeing what he thinks. According to Jonathon Hill, who processes images NASA takes of Mars, what Prof. Ksanfomaliti sees is a piece of mechanical equipment which broke off on landing. He also thinks that the reason it looks like it changed positions is that the images were taken by two different cameras on the craft.

Hill also says that the same object shows up in photos taken by another probe called Venera 14 that landed nearby. Venera 14 and Venera 13 are identical, and likely both dropped the same bit of debris on the ground. What do you think from the blurry images here? I can certainly see something you might think are legs, but the mechanical equipment theory seems much more logical.

[via Telegraph]

The mod was made by 20-year old gearhead Lech Sokolov on his second hand Lada 21. Unfortunately even if I was familiar with auto jargon I still wouldn’t be able to tell you how Sokolov pulled it off because he wrote his how-to in Russian, and I’m almost certain that Google Translate is as clueless about the language as I am.

What I think I got – remember, Google Translate may be making this all up – is that the mod cost about 5,000 rubles (~$159 USD), including the cost of the two extra window panes and the tinted film that he used to coat them. Sokolov also said that the major drawback of his mod is that he had to take out the amplifiers (speakers?) out of the doors to make room for the extra thingamajigs that he installed. Then again he ended up with a car that is not only more versatile – all the benefits of tinted windows without their drawbacks – but is significantly insulated against sound as well. Sokolov, you naughty boy.

[via Drive2 (RU) via Autoblog]

The 13-ton probe failed to get into space far enough to continue its journey and will now fall back to Earth sometime this coming weekend. The swath of land that the remnant satellite parts could fall onto include some of the most populous cities on Earth. The Russian space agency director Vladimir Popovkin has now hinted that some sort of weapon might have caused the satellite to fail.

Previously, a retired commander that was in charge of a missile early warning station said that strong radar signals from Alaska could have damaged the spacecraft. Russia didn’t accuse the US or any other countries of attacking its satellites. However, the insinuation was there. Popovkin said, “We don’t want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now. The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out.”

[via NYTimes]

The duo usually tries to make a statement when they create their technological pieces of art. The large iPhone becomes spiraled, kind of like the unbuilt Tatlin’s Tower, a shrine the ubiquity of smartphone in our modern society, and a comment on how the design of consumerist products are seen as an art form by many these days.

The twisty iPhone is currently part of an exhibition at the Science Museum in London, that’s open until the 14th of February, 2012. The exhibit also features a crazy wavy iPod, and other distorted electronic gadgets.

[The Creators Project via WhuDat]

Open up the biggest robot, and you’ll find a smaller one inside, and another, and another. They come in a set of six nesting robot dolls, and would be a great addition to any cubicle toy collection. I don’t know why, but they all sort of remind me of Bender. Maybe they’re his cousins. After all, they do all have shiny metal asses (made out of ABS plastic).

They’re available over on Amazon for just $10 (USD) a set.

In 2010, a computer shop called PC Shop Group helped SArd set up a private exhibition for his collection of 35 graphics cards. I guess his exhibit was well received, as people kept asking about it and eventually donated some of their old cards to the museum. There are now about 200 graphics cards in the collection, which has since been moved to PC Shop Group’s store. As you’ll see in the pictures, the cards are labeled with information like its specs and a list of games that it can play at a respectable frame rate.

I’m sure the museum’s collection will only continue to grow – after all, a new video card is released every 5 seconds. Seriously though, SArd should try asking Nvidia and AMD for material; I bet both companies have a ton of items that they can offload. PC enthusiasts, honor your craft and its roots – and make your pilgrimage to the Video Card Museum at the PC Shop Group Pushkin outlet in Russia.

[via Oddity Central & Habrahabr.ru via I Heart Chaos]

The screen has widgets for different things functionality and large icons for music, video, FM, pictures, and eBooks. The native resolution of the screen is 800 x 480 and the P8 will support HD resolution video playback when connected via HDMI to your TV. The device also supports just about all the file formats you could need.

The P8 will play AVI, WMV, MKV, and XviD video formats. It supports MP3, WAV, WAM, OGG, FLAC, and APE audio formats as well. It will also store eBooks and voice memos too. The P8 will come in 8GB and 16GB versions and both of them will have expandable storage up to 32GB with microSDHC cards. For some reason, the P8 is only available in Russia at this point, but perhaps it’ll show up around the world with time. Pricing is unknown at this time.

[via designboom]

The official line is that the pod would be used to force space debris and derelict satellites out of orbit. The device the company wants to build is being designed now and will cost about $2 billion to complete. Energia plans to have a finished design and have the thing developed and ready to deploy by 2020 – and in service by 2023.

