Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on VimeoIn the wake of some high-profile acquisitions by Facebook—Oculus VR, WhatsApp—it’s easy to forget the one that got away. Last year Facebook made a $3 billion offer to buy Snapchat from CEO Evan Spiegel. The deal was rejected. But Facebook was undeterred, even though the social giant’s previous attempt to beat Snapchat, Poke, failed miserably. Today the company put forth its new champion: Slingshot....
Imagine having an uncut loaf of bread and needing a slice of toast as soon as humanly possible. As if you were, say, a baker in a rush. You would (theoretically) need this knife that can cut and toast at the same time. Built by mad genius Colin Furze—he of the rocket-powered go-kart—the knife uses a modified microwave transformer to run electrical current through the blade of a “knife,” which then heats bread to a crisp as it saws through....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe worst-ever Ebola outbreak has climbed to an estimated 1229 deaths and 2240 infections, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) . Despite decades of research, a cure or vaccine remains elusive, though several experimental treatments are in various stages of testing. Last week, a WHO committee decided that it is ethical to give to those infected with Ebola or at risk of contracting the disease, as long as the patients give informed consent....
Step-by-Step DIY TechMedia Platforms Design TeamIt was back in 1924 that a couple of researchers from General Electric, Chester Rice and Edward Kellogg, patented what remains the basic design for virtually all the world’s loudspeakers. In the 84 years since, engineers and enthusiasts have invested a lot of thought and energy in the refinement of Rice and Kellogg’s concept, creating a valuable knowledge base for the do-it-yourself crowd.I should know–I recently built the speakers pictured here, and in the process I learned quite a bit about the art and science of a good speaker....
When carolers sing of Christmas, of idealized images of happy families gathered around a warm hearth, they are not singing about our hearth. For my family, Christmas over the past two decades has meant sitting on the couch in sweatshirts or huddled under blankets, wondering why a constantly burning fire was doing nothing to raise the room temperature higher than that of a Norwegian ice storm. We joke about living in an igloo, but we know they must be warmer than this....
Instead of letting old floppy discs rot away with time, an intrepid soul who goes by the name 4am has been saving Apple II games from the creeping effects of time. The whole treasure trove, now numbering more than 500 games, is being preserved on the Internet Archive as 4am Collection.Essentially, 4am is taking the old discs, and figuring out how to break the old encryption that prevented the discs from being copied....
The Iowa caucuses—the first, biggest event of the U.S. presidential primary season—begin tonight. They’re really important in the grand scheme of electing the next president … but they’re really confusing, too.Here, we explain the muddled math that goes into determining the delegate count.The Iowa caucuses are the first event of each U.S. presidential primary season, and even if they weren’t first, they’d stand out as the only stripes in a field of polka dots....
The biggest turbine engine in the world, nearly as wide as a Boeing 737 fuselage, took to the skies for the first time on Wednesday, March 14. The GE9X, destined to power the Boeing 777X, has a composite fan stretching 134 inches in diameter, more than 11 feet, tucked into a 14-and-a-half-foot nacelle. The engine is so big, it needs to be specially mounted on the wing to allow for enough ground clearance....
Scientists have turned leftover barley into carbon nanotubes using a simple heat and chemical wash.Carbon nanotubes are essential to research in many fields, and scientists can make them from recycled waste products.• The process also produces activated carbon, vital to treating poison and filtering water.Move over, Marmite—there’s a new brewery leftover in town. Scientists in Ireland and Oman have collaborated to turn barley waste into plentiful, low-cost carbon in high-value formats as activated carbon and carbon nanotubes....
It isn’t covered explicitly in Everybody Poops, but you can pick it up if you read between the lines: Everybody poops even when they are in space. This truth, universally acknowledged, is not just a fun fact but an engineering challenge—one that a handful of poopgineers have just earned tens of thousands of dollars attempting to solve. NASA laid out the problem like this on the page for its Space Poop engineering competition, which recently awarded $30,000 in total to three separate poop solutions: Current space suits are worn for launch and entry activities and in-space activities to protect the crew from any unforeseen circumstances that the space environment can cause....
