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The tide is low, so there’s a patch of thick mud some 40 yards wide standing between us and the water’s edge of Massachusetts’ Duxbury Bay. For most boaters, the only option is to wait for hours until the tide fills back in enough to cover the boat ramp. But not for us. We just fire up the Sealegs amphibious craft and charge straight into the muck. By the time we’re crossing the mud flats, more than a dozen curious onlookers have gathered to watch....

If you think about it, the Star Wars opening crawl is basically a news story. “Rebel spaceship, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil galactic empire”—it’s the opening of a war dispatch, with perhaps a bit more editorializing than you’d get from The New York Times.The YouTube channel Word Wars clearly noticed. For the past three weeks, it’s been producing videos that take war stories from the Times and stylize them as a Star Wars crawl, complete with John Williams’ triumphant music playing over the gliding lines of yellow text....

The worst part about traveling is living out of a suitcase, second only to moving around in giant machines with other humans. If you didn’t spend an hour packing everything in just the right place (who does?), something as simple as getting some new underwear can be a veritable strip-mining operation. Enter the ShelfPack, an admittedly enormous suitcase with a shelf built right in. Pull up the handles on either side and just extend the suitcase’s innards upwards and suddenly you aren’t living out of a suitcase; you’re living off of a weird and probably flimsy shelf-type thing!...

Media Platforms Design Team1. There are three generations of light cycle—and some modified bikes, too.When Daniel Simon sat down to design the vehicles for Tron: Legacy, he had the script handy—so he knew he’d need to design a few different types of bikes. “If you look at the first light cycle, it’s incredibly simple,” says production designer Darren Gilford. “A beautiful, great design, but very simple—it had to be because of the technology....

Media Platforms Design TeamUPDATE: Ukraine says today that it attacked and destroyed the Russian military vehicles that crossed the border.View full post on TwitterThere’s big news today in the ongoing saga between Russia and the Ukraine as Russian troops have moved across the border. “We saw an incursion (into) Ukraine,” NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today. “What we have seen last night is the continuation of what we have seen for some time....

It’s easy enough to avoid butt-dialing. Just lock your phone. That’s part of the argument the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit used in its ruling that declared that butt-dialers (or pocket-dialers, or any other kind of accidental dialers) or liable for what they’re overheard saying even if they didn’t mean to dial their phones.Pocket-dialer James Huff and his wife had sued Carol Spaw for listening in on their conversation during an inadvertent phone call....

Media Platforms Design TeamLIVE FROM THE 2008 BREAKTHROUGH AWARDS• VIDEO GALLERY: Top 10 Most Brilliant Gadgets of the Year• SUBMIT: Ask Your Questions for Will Wright & Our Award-Winners! Apple announced its new line of notebooks today, and while most of the coverage out there centers on the new “unibody” manufacturing process that Apple is using to produce MacBooks and MacBook Pros, it wasn’t the only news that broke today. In fact, we think that Apple’s novel use of multiple graphics cards in its Macbook Pros is today’s most interesting news....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)PM: In your farewell speech to the DHS, you warned about cyberattacks. We tend to spend most of our time worrying about bombs and kidnappings. Are we leaving the back door unprotected?Napolitano: I think, as a country, we have a long way to go in terms of protection against cyberattack, in part because the whole field changes so rapidly. But this was a constant message we were giving to Congress and industry and the public....

GoldenEyeMedia Platforms Design TeamThis game is undoubtedly one of the best first-person shooters ever made. It was also the best way to use the N64’s four-player capacity. Based on the James Bond film of the same name, the single-player version tracks 007 through a series of espionage missions, taking Cold War leftovers to the trash and such. But it was the innovative multiplayer options, involving different levels, games and arsenals, that made GoldenEye a staple of slumber parties the world over....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe all-new, fifth generation of Bimmer’s flagship sedan—the 2009 BMW 7-Series— is sprouting up all over the Web today as the first bits of news and photos leak out. The 2009 BMW 750i will use the X6’s 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8, with just a touch over 400 hp. But the exciting news is that the 7 will soon get a version of the big joint venture from GM, Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler and BMW: the Two Mode hybrid system....

