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A very common quick fix for the Y2K problem is rippling into 2020 as the adjusted dates run out, affecting video games, parking meters, and more.Outsiders have dismissed Y2K as a nothingburger because they don’t understand how much work went into averting it.The crisis programmers really fear is in 2038, when systems running C will run out of dates.Twenty years after we thought we were in the clear, New Scientist reports that a desperate fix for the Y2K bug is leading to a new series of crashes in 2020....

A new exoskeleton developed by Lockheed Martin could work wonders for troops carrying heavy loads. The Fortis exoskeleton system lessens leg strain and makes it easier for soldiers to carry heavy loads without becoming exhausted.According to Army Technology, a study by the University of Michigan Human Neuromechanics Laboratory found that people equipped with the Fortis leg exoskeleton carrying a 40-pound load at a 15-degree angle experienced significantly less leg strain. View full post on YoutubeThe knee stress release device (KRSD) was designed to boost leg capacity when lifting or dragging heavy objects, or walking on inclines....

In the 100-plus years since a magnitude 7.8 earthquake rocked San Francisco, the West Coast’s building codes and construction methods have improved exponentially as its population exploded. Ken Verosub, geology professor at the University of California at Davis and a former member of the California Task Force on Earthquake Preparedness, explains how Bay Area residents can prepare for the next “big one” by knowing how to get out.How devastating could an earthquake of the same magnitude be if it happened tomorrow?...

More than a third of the U.S. Air Force’s fleet of A-10 Warthogs will end up permanently grounded if the service doesn’t find the money to buy them new wings, and the senior civilian in charge of the A-10 says that’s not going to happen. Such a decision would be another nail in the coffin of the beloved close air support aircraft, which the service has been trying to retire for nearly three decades....

There won’t be blood, but there will be sparks. BattleBots is coming back to television, with a deal to air an upcoming college-level competition on ESPN 2 and ESPNU. And according to BattleBots CEO Trey Roski, the only thing this series will have in common with the original geek fest are the robot death matches. “It’s going to be held like a sports show,” Roski says. “We’re going to show the pit, what they really go through....

Media Platforms Design TeamSpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada—some of the biggest names in aerospace, newcomers or old guard, are competing to build new spacecraft and rockets to carry astronauts to the International Space Station now that NASA no long flies the space shuttle. But Bigelow Aerospace, founded in 1998, actually wants to add on to the station itself.The company builds inflatable orbital habitats, more like balloons than the angular metal modules that make up the space station....

One moon is enough for most of us, but not for officials of the Chinese city Chengdu. They want four, and are willing to spend a good amount of money to make it happen.The plan from Chinese leaders is to put three small, highly reflective satellites in orbit by around 2020. These satellites would reflect light at night and be be around 8 times brighter than the light from a full moon, enough to brighten the streets of Chengdu without spending any electricity on lighting....

Media Platforms Design TeamCharlie Levine, former Senior Editor of , has chased all sorts of big-game fish up and down the East Coast, Mexico, Caribbean and beyond. “Anyone can do it,” Levine says. “You don’t need to be a huge dude to catch a giant fish. I’ve seen 90-pound girls do it and elderly people, too. The saying is true, ‘It’s better to be lucky than to be good,’ but if you do your homework and find a good charter boat operation in a known hot spot, you stand a good chance....

Media Platforms Design Team LAS VEGAS—2009 is the year of the handheld pico projector. Or at least that’s how it looks from the inside of the gadget industry bubble here at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Tech journalists like us love trend-casting, and Wowwee, Samsung, 3M and a slew of other companies are making things easy by simultaneously announcing a range of picos. But the most exciting of these tiny projectors is Samsung’s MBP200, which is essentially a media player with a DLP projector built into it....

With Harvey and Irma understandably making headlines, it can be easy to be forget the infrastructural crises we’ve already had to deal with this year. Take the overflow of the Oroville Dam spillway in northern California back in February. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has released a flyover of the spillway in its current form, in the midst of reconstruction. [youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTvp0QLHfOw&index=1&list=PLeod6x87Tu6eVFnSyEtQeOVbxvSWywPlx[/youtube]The Oroville Dam had roots in a divided California betting on post-war jobs, was first built in 1963 through 1968....

