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In May 2014, a Cessna crashed near Watkins, CO, killing both people on board. Now, a report from the National Transportation Safety Board has unearthed the possible cause: the pilot was trying to take a selfie.NTSB’s report said the pilot, Amritpal Singh, was probably fumbling with a cell phone, which “distracted the pilot and contributed to the development of spatial disorientation,” leading to the crash. GoPro footage from previous Cessna flights revealed that Singh and his passengers frequently took selfies while in flight....

Jonathan Armbruster, biological sciences professor and curator of fishes for the Auburn University Museum of Natural History in Alabama, must come from a science lab far, far away.He named a newly discovered species of catfish Peckoltia greedoi. That’s in honor of Greedo, the Star Wars character this fish so clearly resembles.“Chris [his colleague] looked at the specimen and said ’that looks like that guy from Star Wars,’” Armbrustertold Auburn University News....

Heating laundry inside a standard 220-volt clothes dryer is a huge energy drain. But one scientist just found a brilliant way to reinvent the dryer, making it simultaneously faster and more energy-efficient to do the laundry.Ultrasonic humidifiers use high-speed vibrations to turn water into steam, so Ayyoub Momen, a staff scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, turned that method on fabric. It’s one of those ideas you picture bursting into the brain of an engineer who sits upright in the middle of the night, scribbling on as fast as he can on a piece of paper....

Chile’s Calbuco volcano erupted yesterday evening after sitting dormant for 42 years, creating a thick plume of smoke and ash that forced the evacuation of thousands of people in several small communities that are near it.The volcano is located in Puerto Montt, a town that’s roughly 600 miles south of Santiago. Residents told CNN that it exploded twice within 24 hours with the second eruption being stronger than the first.Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on Twitter"At the beginning, it was small and later, the cloud grew and later there was a huge cloud over you and true terror starts," one resident said....

Build Your Own Backyard PergolaMedia Platforms Design TeamPergolas got their start in Renaissance Italy and have beautified gardens since. Today, pergola styles are varied and even expensive. Save money and flex your builder skills by using our easy-to-modify plans for a freestanding, 8-foot square pergola. Add wisteria or grapevine to finish the project with color and shade, and the pergola will become the focal point for your backyard. Build Your Own Backyard SmokerMedia Platforms Design TeamOur senior auto editor, Mike Allen, has a thing for barbecue—real barbecue, that is, not the grilled meat some like to give the same name—so he decided to build his own smoker....

A newly discovered flaw in Linux could allow hackers to wreak havoc on all kinds of internet-connected devices, Linux security experts announced yesterday. The bug is called either the Bash bug or Shellshock, and because it affects so many devices—including Apple computers, many webcams, and servers that run Linux—security experts such as Robert Graham of Errata Security are saying it’ll be worse than Heartbleed, the OpenSSL vulnerability revealed last April.Shellshock lets hackers into Linux-based machines through Bash, a commonly used command-line shell....

Netflix is developing a live-action Legend of Zelda series according to the Wall Street Journal, described as a Game of Thrones for a family audience.The mythical land of Hyrule is coming to Netflix. The streaming service-turned-network disruptor is looking toward a live action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda.This would be the second TV series based on the popular Nintendo video game series, after a one-season cartoon from 1989. Watch it below:View full post on YoutubeIn the video game series, an elfin young man named Link attempts to rescue the titular Princess Zelda from the clutches of a piggish creature named Ganon....

SAN FRANCISCO – After Steve Jobs’ big keynote, I got a little hands-on time with the new MacBook Air. Obviously, two minutes of use isn’t enough for a full opinion–or to complain that the laptop didn’t live up to my dreamt-up, animated MacBook Plus tablet–but the Air makes some great first impressions.First off, the thing is obviously incredibly thin. Apple gives a range for its thickness of 0.76 in. at its thickest part to 0....

Media Platforms Design Team(Image courtesy of Imagi Crystal Limited /Original Manga Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd.)When Astro Boy debuted as a Japanese manga comic almost 50 years ago, people had an out-of-this world notion of what the future would look like. The animated movie, out Oct. 23, reflects that retrofuturistic worldview, where humans exist side-by-side with androids and take hovercars to work. But the movie is not entirely faithful to the comic or the anime series....

