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The U.S. Army is preparing to test three new trucks.The trucks are meant to be airdropped with paratroopers.The truck, known as the Infantry Squad Vehicle, will prioritize speed over armored protection. The U.S. Army is about to conduct a drive off among three competing trucks, all aiming to become the service’s newest ride for paratroopers. The Infantry Squad Vehicle is a high speed, lightly armored truck that will jump with airborne troops out of airplanes and allow soldiers to quickly move off the drop zone....

The recent explosion of the consumer drone market has had far-reaching effects, the deadliest being their adaptation to weapons of war. Now, military-grade killer drones operable by a crew of one or two and capable of carrying precision-guided microbombs are starting to make their way into the global defense market. One of the first is Velvet Wasp, the drone that can carry anything from bombs to first aid supplies. Developed by UK defense contractor SR, Velvet Wasp is a 37 pound drone with a carbon fiber frame....

NASA booted up its new exoplanet scale, NEID, last week.The instrument, which is based at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in southern Arizona, is designed to measure the mass of distant exoplanets. Exoplanets exert a gravitational pull on their home stars, causing them to wobble—a movement scientists can study to better understand the planet’s mass. Last week NASA unwrapped its new exoplanet-measuring device, NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler spectroscopy (NEID). It’s first task was to observe the 51 Pegasi star system, home to the first exoplanet humanity ever discovered....

Planetary scientist James O’Donoghue of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) released a video that shows what Earth’s surface looks like after the oceans are removed. O’Donoghue first made the video in 2008, when he worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The newest iteration of the video is slowed down to reveal even more detail, and shows how much water is removed over time.Three-fifths of Earth’s surface is covered in oceans....

In the early 19th century, the civil engineer Charles Joseph Minard’s eloquently rendered charts convinced us that sometimes infographics trump text. They don’t always work, of course—imagine how boring On the Road would have been if Jack Kerouac had drawn it as a time line—but the medium lends itself to lists and how-to guides. The folks who published the book Show Me How understood this: Graphics explain things, and lots of graphics in comic-strip form can explain several hundred things....

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft in 1975 and of Stratolaunch Systems in 2011, has died in Seattle due to complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 65. His death follows an announcement several months prior that the disease had returned after he entered remission in 2019. Paul’s sister, Jody Allen, released the following statement through Vulcan Inc., which manages the billionaire’s fortune:“My brother was a remarkable individual on every level....

Visitors to Russia’s Army 2019 arms show were treated to an interesting sight: a Russian main battle tank slicing fruit into pieces with a machete blade. The exhibition reportedly took place at Kubinka, outside Moscow.View full post on YoutubeThe video shows a Russian T-80U main battle tank with a 2A46 125-millimeter gun. Usually the 2A46 is armed with armor piercing, shaped charge, or 9M119 Refleks anti-tank missiles, but for this demonstration the tank has been fitted with a decidedly low-tech weapon: a machete-like blade strapped to the tip of the barrel with pipe clamps....

NASA is currently working to select its next major deep space exploration mission as part of the New Frontiers program. This fall, the space agency will select a few proposals for further study, and the final selection will be made sometime in 2019. There are a number of intriguing options, such as sending a spacecraft back to Saturn’s moon Enceladus to study the water environment there, or to Jupiter’s moon Io to study the highly active volcanoes and surface lava lakes....

Earlier this year in January, scientists working off the coast of Chile spotted something exciting and unusual: Whales that didn’t look like anything they had seen before, that have appeared only in stories. Now known as Type D whales, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will use genetic sample to determine they actually constitute a new species.“We are very excited about the genetic analyses to come. Type D killer whales could be the largest undescribed animal left on the planet and a clear indication of how little we know about life in our oceans,” says Bob Pitman, a researcher from NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California, in a press statement....

The U.S. Air Force is 3D printing replacement handles for broken coffee cups. Why? Not for fun. it’s printing the handles to avoid buying new cups at a cost of $1,210 each. The cups in question are metal cups designed to work with larger Air Force aircraft where crews work in pressurized areas—think cargo planes and aerial refueling aircraft. Air crews, such as the KC-10 Extender refueling boom operators above, routinely fly in bad weather and turbulence and might have to stay at their stations for hours on end....

