Media Platforms Design TeamThe eve of CES 2014 seems as good a time as any to proclaim our love of technology and all it does to make our lives better. But when tech fails us, it sure gets tempting to swear off the latest, greatest gear and pine for the good ol’ days of analog everything.While it’s easy to blame technology when smartphones freeze or hard drives crash, self-inflicted tech fails say more about ourselves than it does our gadgets....
IBM just paid a mind-blowing $34 billion for a software company that does not sell software. Its new acquisition, Red Hat, actually does just the opposite. Over 25 years of existence, Red Hat has made a habit of buying companies that sell proprietary software and then releasing that software for free. Why? It starts with a controversy that lies at the heart of software design: open source.What Is Open Source? The software you use every day, whether it’s the apps on your phone or programs on your computer, exists in multiple forms....
Media Platforms Design TeamMIT WEEK: OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES* MONDAY: MIT Fights for Clean Power With Holy Grail of Fusion in Reach* TUESDAY: Turning Disabled Into Gamers, MIT Spreads Robot Rehab* WEDNESDAY: With Electric Scooter, MIT Hopes To Rev Up Practical Transport* THURSDAY: Crash-Proof UAVs Fly Blind at MIT’s High-Tech Aerodrome* FRIDAY: MIT’s Efficient Nanowire Storage Could Replace Car Batteries* TIME MACHINE: Classic PM Cover Tracked MIT’s Early Solar PowerCAMBRIDGE, Mass....
A decade from now, on April 15, 2029, an asteroid will swing past the Earth, just barely missing everything. The asteroid—nicknamed Apophis—will be as close as some of our satellites and only a few thousand miles away from the Earth’s atmosphere itself. That would make it one of the closest near-miss asteroids in history, and an incredible chance for scientists to learn as much as they can about it.Plenty of asteroids narrowly miss the Earth all the time, but they usually never get much closer than the moon....
The Pentagon’s annual F-35 report says that the controversial fighter still has 13 “must-fix” problems.The F-35’s gun also suffers from misalignment issues, making it inaccurate in air-to-air combat.The Pentagon decision to start building the jet early has led to an issue where hundreds of older jets still suffer from significant problems. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter still suffers from 13 serious flaws, including a gun afflicted with cracking and accuracy issues....
Media Platforms Design TeamTheBay Area Maker Faire is full of clever bike designs—bikes with monstrous back wheels, bikes crafted of solid wood, bikes made to look like a pencil on wheels. But here’s one that could transform your own two-wheeler: the smart handlebars by Helios.The design is simple and clean: a sleek set of handlebars that can attach to most bikes with two LEDs facing backward and one in the center facing forward....
Fleas are a common ailment of household pets everywhere, and ridding your dog or cat of these pests is just the beginning. Oral and topical flea medicine—as well as a good flea bath—is an effective way to remove fleas from your pet, but that does nothing to kill the fleas that are in your home. Fleas can live and thrive in dog beds, rugs, carpets, furniture, and your own bed. Follow these steps to eliminate fleas from your home and prevent them from returning....
Day TripGEARMedia Platforms Design TeamPack a handlebar bag. This stores everything needed for a day on the road and provides easy access to snacks or a camera. Most attach with plastic fasteners, but Canada’s Arkel uses metal brackets, holding the bag steady on rough terrain and allowing for quick removal when needed. A clear plastic map sleeve adorns the lid, keeping you from getting lost and having to backtrack.TOOLSBring a hand pump, tire levers, a spare tube and a patch kit....
Media Platforms Design TeamIn the new blockbuster I Am Legend, virologist Robert Neville (Will Smith) is the sole survivor of a man-made plague that has wiped out all of humankind–and turned those who didn’t die into creepy, vampire-like mutants. Between a highly regimented schedule hunting deer in Times Square with his dog, Sam, and swinging a five-iron from atop a naval cruiser, Neville tries to find a way to reverse the virus using his own immune blood even as the Infected are closing in, setting traps and hunting him....