Last December, the holidays came early when Patrick Stewart told The Hollywood Repoter that’d he’d be interested in reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now millions of Star Trek fans’ dreams have come true: Patrick Stewart will once again go where no one has gone before. Although last year’s interview were in regards to Quentin Tarantino’s recent interest in directing his own Star Trek film, Picard will actually make his return on a yet-to-be-announced show on CBS All Access that explores the “next chapter” of his life....

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is an enormous anticyclonic storm, almost 10,000 miles wide, that scientists believe has been raging on the gas giant for as long as 350 years. It is one of the most iconic features of the entire solar system, and the huge storm is so large that two or three full Earths could fit inside it. View full post on TwitterJuno, the spacecraft NASA has orbiting Jupiter right now, flew within 5,600 miles of the Great Red Spot on the evening of Monday, July 10, marking the closest a spacecraft has ever ventured to the Great Red Spot....

LEGOs are a solid. That’s pretty much indisputable. But through the power of computer simulation they don’t have to be, and one talented animator on Reddit has cooked up a handful of animations that turn hundreds of simulated blocks into moving waves and splashes. They’re absolution hypnotizing. Created by Rexjericho, these awesome animations are made using a fluid simulation program Rexjericho also developed. That part of it does the math, and then when you plug the results into Blender—an open-source computer animation program—you can get results in the form of very convincing waves of LEGO....

For the past two weeks, a gigantic dust storm on Mars has been threatening NASA’s Opportunity rover, and new reports from the Red Planet indicate that the storm has grown to encompass the entire planet. With no sign that the storm will die off anytime soon, it’s an open question whether Opportunity will survive.Near the beginning of the month of June, NASA’s Opportunity rover, along with multiple satellites in orbit of the planet, detected a dust storm growing in intensity....

Media Platforms Design TeamA NASA Lunar Rover stops in front of the Presidential Reviewing Stand as President Barack Obama watches the Inaugural Parade. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) NASA’s plans for manned spaceflight could get a boost from the economic stimulus package—but only if the Senate can convince the House of Representatives to reconsider its version of the bill. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, as passed by the Senate on Feb....

NASA has confirmed that Mars has a permanent metal presence in its atmosphere. This is the first detection of metal ions in the ionosphere of any planet other than Earth. The discovery is the latest find from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, otherwise known as MAVEN. Launched in 2013, MAVEN is back on track after a recent course correction required to avoid a collision with the Martian moon Phobos....

Media Platforms Design TeamBriefly taking its eyes off the stars, NASA engineers went back to the drawing board seemingly by way of Detroit to create a new “concept car” for the moon. The result? A six-wheeled, truck-style vehicle that someday might rove around the lunar surface more like a crab than a car. Developed at Johnson Space Center, the conceptual design unveiled today features independent steering, so astronauts can drive sideways, diagonally or whatever direction best suits their mission....

View full post on YoutubeHead-up displays have been around since the 1950s in jet fighters, and in automobiles since the 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Now, more sophisticated displays are coming to our cars to tell us how we’re driving and to remedy our dangerous compulsion to check our phones while behind the wheel.The Navdy ($499) is a new dash-mounted device with a 5.1-inch screen that syncs with smartphones to let the driver answer calls, send texts, or just check her miles per gallon while keeping eyes on the road....

The PitchLaunched last October to much fanfare, the Nest Learning Thermostat is the brainchild of two ex–Apple engineers. Their idea was to bring HVAC controls into the computerized, networked 21st century. The Nest’s biggest brag is its purported ability to learn your home heating and cooling needs and program itself accordingly.SetupNest does everything possible to help with a DIY installation. It includes stickers in the installation guide to label which wires go where, and the Nest’s LCD display will even alert you to any wiring faults....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow would you like to pay for your morning coffee: cash, credit, debit, or phone? In the near future, this may not seem like such an unusual question.In fact, I’m willing to bet that instant pay-by-phone will become common in three years. And the way the tech is implemented could have a major impact on commerce in America—in a way that should make us all take pause.Several competing systems have already emerged....