Don’t fly your drone near an airport. If that common sense wisdom hasn’t taken hold quite yet, the FAA wants to make it a little clearer. They’re expanding their Pathfinder program, which seeks to “evaluate procedures and technologies designed to identify unauthorized UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] operations in and around airports.” In other words, how to keep stray UAVs the hell away from the tarmac. The FAA has signed contracts with companies like drone detection specialists like Gryphon Sensors, drone disruptors like Liteye Systems and drone security specialists Sensofusion....

The bulk collection of phone calls by government agencies didn’t start with the programs that Edward Snowden revealed, nor even with the tracking put in place after 9/11. It goes back to the Bush years. The first President Bush.A USA Today report has that bulk collection of billions of calls began as early as 1992, when the Drug Enforcement Agency and Justice Department began tracking all calls to targeted foreign countries in efforts to stymie drug trafficking....

There’s plenty of talk that robots can act as replacements for warehouse employees. But items have to be grabbed elsewhere , and Preferred Networks Inc. has an idea for a place covered with clothing and general filth: the home.With an investment from Toyota and Hitatchi, the Japanese company was able to offer a demonstration robot that “picked up pens and put them in a holder all in the same direction,” according to the Wall Street Journal....

Popular Mechanics contributing editor Jeff Wise, a private pilot and long-time aviation writer, takes on his biggest challenge yet: Flying without an engine. Follow along as Jeff learns that no matter how experienced the pilot, getting a glider license is no easy sail. East of the Hudson, a funky gloom hangs from the sky as I drive west towards Freehold this morning. The satellite/radar combo at AccuWeather.com promises that clear skies are moving in from the west, and I’m hopeful that yesterday’s meteorology has reversed....

Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a little tequila, that sweet fermented agave juice you can sip any time of the year. But there’s much more to tequila than what goes into a margarita. Centuries of craftsmanship have gone into making the best spirit, and one tequila maker is out to save those traditional methods. Suerte started when two Boulder-based tequila-loving friends, Laurence Spiewak and Lance Sokol, bumped into Pedro Hernandez Barba, who was making tequila on his family’s land in Atotonilco El Alto, a small town 60 miles east of Guadalajara, Mexico....

New research into 3D printing technology could someday lead to the U.S. military 3D printing body armor for soldiers. The technology, which looks to abalone shells for inspiration, could allow units to print armor themselves, foregoing a cumbersome supply process. Researchers at the Army Research Laboratory, according to The National Interest, are developing ways to 3D print ceramic materials.Ceramics are more difficult to 3D print than plastics or metals, but they are also a key component of body armor designed to protect soldiers from bullets and shrapnel on the battlefield....

Over the year, the U.S. Navy has shot down its own aircraft a just handful of times—and usually by mistake, of course. But on July 8, 1991 the Navy shot down one of its planes on purpose. A stricken Hawkeye early warning airplane, its crew having bailed out, was shot down by a F/A-18 Hornet before it could pose a threat to a populated area.This was one of the strangest shootdowns ever recorded, and it happened 27 years ago this month....

Media Platforms Design TeamYou may have been to Archive.org and seen the Way Back Machine to see its snapshots of websites as they’ve evolved over time. WWWTXT is taking that idea back even further—think of it as way, way back machine. Think BBS and Usenet far back.Artist Daniel Rehn is behind the WWWTXT project, where he posts snippets of what he finds from the BBS era on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter; it includes old Usenet sites and retro-computer caches....

Your laptop, smartphone, and tablet can all be considered technological marvels. That is until they run out of juice and become practically useless.gospace GOSPACE SuperChargergospace GOSPACE SuperCharger$45 at popularmechanics.comWhile portable chargers these days are a dime a dozen, it’s still pretty tricky to find one that is multifunctional, much less come across one that can work in multiple countries. With the GOSPACE SuperCharger, you have a powerful transportable charger and adapter all in one....

DETROIT — Toyota unveiled our favorite car of the Detroit auto show so far tonight: the FT-HS sports coupe. At an invite-only reception after the show was officially over, Toyota showed select media their idea of what a 21st-century sports car should look like. Now, sketches and photos do not do this car justice: I want this car in my garage, like, now. The styling is tough, edgy and, for the most part, original....