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Media Platforms Design TeamPrice: $99Bison describes the Airlighter as “the faster, cleaner and safer way to light BBQ’s, campfires, wood fireplaces, and just about any other fire.” I’ve been looking for a better way to ignite charcoal, since lighter fluid is dirty, smelly, and provides a weird aftertaste, and an old-fashioned match and paper takes too long. So I gave the Airlighter a try.Bison’s devices uses a 4-inch-long flame to light coals and a fan to spread flames quickly....

Media Platforms Design TeamHe may be Captain America, but super soldier Steve Rogers’s motorcycle pales in comparison to the car of his nemesis. In the new 1940s set film version of the classic comic, out July 22, the villain Johann Schmidt (also known as Red Skull) is leader of the evil organization HYDRA, and drives a spectacularly evil and epic car to match. Red Skull didn’t have a vehicle in the Captain America comics, so his vehicle could have been anything, designer Daniel Simon says....

Ceres bright spots have intrigued the Dawn team and astronomy fans since they were spotted earlier this year, but from the Dawn spacecraft’s new perch 915 miles above the planet, they’re positively radiant. And it’s not two spots, but a network of them. It’s not known yet, for sure, what they’re made of, though ice is a likely culprit. (It could also be salt, or some unspecified other hypotheses that aren’t intelligent aliens....

Media Platforms Design TeamComcast has some notoriously awful customer service. And despite claims that they were hiring a new exec in charge of fixing customer service, it seems that one of America’s most hated companies has simply doubled down—they’re straight-up calling their customers assholes. A Comcast subscriber named Ricardo Brown recently had some trouble with the company when his wife, Lisa, had tried to cancel her cable subscription. Naturally, she found herself routed to purgatory the retention specialist line....

Tankless Water HeatersI am considering buying a new water heater and have heard about the instantaneous type. How does it work?ALEX K.VIA E-MAILAn automatic instantaneous water heater (that’s its full name) is an appliance that heats water as the water is used. It’s about the size of a medium-capacity suitcase. Opening a hot-water faucet activates either a burner or electrical resistance heater that transfers thermal energy to a heat exchanger. Cold water is heated as it flows around the heat exchanger....

To hear more more Popular Mechanics’ editors, download this week’s episode of How Your World Works here, and be sure to subscribe and comment on iTunes!The NFL season kicks off this weekend, and while a lot of the focus may be on Tom Brady’s revenge and Arian Foster’s groin, we wanted to look at the game from a technology standpoint. As the efforts to protect players have become more and more high tech, so have other things, like the smoothies they drink after practice....

Media Platforms Design TeamOf the many daily annoyances the Internet has erased, getting locked out is not one of them. Unless you’re one of the few with a digital deadbolt, you’re stuck hunting for that spare key or calling the locksmith.KeyMe wants to solve this problem. The startup based on Long Island stories digital copies of your physical keys, embedding in each copy the information needed to make a copy, even without the original....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Gulf of Mexico during Deepwater Horizon cleanup. Source: Wikimedia Commons.While it’s the big oil disasters like BP’s Deepwater Horizon that get our attention, small and medium-sized spills happen frequently, too. Do we really know who much oil we’re losing into the ocean? A new study of the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico, one of the world’s most heavily drilled bodies of water, finds that authorities do a good job of tracking the total number of spills....

NAGOYA, Japan — Mitsubishi’s long history has been firmly rooted here for almost 150 years. Born of feudal Japan’s most notorious noble families, the company was founded in 1870, and has since expanded to become Japan’s largest companies, commanding a global industrial presence. For instance, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ Tobishima plant, one of three around Nagoya, manufactures a variety of aircraft components, including rear fuselage body panels for the Boeing 777 that flew us here....

