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Kalashnikov is famous for its rifles, but is no stranger to tank drones or AI-powered robot guns. Its latest product, unveiled in Moscow at a military arms expo, is not quite as technologically sophisticated as those other endeavors, but it certainly still is menacing. This is the ‘Shchit,’ or the ‘Shield.‘An anti-riot vehicle, the Shield is a truck with its eponymous garage door-sized shield mounted to its front and supported by a metal arm that originates behind the cabin....

The Skarp Laser Razor is a perfect recipe for a crowdfunding disaster. A brilliant idea. Viral appeal. Millions of dollars. Bubbling controversy. And no way to end but utter disaster. In case you haven’t caught the alarmingly credulous coverage that’s been all over the internet, the Skarp Laser Razor was a Kickstarter project with a tantalizing promise. Shave with this laser, and you’ll never need to buy blades again. Water-resistant, battery-powered, the size of a normal razor: The pitch promises everything short of eternal life, while keeping the technical details of the device incredibly vague....

Throughout the history of timekeeping, the humble second has had a number of very particular definitions. In 1956, it was defined as “1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time.” In 1967, it shifted to an atomic standard: “9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.” Todya, perhaps you know it best as “approximately one Mississippi....

Sure, LEGOs are great. but building full-sized furniture out of them takes a whole lot of blocks and time. It’d be much easier to build with giant blocks, and that seems to be the impetus behind EverBlocks.Now EverBlock isn’t LEGO; years ago LEGO’s patents expired and it lost the fight to prevent these kind of “modular building blocks” from cropping up. But look at these! They’re essentially the giant LEGO blocks you’ve been waiting for....

Cory Arcangel, a Brooklyn, New York–based artist, was watching a video from 1985 on YouTube (below) in which artist Andy Warhol generates a “painting” of Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry on an early Amiga computer, when he wondered, what became of these files? After a quick message to the Andrew Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, he found out: Sitting in the archives, yet to be catalogued, was a series of 3.5-inch floppy disks....

The excitement over self-driving cars might be vomit-inducing. No, really. Researchers at University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute polled 3,200 people across the world and discovered that between 6 and 12 percent of adults will get motion sickness from riding in autonomous. Professors Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle, who spearheaded the survey, explain there are three reasons why this happens.“Motion sickness is expected to be more of an issue in self-driving vehicles than in conventional vehicles,” Sivak said in a university-issued release....

The goal for most Marvel movies is to take all the insanity that happens in a comic-book panel and use computers to make it look like it’s inhabiting a real world with prestige actors and Chris Hemsworth. But for the new computer-animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (out December 14), about the collision of a bunch of Spider-Men from alternate universes, the filmmakers did the opposite: They wanted the look and feel of a classic comic book—which meant creating a new approach to computer animation, which had become too slick for their purposes....

Lithium-ion batteries are growing outdated, both for environmental reasons and their tendency to catch on fire. In working toward a replacement, researchers have made a new concept for an aluminum-ion battery.There’s a long way to go before aluminum-ion batteries become commercially available, but the design solves major problems of energy storage.From smartphones to electric cars, there’s a lot riding on future battery developments. While lithium-ion batteries have become standard, their future growth is seen as unstable for a number of reasons....

A new report says that when it comes time to vote in the 2020 elections, as many as 16 million voters will have no choice but to use electronic machines with no paper trail. The estimate, made by the Brennan Center for Justice, assumes that Louisiana, New Jersey, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Kansas, and Mississippi will all have to keep their voting machines status quo. The Brennan Center notes that many, but not all, politicians in the states are seeking federal funding to strengthen their election procedures, which could lower the number further....

Three years after promising a game-changing battery-powered SUV, Audi last night took the wraps of its all-electric 2019 E-Tron model. The setting was a former Ford plant that once produced the Model A near San Francisco. With techno pounding and a swarm of glittering drones hovering outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Scott Keogh, president of Audi of America, announced that online ordering of the 2019 Audi E-Tron was officially open. The first deliveries are slated for mid-2019....

