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Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Dan Chavkin)Like so many powerful innovations, central air conditioning is easy to take for granted. The cool, dry air that whispers unceasingly from wall and ceiling registers can lull us into a false sense of security. Then an electric bill arrives, or the system starts to falter. Suddenly we realize that basic maintenance was called for–just cleaning the air filter would have cut cooling costs 5 to 15 percent....

View full post on YoutubeMarch 2, 2018: Here’s another Tesla truck sighting, this one taken on California highway as the semi overtakes a car that’s filming it.View full post on YoutubeFeb. 22, 2018: We’ve got another sighting. YouTube user Richard Fiedler uploaded this clip of the Tesla semi truck driving away from him. Nice acceleration. Though, maybe don’t gun it in a 25 mph zone when you’re in a vehicle people are constantly trying to record?...

If ISIS is on the run, that’s a good thing, right? Not entirely—especially if it means the troops of the United States and Russia, two nations with nukes pointed at each other’s cities, are coming into contact. This is the story of how we sleepwalked up to the brink of armageddon.For the past several years, both sides have been attacking their common foe, the outlaw terrorist group called ISIS, from different directions....

A patent filed by the U.S. Navy last month claims to have developed a compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor.Nuclear fusion has been touted as the ultimate energy source, generating enormous amounts of power with little to no harmful byproducts.No one has yet been able to mass produce or control large quantities of fusion energy, so designs for the reactor seemingly stretch the limits of science. Scientists have longed to create the perfect energy source....

SAN FRANCISCO – “You fought in the Clone Wars?“It was a throwaway line, delivered by an awestruck Luke Skywalker to Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first “Star Wars” movie in 1977, but it got young imaginations flowing. So it was a bit of a geek letdown when the saga’s recent prequels barely scratched the surface of the most epic of conflicts in that galaxy far, far away.“Ultimately, and it’s hard to say with a straight face, but ‘Star Wars’ is a very small, little personal story,” “Star Wars” creator George Lucas explained last week at Lucasfilm’s Big Rock Ranch....

Abandoned coal mines are often held up as symbols of the changing state of climate or the economy. But academics at the University of Nottingham see in them the potential future of food. They’ve patented a new system revolving around what they call “deep farming”—turning old coal mines into fully functioning farms. Deep farms would have advantages that current land-based farms lack, including a controlled climate uninfluenced by weather and no need for expensive farming equipment....

Media Platforms Design TeamSmall cars are big in the U.S. right now, and Nissan plans to capitalize on this with the all-new 2014 Nissan Versa Note. A smaller sibling to Nissan’s Versa sedan, the Note will come with a 1.6-liter, 16-valve, DOHC four-cylinder that churns out 109 hp and 107 lb-ft of torque. Depending on the trim—there are four levels—the engine comes mated to a 5-speed manual transmission or CVT. With the CVT, Nissans says the Note will hit 40 mpg highway, 31 city, and 35 combined....

Nerf guns are no mere toys. With the right tinkering, you can make them pretty lethal, especially when they’re attached to a fuel source like hydrogen. That’s what Peter Sripol did. Like some previous mods that have hit the internet, such as the Blaster propelled by nitrogen, Sripol’s rig is both dangerous and absurd. Don’t try this at home:View full post on YoutubeHe managed to extract hydrogen by pouring water into an electrolysis machine, which separates the main two ingredients in H20, placing them in separate chambers....

Here’s a fact of modern life: Tech giants like Facebook and Google collect broad swaths of your personal data and use it for the sake of advertising.But since Apple’s business model is based on hardware and not advertising, the company is taking the opportunity to set itself apart. On Wednesday, Apple announced a Privacy Portal enabling all customers to download every scrap of data it’s collected on them. The company has already made this available to customers in the European Union, as part of the sweeping General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy laws passed in May....

The pilot of the doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed on Sunday reported flight-control problems shortly after takeoff, representatives from the airline told Reuters. Sunday’s disaster, in which 150 passengers were killed, was the second fatal incident involving the Boeing aircraft model in five months: Last November, Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea minutes after takeoff, killing 189 people. The black box data recorder devices from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 are now being sent to investigators in Europe, who will probe what ultimately caused the disaster....

