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Just 4 percent of new cars sold in the U.S. today come with manual transmissions. But 90 percent of worthwhile cars come with a stick shift (okay, that’s an unofficial stat).The decline of the true manual—thanks to the ease of automatics and the future-tech of paddle shifters in fancy cars—means that fewer Americans are exposed to stick-shift cars. Which means fewer and fewer people outside of the Fast and the Furious franchise know how to drive stick....

During WWI, airplanes were still a very new technology. Planes that could fly for extended periods of time were only a few years old, and people were still trying to figure out how they would work in combat.One of the most logical steps was to add a big gun to the front of a plane so it could shoot down other planes. Machine guns were a logical complement to aircraft, but there was one problem: how to stop the gun from hitting the big propeller in the front....

Media Platforms Design Team Today, Silicon Image, the company that pioneered HDMI specs and currently ships many of the chips that make HDMI work in consumer products, announced what it hopes will be the next step in HD video transmission within the home. Silicon Image’s LiquidHD technology promises to send HDMI signals over Ethernet lines, meaning any digital device in a household should be able to share content with any other networked device....

Scientists think the Martian ocean evaporated, but don’t why.A new study says a giant tsunami once hit the planet’s ocean, mirroring Earth’s history.Other scientists question the timing of the tsunami.The history of Mars is up to almost as much scrutiny as the history of Earth. The fourth planet from the Sun is a cold and lifeless world these days, but scientists believe the planet once had a large ocean. A new study looking at the Martian transition from water-filled to barren argues that just like ancient Earth, ancient Mars was struck by an extremely powerful mega-tsunami that was trigged by a large asteroid....

Media Platforms Design TeamBoeing is hoping the second Dreamliner experiences a smoother takeoff than the first. The aerospace giant has just announced the completion of the first of its 787-9s, a variant of the Dreamliner that is 20 feet longer than the original (the 787-8) and can fly 300 nautical miles farther thanks to a greater fuel capacity. Boeing’s promotional video claims the plane is the first commercial use of hybrid laminar flow control—a way to change the airflow around the aircraft’s tail to reduce drag....

Wikipedia has long suffered from a broken link problem as old, referenced pages go offline. But luckily, stewards from the Internet Archive have been slowly resurrecting those millions of faulty links, using a software robot to replace 404’d pages with archived versions using the Wayback Machine. Now they’ve announced over 9 million of those links have been rescued. The broken link cleanup is part of the Internet Archive’s Build a Better Web initiative, which aims to “bring you knowledge in all its many forms that is richer, deeper, more trustworthy and openly accessible on the Web....

Navigating in space has long presented a major challenge to agencies like NASA. There are no obvious landmarks in deep space, so there’s no easily-discernible difference between one location and another. Yet keeping track of spacecraft locations to navigate is crucial to space exploration goals, particularly when we are talking about flying to other planets. Thanks to a recent NASA experiment aboard the International Space Station, we might finally have a reliable solution....

PANAMA CITY, Panama — As we’ve driven around here these past few days, it’s been obvious that some kind of unambiguous political campaign has been waged in recent months. Most of the posters pinned to palm tree trunks and advertisements plastered on billboards read simply “Si” or “No.” Nothing too subtle there. Last Sunday, the voters in this Central American country decided which blunt choice they preferred in a national referendum:About 80 percent voted “Si” to an expansion plan that would double the capacity of the Panama Canal with new locks and shipping lanes....

I’ve always known the 911 was different, and the Cliff’s Notes version of why: the famous shape, the engine in the back, the Porsche’s practicality compared to other exotic cars. As a kid, I’d read enough magazines and played enough driving video games to understand that 911s were fast, precision vehicles that rewarded enthusiastic driving. But if you asked me to explain the dedicated following in more detail than that, you’d find me at a loss....

Beer and batteries aren’t two things you’d consider in a symbiotic relationship. But new research from the University of Colorado in Boulder has developed a new bio-manufacturing process that can essentially turn a brewery’s wastewater into a fungal pool for growing the “most efficient naturally-derived lithium-ion battery electrodes.“This is basically a win-win for breweries and battery makers. One the one hand, breweries don’t have to deal with the costly process of filtering wastewater before disposing....