One service member was killed, and eight injured, when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed into a naval vessel off the coast of Virginia on Thursday, October 22. The accident occurred during a joint Army-Navy exercise, as personnel were rappelling from the transport chopper onto the deck of the USNS Arctic, a type of fast combat support ship that’s typically used as a stand-in for merchant vessels during training maneuvers. Another Army helicopter involved in the exercise ferried the injured service members to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe second-stage Merlin engine fires on Jan. 2, 2010.Over the weekend, engineers at the private launch company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) ignited a rocket engine that sometime later this year will launch an unmanned capsule into space and rendezvous with the International Space Station. The successful test by SpaceX–and recent advances by Orbital Sciences, the other private space company NASA contracted to ferry equipment to astronauts in orbit–represents a shift away from government-run space hardware toward rockets and spaceships designed and operated by the private sector....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: Robert Bakker)The poster boy predators such as T. rex weren’t the only deadly dinosaurs. In a 146-million-year-old fossil, scientists recently found evidence of a lethal stab wound that a stegosaur, that plated-back vegetable-eater, inflicted upon a meat-eating allosaur.Stegosaurs were typically armed with a cluster of tail spikes named a “thagomizer” (in honor of a Far Side cartoon). Paleontologist Robert Bakker at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and his colleagues found a wound in the shape of a stegosaur tail spike, roughly 1....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe 2010 completion of the absurdly tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai has not curbed humanity’s . This January, construction began in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on the next building likely to wear the crown of world’s tallest. Known as the Kingdom Tower, it will soar past the 828-meter-tall Burj all the way to the full kilometer mark (3281 feet). urge to reach even higherEven though Kingdom Tower is not scheduled to open until 2017, we already know its reign probably won’t last long....

Put together a tech-hungry family, the expertise of POPULAR MECHANICS, and a whole lot of cutting-edge digital gear and what do you get? The ideal forum for conducting an in-depth, months-long test of electronics for the home. Every week, it seems, equipment makers announce advances in wireless networking, PC design, voice-recognition technology, digital video recording and more. The goal of the five-part PM Digital Family project is to see how well the latest technology is doing its job....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast week, two barges owned by Google, each carrying a load with large rectangular structures, were spotted in the bays near San Francisco and Portland, Maine. Originally, some speculated that these boats were floating Google data centers. But today, KPIX, a CBS affiliate in the Bay Area, reported that the structures are actually VIP luxury showrooms and party decks where Google can showcase upcoming gadgets and technology with exclusive guests....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s a crisp autumn night, and the Detroit Tigers’ stadium is filled with more than 40,000 spectators watching a World Series game. Suddenly, a swarm of small remote-controlled aircraft swoops in to buzz the crowd. Panic ensues, and so does a deadly stampede.The idea of terrorists using small, commercially available planes in an attack gained mainstream attention last week 26-year-old Rezwan Ferdaus was arrested for allegedly planning to use toy aircraft to attack the Pentagon....

The best way from Winterfell to Lannisport? Well, you could head south on the Kingsroad and jump off on the path to The Twins, but we’ve been having some trouble with the Freys lately, so… You know what, just Google Map it.Reddit user selvag has made this map of the land of Westeros from Game of Thrones in the style of Google Maps, and is selling it on Etsy. For $21 you could consult this handsome work of fantasy cartography every time a pointless minor character on the show mentions where they’re headed....

A new high-end stereo from Caruso uses an old, old technology to pump out the sound: the gramophone. Before electronic speakers, there was the gramophone, a device whose shape amplified sound. The customizable sound system will set you back, though, something to the tune of $3000 (plus shipping from Italy.) There’s still an electronic amplifier inside that works in tandem with the gramophone to create the best possible sound, while a Bluetooth 4....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, one of the longest suspension bridges in the world, spans the length of the strait dividing the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn. But nearly 100 miles away, in a warehouse in Bethlehem, Pa., a much needed upgrade for this heavily used bridge is proving its worth. The Verrazano, put simply, is overtaxed. An estimated 190,000 vehicles cross the bridge every day, keeping the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) constantly at work....

View full post on YoutubeUsing open source 3D modeling software, paleontologists resurrected a 410-million-year-old spider relative—digitally, anyway. The researchers from the University of Manchester and Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde, created an animated video showing how the ancient arachnid would have walked hundreds of millions of years ago. Published in the Journal of Paleontology, this research showcases how paleontologists are using 3D modeling software to reconstruct long-extinct creatures.Scientists study these early spider relatives because they want to know how their legs adapted to walking on land....