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Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit plans to launch satellite-ferrying rockets into low-Earth orbit from the wing of a converted commercial airliner. On Sunday, the company got one step closer to realizing the goal when it conducted the first captive carry of its rocket “Launcher One,” strapped to the wing of a Boeing 747-400. The company is steadily gaining momentum. Last month, Virgin Orbit hitched the rocket to the side of its jet for the first time, although the plane didn’t take flight....

Media Platforms Design TeamAt the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the tech press oohed and ahhed at the beautiful 4K displays (those with about four times the resolution of a 1080p HDTV) from Sony, LG, and Samsung, then gulped when we saw the $20,000-plus prices. It’s a familiar story in the world of technology—an interesting product category gets introduced in the pricing stratosphere, but if you give it a few years, costs come down to where mere mortals live....

Pressure-treated wood has been around for nearly 70 years, yet most of us still know very little about this popular outdoor building material. To start, pressure-treated wood is softwood lumber, typically southern yellow pine, that’s been chemically treated to resist rot, decay and termites. The boards are rolled into giant pressurized tanks where chemical preservatives are forced deep into the wood’s fibers. The result is an exterior-grade wood that’s ideal for building decks, fences, sheds, picnic tables, swing sets, and other outdoor projects....

ThinkGeek usually has the market cornered on April Fools Day gadget gags that become real. But this year Hyperkin got in on the act with Smart Boy, a device that turns your iPhone 6 into a Game Boy that can play old Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles on the phone’s screen. Hyperkin released the design on March 31 with a wink that this was an April 1 gag. But when the internet responded with “OMG I have to have this” levels of enthusiasm, the company said it would put the once-fake product into development....

The lethal A-10 Warthog now comes with added firepower. Thanks to an urgent request, A-10s and F-16s in Afghanistan are now armed with the new APKWS laser-guided rockets, giving them a deep magazine of high-precision weapons.Related StoryWhy the A-10 Warthog Is Such a Badass PlaneThe APKWS or Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System is a guided version of the veteran 2.75-inch Folding Fin Aerial Rocket, an old-school rocket that has been in service since 1948....

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a vital privacy buffers between you and the internet, that’s more vital to protect your privacy than ever before. It’s also handy if you’re a tech-savvy high school student and you want to play a game like Fortnite in class. Ever since the popular battle royale game released its mobile app, schools have been battling against students who are battling in class. Fortunately, biggest mobile game since Pokèmon Go eats up a fair amount of data, which means that students would typically have to rely on school Wi-Fi to play it....

Media Platforms Design TeamTalk about worth the wait. Calling the 2015 Corvette Z06 “the big nasty” and “the most capable Corvette ever”, General Motors’ president Mark Reuss could hardly contain himself when he introduced Chevy’s new supercar. We can’t blame him. The new Z06’s 6.2-liter supercharged V-6 LT4 engine churns out 625 horsepower and 635 lb-ft of torque. And according to Reuss, the car has the most aerodynamic downforce of any car ever tested in GM’s wind tunnel, helping it to best even the ZR1’s fastest track times....

Media Platforms Design TeamRemember when Gymkhana impresario Ken Block’s 2006 Mercedes-Benz CLS55 AMG was slathered in what was reported to be an $80,000 matte black paint job? Carmakers like BMW have since offered far lower priced light-absorbing possibilities, so it was only a matter of time before the aftermarket responded with an even more affordable alternative.The latest involves a company called Dip Your Car, which touts spray-on, easily removed matte paints....

1 | The effort to replace the M-16 rifle, as well as its more compact variant, the M4, has been a long, epic and largely tragic tale. One attempt would have created a modular weapon system, called the Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW), with an integrated grenade launcher and laser-rangefinder. That all-in-one system was scrapped because of excessive weight, and subsequent attempts to salvage the core of that weapon—the XM8 assault rifle—have also failed, highlighting some of the worst aspects of the weapons procurement process....

Padlocks are a convenient way to keep your stuff safe from opportunistic kleptos, but they’re not invincible. When it comes to Master Locks, you don’t even need a bolt cutter to get through. These locks have a mechanical quirk that makes it easy to guess the code in eight tries or less. The technique, developed by prolific hacker Samy Kamkar, is a little involved but still relatively simple to understand. By lifting the lock’s shackle and slowly turning the dial, it’s possible to identify a pair of specific points where the lock’s internals rub up against each other in a certain way....

