Earlier this week, Boston Dynamics unveiled a new version of its SpotMini robot dog. The brief teaser was impressive, but it was nothing compared to the video the robotics company released today. We have seen the Atlas bipedal robot before, and it has always been exciting, but now the bot has some slick new paneling and apparently some new hardware and/or software because we have never seen it move like this....
Media Platforms Design TeamAs bubbles burst in one economic sector after another, we’re now hearing talk of a “higher education bubble,” in which cost increases, buoyed by cheap government loans, may be hitting their limit. Can technology save the day? Or does the problem go deeper than that? No one disputes that college and graduate-school costs have skyrocketed. In recent decades, college tuition has increased at more than four times the rate of inflation, outpacing even medical–care costs and amounting to a 439 percent increase between 1982 and 2007....
Starting in the 1960s, Cap’n Crunch started packing colorful whistle toys inside its cereal boxes. The Cap’n Crunch Bo’sun whistles were designed to mimic boatswain whistles used by sailing officials to signal commands or mealtimes, and it became an unlikely tool of a group of hackers long before they were known as hackers. John Draper was a former U.S. Air Force electronics technician, a part of an underground culture of phone “phreaks....
This week, Facebook released a new data privacy tool called “Off-Facebook Activity.” With it comes new settings for users and the ability to stop tracking across other sites. You’ll still see ads, but they’ll be less personalized.The tool provides a full summary of which sites and apps Facebook has tracked you on, plus all of the information Zuckerberg and co. have gathered on you to serve ads.Rarely do we talk about Facebook and privacy in the same sentence and not refer to a data breach or some sort of election interference....
Seattle’s Bertha tunneling machine has now completed more than 90 percent of its 1.75-mile subterranean journey. Now, before it finishes its job, you can get a look at some of the amazing work that the Bertha workers tackle in this 360-degree video, making it perfect for something like Samsung VR.View full post on YoutubeThe 6,700-ton tunnel boring machine is currently the biggest in the world (although there is another in China that can be expanded to a slightly larger diameter than Bertha)....
The Civil War-era mill town of Nashua, N.H., is not, at first glance, the likely location of a clandestine struggle for the future of military air superiority. The city usually only gets national media attention during political primaries, with candidates stumping over pancakes at the reputedly haunted local restaurant. But since 1951, Nashua has been at the forefront of a struggle that has outlived decades of wars, including the Cold War....
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is finally getting more affordable. According to comments by manufacturer Lockheed Martin’s CEO to CNBC, planes bought in 2019 will be cheaper by a factor of nearly one half. CEO Marilyn Hewson told CNBC that with the first aircraft delivered, the defense giant is “on a path to be down to a price of $85 million per jet by 2019.“Hewson was almost certainly referring to the -A model of the F-35, which has booked orders from the United States Air Force, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel, Japan, and Korea—more than any other variant of the F-35....
The crack in our upstairs hallway comes back no matter how many times I patch it. What’s the right fix?Seasonal cracks in drywall and plaster are tough to repair. As they open and close, one of two things happens: The surface around the crack crushes and grinds the patch material or it pulls it apart, ripping the material away from the wall or ceiling surface. You need a super-flexible material and one that can bridge a wide gap....
Earlier this week, Jake Burton Carpenter passed away at the age of 65 after a battle with cancer. He was the man behind the eponymous brand, snowboarding’s biggest company. But before snowboarding was even much of a sport at all, Carpenter was building prototypes by hand out of a barn in Londonderry, Vermont. He started Burton in 1977, and his initial infatuation with snowboarding grew from the Snurfer, which was a portmanteau of snow and surfer—a cheap plastic toy created by Sherman Poppen in 1965....
Researchers in Denmark claim to have found German U-boat U-3523, bringing an end to a mystery surrounding the Nazi surrender in Europe at the end of World War II. The submarine, missing for decades, was rumored to have escaped to South America, and while its discovery proves that was not the case, its contents are still unknown. In May 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered to Allied Forces across Europe. On April 30th Adolf Hitler had committed suicide, and within seven days the Nazis had surrendered in Italy and Berlin....
