Media Platforms Design TeamWe’re now more than a month into search for the missing Malaysia airliner. But we could be days away from locating real signs of the wreckage underwater, according to officials heading the effort.At a press briefing last night, they announced that the Australian ship Ocean Shield reported it had picked up two more signals coming from the general area where other vessels had heard similar pings over the weekend....
Media Platforms Design TeamRedington CPX Series 6 Weight Flyrod and RISE reel: $300 and $160, respectivelyFly-fishing equipment has a bad habit of getting expensive in a hurry, but Redington’s top-end CPX series costs half of what companies such as Orvis or Scott charge for similar rods. While fishing for trout recently in a few Adirondack streams, we found the CPX to have a nice, lightweight feel and balanced action that lets you hurl out some serious line without losing control....
Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamOn the day the Internet giant announced it would offer $20 million to the first private group that could land a rover on the moon before 2013, a Google representative told PM that competitors would not be allowed to purchase commercial launch services. Since building a booster from scratch is not only difficult but expensive—PayPal billionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has spent five years and $100 million without reaching even low Earth orbit—the Google Lunar X Prize looked more feasible as a publicity stunt than a realistic innovation....
Media Platforms Design TeamUPDATE (Friday, 10 am EST): Salvage crews that spent hours on the grounded Shell oil rig Kulluk on both Wednesday and Thursday have identified several areas of damage to the vessel, Shell Alaska operations manager Sean Churchfield said in a Thursday afternoon press conference. “The findings include some wave damage to the topside of the vessel,” he said. “A number of watertight doors have been breached, causing water damage inside, and the emergency and service generators have been damaged....
If there’s one item in our lives that could use smart technology, it’s definitely luggage. It travels through so many chutes and ladders to get through airports and on and off of planes that it’s surprising our bags aren’t lost more often. Samsung and Samsonite are reportedly working together to create “smart luggage” that will put an end to that travel torment.The smart luggage would be equipped with a chip that tracks its location using GPS technology, so it’ll tell the owner’s mobile phone of its whereabouts and issue alerts if it’s being tampered with....
Media Platforms Design TeamGetting hacked is becoming an Internet rite of passage. Consider 2012 alone: First Zappos was hacked, its customers’ passwords and other personal information exposed. Then LinkedIn announced that its users’ passwords had been compromised. Then eHarmony. Then Yahoo. More than 30 million users’ passwords were stolen. The growing, painful password problem is twofold: Hackers have gotten very good at what they do, with more capable tools than ever, and those tools can work so well because we are still really bad at choosing—and remembering—passwords....
Media Platforms Design TeamA ribbon of glowing Jets-green shone around the top rim of MetLife Stadium last night. Later, the ring turned big blue for the New York Giants, a nod to the fact that two teams share not only a $1.8 billion stadium but also that stadium’s newest gee-whiz feature. The ring is the work of NRG Energy, the utility that is diving headlong into bringing solar power to the NFL....
By now you’ve probably seen the trailer to Star Wars: The Force Awakens something like 50 times, and memorized its intricacies. You’ve probably watched The Binks Awakens at least twice and felt a chill at your soul. But what you probably haven’t seen is this amazing recreation of the first trailer made for what looks like $100, some recycled cardboard, and tongue-in-cheek love and reverence. The “trailer sweded” edition takes its name from Be Kind Rewind, a 2008 Mos Def / Jack Black film involving two record store clerks who take their own distinctly lo-fi approach to recreating famous films....
In a somewhat creepy step forward for science, a team of researchers led by Miguel Nicolelis at Duke announced they’ve managed to network animals’ brains together, allowing the animals to perform tasks better together than they could individually, and creating what the team calls “brainets.“Nicolelis, perhaps best known for the brain-controlled exoskeleton that allowed a paraplegic to kick off the 2014 World Cup, has also done pioneering research in wiring monkeys minds to allow them to control a robotic arm purely with their thoughts....
The last time NASA visited Europa, the tantalizing moon that might have a salty, warm ocean ripe with possibilities for life, was when the Galileo probe to Jupiter ended its mission in 2003. And back then, Europa wasn’t even the main focus.NASA wants to go back in 2025, and this time, the moon is directly in its sights. The space agency just announced the suite of instruments that will shape what a future mission to Europa can do....