Media Platforms Design TeamA soda blaster is like a sandblaster—it works in conjunction with an air compressor to clean dirty parts and surfaces. But instead of using sand as the cleaning abrasive, a soda blaster shoots out sodium bicarbonate, which is commonly known as baking soda (though what’s used in blasters is composed of larger particles than those found in standard household baking soda).The advantage of using baking soda, as opposed to sand, crushed walnut shells, coal slag, or any other abrasive, is that it’s environmentally safe, less aggressive, relatively affordable, and easily rinsed away with water....

Media Platforms Design TeamFor those who live in clement climes, winter can be quite a relief, a real respite from high temps and air-conditioned isolation. But for the rest of us the season brings blessings that are more mixed. For outdoor enthusiasts, there are any number of activities that can take the edge off the long winter months. But when it comes right down to it, the driveway still has to be shoveled, the car still has to be treated with more care than many of us would like, and the lure of Sunday football games broadcast from sunny locales all serve to remind us that spring really is a better idea....

Click here to post this video on your blog or website.Click here to post a photo of this winner on your blog or website.An estimated 2.2 million refugees huddle in makeshift camps in the Darfur region of western Sudan. In the camps, they are safe, but they cook their meals over inefficient wood fires, and as already scant forests are depleted they must venture ever farther to gather fuel–up to 9 miles in some cases....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere’s something miraculous about live TV in the palm of your hand. We had somehands-on time with mobile TVpre-production Samsung phoneat CES on a back , but carrying Modeo’s Mobile TV Smartphone around for the past few days is much closer to the real thing. There’s the host of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel, doing dirty things. There’s some financial show on CNBC. And there’s a lame countdown show on E!...

As soon as the trailer dropped for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a new little droid stole the show. The world fell in love with BB-8, and then a real-live version of the roller bot appeared in April at Star Wars Celebration. You knew it wouldn’t be long until a toy version BB-8 appeared, ready to become the hot holiday gift item of 2015. And here it is.View full post on YoutubeTo control BB-8, you pair it to an app on your smartphone or tablet....

For better or worse, it is a multitasking world we live in. And multiple monitors are uniquely useful for keeping track of numerous programs running simultaneously on your computer. Plenty of studies have pegged the productivity gained by adopting multiple monitors at anywhere from 9 to 50 percent (even if productivity for you means blasting opponents in StarCraft II while tweeting to your followers about how you totally pwned the Zerg)....

Media Platforms Design TeamONLINE HARASSMENTWe’re human, so exchanging salty words online is bound to happen. But according to Michelle Boykins of the National Crime Prevention Council, it’s a bad idea for children (and, frankly, adults) to respond to and potentially escalate harassment. It’s even more important to keep personal information out of the hands of strangers. “Nobody needs to know where you live, no one needs to know your phone number,” she says....

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Yesterday at the CTIA Wireless expo, Microsoft announced that its Surface tabletop touchscreen computers will officially launch this month at five AT&T stores in New York City, San Francisco, Atlanta and San Antonio. As much of the geekosphere already knows, I’ve been a close follower of this technology since before it was announced last May, when my in-depth feature with hands-on video on Surface enthusiastically announced that the machine would be “ready for deployment by the end of 2007....

North Dakota State University students Levi Joraanstad and Colin Waldera were setting up a telescope last week to check out the moon and take some photographs of the celestial body when their night suddenly got a lot more dramatic. WDAY reports that a Fargo police officer mistook their telescope for a rifle—and one of their sweaters for a tactical vest. After checking to see if there were any operations going on nearby, the officer called for backup, with several officers making “contact” with the pair....

Whether you’re hunting for frayed wiring or, in our case, marauding mice, the RIDGID SeeSnake micro ($239) lets you look inside walls without tearing them apart. The scene, lit by two LEDs, shows up on a 2.5-in. screen; in addition to the camera, the 3-ft. cable can be fitted with a clip-on mirror, hook or magnet. It runs for three hours on six AA batteries, and the whole thing is waterproof down to 3 ft....

View full post on YoutubeLet it never be said that the Galactic Empire doesn’t have a heart. In this video, a young boy, Liam, receives a 3D-printed arm courtesy of the John Peterson and presented by the 501st Legion, a troop of Star Wars fans who perform charity work in garb from a galaxy far, far away. Liam, who is missing part of his arm from birth, was able to use his new Vader-approved prosthetic to grab objects around him....