Tomorrow Daily 008: Sub-orbital space capsules, Wi-Fi light art, and more

A commercial flight in the sub-orbital space inside a capsule that is lifted by a balloon. Sounds like a bunch of nope, never gonna, not ever in a million years do me. Thanks to the miracle of science, a paralyzed man was able to move his arm with just his thoughts. No, there's no punch line, that's just awesome. And an artist uses Wi-Fi signal strength and long exposure photography to create a new fun art exhibit. Proving once and for all I will never understand contemporary art. Guy's it's our last show of the week. Welcome to Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] Hello citizens of the internet, welcome to Tomorrow Daily, your absolute number one favorite tech show that you've ever seen in your whole entire life in the history of the internet. Wow, that's pretty good. It's grown exponentially but we have done eight shows now. Yes, that is true, this is our eighth show. I'm your host Ashley Esqueda joining me is always my co-host, my partner in technology, crime, Rich DeMuro. We have such a rap sheet. Yeah you're, you're rap sheet is like a big giant folder. Mine's small. I, I gotta build up here. Mine looks like the dot matrix paper you used to get back in the day, you remember? Paper ream. Yeah, it's all connected. With the perforated edges you gotta peel off, yeah. You guys probably have no idea what we're talking about. Tell me you do. Dot matrix paper. I don't even know what they're saying. These two are so old. It's been, it was really a cool day in technology. I found a bunch of futuristic stuff. So did Rich. [MUSIC] And we cannot wait to tell you all about all the cool things that happened, so let's hit the headlines. As I mentioned in the introduction if you have ever thought to yourself well, there's nothing I'd love more than to go to sub orbital space inside a smallish pascal powered by a balloon and a terra foil. Here is your chance, it's official. Finally. This is pretty much as I say scariest way to travel to space ever at least to me this company is called the World View. And this is footage from their test run, which was very successful, where they send a capsule up into suborbital space, where you can see the curvature of the earth. And you're not quite in official space, but. No, but no doubt. On the edge. An amazing view, 120,000 feet above the earth. I thought Six Flags, like all those tower parabooth word kind of things. Yeah. Goliath. Are like, high. This is just insane. And You're in a balloon. You're in a capsule. So, it's, you'll see it in a second. It's a capsule that is pretty large. And you climb in there. And then so you can see, here's their, 'kay. So there's the balloon. There's the capsule. Okay. And you get in there, and that's where you can see out of. It's like a window inside, you know, the space station. And then that's the parafoil. So on your way down, you, you have a little parachute basically [LAUGH] like between you and the earth. Have you ever been in a hot air balloon? Nope. Okay. So would you go in that? Nope. So you're, you're not a heights person at all. Nope, don't even like getting on a ladder. What about an airplane? Airplanes, I used to be really scared of, but it, you know, it's the thing about like turbulence really freaks me out. But it's sustained heights that I can feel moving. So, I don't like being in high places for long periods of time where it kind of wobbles, where it just feels unstable to me. This just seems like probably the worst way to travel to space. But with that said. It might be the cheapest. It's probably the cheapest. Yep. So I think that's what they're going for here. But you would get the experience of a lifetime. True. That's for sure. Very True. And that view. I mean look at that view guys. Look at that view. This is really kinda amazing. So they're looking to, World View is looking to the thing Commercial Balloon Space Flights. And they just, this is their first full flight profile. They used a balloon to like lift the capsule up to like Rich said, a 120,000 feet and then at 50,000 feet on your way back down, this parafoil deploys and then you safely touch down back on Earth. And they did this very successful test run, where they were able to really easily pin point the landing spot. Right, that's, that's the tough part, you wanna land in the same spot. Yeah. You don't wanna like really Randomly land in the ocean like Sandra Bullock. Exactly. And this is going to be a two hour experience. Two hours? So, I mean, that's, that's a decently long flight. Yeah, it's pretty good. I'm, for me, they're gonna launch this in 2016 as a commercial endeavor. And it seems like in the next couple years we're gonna be seeing a lot of space flights go commercial. Space [INAUDIBLE] is coming, now we have this World View, which is a little different. Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic. So many but I am very curious to see A, how much this will cost. Mm-hm. Probably be, like you said, it'll probably be the cheapest. Probably the cheapest, out of everything. Like maybe, I'm gonna guess, let's guess. Or should we predict? Ooh, predictions. Prediction, let's predict. I'm gonna say it's gonna cost, $50,000. Ooh. I, I feel like this is one of those like, Vegas experiences. Like, where you go to Vegas and it's like, you know, you have a couple beers and all the sudden you, you know. You just decide suddenly to do it? Exactly. You're like, should we go to space? Okay, let's go to space. Let's go to that indoor skydiving thing. It's the same type of thing. Yeah. All right. Exactly. How much does it cost? And, and you'll overspend for that too. I'm gonna say maybe $10,000. $10,000, wow, you're going cheap. If not, if not cheaper. If not cheaper. I think this could be pretty cheap. Pretty affordable, okay. Yeah, because I mean, look at those supplies they're using. There's nothing like space age material. Sure, it's a [INAUDIBLE] balloon. It's like, I did this as a kid. No, but it's like a parasol and I mean, it's, it's carrying a person. You got to stay safe I'm sure there are lots of. It's made, it's made from like, the old 80's parachute pants. Come on. Scary. Yeah. They use MC Hammer's pants. Again, the old references, they just keep coming. Man, this is like the old technology show. We call it Tomorrow Daily, we actually meant like, Old School Daily. Yeah. Decades Ago Daily, yeah. Decades Ago Daily. 20 years ago daily. But we're hip on the new stuff too. We re, we are. Just like this next story, which is amazing. We did not even have a joke about this cuz this is the coolest thing ever. So this man that you're about to see, his name is Ian and he was paralyzed in an accident a few years ago, and he was, he's quadriplegic, right? Um-hm. That means he's all four. All four arms and legs, and here he is, and he's using a device that was implanted into his brain. It was a three hour surgery and this is called the neural bridge, and he just moved his hand. This is monumental. I know it doesn't look like much, but he just moved his hand with only his thoughts. And this is called the NeuroBridge. And how it works is it almost bypasses, it bypasses your electrical systems. So instead of having to have your brain tell your spinal cord to tell you hand to move. If your brain is telling your muscles to move with that sleeve. Yeah, so, it kind of like translates it to that sleeve, the sleeve kind of like. Like instead of having to go from here to here, it cuts out this part, and brings it right to here, and says okay, here muscle, here's what we need you to do. Right. I think it's pretty amazing. I think that we're just seeing more and more advancements in this field. Yeah. And. And this is the first time we it's ever, we've ever seen somebody very specifically move a, a muscle without, like with just their thoughts and this this Neurobridge installed. So this is crazy. And that's what's so amazing, is that. There are thoughts, like you're brain is really a computer. Yeah. A processor there's electric stuff going on there. Now its a very complicated system in there, so that's why and of course [CROSSTALK]. it's very difficult to repair right and so it's just one of these things where the more we learn about it the more we can understand it the more we can do this kind of stuff. Mind boggling. I mean, yeah. You see something like this, and I mean, I told Rich this morning. Like, this is why I love technology, because I woke up this morning not expecting to see that, and then I saw it. And I was like, the sky is the limit! Like, science is amazing. Well, but you didn't want to go on the Virgin, or the galactic thing so I mean, the sky's the limit The sky's the limit but you're staying right here. Sub-orbital state. Fee firmly planted in the ground. Now that's the point of the sky is the limit. [LAUGH] They don't say sub-orbital space is the limit, Rich. That's not the phrase. So the sky doesn't go, okay, I see what you're. Yeah. What you're saying. But this is really incredible and there were five people chosen to participate in this clinical trial. And hopefully in the coming years we'll be seeing a lot more of this like Rich said. And we'll be able to kind of start seeing some really amazing applications and progress being made in this arena. We've already seen so much in the last you know, few years. Then the people, kudos to the smart people out there, that are doing that. Yeah, high fives to you guys. We're just talking about it. There are people that wake up and are doing miracles every day in science Yes. And it's just, it's amazing. So cool. Thank you guys. So awkwardly move on and transition to our next story because obviously it's very difficult to go from the amazing to the artistic, and this is something really really cool that I loved. I saw the pictures of it today. This is an artist who has come up with a way to make art out of Wi-Fi signals, and so this is his art. He had an exhibition. This is called the chandelier digitalserial.com. Is the name of the website. And so you can see all of these phones that are hanging, and they change color. And what it is, is the signal strength of the wi-fi for each of those phones at any given time. So blue is less strong, and red is very strong. So as people walk through, you can see there's different there's different electromagnetic waves and then the signal changes based on what's going on. So when this lady walks by you'll see the phone change. Wow. Cause it. And she hits it, too. And of course she [CROSSTALK] runs