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In late July, Congress actually agreed on something: House and Senate committees announced plans to add $82 million for Tomahawk cruise missile production in 2015. The venerable cruise missile is coming back, and coming back smarter and stronger.In the decade following 9/11, missiles mostly sat on the sidelines while the United States engaged mostly in battles against insurgents. But the age of the cruise missile has returned with violent fanfare. On March 19, 2011 the Western world was reminded of the power of Tomahawk missiles; that night more than 100 missiles launched from U....

View full post on VimeoThe ruler is a perfect measurement device. It’s humans that aren’t perfect. We don’t hold our hands perfectly steady. We don’t mark a measurement perfectly. We don’t read our own marks perfectly.Unfold, a Belgian design studio, thinks it can fix the problem by taking us out of the equation—mostly. The studio’s take on classic measuring devices adds digital sensors and takes away the numbers. Their wood-and-brass ruler, caliper, and protractor measure real-world objects and send the data to digital models, whose dimensions are adjusted accordingly....

If you’re in the market for a new home in Friendswood, Texas, stop searching. We found the perfect place for you. For just about $1.2 million, this beautiful 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom home can be yours, complete with new paint, carpet, tiles, and, oh yeah—a nerd-tastic media room built to look just like the inside of the USS Enterprise. Media Platforms Design TeamWatch endless hours of movies just as Captain Kirk would have done it....

The generator in the Exo went down at midnight. One second I was sleeping in my bag on my cot, the space heater and minifridge soothing me with their chorus of electric hums. Suddenly the whole pod shook. My phone, plugged in beside the cot, emitted a little squirt of noise. There was a thunk as the electronic deadbolt unfastened. Then it was dark. Without power, the pod’s LED-illuminated, capacitive-touch panel, which operates the lights and locks, had gone blank....

Helicopter accidents in Afghanistan claimed the lives of 14 Americans today. The first crash occurred in the south of the country, when two helicopters collided in flight, killing four. (The specific models of helicopters that crashed have not been disclosed.) The second accident occurred in western Afghanistan and reportedly killed seven soldiers and three civilian anti-drug personnel as a Chinook helicopter withdrew from a firefight at a suspected drug compound. These two incidents spotlight what pilots, commanders and soldiers in Afghanistan already know—helicopters give the coalition troops a much-needed edge, but they come with some steep inherent risks....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Kimberly stove is comparatively smalljust 25 1/2 inches tall and 10 inches in diameter. It’s also beautiful to look at. How did you arrive at this unusual concept?Ours is the only stove that was designed completely intuitively and for the specific purpose of heating a boatin my case, a 28-foot boat with me, my wife, and our daughter living on it. Because the only spot available for installation meant removing a 12-inch-wide dish cabinet on the starboard side, and the boat had a list to the starboard side, the stove had to be diminutive in diameter and it had to be light56 pounds....

Media Platforms Design TeamTesla has gone transcontinental. The EV-maker announced that its network of superchargers, which currently numbers 71 stations that let Tesla drivers recharge for free, now stretches far enough that a driver could drive a Tesla across America. Over the weekend, founder Elon Musk tweeted that two Tesla teams will attempt to set a cross-country EV speed record this week, departing from Los Angeles on Friday, and that he himself would take a transcontinental spring break road trip....

Do Not Track is a different kind of documentary: The film about data trackingcan be personalized, so it’s different for every viewer. After you log into Do Not Track online, it tracks your every move and then tells you a creepy amount of info about yourself. The sinister-seeming quality is meant to drive in the overarching point of the docu-series: that your every move is easy to track through the Internet....

Media Platforms Design TeamLOS ANGELES — We’re chatting with Neal Saiki, inventor and founder of Zero Motorcycles, as we ride his new Zero X dirt bike down the beachside bike path here. Halfway to Santa Monica, two things occur to us: We’ve never interviewed anyone while riding a motorcycle (yes, it’s that quiet), and, um, we’re probably breaking the law. This electric motorcycle is smaller than a conventional 250 cc dirt bike, but it’s most certainly not a bicycle....

Media Platforms Design Team SEATTLE–The first comment that leapt to the lips of some folks in a local gas station was “Hey, it looks like a little Audi.” Since when was a Kia ever mistaken for an Audi? But sure enough, if you look at the high rear deck and the general proportions, the Forte certainly bears some resemblance to the cars from Ingolstadt. Then you learn that the new design chief of Kia’s California Design Center is Peter Schreyer, formerly of Audi Design, and the pieces click into place....

