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The U.S. Navy won’t bring back decommissioned ships as a way to grow the fleet. The ships, decommissioned from the Navy after decades of service, are rusting away at a number of “mothball fleet” locations across the United States. Navy officials have concluded that it would be too expensive to bring them back, and they would offer too few capabilities to make them worthwhile.According to Military.com, Vice Admiral Tom Moore said the service had taken a look at decommissioned vessels and concluded it just wasn’t worth it....

The train ride was as uneventful as the dozens of others the man had taken from Washington, D.C., to New York City. He watched the scenery change as he headed north past Baltimore, along the Delaware River to Philadelphia, through Newark, then into the long dark tunnel on the final approach to New York’s Pennsylvania Station. Throughout the trip, the device in his pocket—the size of a portable hard drive, all black, with a single button on the center of one side and a blinking blue LED light above it—remained silent....

‘IT’S A PREGNANCY’Mark Conn | Administrative Assistant | Age: 44 | Time in line: 22 HoursMedia Platforms Design TeamWhat are you missing to be here?Just work.What one thing do you wish the iPhone could do that it can’t?I think the No. 1 answer is going to be GPS. I think you’ll probably hear a lot of that.What has been the worst thing about waiting in line so far?The worst thing is the heat, and being wet last night-not being able to be dry....

Media Platforms Design TeamToday’s professional-grade cordless power tools rival traditional corded models in almost every category. Thanks to the new crop of lithium-ion batteries and brushless motors, cordless tools now offer similar torque and speed in a package that keeps getting lighter and better, all while providing longer runtime on a single battery charge and the convenience of losing the cord. But something new is around the corner for cordless tools....

Back in the 1940s, with the country expanding and demand for telephones increasing, the Bell phone companies decided to implement a bold new plan: area codes.The phone industry was radically different back then. Until 1982, the entire United States was more or less served by one entity: AT&T, or American Telegraph & Telephone, founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1885. As America electrified, AT&T created regional companies known as Baby Bells that would control each region (some that was later deemed by the Supreme Court to be a naturally occurring monopoly....

We regularly test adult-size off-road power sports machines, but this time around we decided to recruit some miniature adrenaline fiends—if we could pry them off their X-Boxes for a few hours. So we assembled four ATVs that are built for different age ranges and categories but share a common goal: getting your kids outdoors and doing something fun.The Beginner BikeHonda CRF50FArturo OlmosThe Honda CRF50F is the reference starter dirt bike. It has a three-speed manual transmission (but with an automatic clutch, so no clutch lever), a kick-start, and a twist-grip throttle....

A ship is launching from Los Angeles this weekend carrying an unusual cargo: 2,000 feet of floating tubing, which researchers hope will clean some of the plastic clogging up the ocean. This makes the first time this type of device will ever be tested in real-life conditions, and if it performs well, it could provide the only feasible solution to cleaning up ocean plastic.Hundreds of millions of tons of plastic sit in our oceans, and we add millions more each year....

What’s it like to train with Air Force human performance specialists? Find out here.The future of the U.S. Air Force special operations stomps into the room on the double—in the form of a half-dozen men and women, fresh out of Basic Training, clad in identical off-white T-shirts and blue shorts. At Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, no trainee walks. Ever. This facility is about sustained maximum effort. The trainees want to be among the Air Force’s elite Special Warfare troops, those who leap from airplanes on rescue missions or embed with front-line troops to direct air strikes....

An Alaska Airlines flight from Chicago to Seattle was diverted after a strange odor wafted through the cabin while the plane cruised at altitude, reportedly causing “respiratory issues” among passengers and crew members on Wednesday. In total, four crew members were hospitalized after the plane landed at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, while a further eight—six crew members and two passengers—were treated upon landing at the airport, airport spokesperson Patrick Hogan told NBC affiliate WGEM....

The worldwide grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max 8 and 9 airliners has upended the aviation business, with American Airlines canceling up to 90 flights a day because of a dwindling fleet. But the impasse might soon be reaching an end. The Federal Aviation Administration is reportedly on the cusp of approving a safety update that could make the seemingly disaster-prone aircraft viable again, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. The embattled manufacturer promised a software update in the immediate aftermath of the Ethiopian Airlines crash earlier this month, meant to rectify an issue with the aircraft’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which tilts the plane’s nose downward to avert stalling....

