Automated eats: Meet the Silicon Valley robot serving healthy grain bowls for $4.99

Is Mezli’s startup idea the future of restaurant labor … or just a fancy vending machine? Are robot-made grain bowls the future of cheap eats? Silicon Valley’s Mezli thinks so. (Image via Mezli’s Instagram) Susie is a local sous chef who spends her days on the line, making Mediterranean grain bowls with turmeric-coriander rice, chicken, roasted vegetables, crispy garbanzo beans and drizzles of a spicy, bright-red chermoula sauce. She’s the ideal employee: ...

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NASA’s on a mission to Mars. This Peninsula expert wants you to come along for the ride

Hiller Aviation Museum’s Jon Welte talks space travel, Martian life and Silicon Valley in space. This illustration depicts NASA’s Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars. Perseverance will land at the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater a little after 3:40 p.m. EST (12:40 p.m. PST) on Feb. 18, 2021. (Image via NASA) This time next week, Perseverance could be sitting peacefully upon Martian ground. If its landing proves a successful one, NASA’s Perseverance ...

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Every brick, every tree: How the Stanford campus is being meticulously rebuilt in Minecraft

Take a virtual tour of campus…or grab a pickaxe and just start building. Stanford’s Memorial Church and Main Quad built at a one-to-one scale in Minecraft by Michael Byun. (Photo courtesy of Michael Byun) When Stanford junior Michael Byun started building Memorial Church in Minecraft on a whim in December 2019, he had no idea how relevant his project would become in 2020 — or how big it would be. “That initial build ...

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Mavericks, Stormsurf and the fine art of predicting a monster wave

How a local surfer with a tech background created a global go-to for predicting swells The Mavericks Wave, near Pillar Point Harbor in El Granda. (Courtesy of Powerlines Productions) By August Howell This is the time of year when Mark Sponsler’s phone starts ringing and his website numbers begin climbing. “It’s really interesting. You watch the traffic on the website go from really sleepy during the summer to instantly, beginning around mid-August, start to ...

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The Stanford alum behind Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma” wants you to stop scrolling

Jeff Orlowski’s must-watch doc is an urgent wakeup call for a nation consumed by technology (Screenshot from The Social Dilemma via Netflix) Jeff Orlowski’s must-watch doc is an urgent wakeup call for a nation consumed by technology Director Jeff Orlowski (Chasing Ice; Chasing Coral) spent the better part of his early film career focused on the fossil fuel industry: amazed by the vast power its executives wielded, horrified by the consequences it was ...

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Restaurant owners thought email was a scam, but it really is $100,000 from Zuckerberg

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg donate $800,000 to their favorite Peninsula eateries so food can go to people in need Larry Chu with donated Chef Chu’s meals for staff at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View. (Photo courtesy Larry Chu) When Seiko Alba got an email from Mark Zuckerberg in late March, she was sure it was a scam. The Facebook CEO, a regular at her Palo Alto Japanese restaurant Dohatsuten, asked how she was doing. ...

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