I think the little gem in here they mention briefly is that this is really one of the only ways to battle the big guys (Google/Facebook/Netflix/etc., at least in my locale). It's well known that top talent will go there for a big payday (the little guys are basically paying for training and filtering out the low performers), however I have seen many times employees stick at a lower salary job that is far more flexible with their time.

Your video, Suggestive flexible robots, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

If we take for granted the need for cost cutting, it would be only logical, if not an outright neccessity in a democracy, to leave the details up to the local representatives. Payment of X Euros expected by mm/dd/yy, figure it out yourselves.

Why do it any other way?

Well, you know the three most discussed possibilities as well as I do: shock doctrine, an attempt to force Syriza to commit political suicide, and bureaucratic automatisms.

During the first stages of this facade, I would have put my money square on shock doctrine. The measures are just too damn beneficial to the "there is no society" kind of thinking. It's horseshit, economically, and tremendously damaging, socially.

Replacing Syriza with the Old Guard seems quite appealing, given the behind-the-scenes deals with the nepotistic elite as a means to facilitate a smoother transitition once those pesky commies are out of the picture. The vitriol against Varoufakis is just staggering in this regard. News of the World got nothing compared to what our respectable media has hurled at Varoufakis and Tsipras.

My take on the automatisms on the other hand is rooted in how our politicians and our public has been arguing this entire time. Neoliberalism is the gospel, dissent is heresy. Privatisation is good, cutting wages is good, flexible labour market is good, taxation of wealth is bad, deficit is bad, surplus is good. They drank the kool aid, they are in it hook, line and sinker.

And as a result, the diagnosis is always the same, and so is the treatment. And fuck me for using this ass of a metaphor, given how the language used is the most subtle means of manipulation. "Rescue" the Greeks, "drowning" in debt, "tighten your belt". How about: food only on five days a week, grandma gets to croak on diabetes and your baby boy dies of diphtheria.

Yes, I had a fucked up day. The discussion in parliament about the "Greek problem" was a disgrace and high treason of the humanistic ideas that are supposed to be the foundation of the European Union.

We (Norway) have 10 months 100% PAID leave, and the dad gets 10 weeks. And its flexible, so mothers can take 12 months at 80% salary, and/or start the leave before birth, dads can choose when themselves etc.

We also make like 3 times as much as US workers.

Ooh that scary Socialism sucks, eh?

I bet those will board slide forever, no more curb waxing! Nice. I wonder how much they flex, my guess is they should be more flexible but less breakable than pure wood boards. Maybe lighter too.

Side note...only the board materials are 'free', the trucks and wheels still cost money. I found it odd that they pretended the entire thing is 'free' of material cost.

Definite upvote for making refuse into something people want.

The filament style of 3d Printers are cheap to operate and can be made to nearly any size.

A resin printer needs a photopolymer, something that solidifies when exposed to UV light. They also need a fairly strong projector and lens, which limits their build area.

A filament printer can use a lot of various materials, the most common being PLA (a bioplastic made from renewable plant materials) and ABS. There are many other materials, some are specialty that have an almost rubber like flexibility to them, to a filament that is made from wood and a binder, which results in an printed object that can be sanded and stained. And, since you are moving a print head, the only limitation to the build size is how big you have made your printer.

It always seemed to me that these "rules" are applied retroactively, with a fair flexibility in how rules can be broken or bent. Not that I don't think there might be something to it all, but I'm just going to hazard a guess that the ability to compose a good photo comes from innate, subconscious ability forged from lots of bad photos, rather than from learning the tricks by rote.

Definitions are flexible. The universe is currently defined as the totality of existence, in much the same way as the "world" was defined centuries ago.

In theory there could be many parallel universes (where we change the definition to mean " a space time volume with a given set of fundamental physical constants")

There's also the theory that our entire universe is a 2d hologram.

Personally, I don't know why you'd want to limit yourself to anything as prosaic as one existence. The idea that there are infinite universes is fascinating....

That's kind of clever actually. I'm surprised I've never seen something like that before.

I think all he has to do is either A) use a little upper-body strength to pull himself up high enough to extend his knees or B) lay backward and push his lower-legs forward on the concrete, not that either of those options is necessarily viable (depending on strength and flexibility).

we'll see what happens once most jobs are 'efficiency-ed-out', unlike in the industrial revolution now you're not just seeing mechanization becoming faster at specific tasks, robotization is becoming more and more flexible, which means that as it goes on more and more broad categories of jobs will go by the wayside.

