Posts

Washingon’s upcoming military parade now has a price tag: approximately $12 million, according to CNN.Meant to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the armistice which ended the brutal hostilities of World War One on November 11, 1918, the parade is currently scheduled for November 10th. While the armistice ended the hostilities, it needed to be extended three times until the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1920.Related StoryMilitary Parades Are ObsoleteThe plans for the parade have varied dramatically since its earlier conception....

In 2005, President George W. Bush signed the REAL ID Act into law. Attached to a military spending law, REAL ID mandated that state driver’s licenses and ID cards follow federal technical standards and verification procedures issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Thirteen years later, the Trump Administration is finally trying to get full, nationwide compliance.DHS is now saying that 23 states still operating under extensions, which delay their REAL ID mandate, have until October 10th to comply....

The U.S. military will have a bunch of military equipment on display in and over Washington D.C. as part of a celebration of America’s Independence Day. All of the armed services, including the Coast Guard, will be represented at an event at the Lincoln Memorial dubbed the “Salute to America”.The event will be the first time in decades, if not ever, military hardware was part of the capital’s Independence Day celebration....

The Popular Mechanics editors head to the Outdoor Retailer show to learn about the newest and most innovative outdoor gear that’s heading to market. Now you can come with us. A new TV special featuring PM Gear Editor James Lynch, called “All You Need To Know: Outdoor Retailer,” will premiere tonight at 10 P.M. on FYI.The OR show is a great time for us to spot new trends in the gear market and to find new areas of interest to follow....

One of China’s most intractable enemies doesn’t even have a vertebrae—or a brain. Chinese scientists and engineers are devising new methods to destroy swarms of jellyfish before they can get into naval propulsion systems, halting ships dead in their tracks or overheating their engines. Ironically, this seems to be a problem of China’s own making. Its overfishing, especially of shark fisheries, is a contributing factor to the global jellyfish population explosion....

The main problem with Soylent Green isn’t that (spoilers!) it’s people, but that it probably doesn’t taste fantastic. After all, that’s the case with real life soylent. But what if you could just choke down protein slime and electrify your tongue into thinking it’s something better? That particularly utopia (dystopia?) might be closer than you think. Dr. Nimesha Ranasinghe is a research fellow at the National University of Singapore, and his project Taste+ is based around that exact idea....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Ford Transit is essentially a practical hauler for small businesses, but a concept unveiled today by Galpin Auto Sports hints at an über-plush European-style custom ride akin to certain cultishly outfitted Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans.Aimed at high-end commercial fleets and shuttle providers, the Transit Skyliner concept and its four “throne” seats can be transformed into four modes: Theater, which drops a 52-inch screen and allows the seats to be reclined, Business, which enables face-to-face conversation around a motorized table, Reception, which slides the door for entertaining at events, tailgate-style, and Travel, with seats reclined and footrests extended....

Say you want to sit down and play some classic Super Mario Bros. or a couple levels of Sonic the Hedgehog. There are countless remakes and streaming options to choose from (some of which you must pay for), but the old standby is always an option: You can plug your old cartridge into your old console into your old TV, and it’ll just work. If that sounds quaint, it should. Over the past decades, video games gradually have been turning into something more amorphous that can change over time, and can disappear forever....

The Marianas Trench is the deepest part of the ocean. Its lowest point, Challenger Deep, is a nearly seven miles below the surface. It’s a different world down there, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) decided to figure out what it sounds like. What they heard is … kind of scary. Like the kind of thing that H.P. Lovecraft warned you about at the bottom of the ocean, when he wasn’t being kind of racist....

1: Deep-Water DrillingI used a 3-inch drywall screw to hang a heavy, framed painting in my bedroom, because the extra length provides more load-bearing strength, right? It held the frame fine, but two months later, the living-room ceiling collapsed. Turns out the screw had punctured a water pipe, creating a slow, insidious leak. Lesson Learned: Use a hollow-wall anchor, not a drywall screw, which can plunge deep enough to do real damage....

