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Fighting back against the deregulation of the FCC, Montana Governor Steve Bullock has signed an executive order that will preserve crucial net neutrality in his state. The order will prohibit any internet service provider (ISP) that has a contract with the state from engaging the most anti-consumer activities—censorship, throttling, or website-specific fees—that are now legal on the unprotected internet. “If you want to do business with Montana, there are standards on net neutrality you will have to follow,” Bullock told The Times....

Media Platforms Design TeamFacebook Home, the massive social network’s take on an ideal mobile operating system, became available last week to the masses. A lot of hype, rumor, and speculation led up to the launch, but based on a few days with the platform, for Android only, it seems most of that excitement is really much ado about nothing. Layered atop Android, Facebook Home is neither app nor operating system. It’s closer to a launcher, since it’s the means by which you access all other apps, but because it so heavily covers up the Android below, that classification doesn’t quite work either....

Media Platforms Design TeamI got a good deal on some industrial-duty steel shelves that I plan to install in my garage. The mounting instructions call for screwing or bolting the shelves to a concrete floor and wall, but they don’t say how. Any advice?We suggest using hexhead concrete screws, which are sturdy enough for this type of application and are easy to install. They don’t require the use of additional plastic or metal anchors, so there’s little more to do than drill, clean, and drive....

Media Platforms Design TeamHöme Improvisåtion is not a video game. It is digital torture and should be illegal under the Geneva conventions.Perhaps you think we’re being unfair, but the game has two big strikes against it. One, it’s a game about assembling IKEA furniture, which is its own level of hell, especially if just one peg is omitted. Two, you have to do it without instructions of any kind. There are just a bunch of parts on the floor....

I once saw union carpenters cutting perfect pieces of drywall with only a tape measure and a utility knife. How do I do that?—Jarett R., Oakland, CaliforniaFirst thing you should do is watch the video that Fine Homebuilding did on this technique in its “Mastered in a Minute” series. After that it’s just practice. People trying this method will sometimes overlook the obvious: You don’t hook the end of the tape measure over the end of the drywall, as you would when measuring....

Media Platforms Design TeamI have a great 1984 Volkswagen GTI that I love dearly, but lately I’ve been noticing a lot of wind noise on the highway and water dripping down the inside of my windows when it rains. I suspect the weatherstripping is going bad. How can I tell, and if that’s the problem, how do I replace it? Into every life a little rain must fall, but it’s best if it doesn’t fall into your car....

There’s no tradition quite like a Fourth of July fireworks display. Lawnchairs and blankets line the grassy viewing area as spectators wait for spellbinding colors, thrilling explosions and intriguing shapes to paint the sky. The event may be magical—especially for the kids—but of course, its all the product of meticulous chemistry and clever ballistics. Behind the curtains—out on a river barge floating a distance from the onlookers’ vantage point—are brown cylindrical and spherical canisters of varying sizes, placed in mortar tubes and wired to a central control....

Media Platforms Design TeamPhysicist Richard Feynman famously said that there’s plenty of room at the bottom. Room to build complex structures, machines, and computing engines at the size of individual molecules and even atoms.Nowhere is this more evident than at the NanoTech Complex, which is run by the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, or CNSE, at the State University of New York at Albany. Sprawling over more than a half-dozen buildings in three locations, the $14 billion facility includes 800,000 square feet packed with advanced laboratories and computer-chip manufacturing equipment....

French scientists believe they have made metallic hydrogen using special torus-shaped diamond anvils.Groups around the world have worked on the metallic hydrogen problem for years.These results are important, but scaling them up will be hugely difficult.Scientists have used diamond anvils to compress hydrogen into a form they believe is metallic. In Nature, researchers from the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) describe how their hydrogen sample changed into a form that acts like a metal....

Climate change has always been a divisive topic for Americans. But new surveys suggest that awareness of climate change is growing, at least a little bit. For the first time, the vast majority of Americans accept that climate change is happening, which means perhaps we can finally start to do something about it.The results come from a pair of surveys, one conducted by Yale and George Mason University and the other by the Associated Press and University of Chicago....

Media Platforms Design TeamFRANKFURT — After two and a half days of trudging the floors, stairs and halls of 10 buildings, shooting photos, collecting press kits and talking to hundreds of people from dozens of car companies, we’ve come away with the impression that the 62nd Frankfurt Motor Show was perhaps the best show that Frankfurt has ever seen. The overriding message, with crude oil hitting $80 a barrel during the second press day, the dollar falling to an all-time low against the Euro, the resignation of both the Russian and Japanese premiers on that same day, and a magnitude 7....

