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Media Platforms Design TeamCredit: Northrop Grumman CorporationA small unmanned aerial vehicle has proved it could have a big impact on future strike operations. During tests at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., a 12-foot-wingspan aircraft called the Bat, succeeded in jamming radar. The Bat has been around for a while, used overseas to conduct surveillance and serve as a communications link in remote places, but Northrop Grumman installed electronic warfare equipment on one for this test....

The Dutch-led investigation of the last year’s crash of flight MH17 has confirmed that the plane was taken down by a strike fired by a Russian-made Buk missile system. The report goes on to say that Ukraine had reason to close the airspace, but stops short at assigning any blame for the actual firing of the missile. The 297-page report is exhaustive, but lays out the factual findings up front: The in-flight disintegration of the airplane near the Ukrainian/Russian border was the result of the detonation of a warhead....

Emulators are fantastic. With just a little bit of software, you can replicate every console that you had (and didn’t have) on tiny pieces of very cheap hardware. Every 90s console on a Raspberry Pi? No problem. It’s not quite the same as using old hardware though, which is a problem YouTuber wermy set out to solve by cramming a whole computer into a Game Boy’s body. Related Story17 Million People Are About To Pay More For NetflixWhile this gadget still looks like a Game Boy on the outside, it’s very much computer on the inside with a Raspberry Pi Zero working as its brain....

Tis the season for culturally-encouraged pyromania and socially-acceptable casual explosives use, but you don’t want to be on the wrong side of the law. To help, the American Pyrotechnics Association has its yearly round-up of fireworks laws broken down state-by-state. For a top level glance, there’s the map you see above. Reds don’t allow anything. Tans allow sparklers and a few other novelty items. Blues allow some of the big stuff....

The sinking of the Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad was caused by confusion among the ship’s crew, leading them to think that an approaching commercial tanker was actually a stationary object. In the collision’s wake, a design defect doomed the ship by letting in water that worsened flooding. That’s the preliminary assessment by the Accident Investigation Board Norway, which is looking into the incident that sank one-fifth of Norway’s frigate fleet. The preliminary report, shared by USNI News, is based upon interviews with both the Norwegian Navy frigate Helge Ingstad and the civilian crew of the tanker Sola TS....

Inspired by mountain goats and a desire to help people, NY-based industrial designer Kai Lin formed an unlikely alliance with an adaptive climber—Arc’teryx athlete Craig DeMartino. With empathy, efficiency, and a willingness to adapt, the pair created a holy grail for adaptive rock climbers: A badass prosthetic foot that doesn’t just level the playing field, but dishes—if not super powers—a real sense of empowerment. Kai Lin researches by doing and learning at an indoor climbing facility in Brooklyn, NY....

Here’s a great talking point for your next conversation lull: What do you reckon is the law broken the most? Speeding, most likely. Jaywalking is in the picture. And somewhere in the top tier must be drivers cutting off pedestrians at crosswalks, where the person on the street has the nominal right-of-way.Trouble is, being legally in the right only gets you so far when one party is hurtling along in a 3,000-pound suit of armor and the other is pushing a stroller....

It’s starting to look like Elon Musk is serious about his tunnel. The SpaceX and Telsa founder, known for flashy projects that promise a spacefaring future for humanity, is now talking about building a tunnel from his office to a spot near the Los Angeles airport, LAX.View full post on TwitterMusk says the tunnel will start “across from my desk at SpaceX. Crenshaw and the 105 Freeway, which is 5 mins from LAX....

James Dean, the iconic Rebel Without a Cause actor, may have died in 1955, but he’s coming back to life in a new form: as a computer-generated image.The CGI will be used in an upcoming film about the Vietnam War, Finding Jack, according to The Hollywood Reporter.We’ve taken a closer look at the two visual effects companies that will be working on the Dean double: MOI Worldwide and Image Engine.James Dean died in a car accident in 1955, when he was just 24 years old....

Media Platforms Design Team3D printers come in many forms: big, small, oblong, plastic, metal, and more. It seems that for every personality, there’s a printer. However, even with the additive manufacturing boom accelerating in the last few years, most printers share a common denominator—a four-digit price tag. For the professional that price may be worth it, but a hobbyist might be harder to sell. David Jones and Michael Armani want to sell a 3D printer everyone can afford....

