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Almost every piece of adventure-ready clothing now has advanced tech woven into its fabric in an effort to be as waterproof and as breathable as possible. Although those two things seem at odds, The North Face has dug down into the nano-fibers to discover the next phase of making these opposite design ideas work together.The North Face will put what it calls Futurelight fabric into its 2019 outdoor garments—but it won’t stop there....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt is hard to monitor hazardous waste because people don’t like to admit they’re dumping it. Most people don’t even know how much they actually have–up to 100 pounds of leftover paints, poisons, solvents and other chemicals per household, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Improper disposal of hazardous substances can be dangerous for garbage collectors, and the environmental risks are even greater: A single gallon of motor oil dumped down a storm drain can contaminate a million gallons of drinking water....

Electronic warfare ain’t what it used to be.Modern radar and communications systems can subtly and quickly change their character, making them harder for U.S. aircraft and other platforms to jam or spoof. That reality is prompting DARPA to lead industry teams to apply artificial intelligence to electronic warfare. It’s called “cognitive EW.“The U.S. military developed its current approach to EW in the 1960s and 70s when it studied enemy systems to identify their vulnerabilities....

As if we needed further proof that the Internet is truly the Wild Wild West, Microsoft has swooped in with the latest cybersecurity nope: a bug that has been stalking Windows users for 20 years. We repeat: Twenty years.The vulnerability is present in all versions of Microsoft Windows and allows non-authorized users to run code that will give them full access to your machine. In other words, it allows hackers in....

Four days after President Woodrow Wilson called for a special session of Congress in early April 1917, the U.S. officially declared war against the German Empire, becoming an associated power with the Allied Forces and entering into one of the bloodiest conflicts to ever grip Europe. It would still take more than two months for the first troops to arrive in the fields of France, but the U.S. had finally chosen a side....

New upgrades could allow the B-1B bomber to carry 40 more missiles, up from the present 24.The upgrades would also allow the bomber to carry a hypersonic weapon. While an improvement, only 7 B-1B bombers are currently ready for action. As strategic competition with Russia and China increases, the Air Force wants to max out the B-1B’s ability to carry not just more, but larger and more advanced weapons. According to FlightGlobal, the Air Force recently showed off an upgraded B-1B to partners in industry....

An ex-military jet operated by a private aviation company slammed into the water off the coast of Hawaii yesterday, injuring the pilot. The vintage Hawker Hunter fighter jet was playing the role of adversary in an exercise with the Hawaii Air National Guard. According to eyewitness accounts, the single-seat fighter jet crashed off the island of Oahu, in the vicinity of Sand Island. Video shared by CBS News shows the pilot ejecting at very low altitude, with the aircraft crashing into the water shortly thereafter....

Video games are full of insincere visions of the future of warfare. From the Halo franchise’s WWII-like alien invasions and galaxy-burning WMDs to the wrathful robot deities of the Mass Effect series, gaming should never be looked to for sober predictions of tomorrow’s conflicts. Even the wildly successful Call of Duty series of military-inspired shooters, despite their less fantastic settings, are only seasoned with realism, featuring protagonists that routinely soak up bullets and bombs....

The IPA boom that you may have noticed at your local restaurant/bar/beer shop/bodega/grocery store is forcing brewers to innovate in the quest to cram more hops into every batch. Conventional brewing wisdom saw hop pellets and dried flowers go in at the start of a boil, the end, and then after fermentation. But the hoppiest brewers have already hit the limit of how much physical hop flower can go into a beer (about three pounds per keg) before a soggy kale taste sets in....

My first car was a Hot Wheels. A firebird funny car to be precise. I loved that thing, and today my 7 year-old son is enjoying it just as much as I did. As a youngster I imagined driving that car in the quarter-mile, and flipping up the body to dial in the engine and make my necessary repairs. I know I’m not alone in fantasizing about driving a real-life Hot Wheels, and when Chevy offered me an opportunity to take their 2018 Camaro SS Hot Wheels edition for a spin, I couldn’t refuse....

