Posts

Media Platforms Design TeamWell, it should be pretty obvious to anyone that this is the next version of Infiniti’s popular and well-done G35 coupe. It’s another looker, but also has a full-length glass panel roof and large projector LED headlights and taillights with a special “sunglass-style multilayered surface treatment,” whatever that is. It also features hidden, touch-to-open door handles and compact cameras in place of traditional outside rearview mirrors. The images appear on flip-up screens located on each side of the instrument cluster....

Media Platforms Design TeamSince its 1977 launch, the Voyager 1 probe has passed gas-giant planets, beamed back the famous Pale Blue Dot picture of Earth from afar, and is now passing through the limits of the solar wind’s reach. Its sister craft, Voyager 2, took the first pictures of the outer gas giants, Uranus and Neptune. Likewise, it’s leaving the solar system. Despite the Voyagers’ incredible distance and its 1970s hardware, scientists can still communicate with them....

Although Sputnik-1 will always be remembered as a shock to Americans, it is surprising how thinly veiled the development of the first satellite in orbit really was. On April 15, 1955, the Vechernya Moskva newspaper announced that USSR had established the Inter-agency Commission for Interplanetary Communications with a goal of developing an Earth satellite for weather forecasting by taking photos of the Earth’s surface. Translation: a spy satellite.This “interplanetary committee” didn’t work in total obscurity....

The first distillery within the city limits of Evanston, Illinois, Few Spirits was founded in 2011 and represents the grain and the glory of the great American Midwest. “We make grain spirits because we’re in the country’s breadbasket,” says founder Paul Hletko, whose distilling philosophy is “grain to glass.” “We’re able to source our corn, wheat, and rye regionally, much of it from farm cooperatives.“A former patent attorney, Hletko overcame antiquated laws in order to root Few in Evanston, one of Prohibition’s birthplaces....

Used to be, if you wanted to find a poker game, you’d have to fly to Vegas or wait for the next steamboat to churn upstream. Today, the game is everywhere, bankrupting online hold ’em addicts and keeping eyes glued to the plasma. Still, nothing comes close to the fun and feel of actually flipping cards with buddies. “Playing live gives you a true poker experience and elevates the excitement,” says Mike Sexton, a World Series of Poker winner and a commentator for the World Poker Tour....

Media Platforms Design TeamiOS 5: Notifications, Cord-Cutting, Twitter and NewsstandNotifications: The clumsy notification system in iOS has been a problem since the earliest days of iOS. It used to just be an occasional SMS popup interrupting a web browsing session. With the advent of 3rd-party apps—and later, push notifications—the problems were compounded. That intrusive blue popup because a constant annoyance, interrupting everything from games to FaceTime sessions. In response to years of grumbling, Apple is killing the popup entirely....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Apple iPhone “S” versions are usually iterative rather than transformative—a set of incremental enhancements with minimal changes to design. This thinking made it easy for Apple fans to write off the odd-year phone launch in the past, but the iPhone 5s breaks out of this pattern. It may look like a replica of last year’s model, but the experience is vastly different once you pick it up and use it....

View full post on VimeoRoughly 75 percent of those burglaries happen to residences, and often when their owners are away, according to the FBI’s most recent crime report. The first step to protecting yourself and your home, then, is simply to make it appear that you’re not an easy target.That’s the idea behind Kuna, a new smart porch light launching today aims to prevent a burglary before it happens by simply letting you know someone’s at your door....

Media Platforms Design TeamSome of my fondest memories are of buying cars with my father. My dad was the kind of guy who would buy whatever was on the showroom floor, and he didn’t care about options. He did no research of any kind, and once he’d decided he wanted a new car, he didn’t like to wait. My dad was not a great one for endless haggling, though he always started out by acting like it was his favorite pastime....

Media Platforms Design TeamConfusion and acrimony have swept NASA since President Barack Obama’s attempt to shift focus from a moonshot (the Constellation program) to a deeper space mission to an asteroid and/or Mars. His $19 billion NASA 2011 budget request is the battleground, but the fight may not be decisive. The result could be an expensive lunar space program that is funded next year, but may be canceled once the politics catch up....