Gaming is no stranger to evolution. You’d don’t go from Pong to Playstation 5 in under 50 years by playing it safe. So its within that culture of innovation that we get Google Stadia.By looking at it, it’s not particularly impressive, at least not compared to souped-up gaming PCs or other powerful console hardware. But the Stadia can do things most other systems can’t: it can play games on any screen you own as long as you have a strong internet connection....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs beautiful as they are mysterious, copies of the centuries-old gather dust on scholarly bookshelves around the world. Curly, fluid letters dance across the page in an unintelligible babble, accompanied by textbook sketches of flowers and nightmarish paintings of naked women frolicking in a green pond. Antique book dealer Wilfrid Voynich discovered the eponymous manuscript 100 years ago, but scholars still struggle to translate even a single word of text, and heated arguments abound as to why the manuscript was written to begin with....

Q: I live in an area where water has a very high mineral content, so I have always tried to use distilled water in the cooling systems. Now I would like to flush the coolant in all of the vehicles but I am unsure how to do this as all the flush instructions show using a garden hose hooked up to the water supply.A: Go ahead and flush with your tap water, although the accepted way to do this today is to fill and circulate 3 times, not a running flush onto the ground....

Media Platforms Design TeamOutdoor lighting offers us a lot. It can stretch a day for work or fun, and make the place safer by helping us see where we walk in the dark. A well-lighted yard also deters crime. The range of outdoor lighting options runs from motion-sensing floodlights, to sodium-vapor yardlights, to low-voltage landscape lights and traditional lamp posts. Each meets a need, but it’s the humble post light we’ll focus on here....

One day, I hope that my kid’s kid’s kids will sit beside my wall. That they’ll cast shadows against it in the long light of late summer evenings, just like we do now. That they’ll boast to friends about the outdoor shower tucked into a nook at the far end, just like we do now. And that, every once in a while, they’ll appreciate the thing that swallowed entire vacations and summers and more than a few frozen weekends of my time....

Media Platforms Design TeamAt first glance, Megamind might seem like your typical superhero movie. Good-looking protagonist Metro Main (Brad Pitt) must regularly defeat the blue, bulbous-headed villain Megamind (Will Ferrell). But there’s one key difference: This story is told from the point of view of the villain. And after Metro Man retires, Megamind is forced to become the hero when Metro City is faced with a terrible new villain. “Megamind’s skill is brainpower,” says director Tom McGrath....

In 2003, a strange skeleton was discovered in Chile. Named ‘Ata’ after the Atacama region where she was found, the diminutive mummy is only six inches long, leading some people to wonder if the skeleton was really from an extraterrestrial. It isn’t, of course: Tests show that Ata has human genes and human bones.But there is something strange about Ata. Even though she is only the size of a human fetus, a radiologist who analyzed the skeleton found that she has the bone structure of a six-year-old child....

The New York side of Niagara Falls may be “dewatered” in the next two to three years in order to replace two bridges that date back 115 years. The last time Niagara Falls went dry was in 1969 in order to study the effects of erosion and rock buildup at the bottom of the American side of the falls. The two stone arch bridges allow pedestrians and vehicles to get to and from Goat Island, which stands between the Bridal Veil Falls and the Horseshoe Falls in the Niagara River....

Media Platforms Design TeamOne of the more highly anticipated new car introductions of recent years is for the Lexus LS 460. The new large Lexus sedan has dropped its gloves and is ready to go toe-to-toe with the heavyweight prestige sedans from Germany. The LS 460 is as big, luxurious and technologically awesome as the newest Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7 Series. We can’t wait to drive it.Oh, change that. Yes, we can wait to drive it....

Mike Pence is losing his patience. The vice president has become the face of the Trump Administration’s mission to put U.S. boots back on the moon, and beyond. Last fall, NASA released a roadmap of its new new plan for returning to the lunar surface via the Lunar Gateway, a space station to be built in orbit around the moon. But that timeline wouldn’t put Americans there until 2028.At yesterday’s Space Council meeting, Pence declared that 2028 is not soon enough....