Media Platforms Design TeamJust more than a week after its Antares rocket shortly after liftoff on a mission to the International Space Station, Orbital Sciences Corporation has promised to keep cargo flying.explodedThe company said in a statement today that it would speed up the introduction of a new rocket engine for Antares—that will now happen in 2016. To keep ISS cargo missions going until then, Orbital will launch its Cygnus cargo spacecraft atop other rockets at least once or twice....
Media Platforms Design TeamOne morning in April, I pulled up to a nondescript gray stucco duplex that fronted a canal in Key Largo. From the outside, the structure looked like an ordinary Florida condo, but if you peered over the fence into the covered portico, you could see a dizzying collection of air and mixed-gas tanks and the latest high-tech scuba gear splayed out everywhere.I entered the condo to find two women and three men, all shoeless and in shorts and T-shirts, eating breakfast and talking into a speakerphone....
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of prisoners are adding their voices to biometric databases set up by state correctional organizations under coercion from their prison. While advocates for the prisons say the databases could help uncover gang-related activity, critics say they could seriously violate prisoners’ rights.A new joint report from The Appeal, jointly published with The Intercept details how widespread the databases have become. According to the New York Department of Corrections, 92 percent of its population had been enrolled in the voice recognition system....
Researchers have created a miniature robot modeled after trap-jaw ants.Dubbed “Tribot,” the small robot has potential for multiple applications, including scouting and exploration missions as well as emergency search and relief efforts.Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Osaka University in Japan have collaborated to create “Tribot,” a small robot that’s been modeled after trap-jaw ants. The Tribots weigh 10 grams and are designed to function like trap-jaw ants do in their colonies, where each member has a designated role like leader and worker....
Media Platforms Design TeamAUSTIN, TEXAS—As SXSW Interactive hit critical mass this morning, thousands watched WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange talk via Skype at the first of several main events with a focus on privacy.Speaking from London’s Ecuador Embassy—where he says he is able to “exist in a situation which is every national security reporter’s dream, which is a land without police” (but also where he is avoiding deportation from sexual assault charges)—Assange said that national security reporters have become a new kind of refugee....
In what sounds more like the plot of a comedy heist movie, a group of thieves tried smuggling a shark out of an aquarium in San Antonio by hiding the animal in a baby stroller. After a weekend of searching, authorities have apprehended the thieves and the shark is now safely back in her tank.The shark heist began on July 28, when two men and a woman entered the aquarium with an empty stroller....
Earlier this summer, the Swedish Air Force dropped a laser-guided bomb on a forest fire to help suppress the flames. Now there’s a proposal for the United States to do the same, using the might of the U.S. Air Force to fight America’s raging forest fires via bombs and sonic booms. Bombers that have attacked targets in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq could instead strike targets in the continental United States—this time saving lives and property....
Stephen Hawking isn’t done yet. The brilliant physicist, who died in March after one of the most extraordinary careers of the century, co-authored a new theory about the origins of the universe released by Cambridge today. The theory, co-authored with Thomas Hertog of the Belgian university KU Leven, uses string theory develop an idea of a cosmic origin, a departure from Hawking’s earlier ideas of a “no boundary” universe, or the idea that space existed without time before the Big Bang and therefore the universe has no beginning....
Update! Here it is, the official trailer for Solo:View full post on YoutubeDuring the first commercial break of the 2018 Super Bowl, Disney finally gave fans a first look at Solo: A Star Wars Story, a film about the galaxy’s favorite scoundrel.View full post on YoutubeThe teaser hits all the points you’d expect from a Solo stand-alone story. We’ve got a “best pilot in the galaxy” reference, the Millennium Falcon, Lando Calrissian (played by the excellent Donald Glover), and yeah, Chewbacca....
Legendary synthetic biologist George Church from Harvard Medical School is working on a start-up called Rejuvenate Bio that wants make dogs younger, and someday, maybe apply the same technology to humans. In a podcast interview, Church revealed that the company has already experimented on mice, and are testing on dogs now. “Dogs are a market in and of themselves,” Church said at a event last week, according to the MIT Technology Review....
