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The U.S. Air Force will go ahead and buy brand-new F-15s even as it purchases large numbers of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Updated with the latest technology, the F-15X can carry nearly two dozen air-to-air missiles and will likely work together with stealth jets to take on fleets of enemy fighters.An article at Bloomberg has revealed that the USAF will request eight F-15X fighters in its budget. The service plans to buy 80 fighters over five years....

Update 4:00 p.m.: The Falcon 9 launched without incident and successfully deployed the two GRACE satellites. In about half an hour the rocket will begin deploying the five Iridium satellites.Original Post:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will (hopefully) launch at 3:47 p.m. ET today, containing two Earth-observing satellites for NASA and five commercial communications satellites for Iridium. SpaceX will not attempt to land its first-stage booster after the launch.This rocket will use the same first-stage booster rocket that launched the Zuma spacecraft for the U....

Update: We’ve got the latest on the new Microsoft products here:Microsoft’s New GadgetsMicrosoft’s Surface Neo Could Change EverythingDid Microsoft Finally Make a Phone Worth Buying?Editor’s Note: The original story is below.Tradition continues as Microsoft once again is debuting brand-new products at its annual October Surface Event, to be hosted in New York.Here’s how to watch and what to expect.How to watch-Microsoft’s website: Have this web page loaded and ready to go for the event, which begins at 10 a....

Q: I want to get the new iPhone, but with its full-front touchscreen, I’m afraid that I’m going to end up dialing it with my face whenever I’m talking. Is that going to be an issue?A: While iPhone is far from the first phone with a touch-sensitive screen, Apple is the first to make a real effort to address this worry. The iPhone has two diodes at the top of the phone, near the speaker....

You know Elon Musk today as a venture capitalist, engineer, inventor, and founder of two companies defined by their futuristic ambitions: Tesla produces electric cars, while SpaceX develops spacecraft “with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets” (perhaps driving Tesla cars when they get there).But in 1984, the same year Duck Hunt and Tetris saw their original release, a 12-year-old Elon Musk programmed a computer game called Blastar....

One Russian company has announced a plan to build gigantic billboards in space, lighting up the night sky with advertisements for companies like Coke, McDonald’s, and KFC. If they’re successful, we could start seeing advertisements floating in the sky as soon as 2021.View full post on VimeoOn the one hand, this is a pretty incredible technological marvel. The company, StartRocket, plans to launch dozens of tiny CubeSats into orbit roughly 280 miles above the ground in a single rocket....

What is cosmic radiation?There are different types of radiation that fall under the general umbrella of cosmic radiation.’ But one important distinction to make is that cosmic radiation is fundamentally different than the radiation that most people are familiar with, like x-rays, gamma rays or microwaves. Those are all electromagnetic radiation, which is mass-less. But cosmic radiation is not. Cosmic radiation is mostly composed of energetic elementslike carbon, oxygen or hydrogenthat are present across space and have had some of their electrons stripped from them....

Clearview AI, a small startup that was mostly unknown until a story from The New York Times called it the app to “end privacy as we know it,” lets strangers figure out your identity through the quick snap of a single photo.Hundreds of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, are already using this facial recognition technology, despite bans on the tech in cities like San Francisco.The app uses over three billion images to find a match....

Media Platforms Design TeamNow that you’ve gotten schooled witheverything you need to know about cicadasCicada Tracker, it’s time to track these buzzing bugs. Radiolab, the mind-expanding show from WNYC public radio, organized a this spring to predict the emergence of Brood II up and down the East Coast this summer and gather data about the extent of this horny horde of insects.The best way to predict the appearance of cicadas is to track the temperature underground—when the soil 8 inches deep reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit, they emerge....

Everyone knows beer can save the day when you’re watching the game or staging a cookout. But it can also save the day on the battlefield. Consider the case of Private William Speakman, who used the incredible power of beer to fight off 6,000 enemy soldiers during the Korean war.In 1951, Speakman was a private in the British Army, fighting against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Korea. His regiment was given the task to capture and hold United Hill, a Chinese outpost....

