Posts

Boeing today released a photo of its MQ-25 Stingray prototype, an unmanned carrier-based tanker aircraft. The U.S. Navy is looking for an unmanned tanker that can operate with existing carrier catapult launch and recovery systems. The MQ-25 will fly missions to extend the range of Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers, and F-35C Lightning II fighters. A final request for proposals (RFP) was issued by the Navy in October, and proposals are officially due January 3, 2018....

As the world works to wean itself off of coal and oil, we need something to replace it. Natural gas is cheaper and cleaner, but still a fossil fuel so that’s not ideal. Wind and solar are making great strides, but their variable nature means we can’t depend on them at all times. Hydro and geothermal are great sources of steady renewable energy, but highly location-dependent and can’t be built everywhere....

Smog is a major problem in India, with New Delhi recently named as the place with the world’s most polluted air. On a visit back to his home country from MIT, Anirudh Sharma figured out how he might be able to help with the problem by finding a use for all the soot shot out by exhaust pipes. Sharma’s company, Graviky Labs, converts soot into black ink for pens and artist paints....

It only seemed a matter of time before a law enforcement agency would use the iPhone’s Face ID technology to unlock the device and access information vital to a criminal investigation. In August, the FBI became the first agency to use Face ID to unlock an iPhone X, according to Forbes.Suspected of either receiving or disseminating child pornography, 28-year-old Columbus, Ohio resident Grant Michalski cooperated with the FBI when asked to unlock his phone via Face ID....

Ford may not have found a way to make the folding bike look any less ridiculous looking, but at least the car company found a way to make it smarter. Meet the MoDe. Ford’s prototype folding bike can charge a smartphone and connects to health trackers via BlueTooth. That allows for cool features such as the “No Sweat” mode, which can kick on automatically when it senses your heart rate getting high to provide an assist via the electric motor....

While Facebook’s spokespeople did not reply to our inquiries, we will offer one clarification in their defense: They do not “sell off” data, technically. They sell a service to advertisers. Looking to peddle your hemp-rope macramé vests? Facebook will happily take your money and use algorithms to serve your ads to a carefully curated subset of its users. Those with no taste perhaps. Or no arms.As for the “worth” of your data, to derive a (very) crude estimate, one could take Facebook’s 2018 first-quarter revenue ($11....

Media Platforms Design TeamI’ve always been attracted to engineering oddities. You know, things that get the job done in a different way than most. And I’m especially partial to out-of- the-ordinary engines. So it just seems natural that sooner or later I’d own a car with a rotary engine. And I do: a Mazda Cosmo Sport. “A what?” you say.The two-seat Cosmo is a ’60s-era small sports car powered by a 110-hp, two-rotor Wankel engine....

We haven’t seen the last of the spinning triangles.Back in March, Martijn ten Brink, Mazda Motor Europe’s vice president of sales and customer service, ignited gearheads everywhere when he told Dutch auto news outlet ZERauto that the Wankel rotary engine will return to production.Specifically, ten Brink said the rotary could become a range extender for an electric car in 2019, and for now that’s just a rumor. Mazda Motor of America won’t discuss or confirm ten Brink’s comments, telling us only that “Mazda hasn’t announced any specific products featuring a rotary engine at this time....

The bones of a gigantic prehistoric aquatic reptile have been discovered in England. The ichthyosaur, as the 205-million-year-old reptile is known, is estimated to have been 85 feet long—around the size of a blue whale. Its discovery leaves scientists wondering if the modern blue whale might not, in fact, be the largest creature to have ever lived.Ichthyosaurs have been found all over the world in a variety of sizes. Common in the oceans of the early Triassic and late Cretaceous periods, they resembled modern dolphins and were, for a time, the top predators in the seas....

Buy NowThe North Face’s new Prophet 100 was designed for—and tested on—snow-capped mountain summits. But every adventurer hauling a few days of supplies down a trail can benefit from the technology that makes the Prophet not just supremely capable, but one of the most comfortable packs available. The backpack is light (five pounds, 11 ounces), and made from abrasion-resistant and ripstop fabrics that will last decades, but North Face wanted a pack that made the ugliest endeavors easier by focusing on the fit, mobility, and balance, says product manager Alex Goulet....