NASA wants to build a squid robot, develop deep space cryogenic storage, and use quasars to guide spacecraft. These and 12 other proposals will receive $100,000 each for development in Phase I of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts. As NASA describes it, the program “aims to turn science fiction into science fact.“The squid robot, proposed by Mason Peck of Cornell, is a “soft-robotic rover” designed to go where conventionally powered robots can’t—like Europa, a moon of Jupiter thought to house a subsurface ocean....
It’s hard to imagine all of the world’s land masses together as one supercontinent. Over 200 million years ago, however, that’s what Earth looked like. The breakup of Pangea was essentially the first step in the creation of the modern world. But that’s not all. Now scientists are saying that the Pangea splitting up also led to lower water levels that made the planet more habitable in the first place. And it’s still happening, they say....
Media Platforms Design TeamPlaySkool’s KOTA the Triceratops /// $300 PlaySkool’s Triceratops may be aimed at kids (ages three and up), but when it comes out this fall, it’s biggest fans could be adult women. Within minutes of wheeling the gigantic robotic dinosaur into our office, every female within a two-floor radius had descended upon our Jurassic friend. The verdict: “He is too cute!” Don’t just take their word for it—check out hands-on video here, then scroll down for the rest of our review....
While the threat of a meltdown is scary, fossil fuel kills thousands every year and nuclear power is one of the best alternatives. But nuclear plants are also incredibly difficult and expensive to build. Even small nuclear plants can cost billions of dollars, making the investment much tougher. There’s a reason the U.S. has only built one nuclear plant in over 20 years.One possible solution to this problem being pioneered by Russia is floating nuclear plants, built in a single location and sailed to where they’re needed....
In today’s war zones, remote outposts are often serviced by fuel convoys.Reliance on liquid fuel endangers troops who have to transport it.Solar power, collected in space, could be beamed to outposts.The U.S. Air Force is investigating beaming collected in space down to the Earth, providing remote military outposts with all the electricity they would need. The method would cut down on the number of fuel-laden armed convoys that often have to travel through dangerous territory, where they are vulnerable to attack....
The United States developed and built tens of thousands of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. A new report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates the total cleanup cost for the radioactive contamination incurred by developing and producing these weapons at a staggering $377 billion, a number that jumped by more than $100 billion in just one year. Most people think of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and think of oil rigs, coal mines, solar energy panels, and wind farms....
Ever notice how hard it is to swat a fly? A core component of fly can be found in their wild insect eyes, which have multifaceted lenses to see in many directions at the same time.Astronomers are now taking a page from the fly’s survival manual. They’re using the same optics concept to create a network of telescopes designed to find an asteroid hurtling toward the Earth—before it squashes humanity like a bug....
The U.S. Navy is experimenting with placing antennas and sensors on parasails that would fly behind a ship, giving them a much longer range than existing sensors. Almost all shipboard communications and sensors are limited by line of sight. The problem is that line of sight at sea level is roughly 12 miles. You can get slightly more from the mast of a ship 50 or 60 feet above the waterline, but that’s still pretty limiting....
The U.S. Navy’s elderly fleet of minesweepers—the service’s main line of defense against one of the oldest and most effective weapons in naval history—is so run down it is unable to fulfill its mission. A new report by ProPublica alleges the service has neglected the fleet and that minesweepers are, in the words of a serving officer “the ships that the Navy forgot.” As tensions between Iran and the U.S. increase, the ships that could see the most action are the least ready for it....
Media Platforms Design TeamYou’re hiking in the Himalayas, one of tallest mountain ranges in the world, and you are struggling. You’re miles above sea-level, your head is in a fog—both the literal one and the disorienting sensation—and it is getting hard to breathe. Altitude sickness is setting in, and you are starting to wish that you had spent more time acclimating to the thin air. As your body fights every step, the Tibetan guide ahead has a smoke, waiting for you to catch up....
