On Friday, the U.S. Army announced in increase in American troops in Germany, the latest step deeper into the new Cold War taking root in Europe. This increase is more than a gesture; the hardware involved speaks to the way the U.S. and NATO would respond to a fight against Russia’s modernized military.“We are working to create a combat-credible posture in Europe that will underpin our deterrence,” Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the U....
We have robotic fish and jellyfish that can swim in the seas. We have robot cats and dogs that can sprint across the land. It’s time the amphibians got their turn.Meet Pleurobot. It’s a machine programmed to move just like a salamander, the result of hundreds of hours of painstaking research into how those creatures move. Like a salamander, it’s amphibious, able to move between water and land, slowly, thanks to waterproofing armor....
Thousands of phallic-looking marine worms washed ashore at Drakes Beach in California and have caused quite a stir online.The worms, which very closely resemble a penis—and are nicknamed ‘penis fish’ among other things—likely got stuck on the beach after a strong storm disrupted their shallow burrows, leaving them stranded. While a strange sight on land, weird-looking sea creatures completely fill our oceans, and we love them all.People visiting Drakes Beach in California were treated to quite the spectacle when thousands of the alien-like sea creatures washed up onto the shore....
The U.S. Navy, reacting to an increasingly active Russian Navy, will reactive the Second Fleet. The Second Fleet was historically responsible for the East Coast and the Atlantic Ocean ranging out to halfway between North America and Europe. The fleet will likely coordinate a response to Russian cruise missile submarines operating near the continental United States.The U.S. Navy is organized around several numbered fleets, each with a particular geographical area of responsibility....
Daimler announced that car2go, its on-the-fly car rental program, launched in Austin, Texas, today with a fleet of 200 Smartcar fortwos that will be available for rent to members by October. Customers who register for car2go receive a membership card with an RFID tag that can open any car in the fleet and, in conjunction with a PIN code, acts as the key for the cars. What sets this program apart from others like it, such as Zipcar, is that there is no need for preregistration, and the vehicles are “untethered....
This hatch isn’t quite hot. But maybe it shows a Corolla can be cool.The 2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback was one of the stars of this year’s New York Auto Show, and for good reason. While most automakers rolled out yet another crossover, Toyota displayed a wee hatch in shocking blue, a ”Blizzard Pearl” present to those of us who grew up loving small, quirky cars.This model won’t be on the market until later this summer, but we drove one out of New York City and up to the Berkshires to see how much fun a person can really have in a Corolla....
Invisible ink is an espionage trick that dates back centuries. Spies in the Revolutionary War used acidic liquids like lime juice to create patterns in paper fibers that would become visible when exposed to heat, and sometimes even more sophisticated inks with special decoding solutions. In the digital world, you won’t get quite as far with a jar of juice, but the premise of secret messages hiding in plain sight hasn’t gone away—it’s just evolved....
LAS VEGAS — Got $15,000? You could drive a Honda Fit off the lot… or just buy the D-Box GP-100 gaming platform, a chair that brought home the terrors and thrills of truly bad high-speed driving to this tester. No mere controller or vibrating lounger I’ve tried comes close to the realism of the GP-100. Three motors make the chair rock and roll, and speakers are placed right behind the head....
(Note: Maybe don’t watch the video if snakes really freak you out.)Drones are great tools for going where humans cannot go. And for going where we shouldn’t go, like directly above a group of angry rattlesnakes.YouTube user Michael Delaney flew a GoPro-equipped drone over the snake pit to capture an slithering, stunning, and somewhat discomforting view. The only trouble is that the rattlers aren’t crazy about the uninvited mechanical guest. One of them begins waving its tongue at the UAV....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhen General Motors released a list of 1124 dealerships it had targeted for closure last year on its way to cutting more than 2000, it was dubbed by many Wall Street analysts and insider executives as “about time.” But it was called “robbery” and “criminal” by many long-time dealers and their lawyers.It looks like many of those dealers whose rights under tough state franchise laws were trampled by GM’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, though, are now going to see another day by way of arbitration that’s been forced on both GM and Chrysler by Congress....