Microsoft is among the companies dabbling in DNA to store data, a sci-fi prompt that gets very exciting very quickly. A tech startup called Twist Bioscience reports that it has sold 10 million custom oligonucleotides (strings of nucleic acid polymers, i.e. DNA or RNA molecules) to Microsoft. The tech giant is sending over lines of code as A’s, C’s, G’s, and T’s —the 0’s and 1’s of DNA code—and Twist is building molecules to those specs....

Media Platforms Design Team MUGELLO, Italy — We saw American-style MotoGP mania first-hand last summer in California—quite the scene. But the fervent following of the motorcycle world’s equivalent of Formula 1 that we just witnessed here at the Grand Prix of Italy? Talk about a scene and a half: 96,000 fans nestled along the side of a 3.259-mile track—enough, honestly, to put most U.S. sporting events to shame. Seven-time world champion Valentino Rossi is a local legend, and the banners supporting him formed a sea of yellow among the rowdy revelers, some of whom brought their own crate engines for as much disruptive noise as possible....

To figure out the fundamental mysteries of the universe, sometimes you have to make things really damn cold. NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory takes this to the extreme by creating the coldest place in the universe. On Sunday, that laboratory is finally heading into space to study what happens when atoms get really, really frigid.NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has spent the last few years building a chamber to cool a handful of atoms down to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero....

A Norwegian warship is in bad shape after a night time collision with a civilian vessel. The captain of the frigate HNoMS Helge Ingstad deliberately ran it aground after the collision, allegedly to prevent her from sinking. Helge Instad is one of NATO’s most capable small warships. The incident took place in Hjeltefjorden, east of the Norwegian city of Bergen. The Helge Ingstad collided with the Maltese-flagged tanker Sola TS as the tanker left the Sture oil shipment terminal with a load of crude oil....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn March 25, James Cameron became the third person—and the only one traveling solo—to visit Challenger Deep, 6.8 miles below the western Pacific Ocean’s surface. With the help of the Australia-based Acheron Project, the director engineered the Deepsea Challenger, a one-of-a-kind vertical-descent submersible equipped with HD 3D cameras [1], tools to gather scientific samples [2], and specially designed batteries housed in plastic cases filled with silicon oil [3]....

Media Platforms Design TeamQ: I’ve built a large deck and a shed and fixed up a bathroom. Now I want to build an addition onto the back of my house. I’ve never worked with an architect before–do I need one for this job? Also, is it a good idea to split some of the work with a contractor?A: It sounds like you have enough mechanical experience to tackle the project, but you may not have the design expertise, so I’d recommend getting an architect to draw the plans....

When a trio of Russian military ships pull into a Cuban port this Friday, the visit–the first since the Soviet collapse in 1991–is likely to rekindle ugly Cold War memories for many Americans. Cuba is the final port of call on a tour that included visits to the national governments in Latin America most antagonistic to America, including Venezuela and Nicaragua. The Russians, and many in the media, are touting the journey as a show of strength....

Often overlooked in the vastness of space, Pluto’s tiny moon Charon has gotten ahold of some major celebrities: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler. That’s because the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has approved names for the moon’s surface-level features, with a focus on names in science fiction and historical myth.NASA’s New Horizons space probe has been exploring the outer reaches of the solar system since 2013. One of its main objectives was to better understand global geology and morphology of the dwarf planet and its tiny moon Charon....

Media Platforms Design TeamHere at the FIRST Robotics Championship in Atlanta, Ga., the students wear team t-shirts, jumpsuits, flowing capes and tick costumes. They wear pig ears, tiger hoods, foam daisy headbands and hard hats with narwhal tusks glued to them. They dye their hair blue, green and hot pink. And so do some of the adult teachers and engineers who serve as their mentors.The infectious enthusiasm surrounding FIRST extends to—and sometimes starts with—the 40,000 volunteer mentors who work closely with the teams....

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the first in a new class of aircraft carriers, will be delivered to the U.S. Navy three months later than planned. The Navy says the delay is necessary to resolve issues with the ship’s nuclear propulsion system and elevators designed to lift munitions up to the hangar. The technologically ambitious Ford, which introduces several technologies to frontline service, is already at least two years behind schedule....