Media Platforms Design TeamAny product that can help you keep the upper hand in remodeling is a good thing. So when I spotted Freud’s multi-material Diablo blade recently at The Home Depot, I gladly plunked down about $60 for it and put the blade to use on bathroom remodeling job in an old house.Designed for use in a 10-inch miter saw, the 80-tooth blade is rated to cut plastics and non-ferrous metal such as aluminum and copper....
As Detroit continues its all-out push for hybrid electric cars, GM announced today that it has lined up two battery contracts for development of the Chevy Volt, which will need a real power source as it moves from concept to reality. One of the cell suppliers for the contracts will be A123Systems to power the plug-in revolution. The lithium-ion batteries will provide the electric storage capacity for GM’s E-flex system, which uses traditional internal combustion power sources coupled with electricity....
Bloomberg has an interesting profile of Henry Hobson, the designer of last night’s Academy Awards. For each best picture nominee, Hobson created a related sequence, adding a touch of fantastic graphic design to the industry awards show, as seen below. Hobson did the same for each category, hunting down the minutest detail for each nominee. For example, the best costuming nominations showed the garments for each film coming together. Prior to working on the Academy Awards, Hobson worked on title sequences for films like Snow White and the Huntsman, The Lone Ranger, and the 2011 version of The Thing....
Media Platforms Design TeamGetty ImagesThink YouTube and streaming music services have killed music on the radio? Think again. It’s still the method most people use to hear music, and is leagues ahead of Spotify, Sirius, or SoundCloud.In fact, 86 percent of respondents to a Morgan Stanley poll said they used the radio to hear music. The second and third place finishers, YouTube and Pandora, trailed far behind at 62 percent and 33 percent, respectively....
Media Platforms Design TeamWord has leaked that a technical error in communications gear led to a 45 minute loss of contact with 50 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) last weekend. The Pentagon says a problem with the elaborate network of communication hardlines—which have been in use since the silos were dig in the 1960s—is responsible for the disconnection at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. For the missileers, tucked inside the Launch Control Center 65 feet underground, the crisis became known with an acronym on one of the two screens on their launch consoles: “LF....
A group of CalTech researchers peered at a nearby galaxy and didn’t see dark matter. In fact, they didn’t see a ton of it—and yet they know it’s the largest concentration of dark matter ever in a galaxy.Now, seeing isn’t always believing in astronomy, especially when it comes to figuring out dark matter, the stuff that’s invisible to our eyes and instruments but makes up more of the universe than ordinary matter....
Media Platforms Design TeamOlivia Munn has been charming comedy fans and gadget enthusiasts since she first appeared on Attack of the Show, the cult-hit news and technology review on the channel formerly known as G4, in 2006. Since then she’s played a fake journalist on The Daily Show and a real journalist on HBO’s The Newsroom. She currently stars alongside a very mustachioed Johnny Depp in the action-comedy Mortdecai (out January 23), which deserves its own special award, even if it didn’t come out in 2014....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhat’s super-absorbent and can clean up nasty spills? Wringable, washable and can be reused again and again? It’s called Osorb, and it’s a kind of ShamWow for industrial accidents. Mix it with dirty water and watch it magically absorb oil, pesticides and organic volatile compounds!Okay, so Osorb may not be a miracle product. But, as we saw demonstrated in yesterday’s live webcast, it is pretty cool. Chemical engineer Paul Edmiston, Osorb’s creator, accepted a bottle of fuel additive from an NSF employee and used it to liberally spike a bottle of clean water....
Media Platforms Design TeamWe know drones have become a cornerstone of America’s defense policy and that the size of the fleet has surged during Obama’s years in the White House. But how many drones is too many? According to a report by the Pentagon’s own investigators, obtained by The Guardian, the U.S. Air Force is spending billions on drones for which it might not even have a plan.Purchases of the MQ-9 Reaper drone have jumped from 60 in 2007 to 401 now, the paper reports, and that number jumped substantially when “former defense secretary Leon Panetta in 2011 ordered the Air Force to buy sufficient drones to perform 65 combat air patrols, missions that require up to four aircraft to observe a target for nearly 24 hours....