Imagine you’re in charge of guiding ships into a harbor and you want to use a sign to direct them all to one specific point, perhaps a dock or a channel. How might you make a single signal light that always points to the right direction depending on the angle you look at it, to the right if you’re too far left, and to the left if you’re too far right?...

Media Platforms Design TeamClassically trained in woodworking at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Nico Yektai enjoys applying those tried and tested techniques to craft his asymmetrical pieces. He custom-built this sapele coffee table for a client, taking the size and color palette of the room into account to determine the shape and finish of the table. Yektai encourages those wanting to build this table to adjust the size, shape and type of wood used to best fit their space....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe ultimate goal of the $10 million Automotive X Prize is to offer more efficient vehicle choices that consumers can use. A team of high school students from west Philadelphia—the only high school team in the competition—certainly realized that vision. The students from West Philadelphia High School didn’t win the X-Prize competition, but their 160 mpg Factory Five GTM biodiesel hybrid kit car is a Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award winner....

Media Platforms Design TeamNEWPORT BEACH, Calif. – After driving a hydrogen-powered car around for GM’s Project Driveway test fleet for three months–first receiving the keys, then getting used to it and eventually begging for more fill-er-ups–I can finally appreciate what’s it like to live free from gasoline. Even as oil prices have dipped recently, gas is still raging above $4 per gallon, and everyone has probably done some math to figure out how much you’d save buying a more fuel-efficient car....

Developers have so many technical problems to worry about when they’re building an app that they may not be thinking about one of the most basic: making sure everyone can use their product. IBM is thinking about it, though. Big Blue just released a new tool called the Mobile Accessibility Checker that’s an easy way to make sure everybody, even people with disabilities, can use new software.“With mobile, applications are often developed at such as fast pace, that designers and developers ignore, or in most cases, are unaware of basic accessibility conformance requirements — such as color contrast or ensuring they work with screen readers,” IBM Chief Accessibility Officer Frances West said in an email....

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin has admitted that a December 2011 incident involving a nuclear missile submarine almost became one of the worst nuclear weapons disasters ever recorded. The Ekaterinburg, a ballistic missile submarine, caught fire in drydock, threatening its load of liquid-fueled nuclear missiles. If the missiles had caught fire, then the resulting explosions would have spewed radioactivity over a wide area, threatening a nearby town of 300,000 people....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow do you feel about the retirement of the space shuttle program?I am personally sad to see it go. But it was the right decision to retire the shuttleassuming the U.S. has a follow-on plan to keep launching people to the International Space Station and deep space. It was the wrong decision to retire the shuttle if the U.S. ends up with nothing.What is it like to pilot the space shuttle?...

The universe, to put things mildly, is very, very old. But it’s not so old that its earliest days are unknowable. And so scientists at the Australian National University have discovered what they describe in a press statement as “remains of one of the universe’s first stars inside a rare, ancient star far, far away on the other side of our galaxy.““We’ve found a time machine that takes us back to the universe’s earliest stars,” says Thomas Nordlander from the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) at the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RSAA), speaking in the statement....

The best way to get through a long, stressful flight is to relax with a nice cold beer. Unfortunately, things just taste different at high altitudes, so your favorite brew might not be so enjoyable at 30,000 feet. To remedy this, one airline is developing a unique beer designed to taste good during flights.The beer is called Betsy Beer, and is being developed by Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific to serve on its flights to the UK....

Let’s talk about what’s wrong with the shiny new Apple Watch about to go on sale. It’s garish. It’s tethered to your iPhone so it isn’t any good without one. Most importantly, it’s not an Apple II.Never fear: You can get the height of Apple’s late 70s aesthetic on your wrist by making your own Apple II watch. Creator Aleator777 walks you through his entire build in this instructable. The case is 3D printed, and the knob (sorry, “digital crown”) allows you to scroll through a CRT version of the 2015 Apple Watch’s functions....