With the successful launch Sunday evening of the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket carrying a simulated version of the Cygnus supply vehicle for the International Space Station, NASA took another step toward turning over low Earth orbit to commercial launch companies. After a launch that was scrubbed on Wednesday when a data cable connected to the second stage unplugged prematurely and subsequent weather delays, evening’s launch went off without a hitch....

Media Platforms Design TeamI just got a new electric guitar, but I don’t have a guitar amp, so I tried plugging it into some computer speakers. I could barely hear it. Am I doing something wrong? Electric guitars work because of electromagnetism: The pickups on a guitar, which are transducers, receive the mechanical vibrations of the strings and turn them into an electric current. Dynamic microphones work in much the same way, picking up the vibrations of sound waves and converting them into electric signals....

Life is mysterious. There are amusing mysteries. Why do gentlemen prefer blondes? There are mysteries that define generations. What happened to Judge Crater and Jimmy Hoffa? And then there are the grand mysteries. Some have perplexed humans since we first stood on two legs, others have only recently come to mind. Is there a Fountain of Youth? Will we cure cancer? Can we achieve immortality? Can we create artificial life? Where is the soul?...

Can someone have an electromagnetic field?Plenty of people have a fear of cellphones, microwaves and power lines. For those who got close enough to Joseph, a depressed employee at a shipping company, those fears should have extended to alarm clocks, computers, pacemakers and conveyor belts. In a day’s work, this guy manages to cause all of those electrical appliances to malfunction. Worse yet, he accidentally causes an elevator to plummet several stories and drive itself into the ground....

Wiretapping Bill Accommodates for Technology President Bush cited “accounting for changes in technology” as a central function of a modified wiretapping bill that he signed into law on Sunday. The bill updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by redefining the legal allowances of “electronic surveillance” to include both e-mail and international phone calls. Internet service providers and even voice-over-IP services such as Skype are now legally obligated to open their doors to the government for surveillance of foreign suspects when American citizens communicate with people outside the United States....

(Published in the May 1998 issue)More: The most popular Drug Smuggler Boat.We hit the first wave at about 25 mph. The bow rose so high that only a cloud-scattered expanse of blue Florida sky was visible beyond the rail. As we hung in the air, I told myself: You should have backed off the throttle while you had the chance–moron. Instead, I clutched the wheel, flexed my knees and waited for the inevitable sternum-crunching reunion with the water....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is the world’s darling organization. It received the Nobel Peace Prize, and its inspectors are in Syria on a mission to dismantle the Assad regime’s chemical weapons. What could be the problem with a group like that? Well, sorry to say, things are not all that squeaky clean when it comes to this organization. The group is not all that effective, it serves as a get-out-of-jail card for the worst chemical weapons offenders, and it is even a likely conduit for spies seeking access to the world’s chemical manufacturing plants....

Media Platforms Design TeamA terrorist blows a hole in the side of Air Force One, near the back of the plane. The pressure differential blows 13 people out of the aircraft. , aka Tony Stark (the raffish Robert Downey Jr.), appears, like a high-tech cavalry of one—and thus begins a heart-stopping rescue sequence in which the hero zips through the sky, daisy-chaining the falling passengers together and depositing them safely in the calm waters off Miami, all in less than 2 minutes of screen time....

Media Platforms Design TeamAlthough newer models are quieter and cleaner, snowmobiles still have a bad environmental reputation. They produce noise and exhaust. Environmental advocates say engine noise can disturb wildlife, potentially driving some species from their habitats, and that emissions from snowmobiling may pollute local air and water.According to the American Council of Snowmobile Associations (ACSA), much of the noise and pollution from modern snowmobiles results from aftermarket modifications to exhaust systems....

Think it’s rough getting blasted with someone else’s high beams? You wouldn’t want to find yourself on the wrong side of this totally absurd DIY flashlight. Built by YouTuber rctestflight, and comprised of ten separate 100-watt LEDs all mounted on a giant heatsink for one serious light show. The ten-pound rig is powered by two 8 amp-hour lithium-polymer batteries (roughly the battery power of 9 iPhones 6S batteries) and can run for about 10 minutes, though since it only has passive cooling, it gets relatively hot after only a couple of minutes....