Spider-based architecture is a long-standing tradition exactly nowhere, except maybe in nightmares. But this year’s collaboration between the University of Stuttgart’s Center for Computational Design and the school’s Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design has resulted in a pavilion that draws from the web-spinning habits of the diving bell spider.The diving bell spider builds its webs underwater where it can’t breathe, because the spider has a lot of evil magic that makes it immortal and all-powerful....
Just 48 hours after Germanwings Flight 9525 slammed into a mountain in the French Alps, the shocking news that the captain was deliberately locked out of the cockpit by a junior copilot – allegedly intent on crashing the jet – has put new focus on the security of the cockpit door. The question before investigators now is: Could cockpit security have worked too well, preventing the right person from getting into the flight deck and regaining control of the aircraft?...
On-Sale Date: June 2012Price: $44,995 to $59,080Competitors: BMW 5-Series, Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Lexus GS 350, Audi A6Powertrains: 3.6-liter V-6, 304 hp, 264 lb-ft; FWD or AWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 17/27–28 mpgWhat’s New: The full-size XTS isn’t just the first all-new Cadillac in three years. It’s blazing a trail for the next generation of Caddy sedans, including the smaller ATS that joins the lineup this summer.Powered by a 3.6-liter V-6, the XTS comes with front- or all-wheel-drive layouts in four trim levels: Standard ($44,995), Luxury ($49,610), Premium ($54,505), and Platinum ($59,080)....
Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: NowPrice: $20,845 to $33,895Competitors: Ford Fusion, Honda Accord, Toyota CamryPowertrains: Turbocharged 1.8-liter I-4, 170 hp, 184 lb-ft; six-speed manual, six-speed automatic, FWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 24/34–35What’s New: The big news for the Passat is the gradual phasing out of the 2.5-liter five-cylinder, which is being replaced by a new 1.8-liter turbocharged and direct-injected four-cylinder. At first glance, the I-4 produces the same peak output as the outgoing five-banger: Horsepower is matched at 170, and torque climbs by 7 lb-ft to 184....
The planes that won the Cold War are getting old. They pack as lethal a punch as ever, but like the baby boomer generation they protected, they are beginning to show their age. The electrical system of the Air Force’s A-10 Thunderbolt, better known as the Warthog because of its ungainly tail-engine configuration, lacks the juice to handle modern radar and battle-management computers. Salty sea air has hastened the breakdown of the insulation in some Navy jets, causing scores of fires and prompting a program to install arc-fault circuit breakers....
The Formula E electric racing series will arrive this September with 10 teams signed up to participate in the inaugural season. So far, though, only one car exists—the Spark-Renault SRT_01E. The Spark will serve as the model for all of the other Formula E cars during the first season. After the first season, the series will be open, meaning Formula E teams will be able to modify their cars and try out new technologies....
On a brisk, sunny afternoon last August, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy came to a crunching halt in 4-ft.-thick pack ice, 490 miles north of Barrow, Alaska. The polar icebreaker had just completed the western leg of its summer mission to study the Earth’s crust for the National Science Foundation. Since the ship had been at sea for more than 40 days, the commanding officer, Capt. Douglas Russell, offered the crew a little rest and relaxation: He let most of the 84 sailors and 35 scientists on board disembark for several hours of ice liberty....
Chris Marroquin is waist-deep in a hole in the floor. He’s a tall guy with a medium build, but he looks awfully short now, and his shirt is pumped up to Schwarzenegger size by a 60-degree breeze blustering all around him. Grappling with a 1-inch-diameter hose, he attempts to explain the liquid-cooling system of IBM’s next-generation supercomputer to me, but I can barely hear him over the howling wind. We’re in a development room of IBM’s Rochester, Minn....
Media Platforms Design TeamJosh Nesbit sees a bright future for the cellphones that most of us see as antiquated. The 24-year-old Nesbit is the CEO of nonprofit , and this startup exec’s vision is to take those chunky Nokias and other phones of the recent past—the kind that most Americans threw out or relegated to the junk drawer long ago—and use them to radically change how health care is delivered in developing nations....
Media Platforms Design TeamIt seems like every discussion of the iPad has to start or end with a caveat. “I love it,” people say, “but it doesn’t have a keyboard.” They’ll describe the processes of working, playing, consuming and producing on their beloved tablets but reflexively return to the same refrain: “It’s just not quite like a laptop.” I’m here to tell you that these people are wrong. Reading the endless discussions about the absence of Flash in its browser, its occasionally awkward usability and its tightly controlled operating system, one can’t shake the feeling that this is a device defined inordinately by what it lacks....