The LightSail 2, a small spacecraft powered solely by the sun’s rays, has successfully unfurled and is now flying through low Earth orbit (LEO). Built by The Planetary Society, a non-profit co-founded by Carl Sagan, the LightSail 2 is the first steerable solar sail launched into the LEO.View full post on TwitterThe Society is keeping track of LightSail 2 on its website. The spacecraft is a CubeSat, a tiny satellite that has democratized low-level space exploration to the point where it can be can successfully crowdfunded, as was the case here....
NASA’s Insight lander has chronicled abundant seismic activity across Mars’s surface. Insight landed on the red, rocky planet in 2018, and has since recorded over 450 “Marsquakes.“Observations from the lander’s magnetosphere have revealed the planet may have some residual magnetism after all. For the last 10 months, NASA’s Insight lander has poked and prodded the surface and subsurface of Mars, in an effort to better understand the red planet’s geology. Now, the results are in, and the lander has unearthed a treasure trove of information about the seismically active planet....
In 2002, the Pentagon ran a free-form exercise code-named Millennium Challenge.The exercise was designed to test U.S. tactics against a modern foe based on Iran.The “Red Team,” led by a retired Marine Corps general, repeatedly beat U.S. forces by using unorthodox tactics.As the world reacts to the U.S. military’s killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, many experts are predicting Iran will treat the incident as an act of war. In 2002 the Pentagon ran an expensive wargame designed to simulate what a war with Iran would be like—and the U....
A Canadian mining company has acquired land rights for a mineral deposit that was previously part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. The land was removed from Grand Staircase last year by President Trump. Glacier Lake Resources Inc., a Vancouver-based company that specializes in copper and silver, is looking to expand its repertoire with the “Colt Mesa” copper-cobalt property in southwestern Utah. In a press release, the company notes that the “area recently became open for staking and exploration after a 21 year period moratorium” and specifically credits President Trump with reducing the size of Grand Staircase-Escalante....
NASA’s mission to capture air-to-air images of supersonic shock waves was a long and fraught process that lasted more a decade. But now, the space agency has accomplished the task with flying colors.On Tuesday, NASA released a series of stunning images that show two T-38 supersonic jetliners tearing through the atmosphere, creating sonic shock waves. The images were made possible by a NASA B-200 King Air aircraft, which ferried an updated camera imaging system up to 30,000 feet....
I like to take pictures in low light. The general rule is that you need a shutter speed roughly equal to the focal length of your lens to avoid blur due to camera shake: If you’re shooting with a 200-mm lens, you need a shutter speed of at least 1/200 second. That’s fine for photos in sunlight, but indoors and in other low-light conditions a fast shutter speed results in an under-exposed photo....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhat do you do with the world’s biggest, highest-intensity laser system? Well, for starters, you could blast the nuclei of hydrogen atoms and transform their mass into energy in a reaction that rivals the force and temperature of an exploding nuclear warhead. The lasers are at the heart of the National Ignition Facility, a government project in Livermore, Calif., that you may have seen of on the Web this week....
An amateur fossil hunter in Australia has just made the find of a lifetime: a rare set of teeth from a giant prehistoric mega-shark, the first of its kind found on the continent.Philip Mullaly, a schoolteacher from Victoria, was walking along a beach in Melbourne on the hunt for fossils. This was less a shot in the dark than it sounds: Southern Australia is actually rich in fossils, and Mullaly was walking near a region named Dinosaur Cove....
For the first time in this country’s history, renewables generated more electricity than coal. Last month, renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro actually outpaced coal generation, per data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and an analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. That’s never happened before. It’s a landmark moment for renewables; no one can say that they can’t compete with traditional fossil fuel energy sources anymore....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhy did you decide to make this Saw movie in 3D?The Saw movies have always been visually very rich. There’s a lot of dimension to the images already, and I think that also there’s a veneer of sort of crazy technology, all the Jigsaw gadgetry. So it just seemed like the logical step to use the greatest cinema gadgetry to enrich the film. You actually shot in 3D, as opposed to converting after shooting....
Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeReusable rocketry is creeping higher and higher into the atmosphere. Grasshopper, the SpaceX rocket that can take off into the sky and then steer itself back to its launch pad, reached an altitude of 325 meters (just more than 1000 feet) during a test this weekend at a SpaceX launch site in Texas, seen here. The rocket’s previous altitude record was about 840 feet....