into it. So, so we have people doing really awesome stuff for society. And this, which really doesn't contribute to society at all, but it's kinda fun and it looks cool. But nobody really understands what this guy's doing. No, listen, I understand, okay. So what he's doing is, is [CROSSTALK] I get he's making a picture, but my point is like [CROSSTALK]. I mean, it's art. Can I, can I paraphrase though? Art doesn't need to have a point, that's why it's art. Hm, now that's true. Okay. Just like, it's like in Willy Wonka he said candy doesn't need to have a point, that's why it's candy. Seri, well for dentists to make money. But here's the thing. I do like, [LAUGH]. I do like what he does with the, or it makes me think about something that I think about a lot. Yeah. That in this room right now, anywhere you are, there are so many wireless signals. Yeah. And not just signals, but like, information moving through your like radio stations. Sure, right through us. Information, data, whatever, I mean, all the time. All the time. And so this guy took this idea of color with signal strength, and he put the LDS and [UNKNOWN] kit together. And walked through long exposure photography, and this is some of the photos that he came up with. So, this is WiFi signal strength being seen as light graffiti, which is awesome! This is so, so, cool. So here, you can see like, sometimes you can see the ghost of his image like inside these crazy sort of cocoons of light. So he's sort of whirling around a phone right now [CROSSTALK] to or some sort of like device [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah, a phone and a [UNKNOWN] kit connected to an LED. Okay. S band of LED. He liked. So really what you're seeing there is he's, he's long exposure, the signal. But that's the signal that it's sort of catching through the device. Right. The strength of the signal that the device is seeing. Okay. So. It looks, it looks really cool. It looks lie, It's really cool. It looks like it looks like that scene. Okay, there, oh, look at that. Yeah you can see [UNKNOWN]. A person behind it. Okay that's ghostly because you can't, you can. Yeah. Because the light is so bright. And the long exposure, he's kind of a very faint memory inside these pictures, which is really awesome. Reminds me of the ghost in Ghostbusters. Oh, okay. That's kind of what it looks like a little bit. Very ephereal. So digital ephereal is is a very apropos website for him to have and yeah, he's actually opened this up. He released an app. it's, that helps people sort of use the same thing to see the signal strength no matter where they are. Which is really neat. And you can, he wants people to participate and send their results in, and do their own long-exposure photography, which is really cool. So if you head over you can see in the show notes if you go to the article for this show on CNET's site. You can see the, the link and everything. I'm just imagining my wife coming home and seeing me. Just like waving around like randomly. With a phone, with like a camera there and she's like. What are you doing? What are you doing? You're like I'm making art. It's art, baby. Art! It's art. Oh boy, well, we are going to take a quick break, but we will be right back and we are gonna talk about something really cool that Rich did today. And then we're gonna get into your feedback so stick around. [MUSIC] Hello, and welcome back. We are back from our, our short break. And we are ready to talk about something really cool that Rich did. It's, I don't, I feel like maybe we should make this a segment, but you guys can tell us if you want. That's like a cool thing I did. [INAUDIBLE] No. No. Oh. I almost said [INAUDIBLE] Never fails [INAUDIBLE] Oh my gosh. I almost just said something that I should never say. Never. Wow. You'd have watched me punch you right on camera. I know, you, yeah, that, that would not have been good. So, a cool thing that you did. [LAUGH] Rich, actually went this morning to a 75 Years of Batman Exhibit at Warner Brothers, at the actual studio that owns that franchise. Yeah, we taped the show in Los Angeles, so we go to these kinds of places once in a while. Never been to the Warner Brothers lot. Yeah? I've been here for a while. One of the coolest lots I've ever been to, so beautiful, so old Hollywood. And so they're doing this new exhibit there which is like behind the scenes tour: and 75 Years of Batman. Okay. So they have all the old props, memorabilia and guess who kicked it all off? Who did? Danny DeVito. What? Yeah. [CROSSTALK] The Penguin himself. The penguin, yeah. And he was, Frank Reynolds. It's Always Sunny. Frank Reynold's came out You know him, see, I guess, yeah. The new kids know him as the It's Always Sunny character. Frank Reynolds on It's Always Sunny, right. I know him as The Penguin. Tiny in real life. Oh yeah, no, he's a little man. Smaller than I thought. He's like 4'10". But just, see how small he is there? He's with the bat signal! Amazing! Yeah, he's with the bat signal kicking it all off. So basically they have all kinds of batmobiles on display. They have all the the bat costumes. Oh, from all the different movies. Yeah, from all the different movies. That's awesome. So Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, all the different batmobiles. Do they have some of the Adam West stuff to from like the 60s? I, you know, I didn't see that Did you see like a lot of tv stuff? I'm sure, I'm sure they did. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know may be they you know,. Maybe Warner Brothers, I don't know, They probably did. Maybe they do somewhere. But it looked really cool. It was really fun. I mean, it had a little smoke machine going. Man, look at those crazy old Bat Mobiles from the 90s. Right? And the funny thing was, I was looking inside a lot of these BatMobiles, and the insides were inspired, or they looked like they were from airplanes. Like airplanes cockpits. Like a lot of the controls look like that. You know, stuff that you see on TV, like there is one of the examples. That is so cool. It's sort of like in real life never looks as cool. Like, they photographed, like this looks phenomenal, right? Yeah, that looks amazing. And in real life. The attention to detail is incredible. It doesn't look as good as real life, but the way it photographs, and that's why movies are amazing. Because it's so epic, right? It looks epic, exactly. Yeah. Lot of fun today. You know, Batman is just a, anytime a Batman movie comes out, people see it. Yeah of course. So it's just kind of fun. What was your favorite thing that you saw at the Batman exposition. I think it was the old school Batmobile from like when I was in high school. Like I think it was the '95 movie. So the Tim Burton, the Tim Burton Batman? Yeah. That one, right there. That Batmobile. That's the Tim Burton Batmobile. Was it that one? No it was the one before that. The one before that? Okay. Anyway it was one of the, it was like the old school, like the classic one. Yeah, yeah, well the Tim Burton batmobile from Batman and Batman returns, the Keaton batmobile. [CROSSTALK] There you go, that was the one, the Keaton one exactly. That's a really good Batmobile, one of my favorites. So, it was just fun, you know. That's awesome. It's just one of those things like you don't. The new batmobile. It's just one of those things that you get to do when you live in LA and you know, and anyway it's back at Warner Brothers Studio Tour. So if you're visiting LA, you can actually go to this, but I think you have to, like, pay for a VIP tour which is probably way expensive and so I don't know. It's actually not. So the tour on that lot is, like, between 50 and 80 bucks a person. Okay, so it's not too bad. Which isn't [INAUDIBLE] and it's for the whole lot so I'm sure this is included. And it really is, like, a nice lot. like, they shoot a lot of T.V. shows there, I had no idea. Like- What else you, what else you serve? Like they, Two and a Half Men, one of your favorite shows. Oh. Oh yeah. Ooh, you know me, I love some Ashton Kutcher. You're a big Ashton Kutcher fan Gilmore Girls? Oh yeah, your favorite show. Look at that. Amazing. [LAUGH] Oh my favorite. All of our favorites. All of our favorites. You said, I think you said Conan shoots in there too. Yeah. Conan shoots there which is really cool. So I was trying to figure out which car was his you know? You just have to look for the nicest car it's always the person. it's the limousine that drops him off every day [CROSSTALK] picks him up at his house and takes him. Smart. Conan doesn't drive come on I like the way you think. Some day we'll get there. No, we won't. wait they don't pick you up every day to come in here. What. What. [CROSSTALK] time to go. [CROSSTALK] Now on that awkward note. That's really cool. I, I wish I had seen that, I, I might have to go see that now. You, I think you should. I have to go, go arrange a little trip to the Warner Bros lot cuz I have never been there, either. And it is beautiful. That's pretty awesome. So, with that being said, we have to get into your feedback because you guys had some things to say about Google Cardboard. Oh, yeah? Pretty awesome. So we have some tweets from you guys. The, the hashtag yesterday was TD cardboard, and some of you guys really stepped up your game and sent some great stuff. So we have a tweet from actually Asher, and he says, I'm totally going to build one this weekend. It'll be like I have an Oculus Rift, but not really. Not really. Very true. Very true. And then Perry1238 says once I get the materials, I'm gonna build it. How about doing a DIY project on an episode of Tomorrow Daily? I feel like they already have those shows on Cnet. And then Walter Pavlik says I don't think I will be making me own, but I did see a link where I could buy one for $25 bucks, might have to after payday. And I went and looked that up. And in fact it is Dodocase who makes very nice cases for iPads and things. They make this $20 Google cardboard VR toolkit. So, they get all these pieces together and they put it all together for you. [UNKNOWN]. You get it for 20 bucks plus shipping, but unfortunately here's one drawback. What? For six week shipping, because the demand was so. That means the demand was awesome. For 20 bucks? So overwhelming that they just rush, people just rush to the site and they're like I gotta have it. I like how it's already on sale. It's like normally $45. It's like already on sale for $20. Oh yeah, it's immediately on sale. Immediately on sale. How does that work? It