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Media Platforms Design TeamYesterday Boston-based startup Rethink Robotics unveiled Baxter, maybe the only factory robot in living memory to generate prelaunch buzz.Baxter is a vaguely humanoid model—a legless, two-armed, tablet-headed line worker. Its primary selling points are its low price—$22,000, exponentially less than most manufacturing bots—and the assurance that it won’t kill anyone. Baxter can perform a range of repetitive tasks without the need to retrofit assembly lines and with minimal investment....

In medieval times, pocket bibles made of stretched leather were commonplace. But what wasn’t common knowledge regarding these painstakingly transcribed and crafted books was the origin of the vellum, the paper upon which they were written. When modern scholars examined the material, it seemed to be leather, but some of it was so thin that it seemed to stretch the limits of the livestock skins thought to be used. What’s more, one term associated with them—“abortvium”—elicited some … concerns as to whether or not they were ethically sourced....

As the U.S. Air Force’s newest and priciest fighter, the F-22A Raptor is the most advanced aircraft in the sky—but that doesn’t mean it always works. Last week, the Department of Defense issued a statement about a hapless pilot from the 27th Fighter Squadron who got trapped inside an F-22 cockpit during pre-flight checks at Langley AFB, Virginia. Stuck in a down and locked position, the aircraft’s canopy was subjected to a myriad of “maintenance options” recommended by Lockheed Martin to extract the pilot—all of which failed....

We’ve had plenty of opportunities over the past few months to try out the fantatically anticipated Sony PlayStation 3 at controlled product demonstrations, but every glitch we’d witness on-screen was accompanied by some believable explanation (“we’re still debugging;” “that’s a known issue;” “of course, you’re looking at a beta”), and these events always involved plenty of company hand-holding before a PM reviewer would ever get his paws on a controller.Now, of course, the finished PS3 machines are out, and we wrangled one from Sony for testing....

Media Platforms Design TeamJust when we thought there were no new ideas to be had in the data storage space, SanDisk today introduced two interesting new takes on the portable hard drive.The first, and most interesting, is the SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive ($50 for 16 GB; $60 for 32 GB). This little gadget is both a USB thumb drive and a wirelessly accessible hard drive. It works like this: You plug the drive into the USB port of your computer, and as you upload documents, photos, music, movies, or what have you, the device’s internal battery charges via the USB as well....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Metal Vapor Torch might be the next best thing to a lightsaber: a belt tool that can generate a blade of flame that slices through a half-inch steel bar in less than a second. Energetic Materials & Products, Inc. of Round Rock, Texas designed the MVT as a tactical breaching tool for police and others who need to cut through bolts, chains, and padlocks quickly. By using reactive material technology with solid fuel and an oxidizer, the MVT is cheaper, lighter, and more compact than a traditional oxy–acetylene torch....

Fuel economy is foremost on the mind of every motorist these days, regardless of economic stratum. We all want vehicles with cat-like agility, power to spare and enough cargo area to transport a small army. But we don’t want to break the bank feeding such a beast–a catch 22 that every car maker is busy trying to solve. One of the more promising bits of new technology designed to boost efficiency while enhancing performance is the two-mode hybrid system, jointly developed by GM, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz and BMW....

Devastating earthquakes often end up making buildings safer. After hospitals collapsed in southern California’s 1971 Sylmar quake, for instance, the state adopted stringent new construction standards for hospitals and schools. In 1994’s Northridge earthquake, buildings remained standing, but damage to equipment knocked some medical facilities out of service.But engineers would prefer not to wait until the next disaster to put best practices to the test, which is why representatives from the National Science Foundation, the California Seismic Safety Commission, the University of California, San Diego, and a number of private companies were at a construction site on the campus of UC San Diego this week, staring up at a five-story hospital building and waiting for an earthquake to strike....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen the RMS Titanic went to the bottom of the Atlantic in the early hours of April 15, 1912, it carried with it the era’s uncritical faith in the promise of technology. The ship was the jewel of the industrial age. That such an extravagantly engineered behemoth could fall victim to the everyday risks of sailing the North Atlantic was more than shocking; it set off a period of deep skepticism about the relationship between man and his machines....

The answers on Family Feud—the correct ones and the off-the-wall guesses—are a frightening look into the American psyche. The same goes for Google’s autocomplete feature, the suggestions Google offers you when you start typing in the search. Now the two kinds of darkness are united in Google Feud, the game that will waste the rest of your afternoon.The ingenious unofficial online game gathers the 10 most popular autocomplete phrases that follow a particular word or phrase....