The 2019 Illusion of the Year is a set of twisting lines made by programmer and polymath Frank Force.Optical illusions use the brain’s predictable expectations to subvert what we believe we’re seeing.This new illusion follows in the footsteps of famous classic optical illusions.The optical illusion of the year is an animated cat’s cradle that turns both horizontally and vertically and both clockwise and counterclockwise. The illusion hails from Frank Force, a programmer and video game designer who makes art, and apparently optical illusions, as one of his eclectic interests....

Scientists have confirmed that plastic bags litter the very depths of the Earth’s oceans inside the Mariana Trench. The findings highlight a polluted region of the ocean often ignored: the very bottom.Scientists from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and the United Nations were able to determine that “plastics are ubiquitous even at depths >6000 m (over 3.7 miles down) and 92 percent was single-use products.” A plastic bag was even found at 10,898 meters (nearly 7 miles down) below the surface inside the Trench....

Media Platforms Design Team Work at PM ground to a temporary halt today when news arrived that we’ve been nominated for a National Magazine Award in the General Excellence category by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). (The awards are the Oscars of the magazine journalism business, without the TV crews and red carpet. The awards are the Pulitzers of the magazine journalism business.) We also received two nominations in the Personal Service category....

Spanish police have commandeered the first known “narcosub” to make the trip from South America to Europe.The submarine had just arrived off the coast of Spain, carrying more than $100 million in cocaine.Narcosubs are used by cartels to move large amounts of drugs from South America to Mexico, but this is the first known to have traveled as far as Europe. Spanish authorities have confiscated the first transatlantic “narcosubmarine” ever discovered by authorities....

The Australian government recently released a list of documented thylacine—also known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf—sightings.The thylacine was thought to be extinct for the past eight decades and has yet to be officially spotted since the last one in captivity died in the early 1930s.It remains to be seen whether or not any reported thylacine sightings will be made official—something made especially difficult with no photographic proof or other hard evidence....

A Leica employee said it before I could: One very specific feature on the new M10-D is divisive. On the top right of the camera, there’s a lever you would use to advance the film on a film camera. But the M10-D is digital. That lever is a thumb grip. You keep it closed when you’re not using the camera. When you want to take photos, you open it, and lodge your thumb against it so you can grip it with one hand....

According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS’ Leslie Moonves says that company is bringing back The Twilight Zone, the late ’50s/early ’60s television megahit whose influence still reverberates throughout the genre today. The best part is Jordan Peele, the director behind one of this year’s greatest horror films Get Out, will be involved with the project with Marco Ramirez (The Defenders, Daredevil, and Sons of Anarchy) rumored to write.Update: On September 20, CBS All Access dropped a teaser trailer with Jordan Peele’s voice superimposed over Rod Serling’s iconic intro....

The planet, HR 5183 b, takes 77 years to complete its “comet-like” orbit. But that orbit is extremely eccentric, spanning essentially the equivalent of Jupiter’s orbit at its closest point to its home star, and past Neptune at its furthest.The planet, which is about 102 light years away, likely got this way in an incident that ejected another planet in the system. It’s both one of the longest orbital periods known, and one of the most eccentric....

It may not look like much, but this grainy video was made without any outside power source. No battery, no electrical plug-in—the camera uses nothing but a solar panel that takes in light the same way a digital camera does, capturing an image while charging itself. Built with off-the-shelf parts, the camera is a new way to capture video and images without any outside influence aside from photonic activity. Right now it’s operating on a 30x40 pixel display, making for grainy video....

If we want to stop climate change, we’ll have to stop pumping out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In order to do that, we’ll need to replace all the sources of carbon pollution—like fossil fuel plants and combustion vehicles—with clean, renewable alternatives. But there’s a problem: According to a new study, we might not have enough materials to make that happen. Plenty of high-tech electronic components, like solar panels, rechargeable batteries, and complex circuits, require specific rare metals....