This might look like a case full of bright blue plastic kids’ toys, but in fact its contents are deadly serious. They’re 3D-printed models of common bomb fuses, and the next generation of bomb diffusers will use them to learn how to safely disarm explosives.The Golden West Humanitarian Foundation, a non-profit org dedicated to clearing land mines and bombs, worked with MIT and the Singapore University of Technology and Design on these models....

Look, nobody likes to think about the details behind airplane toilets. They’re too small, who knows what the last person did in there, and why are there seemingly never paper towels? But their turgid tanks of turds could prove useful in the fight against global disease.An analysis published in Scientific Reports in July by a group of Danish researchers looked at the toilet contents from 18 international planes that arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn March 11, 16 year-old Gunnar Sandberg was pitching for Marin Catholic in a game against Kentfield when he was hit in the head by a line drive. Sandberg suffered a traumatic brain injury, which left him in a medically induced coma for more than two weeks and forced doctors to remove part of his skull to relieve pressure on his brain. In the wake of that accident, California Assembly member Jared Huffman introduced a bill that would institute a one-year statewide moratorium on the use of aluminum bats in California high schools....

When it comes to 1080p HDTVs, do you really get what you pay for? To find out, we stuck three testers in a room with three new LCD sets and showed them scenes from an old movie (The Road Warrior, on a Blu-ray and an HD DVD player), a newer movie (Flags of Our Fathers, also on Blu-ray and HD DVD) and a video game (Full Auto 2, on Blu-ray for the PlayStation 3)....

Media Platforms Design TeamDetroit, Mich—We’ve tested the Volt and found that —with a fully charged battery it behaves like a pure EV and switches to gas propulsion once the battery is depleted. It’s in this second, “charge-sustaining” mode where the Volt really displays its technical prowess. GM has finally released all the details about how this powertrain works. it operates as claimedThere are two electric motors—a 149 horsepower primary drive motor and a 74-hp motor/generator—and a 1....

Media Platforms Design TeamSmall unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have a big problem: their limited battery power. But researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are developing a way to extend the range by having drones act like birds. If a drone can land on a power line, the thinking goes, then it can exploit the electricity running through power lines to recharge.The key is getting the UAV to land right on a skinny line, which, given the slim margin of error involved, is no easy task....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe lightweight rims that appear on many supercars and other top-of-the-line autos are made of aluminum or, in rare cases, magnesium. But the Australia-based company is focused on producing a one-piece carbon-fiber wheel that could go widespread. “Our goal is to get the cost of manufacturing wheels down low enough so that it’s an everyday product eventually,” says Ashley Denmead, design director at Carbon Revolution.Carbon RevolutionAnyone who’s read PopMech’s new-car test drives has probably noticed the trend toward using carbon fiber in panels and parts, now that the cost of the material is beginning to come down and the emphasis in the car market has shifted to better fuel economy....

The 2007 North American International Auto Show is still months away. Heck, we’re so busy gearing up for the Los Angeles Auto Show later this week that we haven’t given Detroit much thought yet. But Chrysler and Jeep sure have. They decided to tease us recently with sketches of two vehicles they’ll be unveiling in the Motor City come January. The Chrysler Nassau Concept is a four-door, four-passenger luxury coupe with, according to a press release, “an emphasis on driving dynamics....

Media Platforms Design TeamSeconds after you launch Forza Horizon, out today on Xbox 360, a yellow and black SRT Viper muscles its way into some autumnal Colorado scenery. V-10 howling, it tears down a mountainside road, only to be joined by a red Ferrari 599 GTB. As they race down the pass, their exhaust notes harmonize with the drum and bass piped in over the radio. I grip the controller tighter, hammering down on the right trigger as I await the moment the game relinquishes control to me....

The suspense was thick this morning at the Polytechnic Institute of NYC in Brooklyn, where representatives of 37 local high schools packed into a standing room-only auditorium to learn how they’d be spending the next six weeks. One thing they knew for sure: The end result would be a robot. But would it have to fling balls? Climb obstacles? Pull trailers? The possibilities seemed endless. “We don’t really know what to expect,” said Matt Wong, a member of a rookie team from the city’s Hunter College High School....