Media Platforms Design TeamIn NASA’s iconic images of nebulas such as the Crab and the Eagle, bright greens, reds, and purples swirl in a fuzzy cloud of cosmic psychedelia. These images are, of course, a lie. But a new image of the Helix Nebula provides a fascinating look at how these stunning pictures come together.The La Silla Observatory, located way out in Chile’s Atacama Desert, captured this collection of raw images—a different detector captured each of the eight frames....
When scientists got a whiff of 170-year-old beer that was discovered at a shipwreck in 2010, they knew something was wrong. Simply, the beer smelled funky and had grown so sour that they weren’t sure what it originally tasted like.But the researchers weren’t going to let a little thing like that stop them from investigating brewing history. So they did what any good scientists would do: ran the samples through some electrical fields and analyzed what was in them....
Andy Weir is back with a new book. And while The Martian followed a wisecracking astronaut marooned on Mars, Artemis (out now) follows a wisecracking, ne’er-do-well young woman who lives in the titular city, which happens to be humanity’s first permanent outpost on the moon.As with Weir’s breakout title, science is the star of the show. Artemis is at its strongest when Weir dives into deep explanations of how the city works and the technology required to build a lunar base....
If you have any smart appliance, like a connected thermostat or Wi-Fi security camera, chances are it’s extremely hackable. Internet of Things devices tend to have such poor security that your best bet, if data privacy is your number one concern, is to instead buy the dumbest appliances you can find. But for people in Japan who bought smart devices anyway, their government is going to test the security of those devices by trying to hack them....
Media Platforms Design TeamTaking decent video on most compact cameras is like drawing the Mona Lisa with a box of crayons. That’s why most people leave the live action to dedicated camcorders.Remedying this issue, and thus saving you valuable bag space, is the impetus behind Kodak’s EasyShare V1253 camera, which claims to be the first compact cam to soak up high-definition, or HD, video at 720p. So how does it hold up?...
In a fairly shocking report that will make you laugh, cry, or vomit, NASA’s inspector general has revealed that the space agency appears not to give much of a hoot about its valuable, historically significant, and irreplaceable collection of one-of-a-kind artifacts from space missions. The new report shows that “a significant amount of historic personal property has been lost, misplaced, or taken by former employees and contractors due to the Agency’s lack of adequate procedures....
A Eurofighter 2000 was on a NATO air patrol near the Russian border with Estonia today when it accidentally fired an air-to-air missile. The plane returned to Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania, but the missile is MIA. Its presumed location is 40km north of Tartu in Estonia. Spanish authorities are warning people to beware going near “something that looks like a missile.“The investigation is just beginning, but how can a modern fighter just make such a serious mistake?...
Winter adventures often mean adding an extra layer or two (or five, no judgement here), and in our book, the two most important pieces of gear when the mercury drops are coats and boots. Choose the wrong coat and you might find yourself overheating, a problem temporarily solved by unzipping your jacket. But pick the wrong boots, and you expose your feet to a painful chill or, worse, you get caught slipping and sliding in the snow and ice....
Media Platforms Design TeamNorth Korea: Who’s Controlling Those Nukes and Chemical Weapons?After Kim Jong Il died this weekend, the South Korean military went into alert—and South Korean defense stocks rose 15 percent when the dictator’s death was announced. South Korea’s leaders, and investors, know that Stalinist regimes tend to have rocky transitions when their leaders die.Perhaps the only good thing about a tyrant is that you know who is ultimately in charge—and with North Korea in particular, who has the authority to launch nuclear weapons....
This week we decided to change it up a bit and revisit some classic riddles that you may have heard in your childhood. These are wordplay riddles, each its own little ditty, unlike our normal logic puzzles. Here are the Riddles in the Dark.Problems1. Gollum: What has roots as nobody sees, is taller than trees, up, up, up it goes, and yet, never grows?2. Bilbo: Thirty white horses on a red hill....