just came out yesterday, like. I don't know how that works. It was on sale yesterday right after IO from $45, and then 24 hours later they discounted it. Oh. Well, maybe. No, no, its, you're probably right. Its just that immediate discount? I think you've got me Ashley No I think, I think you're right But I think that's cool. Maybe we should get one expense one for the show May, maybe we'll pick one up and will put it together on the show. I'm sure that'll be 20 minutes of awkwardness where I can't figure out how to put together a. Good idea. A cardboard. We'd have to do like a story wall while I was putting it together. Yeah, it'd be like IKEA. Like every time I get halfway through IKEA, there's one part that I've put in the wrong way. And I have to like take everything apart and put it back. That's the worst feeling in the universe. I always hate when I do like a drawer backwards. [CROSSTALK] And you've got the bottom up. Or the rails. Well, you know when like the part that's not supposed to be exposed to the sun is like up. Exposed? You're like no. That's not it. That doesn't look pretty. Yep. Anyway. That happens to me all the time. And then finally our very last bit of user feedback is a, our phonetographer of the day. And our phonetographer of the day is Karan Mehra, or Karen, it might be Karen. Karan Mehra or Karen Mehra. I hope I pronounced your name right, or close. Karan. And they say that this was taken on an iPhone 5s when I took a school trip to Barcelona. I was near the boats and the mall called the Mara Magnum. So, that is beautiful. Ar, Barcelona. I've heard Barcelona is just beautiful. I've heard that, too. I've never been. I went to Madrid last year and everyone in Madrid, I'll say, oh, what should, what should I see? Barcelona. [LAUGH] Barcelona. [LAUGH] Don't do that. Don't come here. When someone comes to your city, don't tell them another city to go to. They're not going there. [LAUGH] Tell them something in that city. It's gotta be there. [LAUGH] Tell them something, there. [LAUGH]. You know, that picture's really gorgeous. Luke, can we pull it up one more time and talk about the the ships? I really love this this dock picture, and there's actually a man with, like, a little boy or a little girl. And I don't know if they're holding hands, but it's like really sweet. Yeah. There's kind of an artistic quality about it. There's a lot of sadness in this picture. What? Again I don't under, maybe I'm not understanding contemporary art. Maybe Richard is the art expert here. It's not sad [UNKNOWN]. See I told you I don't understand pictures. I don't understand art. But no I, I agree, it's very. [CROSSTALK] It's beautiful. There's something nice about that little couple of the dad and the kid, and the frame. Yeah, and I really like how the sky is half and half clouds rolling in, and it's very, it's very nice delight. Well, done. Well, played well played I like it. If you want to submit your photographer picture, you can do that hashtag phonetogopher or you can email us tomorrow at cnet.com. We just saw that lower third right there that's our hashtag of the day hashtag pdk capsule we want to know. Yeah, this is we need to know this. We know two things. Number 1, if you would go on a World View capsule ride. like just like straight up are you game. Would you go? And then the second question is. Wait do we have to qualify it like you knew you wouldn't die. Yeah, if it's a guarantee that you wouldn't. Well, there's no guarantees in life, It's always safe. It's certified safe. Okay, if it's certified safe, I'd go. Okay, so you'd go. And then. Depends how much, how much would you pay? That's the second question, how much would you pay for that trip? Would you pay $1,000 like Rich is saying, or would you pay $50,000 like I'm guessing. Quite a dif, quite a canyon. Going to be paying off that trip for a while. Yeah, that's like buying like two cars. I think they need to make it affordable. But anyway, so yes, again, will you go? And how much will you pay. TD hashtag. TDSpaceCapsule. And then also, if you want to do a selfie of like your face. Where you're like When you go up. Yeah. Whatever your face is going to be when you go up in a balloon. No, they send you up in a little balloon. Like they did with Felix Baumgartner, the same type of Okay. Technology. And that seemed pretty safe for him, I mean he jumped out! Yeah, that didn't seem crazy as he went down like this a thousand times. No, but I mean, I guess it's all right if you're in a capsule, you're not actually jumping out like a daredevil, he did,. That's true. He jumped. That is true. And he lived. So I guess it might be okay. You're like, at least 50% safer than he was because you're not. Yeah. That's very true. Yeah. Okay. So that's the end of the show. That's it. You can email us TOMORROW@CNET. COM. Tell us all of your thoughts. You're hopes, you're dreams for the show. You can always find us on social media. Yes. It is a, it's a long weekend, so find us on social media. Yeah. Take the time. Come harass us. We're on Instagram. We're on Twitter. We're on Facebook. The show is Tomorrow Daily on all those places. Sure. And then I'm Rich DeMuro. I'm Ashley Esqueda, and that's been Tomorrow Daily. Be good humans, and we will see you on Monday. Bye.