These satellites would fall back to earth and splash into the ocean or burn up on reentry. The thing that bothers me is that the pod could just as easily knock things like GPS satellites and other things out of orbit if some evildoer wanted to do so.

[via Fast Company]

I have to say that I’ve been neglecting my own storage needs, and have been filling up my HDs for a while now, by backing up every few months. Although it seems excessive to most users, I think that a 10 TB Drobo would be perfect to suit my needs. Obviously, that wasn’t the case with this Russian guy, who went for 70TB that he needed to cool down with 20 fans!

For some reason, all of this gear was put inside a wooden enclosure. Seems a bit suicidal to me, but hey, whatever works. It’s probably the capacity of a server farm built into one rig. He used 60 hard drives, but using Western Digital’s new 3TB drives, that number would plummet to a mere 24.

[English Russia via GearFuse]

If this was real I bet 90% of people who use it will just say that they’re tweeting from a twitter booth. Assuming that would fit in 140 characters or less.[via Livejournal via reddit via buzzfeed via geekologie via walyou]

Now it’s your turn…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

If I have to have that tune stuck in my head, so do you. Get the whole album over at PigFaceBoy.

[Thanks for the tip, Craig!]

It looks like it was drawn by a kid too:

And now you know. This ad actually belongs to a series of video game-related ads for said junk food; you can view the rest of the ads at Tvigle.

[via Kotaku]

Or can they? Can cows look up? And if so, can they look up for long periods of time? The farmer is now measuring the milk production of the bourgeois cows against the ones who have no TVs. Hit up English Russia for more pics.

[via The Raw Feed]

Your partner may not want to wear it once she or he (yes, there’s a version for men) finds out that the shirt is called “b!tch c(.)ntr(.)L”. Russian shop MaryJane is selling the shirt for 1290 rubles (approx. $42 USD) for both the men’s and women’s versions.

[via Flop culture via Loot Ninja]

Each one is built from the finest electronic components, with an optical resolution of 1600 dpi, and with microswitches rated for over 1 million clicks. The mice also feature a stiff, but bendable cable that keeps the cord from getting in your way. There’s also a unique sound-wheel control which kicks in to adjust your system’s volume when you click the scroll wheel.

The handmade wooden mice are available in Bubinga, Makor, Sapele, and Ebony woods from exotic locations like Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Sri Lanka. Of course, being a luxury item, you can’t expect them to be cheap. Prices for the mice range from €668 to €859 (appx. $996 to $1281 USD). If you’ve got money to burn, you can get your hands on one of AlestRukov’s mice here.

[via Behance]

If you’ve seen the real ASUS Eee keyboard – which incidentally will be available this month – you know that it doesn’t look anything like this mod. But even though the mod is chubby and faceless, it’s every bit as useful as the real thing: just attach it to a monitor via VGA and you’re good to go. The keyboard also has USB ports, a headphone jack and a built-in mic.

FYI, an Eee PC 900 netbook is equipped with a 900 MHz Intel Celeron M and 1 GB of DDR2 RAM. Here’s a naked look at the mod:

Funny how there’s still quite a bit of space left on the keyboard. You know, space for something like a screen. But maybe that wasn’t in the modders’ plan, which you can view in detail – and in Russian – here. Don’t even attempt to run the page through Google Translate, as the resulting “translation” only adds random English words, not sense.

[via Engadget]

You won’t find any Donkey Kong, Pac-Man or Space Invaders in this arcade museum. Nope. Games had names like Магистраль (Magistral), Городки (Gorodki) and Морской бой (Morskoy-Boy).

The early machines featured at the museum mirror some of the earliest U.S. and Japanese games with simple racing games, shooting gallery, a sub hunt game, and mechanical tabletops like basketball and ice hockey.

The museum currently has 37 different types of retro arcade machines in its collection, with 20 of them now restored to full working order. But even if you don’t get a chance to get to Russia any time soon, you can see many of the details of these oddities thanks to the excellent, detailed photography and descriptive overlays over on the website.

Perhaps the coolest thing about the site is that the designers over at Art Lebedev Studios went the extra mile by building playable Flash versions of many of the games.

Be sure to check out the online versions of Magistral, Gorodki, Morskoy Boy, and Autorally. You can even see the old 15 Kopek coins used to play these machines.

The Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines is located at the Moscow State Technical University, and you can find out more details about their amazing time capsule of retro games over on their English language page here.