Contrary to their earlier statements, Westinghouse now claims that their 1080p televisions are not the cause of the Sony PlayStation 3 blinking phenomenon. The company had indicated earlier that a problem with the firmware installed in certain Westinghouse TVs caused the anomoly in which images from the PS3 blink without sound. Rey Roque, Westinghouse’s vice president of marketing, now denies any problem with the firmware. “It turns out that the problem was in the source box,” says Roque, referring to the Sony PS3....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhy live dangerously?I find a certain nobility in living a little more dangerously than the average guy. A University of British Columbia study gathered a group of executives who reported various levels of career success and life satisfaction, then gave them a questionnaire to rate their tolerance for risk-taking from one to 100. A score of one was basically a homebound agoraphobe, 100 was a fire-breathing lion-tamer. Well, the people that tested as riskier than average were in the same group that was successful and satisfied....
Media Platforms Design TeamIf you have a backyard deck or patio, chances are there’s more than an ordinary door connecting your outdoor space with the inside of your home. In contrast to the traditional porch, decks and patios are real living spaces that extend both the form and function of your home’s interior. And while we’d all like to keep the nasty weather outside where it belongs, we’d like to do so in a way that brings the spaces together as part of a whole....
At the preseason tryouts for the U.S. Boomerang Team in Greenfield, Mass., one figure stands out among the hacky sack players and pizza delivery guys gathering in the soccer fields, limbering up their throwing arms.Eric Darnell, a soft-spoken 62-year-old Quaker and backyard inventor from South Stafford, Vt., has brought 60 of his latest handmade boomerang prototypes, along with several notebooks, two windsocks and printouts of weather forecasts. While others just hurl their rangs – as aficionados call them – Darnell tries to be as meticulous and scientific as possible about the objects he refers to as “my kinetic sculptures....
Skipping Security SoftwareAntivirus software is not a perfect defense, but it offers basic protection. Although antivirus programs are available for smartphones, security analysts say most users don’t use them.Even with antivirus software installed, anyone who steals your phone still has access to your data—no hacking required. Someone in the United States loses a phone every 3.5 seconds, according to Lookout Mobile Security, so make sure your smartphone has antitheft software, such as Prey, that can erase data remotely if a thief steals your phone, and tracking software such as Find My iPhone to track it down....
Media Platforms Design TeamA study published in Nature this week has found a way to determine the color of dinosaurs and other ancient reptiles: by analyzing the dark deposits left on fossils, which the scientists says are actually pigments left over after the animal’s skin decayed.Lots of fossils, such as the ichthyosaur shown here, are outlined or shellacked with a mysterious dark deposit. For a long time, scientists couldn’t be sure what the material was or where it came from....
Maybe the Tefifon was doomed from the start. But it was so amazing, and so German.Tefifon was a non-magnetic plastic tape with etches in it used to play music—a sort of low-tech cassette that played like a vinyl record. Sold primarily in Germany, the device was initially developed as a cheap recording medium for the military before becoming more widespread as a consumer device. The sound quality couldn’t match vinyl, but the storage medium did have one remarkable feature: It could store up to 4 hours of music....
View full post on YoutubeWe’ve recently road tested the Dodge Dart, but an embargo prevents us from divulging the compact sedan’s driving dynamics… so in the meantime, let’s take a closer look at the car’s evil twin, a rollcage-equipped alter ego that serves as the ultimate halo vehicle for the humble compact sedan.The race car, which is very loosely based on the Dart, will compete in Global RallyCross, an Americanized version of rally racing which premiered at the X Games in 2010....
Quentin Tarantino has his arsenal of trademark shots, led by the unmistakeable “trunk shot” taken from inside a car’s boot looking out. But the director repeats other, perhaps less noticeable shots involving cars to set the tone of his movies. This supercut makes it clear.Media Platforms Design TeamSome of the scenes you could probably guess without watching, like the blood-soaked action from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. The Kill Bill movies have their signature look of Uma Thurman driving around in between stops on her revenge checklist....
Update: The Re flopped upon its release in October 2014, another stinging failure for HTC. But this week, a year later, the company dropped the price of the cutesy camera from $199 to $50, much more in the range of a proper fun impulse buy. At 50 bucks, this plucky on-the-go camera might be worth a second look.We’re accustomed to seeing HTC go toe-to-toe with Samsung and LG in the battle for Android smartphone dominance....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe idea of the password as the “key” to your account just became a little less metaphorical with Google’s announcement that it’s supporting the Security Key open standard. The physical USB dongle takes the place of code in the second step of two-step verification, the system of protecting an account with not only a password but also a second form of authentication, usually a code sent to a phone....