SICILY— They called them Californias, and in the sixties only the wealthiest and most glamorous people in the world owned these Ferraris. McQueen, Garner and Coburn all owned the sleek Italian sports car. The California came at a time where Ferrari had stopped building racecars for the road, or road cars that you could race and just built outstanding and beautiful street cars. Now Ferrari is looking to rekindle that spirit with the new 2009 Ferrari California, a two-plus-two V8-powered grand tourer....

Media Platforms Design Team SANTA BARBARA — Harley-Davidsons come in such a wide variety of shapes and sizes it’s sometimes tough to keep them all straight. But every year a thin slice of the Harley’s meaty lineup scores the CVO treatment. Short for Custom Vehicles Operations, Harley’s boutique CVO division is responsible for pushing the envelope on both styling and performance. For 2009, Harley has created limited edition versions of the Fat Bob, Softail Springer, Road Glide and Ultra Classic Electra Glide....

On-Sale Date: Summer 2012 Price: $49,500 for the base, $60,900 for the SCompetitors: BMW Z4, Audi TTPowertrains: 2.7-liter six-cylinder, 265 hp, 207 lb-ft. of torque; 3.4-liter six-cylinder, 315 hp, 266 lb-ft of torque; six-speed manual or seven-speed auto, midengine, RWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 21/30 (S with the dual-clutch automatic); 20/28 (manual S). What’s New: Pretty much everything. Porsche revitalized the styling, especially at the front and the rear. The new steel-and-aluminum body is lighter....

The Texas Hold Em-1000 Virtual Poker TableTime: About six months, working three to four days per weekCost: About $12,800 ($15,000 Australian)Media Platforms Design TeamNot many people can boast that their home poker table is equipped with nine projected capacitive touch screens and a quad-core PC, but Australian IT whiz Andrew Milner can. The 38-year-old, who’s been slinging cards for the past four years, rigged up four digital video cameras to stream all the action for players who are knocked out early, and incorporated Microsoft’s ....

Media Platforms Design TeamImagine you’re on the west side of Manhattan, strolling along the Hudson River on a summer day. You certainly shouldn’t swim in its water, which has been soiled by years of pollution. But you could go for a dip in a pool of crystal clear water that’s floating on top of the river.This illustration of a portable paradise may be the inner workings of a real estate mogul’s wild imagination, but it’s not too far from reality....

Media Platforms Design TeamLate last month, while I was in a hotel ballroom packed with more astronauts, engineers, scientists, and space policy experts than you’d find in Houston’s Mission Control, all eyes were on the Dragon, the SpaceX cargo capsule that launched early on May 22 to the International Space Station (ISS). Timed as if to kick-start the in Washington, D.C., Dragon rocketed to orbit, wowing the conferees and returning on May 31 from a demonstration cargo run to the ISS....

Media Platforms Design TeamMonths ago, the Russian government asked me to head a panel on spaceflight at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (). But that was before the crisis in Ukraine, which changed relations between spacefaring companies and nations drastically. The theme of the forum was “A World in Transition,” and as we’ve seen as the diplomatic crisis continues, that includes the way spacefaring nations cooperate in space. The way things are going, NASA may be left out in the cold....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe’re not sure how long the matte paint craze will last, but BMW is riding the trend by expanding their portfolio of light-absorbing finishes.A brief history of Bavarian anti-burnishes: Two years ago, BMW dipped their toe with the Frozen Gray M3 Coupe, a premium priced ($78,900) limited edition that came with a laundry list of “Do Nots” and a “Maintenance Agreement” that made owners promise they wouldn’t commit cardinal sins of mistreatment....

Nerf’s new 70 MPH ball-shooting guns are way pretty serious for toy firearms and after they hit the market, it wasn’t long before the modding started. First, we saw the inevitable conversions from semi-auto to full-auto but now there’s a new mod designed to keep you shooting basically forever. Related StoryThe Design Behind Nerf’s New 70 MPH GunsBuilt by YouTuber Out of Darts, this modified version of Nerf’s Rival Zeus MXV-1200 blaster is pretty simple....

Media Platforms Design TeamTop speed runs test the mettle of man and machine through extreme straight line velocities, and few exhibitions of speed get more extreme than racer Bill Warner’s record-smashing motorcycle run on July 17, 2011, when the Floridian hit a record smashing 311.945 mph aboard a methanol-burning, 1,000 horsepower Suzuki Hayabusa.Sadly, luck wasn’t on the 44 year-old motorcyclist’s side when he attempted to break his own record yesterday at the Maine Event speed competition....