The colored blobs in the picture above were not added. They’re called ULXs, but NASA doesn’t know where they came from.Maybe the ULXs came from either a black hole’s accretion disk, or a wavering in a neutron star’s magnetic fields.Scientists plan on studying the phenomena further.While studying a supernova in the distant Fireworks galaxy (NGC 6946), a NASA space observatory has observed extremely bright sources of X-ray light that resulted in dazzling flashes of blue and green....

NASA scientists may have just found the first pieces of meteorite fragments in the Pacific Ocean. Scientists have been hunting aboard the Nautilus vessel for pieces of a meteorite that fell in March 2018. The fall was one of the biggest meteorite falls in recent history, and the meteorite pieces had seemed especially sturdy, not prone to cracking or breaking as it passed through the atmosphere.Scientists on the Nautilus have identified two small pieces that could be part of the space rock....

Q: I have a 92- Ford F-150 300 6 cylinder. Six months ago I threw the serpentine belt. A month later the tensioner started squealing and I replaced it. Since then I’ve thrown the belt 3 more times. In addition, the power steering pump pulley had about 1/4" play so I replaced it as well. Two days later I threw another belt. What is going on?A: One or more pulleys are out of alignment or damaged, probably as a result of the shredded belt....

Update, November 10, 2021: On October 22, SpinLaunch conducted its first prototype test flight at Spaceport America in New Mexico. The test vehicle did reach supersonic speeds, but the centrifuge-like accelerator that the company used was only about one-third of the size originally planned. According to CNBC, SpinLaunch plans to conduct another 30 suborbital test flights in the next six to eight months. A tight-lipped startup called SpinLaunch is ready to start suborbital test flights of its rockets using a gigantic centrifuge....

The Air Force’s Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base has existed at the leading edge of the aerospace’s newest technologies for 75 years. Now, as the Pentagon focuses on the military importance of Earth’s orbit, the institution is forming a new school specializing in space hardware.Maj. Gen. Chris Azzano, tells Popular Mechanics that he secured Air Force funding to create a space curriculum for the Test Pilot School. “This is the same institution that graduated Chuck Yeager and so many of the other world famous test pilots, where Jimmy Doolittle III was a commandant,” he says....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen The Dark Knight explodes into movie theaters today, certain scenes will look a little crisper, a little more real and a lot more intense—sort of like you’re in the action. That’s because director Christopher Nolan used IMAX cameras to film several key sequences of the film, including the opening bank heist and a climactic chase scene featuring and a tractor-trailer. marks the first time a director used IMAX cameras to film parts of a traditional theatrical release—and PopMech TV has a behind-the-scenes first look at how the action came together:the Bat-podThe Dark Knight Shooting just a few scenes in IMAX format posed a number of challenges for the director and his crew....

The fastest moving stars in our galaxy could be runaways from much smaller galaxies. Or at at least that’s what astronomers from the University of Cambridge suggest in a recent study. The findings results are published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and were presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Hull on Wednesday.Using data from Sloan Digital Sky Survey and computer simulations scientist were able to demonstrate that extremely fast-moving stars known as hypervelocity stars, originate in a dwarf galaxy which orbits the Milky Way....

Media Platforms Design TeamTwo years remain. The Google Lunar X Prize, inaugurated in 2007, challenges private companies to put a lander on the moon, maneuver on the lunar surface, and send back messages to Earth. The contest includes a $30 million prize, but the deed must be done by December 31, 2015. Today the X Prize Foundation announced that five teams are pulling out of the race to the moon. So, with so little time remaining, is any one team on track to win the prize?...

Media Platforms Design TeamMORE SKYDIVING ACTION* PLUS: 5 Extreme Skydives From the Last 50 YearsMan, I wish I were anyplace but here.It’s 8 am on a clear, cool morning at a “quiet airstrip in eastern Long Island, N.Y. The trees lining the runway are sharp as jewels against the crisp blue sky. Duncan Shaw, the jump instructor, hands me a heavy jumpsuit, a pair of gloves and a leather cap. In a few minutes we’ll be riding in a Cessna 207 up to 13,500 ft....