🛠Number of parts: 284 | Model: Power Wheels Ride-On F-150 | Producer: Mexico | Time to Disassemble: 3 hours, 4 minutes Power Wheels Ford F-150 (Raptor Version)Power Wheels Ford F-150 (Raptor Version)$429 at WalmartIf you were five years old, you’d be pretty stoked to see this under the Christmas tree. Its 12-volt drive system whisks you up to 5 mph. A power lift-and-lower tailgate can carry your toys. There’s even a speaker with a 3....

NASA’s support of private spaceflight has helped spur competition between companies like SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin, and that rocket race has driven launch costs to historic lows. The next step will give industry a chance to take the reins a little farther from home by putting the first private lander on the surface of the moon.This move became crystal clear last week when NASA confirmed the cancellation of Resource Prospector, a lunar rover program in the planning stages, and announced a new request for private industry to build lunar landers....

The future of flash is looking bleak. Announced in tandem with the new Google Pixel 3 lineup, Night Sight—the tech giant’s low-light photography setting that captures vivid images in the darkest of scenes—is absolutely eye-catching.The Pixel line was already known for its powerhouse of a camera, but Night Sight increases its utility by cutting through darkness without the violent zap of a flash. I was lucky enough to test it out in the ideal venue—a very dark place....

Media Platforms Design TeamSAN DIEGO — Trekkies have Star Trek conventions. Spring breakers have Cancun. And for incurable Porschephiles, there simply is no substitute for the Porsche Parade, an annual event in which the most die-hard aficionados gather from near and far to celebrate the cult of those pricey but addictive German sports cars. Organized by the Porsche Club of America, the five-day festival kicks off with a concours, which draws ardent Porche supporters such as Toronto-based stockbrocker Botho von Bose....

Media Platforms Design Team NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Dodge is known for bucking conventional pickup-truck wisdom. The ‘94 model polarized everyone with its brazen big-rig styling. For 2009, the Dodge Ram gets perhaps its most significant breakthrough yet: rear coil springs. That’s big news, as is the 390 horsepower rating of the revised 5.7-liter Hemi. But is class-leading power and a new suspension enough to lure more half-ton shoppers to Dodge’s lots?...

If you’ve ever been stuck in traffic, you might have tried to go faster by tailgating the car in front of you. Instinctively, you probably know that tailgating doesn’t help you get where you’re going any faster, but it’s hard to overcome that urge to drive as close to the car in front as possible.New research from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory not only confirms that tailgating doesn’t work, but demonstrates that it actually makes the situation worse....

To generate more wind power, why not go where there’s more wind? That’s the idea behind the Buoyant Airborne Turbine, which will float up to higher atmospheric layers and harvest the more constant and stronger winds up there.The turbine is held aloft by helium and tethered to the ground by three strong cables. It’s designed to automatically deflate if the cables are severed. One of the turbine blimps can power about 12 houses, making them ideal for rural communities and emergency situations where people might otherwise rely on diesel generators....

A swarm of more than 1,000 tiny robots can assemble itself into complex shapes such as letters of the alphabet.Until now, robot swarms that work together as teams had been limited in size to dozens or hundreds of robots. But computer scientist Michael Rubenstein at Harvard University and his colleagues have shown they can program 1,024 tiny robots known as Kilobots, each a little more than three centimeters wide, to assemble themselves into various 2-D shapes, such as a wrench or a five-pointed star, as they reveal today in the journal Science....

Everyone’s favorite video site may be facing a name change–or at least some major aggravation and expense. Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment (utube.com) is suing YouTube (youtube.com), alleging that the similarity between the companies’ Web addresses is wreaking havoc on the tube, pipe and rollform machinery supplier’s business. Universal Tube says its average Web traffic of about 1500 users a month has swollen to more than 2 million–paralyzing the site and possibly hindering sales....

If you want to see a hail of 181 rounds burst forth in just a matter of seconds, then behold this new weapons testing video of the F-35. In a test performed on August 14, the fighter’s four-barrel, 25-mm Gatling gun emerges from its left wing root and unleashes hell.Because it has to do a number of jobs in its Joint Strike Fighter role, the F-35 will use this mean gun to strafe targets on the land and in the air....