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Some software costs money, and some software is truly free. But in the middle, there’s a grey are. Perhaps one of the best examples is WinRAR with its 40-day free trial, which, as anyone who has downloaded it knows, last far longer than said time period. It’s no accident that WinRAR gives its program away for free even after its 40-day trial. It’s part of the company’s business plan: Give away core features with light pressure to pay, add special features for heavy-use customers like businesses....

The main character in The Mandalorian, is not, in fact, the Mandalorian as its title would suggest. Yes, Pedro Pascal’s helmet-clad “Mando” gets the most screen time, but it turns out the show’s titular character is really just second fiddle to baby Yoda.The internet has fallen in love with the pint-sized, big-eared alien (though don’t let looks fool you, this little guy is 50 years old). But there was one person who hadn’t quite opened his heart to the cult of baby Yoda, and that’s the Mandalorian himself....

Over the past century and a half or so, the humble automobile has seen a million advancements: fuel injection, radial-ply tires, self-driving technology, cupholders. But the immediate differences that separate a 2019 Nissan Altima from, say, a 1918 Franklin Model B Touring can be narrowed down to these ten innovations.1. Enclosed fendersLet’s start with the obvious: How about the fact that your car doesn’t have separate fenders like Jay Gatsby’s Packard?...

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: NowBase Price: $30,075 to $50,650 Competitors: Chevrolet Traverse, Dodge Durango, Ford Explorer, Honda Pilot, Hyundai Santa Fe, Mazda CX-9, Nissan PathfinderPowertrains: 2.7-liter I-4, 185 hp, 184 lb-ft; six-speed automatic, FWD; 3.5-liter V-6, 270 hp, 248 lb-ft; six-speed automatic, FWD or AWD; Hybrid-electric 3.5-liter V-6, 280 hp total output, CVT, AWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy, mfr. est.): 20-25 (I-4); 19-25/18-24 (V-6); 27-28 (hybrid)Let’s get right to our favorite feature: Driver Easy Speak, which uses a front-seat microphone and rear-seat speakers to transmit the driver’s voice to the back, like a PA system....

Take a deep breath. In and out. Simple, right? We breathe all day long without thinking, so it must be a cinch. But for our bodies, and specifically our cells, the process of breathing isn’t so easy.That’s the crux of the research from Willima G. Kaelin Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza, who on Monday morning were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The scientists have spent decades deciphering how our cells use oxygen and adapt to its loss, a condition called hypoxia....

Media Platforms Design Team1. Hawaii Gateway Energy CenterThe Idea: Whole-System DesignLovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) take pride in helping to design energy-efficient buildings that cost less than wasteful ones. The 3600-sq.-ft. Hawaii Gateway Energy Center in Kailua-Kona is a net-zero energy facility. The building forms a thermal chimney: Sun-heated air flows up and out stacks in the sloped roof, pulling air that’s been cooled by 45-degree seawater into the work space below–no fans or conventional a/c is needed....

Barring some unforeseen break in character, the Academy will not bestow Best Picture honors upon Gravity or Her. Most likely, the critics have agreed, the Academy’s preference for straight dramas and period pieces will hold true once again. American Hustle or 12 Years a Slave will take home the statue, making the remaining seven films token nominees.That’s nothing new for sci-fi movies, which have always been in the happy-to-be-nominated pool as more typical Oscar bait takes home the award....

Planck’s constant is a pretty important part of modern physics, but it’s also pretty confusing. Maybe you were wondering what it was while reading about the new kilogram definition. Well never fear, because this video from PBS Space Time will tell you everything you need to know about Planck’s constant/In the late 1800’s, physics was facing a crisis. Physicists were trying to model atomic vibrations, but they kept getting it wrong....

Some of the biggest moments in cinematic history hit your ears before they hit your eyes and keep reverberating long after you’ve left the theater: Those first spine-tingling notes from John Williams’ Star Wars Main Title; Booger’s no-contest belch in Revenge of the Nerds. But for a film’s sound team, it’s also capturing and conveying the sonic subtlety in between those memorable moments that makes a film truly memorable.“It’s long been said that you do a great job in sound when no one notices it,” says Gary Rydstrom....

Before a heat wave in Australia last November, the country was home to an estimated 75,000 spectacled fruit bats (also known as the spectacled flying fox). The bats reside mostly in the northeast state of Queensland. A heat wave hit the region between November 24 to 30, 2018. On the hottest days, November 26 and 27, temperatures were above 42 degrees C (about 107 degrees F), and the effect on the fruit bats was dramatic: At the time, locals reported seeing bats fall out of trees en masse....