Just think of when in the endless quest for profit the moment it becomes more cost effective to switch to, say, self-driving delivery trucks and entirely automated fast food, how many millions of people will that put out of work? and what are they going to do?

I don't blindly subscribe to dystopian scenarios, but I also don't blindly subscribe to platitudes like "horse buggy whip factories disappeared and we were just fine", this is something we need to address as a society somehow (via basic income maybe, or some other way)

For a Venus Flytrap

The process continues until all that's left of the insect is its hard exoskeleton. (Unlike humans and other vertebrates, who have an internal rigid skeleton made out of calcified bone tissue, insects and arachnids use a more flexible, external exoskeleton to both protect and form the framework for their bodies.) Once the nutrients are depleted from the acidic bath, the plant reabsorbs the digestive fluid. This serves as a signal to reopen the trap, and the remains of the insect are usually either washed away in the rain or blown away by the wind.
See more @ http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/venus-flytrap4.htm

Also before and after video http://youtu.be/pFGoZMld_Gs

What they're showing certainly is ridiculous, but I'd be pretty happy with a monochrome green projection. That said, in all likelihood some sort of flexible OLED patch or wrist band would probably be practical long before this is. Probably even some sort of fluorescing tattoo.

I do like the possibilities of short throw pico projectors combined with machine vision for user interfaces though. You could take Newtboy's dual projector concept and have something the size of a couple marker pens that unrolls like a scroll, with the screen in the middle.

When it comes down to it, though, what I really want right now is something about the size of a smartphone, with minimized thickness an e-ink display and a limited feature set (phone, text, e-mail, and basic web surfing), the whole design optimized for battery life and performing just those four functions adequately. An easily replaceable battery would be nice too.

C or B, that's the lowest you can go with 22/24 fret guitar.. After that you need to start extending neck to get intonation right and you lose more attack the lower you go. Not to mention that B is ~60Hz, pretty much everything below that don't form decent chords specially with heavy distortion. I have drop B tuning (B-F#-B-E-A-C#) on same looking sunburst Fender strato '80 and i've already run out of room fix intonation (thank goodness for my Rockinger Tremolo bridge circa '81 and it's flexibility..)

Well, perhaps with currently available public domain parts, it's not possible. That doesn't mean it's completely impossible.
The flexible frame might be hard, but there ARE already wristbands that un-bend to make a flat device, they've been around for decades, I recall seeing one in the 90's. Making it support flight might be hard, but not impossible, especially with the small forces this thing provides.
You say there are already 2" square quads out there, this was closer to 18"square(6"X3"), so the 'it's just too small' argument falls flat.
Battery time might be a factor, but a 5 min video is pretty good for now, plenty to prove the concept. Also, battery life is increasing fast.
The camera and GPS in a phone hardly uses any battery power too. These tiny devices are really not hungry enough to make them a power drain problem, at worst they might limit flight time slightly. Also, there's no GPS needed really, it could operate by keeping the subject in frame at approximately the same distance...then it could just follow you through the trees, using the image to avoid obstacles. It would take some computing power, but not an outrageous amount. Perhaps it's paired with a cell phone to do the computing? That part wouldn't be hard.
Again, because the tech isn't available on the market today (and I'm not at all sure that's correct) doesn't mean the tech isn't available to some, or creatable by intelligent people. I just don't see this as that far away.
EDIT: The airdog seems like it's everything this wants to be, but large enough for a go-pro. I see no reason at all they couldn't miniaturize it all.
Flexable/foldable frame...check. Size issue...check. Battery life...irrelevant (so long as you get over 1 minute)...so check. What were the other 2 technologies you say don't exist?

This is absolutely 100% not possible at this time. Not in this format at least. I fly quads. I manufacture quads on a mass production basis. If this was a single technological step away from where we are currently, then maybe it could happen, but this is at least 5 technologies that do not currently exist or are in very early development. Just to start out with having a flexible frame that can support flight is quite a concept. Don't even get me started on the wrist watch size. The smallest quads out there measure about 2" square using 5mm brushed motors, and a 100MAh lipo battery. The best flight time you can get with it is about 5-7 minutes and takes about 15 minutes to charge(from a USB port). that doesn't leave anything for powering a camera, or GPS.
Anyways, the technology doesn't exist to make this thing close to feasible. Closest thing like this on the market right now is this:
https://www.airdog.com/