Las Vegas police busted a homemade gas station in a local backyard.Even at legal service stations, gasoline must be handled with care, as its vapors are extremely flammable.People die tapping and stealing gas. Please don’t make a gas station in your backyard.Las Vegas police have found a “homemade gas station” in someone’s backyard. With two fuel tanks, a fuel pump, and a hose long enough to reach the street, it would be hard to claim this was anything other than an illegal fuel business....

SpaceX’s first launch of 2018 was the classified Zuma mission, which lifted off earlier tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST. The launch was originally scheduled for November 2017, but the mission was delayed so SpaceX could review data from a fairing test. The Zuma payload was built by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. government, but additional information about the satellite is not available.The webcast of the launch did not follow the second stage carrying the payload after it separated from the first stage....

You’re anxious, worried and feeling as if you’ve lost all control. Your stomach is in knots and you have no appetite. You sit by the phone nervously, waiting for it to ring. These are the unmistakable symptoms of someone who has either: 1) fallen in love for the first time, or 2) put a house up for sale.If you happen to be lovesick, you’re on your own. But, if you’re selling your house, there are steps you can take to ready the property–and yourself–for the sale....

SpaceX is primed to launch its first passenger-ready vessel on a mission to the International Space Station on early Saturday morning, except there’s a caveat: The Crew Dragon spacecraft won’t be ferrying a single soul when it lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Rather, the craft—carried by a Falcon 9 rocket—will serve the purpose of running crucial tests for future SpaceX missions, which are poised to involve real astronauts....

It’s the holiday season and the scourge of package banditry is more of a concern than ever. There are ways to avoid your parcels getting snatched, like making sure you’re home at the time of delivery, getting them delivered to work, or getting a big ol’ safe. But if you’re Mark Rober, you might want one of your boxes to get taken because it’s actually a decoy glitter-bomb fart-spray nightmare. After having one of his actual packages stolen, the DIYer YouTube star built a honeypot trap including four livestreaming phones and a mechanism designed to throw glitter and fire fart spray when opened, sending footage of the whole event back to base....

Many of us spend an inordinate amount of time tending our lawns and gardens while practically ignoring our trees. And that’s too bad, because healthy, properly trimmed trees can dramatically enhance the beauty and increase the value of any home.The amount of time spent on tree maintenance is, of course, related to the number of trees on your property, but also to the age of the trees. Mature trees need little more than an occasional pruning and a dose of fertilizer every year or two....

In a presentation earlier this year, Ukrainian space company KB Yuzhnoye made a splash by unexpectedly revealing an exotic shuttle-like space vehicle. The presentation shows a bullet-shaped design that looks more like a plane than a traditional rocket—and unlike anything seen from the famous Ukrainian rocket makers before.Of course, these images could be just a hypothetical picture on a computer screen, but the same presentation also shows active work at Ukrainian test facilities and even some experimental hardware, which was clearly related to the unusual space plane....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen it comes time to trim the lawn, a mower will only get you so far. For the finishing touches, you have to rely on a string trimmer, known in backyard vernacular as the weed whacker. At the moment, there are a number of different styles and brands on the market, each offering different capabilities. I recently had the opportunity to check out three new trimmers–two of which had cutting-edge fuel types–to see how they rated against one another....

After a lightning storm at Glacier National Park in Montana, multiple large forest fires have been ignited, forcing evacuations at popular campgrounds and highlighting the continuing danger of climate change.Three separate fires in the Glacier National Park area, the Howe Ridge Fire, Heaven’s Sake Fire, and Numa Ridge Fire, were started by a lightning storm on Saturday in different regions of the park. The fires are still uncontrolled and are spreading, forcing road and trail closures....

Snakes are in trouble. A strange disease is affecting snakes from all over the world, and scientists aren’t quite sure how to fix it. If they don’t figure it out soon, we could be seeing a global snake pandemic that threatens entire ecosystems.The illness is called Snake Fungal Disease (SFD), and it’s caused by a fungus called Ophidiomyces ophidiodiicola which causes painful legions on the skin of the snakes it infects....