If you copy some text from an email or website or message board and then paste it somewhere else, there’s no way anyone could trace that back to you right? Wrong. There’s absolutely a way, and it’s not even that complicated. Tom (@umpox) explains exactly how this is possible in a fascinating little post on Medium, where he describes how he’s also put it to use. As he explains: A few years ago I was a member of a team that participated in competitive tournaments across a variety of video games....

Researchers at MIT have developed a new way to help autonomous vehicles operate in snowy weather conditions. While sensors like cameras, radar, and lidar can be obscured by snow—or neglect to see the flakes at all—a ground-based radar system that pulses underground could offer the cars some clues. Operating self-driving cars in hazardous weather conditions, like the snow, has long been a concern, as much of the vehicles’ testing is conducted in warm, sunny states....

Hypersonic weapons are now a top priority for the Pentagon.The new weapons are exposed to temperatures of up to 17,000 degrees, necessitating the development of new, heat-resistant materials.Nanotech and carbon nanotubes could offer a way forward to building hypersonic weapon bodies.The U.S. government is pushing into hypersonic weapons in a big way, with at least five different weapons programs currently in development. Nanotechnology is shaping up to be a key tech that will enable delivery systems to survive traveling through the atmosphere at Mach 5 and above, with carbon nanotubes showing promise as strong, lightweight material that rapidly sheds heat....

SatellitesHow It Works: Instead of traveling through towers, which are antennas connected to fiber-optic cables in the ground, data comes from low-Earth-orbit satellites that are calibrated to rotate with Earth and hold position above the region they serve. Right now companies such as HughesNet and Exede use the technology to sell internet to people who live beyond AT&T; or Verizon’s reach. Other than the dishes and hardware you need on the ground, the satellites themselves are impervious to terrestrial disasters....

Are you a savvy shopper looking to purchase a new home? If so, you should consider foreclosures–they’re a great way to get a house on the cheap if you’re working with a limited budget.So if you decide to go this route, here’s what you need to know. What is a Foreclosure?A foreclosure is a home that has been repossessed by the bank or a mortgage company as a way to repay the debt owed by the previous homeowners....

First there was Proxima b, the Earth-sized planet orbiting the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri. Then came the seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting TRAPPIST-1, a star 39 light-years away, three of which are in the habitable zone. Now we welcome a new tantalizing exoplanet to the group, the second closest we know of, also Earth-sized and temperate, orbiting a calm red dwarf star: Ross 128 b. Ross 128 is an old, inactive red dwarf star that sits 11 light-years away....

MAKE A DISASTER KITBY ERIN SCOTTBERGIt’s always a good idea to be prepared for the unexpected. Having an up-to-date emergency disaster kit in your home and car can help your family better fare an emergency of any type, be it an extended blackout, a category 5 hurricane or a terrorist attack. Pack your emergency disaster kit in a waterproof, airtight container, such as a garbage can or plastic tote box, and store it in a safe and accessible location....

Welcome back to Popular Mechanics’ Riddle of the Week. We are currently in the middle of a series of knights and knaves puzzles, which take place on an island with two types of people: knights, who always tell the truth, and knaves, who always lie. Except this week we are setting sail for a new island. On this new island, apparently part of an archipelago, there are three types of people: knights, who always tell the truth, knaves, who always lie, and spies, who can lie or tell the truth at will....

In the history of comic books, rarely has a mastermind come up with a weapon quite as unabashedly cool as the Airborne Laser. Take a relatively standard Boeing 747 aircraft, and load it with a massive chemical laser. And not just any laser, but a megawatt-class beam weapon with an impressive name: COIL, short for Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser. Thanks to a deformable mirror that changes shape using hundreds of twitching actuators, the Airborne Laser (ABL) can account for the atmospheric turbulence that would normally distort and smother a beam traveling at long distances....

The rumor is now a fact: Mazda announced today that it would bring back the legendary rotary engine, though not as the main powerplant of a car. Instead, a version of the rotary will act as a range extender in one of two electric vehicles the brand will debut for 2020. As Popular Mechanics noted in our recent feature about the story and legacy of the Wankel rotary, the engine hasn’t been featured in a car since the Mazda RX-8 was canceled in 2018....