Media Platforms Design TeamVisitors to the 2014 New York International Auto Show– especially autowriter types inexplicably smitten by the wagon bug– will likely gawk at the niche-a-licious Volkswagen Golf Sportwagen, a just-unveiled all-wheel drive clean diesel concept that foreshadows the Jetta SportWagen replacement.The upcoming Mark 7-based model (at the bottom of the split-screen) sits 1.1 inches longer, .7 inches wider, and .9 inches lower than the current SportWagen, and is a dead ringer– in fact, essentially the same model– as a wagon I tested in Europe nearly eight months ago (seen at the top of the split screen)....

Media Platforms Design TeamSusan Kroll wasn’t squeamish about installing a rain barrel. Having lived in Thailand, where huge, impressive rain jars abound as part of an ancient tradition of capturing water from the sky, she hardly worried about turning her home into a scene out of Dogpatch, adorned with an old oak barrel rotting amid algae and mosquitoes.After moving to the Pacific Northwest, she grabbed the chance to install a new 55-gallon plastic cistern in the home she rented, finding rain harvesting no less appealing in the temperate-forest “drizzle capital” of Bellingham, Wash....

Impact wrenches are found in the tool chests of mechanics everywhere. They’re commonly used for loosening lug nuts from cars and trucks, but they can also be used in any high-torque situation. Not to be confused with an impact driver, which has a 1/4-inch hex opening, a standard automotive impact wrench can accommodate 1/2-inch sockets of various sizes, including those that can fit a wheel lug. Impact wrenches have traditionally been as pneumatic-powered tools, similar to the types used on pit road during auto races....

IBM has announced the development of a new transistor which will allow for the creation for chips a mere 5 nanometers in size. Along with research partners GlobalFoundries and Samsung, the computer giant has created a chip which would allow for 30 billion switches, essentially the on-off switches of electronic devices, on the surface of a fingernail.“For business and society to meet the demands of cognitive and cloud computing in the coming years, advancement in semiconductor technology is essential,” says Arvind Krishna, director of IBM Research in a press release....

Japan has officially activated its first amphibious combat unit since World War II. The new 1,500 man Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade is designed to retake Japanese territory seized by enemies in wartime, using amphibious assault vehicles and Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.Japan is one of the pioneers of modern amphibious warfare, using it in China during the 1930s and across the Asia-Pacific in the early months of World War II. Using flat-bottomed infantry landing craft later copied by the Allies, Japanese soldiers and marines rapidly overcame local defenses and carved out an empire from the Indian Ocean to Wake Island in the Pacific....

The world’s oldest McDonald’s hamburger will turn 21 on July 7, 2020. What will its first legal drink be?David Whipple, who bought the burger more than two decades ago, says he didn’t even realize he still had it until his wife found it while they were moving.Whipple, who isn’t the only person to have saved a McDonald’s burger for a comically long amount of time, plans to donate the patty to a museum at some point “so that it can be accessible to everyone,” but he’ll continue to hold on to it for now....

North Korea is reportedly testing loading anthrax onto intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at the United States. The marriage of biological weapons with long range missiles at first glance sounds like nightmare fuel, but sounds bizarre given the country’s emphasis on nuclear weapons.Japan’s Asahi newspaper, citing an unnamed Japanese intelligence source with ties to South Korean intelligence, says that North Korea is experimenting with the biological weapon anthrax to determine if the spores can survive the heat and pressure of reentry aboard a missile warhead....

Media Platforms Design TeamA pilot flying a single-engine plane from California to Hawaii encountered a nightmare scenario: Because of a jammed fuel line on his extra tanks, he was quickly running out of fuel on his Cirrus 22. After emergency maneuvers failed to save the plane, he followed U.S. Coast Guard orders to ditch his plane.The pilot reportedly maneuvered near to a cruise ship and then jettisoned from the plane, which crashed into the ocean....

Was Dad Right? Re-evaluating Warm-ups with the Exhaust System Q: In a recent auto clinic Q&A, you made some good observations but neglected a major problem of not letting a car warm up completely: the exhaust system. I had an acquaintance that had to replace the entire exhaust system in his Chrysler once a year, and it was because he drove the car six blocks to work and shut it off—only to do the same thing going home....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn a statement today, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin that the Russian Navy had executed a cruise missile attack on the Islamic State. “Four missile ships have launched 26 cruise missiles on 11 targets. According to the objective control data, all the targets have been destroyed, and no civilian facilities have been hit,” Shoigu said. The missiles were launched by the Caspian Sea Flotilla, a unit of the Russian Navy that patrols the land-locked sea....