Scientists surveying the galaxy believe they have identified a new category of black hole.This black hole would be the smallest yet—tinier than a stellar black hole, but larger than a neutron starThere are currently three types of black holes: stellar black holes, intermediate black holes, and supermassive black holes.Scientists conducting a galactic black hole census believe they may have stumbled upon an entirely new kind of black hole. This new type of star remnant, according to research published October 31 in the journal Science, is smaller than any stellar black hole, but more massive than the super, super dense neutron star....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe planets have finally aligned to kick off the boating season. The weather’s gorgeous, your craft is tuned and fueled, and the water beckons. In case your launching skills are rusty, here’s how to leap from land to sea with the skills of an ancient mariner.1. Before you back down the ramp, your boat, trailer and tow vehicle need to be primed for launch. Start by inspecting the ramp for submerged hazards, sharp drop-offs and slippery spots covered with algae....

Bugatti unveiled the 500-pound, go-kart-like Bugatti Baby II, a 75-percent scale replica of the 1924 Type 35 Lyon Grand Prix Car. There are only 500 in existence, and they run for a cool $33,000Oh, yeah: They’re made for kids.Good news! Bugatti built a car that costs less than a Mustang GT. Bad news! It’s sized for kids, they’re only making 500 of them, and they’re all sold out. But they’re taking names for the reserve list, anyway, in case anyone who’s already made a deposit subsequently decides they have a better use for $33,000....

Platon photographed Buzz Aldrin for PM in Los Angeles, May 2009. “It\’s mankind's destiny to walk on another planet,” aldrin says. “we can achieve it, but we've got to have the right plan.” (photograph by platon)< Media Platforms Design TeamI had a splendid career at NASA as an astronaut in the Gemini and Apollo programs. The capstone, of course, was my moonwalk on the Sea of Tranquility 40 years ago. I have only two regrets from my NASA days, and both were my own fault: I failed to speak out when I saw bad decisions being made....

The dark web is a said to be a marketplace worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And now, if you applied for a Capital One credit card and were one of the 100 million people whose account information may have just been hacked, your personal information could be on the dark web and selling for less than the price of your monthly car payment. Here’s what we know so far, and here’s how to protect your data after this breach—and the next one....

Explorers and navigators have long searched for a way to move ships through the Arctic Circle as find a faster way to move goods between the Atlantic and the Pacific without having to go around either Asia or South America. Groups of people hunted for the fabled Northwest passage through North America for decades. The problem, of course, is that the Arctic contains too much ice.Over the past few years, however, ice levels in the Arctic have been hitting record lows thanks to climate change, and while its effects are almost universally negative, one benefit is opened northern sea routes....

DARPA is embarking on an undersea submarine detection system so weird it may just work. The Pentagon’s research and development arm wants to learn the behaviors of undersea animals including fish, shrimp, and microscopic phytoplankton so it can use them to detect manned and unmanned submarines passing by. Such a network would enhance the U.S. military’s ability to detect even the quietest submarines. Traditionally there are two methods to detect submarines at sea: active and passive sonar....

View full post on YoutubeMarvel’s first family, the Fantastic Four, has had a rough road to the big screen. Three previous outings have been met with frigid reviews not quite fitting a Human Torch. But despite initial skepticism, the trailer for the new one looks … kind of awesome. Somewhere between X-Men: Days of Future Past (with whom it shares a producer) and Interstellar. The film is a “contemporary re imagining,” and it seems that the team is launching into some kind of dimension jumping that puts them into the Negative Zone....

If you’re a fan of British indie pop band The xx, then you’re probably a fan of Jamie xx, who has recently been branching off into his own psychedelic solo career. His debut solo album In Colour is set to be released this June, and today we were blessed with a surprise release of this gorgeous music video for his new single, Gosh.Directed by Erik Wernquist, who also made Wanderers, a breathtaking short film he describes as “a vision of humanity’s expansion into the Solar System,” Gosh is a collection of slow zooms and pans over an unidentified planet based on images from NASA JPL and Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio....

Media Platforms Design TeamUSS BATAAN, Haiti—Since the wooden days of naval battles, the flagship has been the admiral’s primary vessel for commanding his fleet of ships. The name is literal: from the quarterdeck, commands were transmitted via signal flags (a tradition that continues today, although mainly as a backup).With the advance of digital communications, the need for a dedicated ship for an admiral has diminished, yet the need for complete command and control has remained....