Media Platforms Design Team MONTICELLO, N.Y. — News outlets are buzzing with stories of financial struggles at General Motors. But from the driver’s seat of its latest sports sedan, the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V, GM appears to be quite fit. Simply put, this muscular, supercharged, V8-powered sedan kicks out an overabundance of forward thrust, life-saving brakes, neutral handling and an appreciated dose of refinement. Caddy has a message for the established sports-sedan players from Europe: Watch your back....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: FallPrice: $22,495–$32,995Competitors: Toyota Camry, Nissan Altima, Chevy Malibu, Honda Accord, and Hyundai SonataPowertrains: 2.5-liter I-4, 175 hp, 175 lb-ft; 1.6-liter Turbocharged I-4, 178 hp, 184 lb-ft; 2.0-liter turbocharged I-4, 240 hp, 270 lb-ft; 2.0-liter I-4 hybrid, 188 total system hpEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 22/26 (I-4 2.5), 23/36 (I-4 1.6, auto), 25/37 (I-4 1.6, manual), 22/33 (I-4 2.0), 22/31 (I-4 2.0 AWD), 47/47 (hybrid)What’s New: Ford’s new Fusion is so thoroughly redesigned and improved that few will draw any similarities to the old one....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sale Date: Now Price: $69,895—$92,895 Competitors: Porsche Boxster, Porsche 911 Carrera, Audi R8, Aston Martin V8 Vantage, Chevrolet Camaro, Mercedes-Benz SLKPowertrains: supercharged 3.0-liter V-6, 340 hp, 332 lb-ft; supercharged 3.0-liter V-6, 380 hp, 339 lb-ft; supercharged 5.0-liter V-8, 495 hp, 460 lb-ft; 8-speed automatic, RWD EPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 20/28; 19/27 (S); 16/23 (V8 S)What’s New: The last two-seat roadster Jaguar produced was a little car called the E-Type....

On its way in for a landing at the Warsaw airport, a Lufthansa flight with 108 people on board had a near miss with a recreational drone on Monday. According to the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA), the drone and plane were at a height of roughly 2,500 feet when the drone came within 330 feet (100 meters) of the Lufthansa airliner. The flight landed with no issues, but PANSA redirected several subsequent planes just in case....

Many scientists believe tiny Martian microbes could flourish beneath the red planet’s ice-cemented polar caps, or even in briny puddles of ultra-salty water—which they believe may be locked under Mars’ soil in seasonal flows. But here’s one important question about the possibility of life on Mars: What the heck does it eat?According to Gary King, a biologist at Louisiana State University, the surprising answer could be a scentless, atmospheric gas: carbon monoxide....

Ad space? Anyway you can. But has it come to this—Ford allowing a huge chunk of space on its corporate office façade to promote an auto website, complete with a free subscription? Is Ford in more trouble than we thought? We know sales of its products are slipping, with pickups and SUVs—the bread and butter of the Ford empire—down substantially this year. And the company is hurting for profits. But is this the way to go?...

NEW iPHONE UNVEIL /// LIVE TODAY @ 10 A.M PACIFIC!* BOOKMARK: ‘Cult of Mac’ Expert Live Blogs the Steve Jobs KeynoteHere we go again. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is gearing up for another keynote speech about another upcoming product that has already been reported to death by online publications (ours included), slobbering over each new nugget of innuendo. But the writing’s on the wall: A new 3G iPhone is coming today....

Media Platforms Design TeamSunday, 8 am–Sport pilots are at the mercy of strict weather guidelines. So when there’s sun, there’s flying. I meet my instructor, Nathan Mayers. He’s 23 and has been dodging clouds longer than dodging motorists. “Flying’s a lot safer than driving,” he says. “Look at the road. Look how many things you can hit.“Nathan has a casual honesty that makes the extraordinary seem entirely possible. Things can go wrong in an airplane, he says, things that can kill you....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeThe Dynamic Ebbinghausby Christopher Blair, Gideon Caplovitz, Ryan Mruczek (University of Nevada Reno)In this update of the classic Ebbinghaus illusion, the central circle remains the same size while the surrounding ones expand and shrink. If you focus your eyes on the main circle, the illusion is subtle. But if you look away for a moment, it’s more pronounced. The central circle appears to shrink and grow along with the others....

When the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, a pall came over Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The Obama administration had killed the Constellation moonshot program. NASA had no backup. And while the Air Force and United Launch Alliance would keep lofting government payloads into space from Cape Canaveral, there was no way to deliver crew or cargo to the International Space Station (other than to rely on the Russians) and no manned programs on the books....