View full post on YoutubeThe valve-popping wail of a turbocharged 252-hp inline four may not be for everyone. But thanks to a new tech in the 2013 Ford Focus ST, Ford hopes drivers will be able to have a quiet, practical car and a fire-breathing demon all at once. Taking a page from the BMW Active Sound Design system found in the new M5, Ford announced yesterday its own engine sound enhancer for its signature performance hatchback....

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have recently discovered that komodo dragons grow osteoderms in their skin that closely resembles chain mail.Even more interesting is that komodos grow four different shapes of osteoderms when lizards typically have one or two different shapes and tend to have less osteoderm coverage than komodo dragons.You’ve probably heard of the fearsome komodo dragon, a monitor lizard belonging to the Varanidae family, known for their lethal bites and incredible strength and speed....

Wear and tear is a part of every vehicle’s life. While NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover resembles a car in many ways, including size, it’s a bit tougher to get it to a mechanic for a tune-up. That’s why NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has spent 18 months working on software to upload to the rover on Mars, with the hopes that it will help give it some new life.Curiosity’s wheels started wearing down in 2013, but JPL scientists have been anticipating that long before....

The U.S. military is trying to recover the oil form a ship that’s been underwater for 72 years. In an interesting twist, it’s not even an American warship.The United States captured the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen as a war prize after the end of World War II. The Prinz Eugen capsized in 1946 after being nuked—twice—during the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. For decades, experts have feared that the ship’s oil might leak into the Pacific....

With news that data mining company Cambridge Analytica gained access to the data of 50 million Facebook users by questionable means, you may be thinking twice about how useful or beneficial it is to still have all your data floating around on it. Maybe you’re just through with it for other reasons. If so, here’s how to quit the service. Also, if you’re a little skittish, there are other options, which include deactivating rather than disabling your account....

Andrew CebulkaFor a few short days every year, it is perfectly acceptable to drink creamy, booze-laced punch from a dainty cup. Especially if it’s a version of the creamy, booze-laced punch George Washington used to serve over the holidays at Mount Vernon, his plantation house in Virginia.If you think you don’t like eggnog, that’s probably because you’ve had only the overly sweetened cartons from the supermarket. “The true version takes time and patience,” says Brooks Reitz (pictured), founder of Jack Rudy Cocktail Co....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe annual Popular Mechanics Editors’ Choice Awards, always a special part of CES, were super-special this year thanks to our friends at 3D Systems. Anticipating the barrage of 3D printing–related introductions at the show, we decided to use the technology to create the trophy for our top picks.Only, that turned out to be a bit more complicated than we thought.Just two weeks before CES would fling open its doors for the world’s biggest tech party, our design director provided a sketch of the totem on paper, showing the x and y dimensions....

The news reports today read almost like fiction: A mysterious piece of flotsam washes up on a beach on a remote tropical island —and it could be the evidence that solves one of the biggest mysteries in modern history. Well, maybe.The debris is a six-foot chunk of what appears to be an aircraft wing, and it surfaced on Reunion island, a French territory east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. We don’t know much about it yet, but all signs suggest that this could be the breakthrough the world’s been waiting for in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370....

Ever since Nerf introduced its Rival line of blasters that fire spherical foam balls instead of traditional darts, Nerf fans and Nerf itself have been engaged in something of an arms race. The race to build the ultimate bottomless blaster might just have ended though because it would be hard to top Adam Savage’s latest creation. Unlimited AmmoNerf’s New Rival Blaster Just Doesn’t Stop FiringNerf’s Bonkers New Blaster Is Almost Too Much FunBonkers Nerf Mod Lets You Fire for an EternitySavage builds on what Nerf started with its Nemesis MXVII-10K blaster, which featured a gravity-fed hopper capable of holding some 100 rounds and firing for over 20 seconds at a stretch....

Earth’s magnetic north pole has moved across the Prime Meridian in the last five years.Our magnetosphere protects the Earth from the sun, whose bossy space winds cause the Aurora Borealis.The magnetic poles always drift and have even switched completely many times in history.Live Science says Earth’s magnetic field is still on the move, according to the latest report in a series that comes out every five years. The magnetic north pole has crossed the Prime Meridian in the newest update from the National Centers for Environmental Information and the British Geological Survey....