Using a tiny microscope outfitted with some special gear, scientists have built a tool that can track the millions of interactions among brain cells in a mouse’s head. Hopefully one day, this technology could be applied to the human mind to help better understand conditions like autism and schizophrenia.The invention, developed at Rockefeller University in New York, is equipped with specialized group of lenses called a microlens array. The array helps the microscope capture images from multiple angles and depths on a sensor chip, which then produces a 3D record of neurons turning on and off as they communicate through electrical impulses inside the brain....

We still have years to go before the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the would-be successor to Hubble. And already the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) is looking past Webb and into a high-def future. AURA recently contracted a study for the High-Definition Space Telescope, a future telescope that the organization says will be able to hunt for extraterrestrial life around exoplanets, as well as capture some pretty ultraviolet and visible spectrum pics....

The U.S. military’s new “Stormbreaker” guided bomb has entered operational testing and could be ready for service as early as next year. The new bomb will allow combat jets to strike moving targets on the ground using sensors capable of seeing through bad weather.In 2005 a new bomb entered U.S. military service: the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB). The SDB weighs 285 pounds and is just 5.9 feet long and is equipped with glide fins and a GPS guidance system, giving it the ability to glide up to 46 miles to target and strike within 5-10 yards of the aiming point....

Media Platforms Design TeamWell, the rumors are true. Google wants its Android operating system in your car, and the company is partnering with several carmakers and one chip maker to make it happen. Google, Audi, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, and NVIDIA have joined forces to create the Open Automotive Alliance, a consortium that will work to get Google’s Android platform into vehicles, according a press release from the group.The first cars to feature Android will launch sometime in 2014....

Losing the canopy at 30,000 feet isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a person in a fighter jet, but it’s still a hell of an unpleasant experience. But it didn’t matter to the crew of an Israeli Air Force F-15.The two-person crew braved battering winds and freezing temperatures after their cockpit canopy detached in mid-flight, leaving them exposed to the elements, and landed the jet at a nearby military airfield....

Media Platforms Design TeamNo sooner do we wax poetic about a shockingly (pun intended) fun-to-ride electric motorcycle than we eulogize a late, not-so-great electric car.The Coda EV enjoyed plenty of controversy while it struggled for alt fuels fame, but the Los Angeles-based startup with Chinese-sourced components announced yesterday that it’s filing for bankruptcy protection, with assets of $50 million against $100 million of debt. Though it claimed up to 125 miles of range on a charge, the Coda suffered from terminally dull styling and a disturbingly high starting price of around $38,000, before incentives....

Composite decking is a great choice vs. wood for a variety of reasons. People choose wood plastic composite (WPC) or even plastic lumber (PL) over wood because they want the finished project to resist rot, wood-eating insects, harsh sunlight, and mold and mildew, and they never want to paint it. So, do these materials deliver? In many respects, yes. But are they maintenance-free? No material is. Though many of these products carry 25- to 50-year warranties that protect against things like rotting, splitting, peeling, and insect infestation, we’ve seen these decks fade, buckle, and harbor mildew in certain conditions especially the stuff that contains wood fibers....

Among his many, many, outlandish and ambitious projects like a Hyperloop on the eastern seaboard, tunnels under LA, or landing three rocket boosters simultaneously and putting his own Tesla Roadster in Mars orbit, Musk has proposed something smaller scale but almost as ridiculous: branded flamethrowers. View full post on TwitterAs various Musk-watchers discovered, a listing for such a flamethrower was actually up on the Boring Company website, and now the page is live, with the option to pre-order a ’thrower for $500....

Media Platforms Design TeamI mainly use Gmail, but I still have an old AOL account that occasionally receives mail. Is there a way to get it to show up within Gmail?The old AOL account is a classic remnant of booming 1990s Internet. If you’re not ready to part with it, you don’t have to: Gmail (and many other email services) can keep track of it for you. Almost all email services offer the Post Office Protocol (POP) standard, which lets email programs get messages from a server....

Researchers have breached a crowdsourced DNA database by reverse engineering a user profile.DNA testing and database sites are vulnerable to many kinds of attacks and data sales.Users must ask themselves if the potential benefits of DNA testing outweigh privacy concerns.Genealogy and security are clashing yet again, this time over the massively crowdsourced DNA database GEDmatch. MIT Technology Review reports that computer science researchers designed targeted attacks that breached the GEDmatch database by making complex search strings that let them guess much of users’ DNA....