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There’s a bizarre alternate universe out there where your favorite movies are twisted and transformed into weird, cheap derivations both alien and all-too-familiar—and made on a budget that would make Plan 9 from Outer Space blush at the shoe-string effects. It’s the world of Turkish rip-off cinema, and one of its crowning achievements is Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam. That translates to “The Man Who Saved the World” but has become better known as “Turkish Star Wars....

Not all satellite surveillance is creepy. The European Space Agency says its Proba-V, which watches for changes in Earth’s vegetation by scanning the planet in infrared, has another use: It can detect skin cancer in humans. Thanks to its digital infrared sensors, the small probe can also detect irregularities in human skin invisible to the human eye, scientists have discovered. Thus, the same kind of on-board camera that detects minute differences in the planet’s plant life when it’s on a satellite could be added to medical scanners to find skin cancer in humans....

Media Platforms Design TeamThis past summer, I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out how to get TV episodes from a DVD-burnerless computer to a television so my cousin could catch up on the second season ofLost (what we won’t do for family…and good television!). It proved to be a fruitless effort, but thankfully, cuz, it appears that Steve Jobs was watching out for us. Not content to make an impact on music downloads alone, Jobs unveiled Apple’s new iTV this week, which could make watching what you’ve downloaded on iTunes easier than ever – not to mention revolutionize the way we get our TV media....

View full post on YoutubeScientists from the University of Rochester have developed a way to make self-cleaning, water-repellant metals, paving the way for rust-proof devices and panels.The team led by Chunlei Guo accomplished this feat by firing lasers at the surface of the metals, creating “nanogrooves” just 0.1 mm apart. When exposed to air, the grooved materials are so water-repellant that drops simply bounce on the surface a few times before rolling off as if it were Teflon....

Media Platforms Design TeamIs there a way to turn on my window air-conditioning units from my office, so my house isn’t hot when I get home? If you had central air, the answer would be easy: Install a smart thermostat such as the Nest or Honeywell Wi-Fi Smart Thermostat. But even if you don’t have central HVAC, you can still control window air conditioners from afar, so you always arrive home at the end of a sweltering summer day to a ­comfortable and cool house....

Facebook has come a long, long way since its genesis in 2004. Throughout all the changes, good and bad, there’s been a thread of algorithmic smarts. Facebook wants to learn how to show you only what you want to see. It’s already gotten pretty decent at that, but Mark Zuckerberg sees it going so, so, so, sooooo much further. While responding to a question in one of the periodic “Town Hall” Q&A sessions Zuck occasionally holds on Facebook, he highlighted the broad strokes of his perfect future for Facebook....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamMORE BREAKING NEWS FROM THE 2008 L.A. AUTO SHOW• 2008 LA AUTO SHOW: All of Our Updates and Analysis in One Place Great-looking convertibles are scarce. Usually the best convertibles (like the Mazda Miata or Porsche Boxster), were developed and designed as ragtops from the get-go. The coupe-derived G37 Convertible, on the other hand, borrows heavily from the Coupe—and with its hinged metal retractable top deployed, could probably pass for a coupe on a dark night....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast week, a new company called Planetary Resources announced that it was starting a . The mission, backed by billionaires such as Google’s Larry Page, plans to send robots to procure heavy metals and water from space rocks. But for years now, other would-be space miners have had another, closer target in mind: the moon. For instance, the was formed to make rocket fuel from it. Its founders also plan to mine other volatiles—such as ammonia and methane—that were also discovered, which would provide nitrogen and carbon for fertilizer and other uses....

Media Platforms Design Team GENEVA — The relentless pursuit to perfect lithium-ion batteries has put General Motors in the lead. Well, that’s what GM says anyway. As PM broke down in detail from the labs last month, every major automaker is working hard on validating its li-ion packs. But here at the Geneva Motor Show, GM seems uber-confident that it’s on the right track. Officials from the General announced that the company has developed a second generation of lithium-ion batteries that will generate three times more power than the nickel-metal hydride (NIMH) batteries they’ll replace in all future GM hybrid research and production vehicles....

Media Platforms Design TeamCleopatra’s Needle is an ancient Egyptian obelisk, but right now it looks like a construction project. Scaffolding snakes up the 69-foot spire as conservancy crews clear away 3500 years of soot and grime.Originally built in honor of Pharaoh Thutmose III, the obelisk has black streaks that mark its time spent buried near the Nile, its travel across the Atlantic, and near 130 years facing the pollution-filled elements in New York City....

During the running of the Indianapolis 500, drivers will navigate the 2.5-mile, nearly rectangular oval 200 times, and each time they’ll face a foe as formidable as any other competitor: Turn One. Like all four turns at Indy, Turn One is a 90-degree left-hander that looks innocuous when viewed on the tube. But when you’re barreling down the 5/8-mile-long front straight at over 225 mph, that barely banked turn takes on all the appearance of a widow maker....

Media Platforms Design TeamLAS VEGAS—We keep expecting wireless charging pads to take off. There are essentially two ways to transfer charge from a mat to a portable device, conductive and inductive. Conductive devices, such as the current WildCharge pad, work through a direct physical connection between metal contacts. Inductive devices, such as the nonstarter Splashpower technology we wrote about several years ago, transfer power through the air using inductive coils (electric toothbrushes have been using inductive charging for years)....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s no surprise, but now it’s official: Shell oil announced that it will not be drilling for oil north of the Alaska coast in 2013. The company bored preliminary holes in the fall of 2012 in preparation for drilling a series of exploratory wells this summer. The idea was to become the first company to find significant oil in America’s slice of the Arctic Ocean, and open up a whole new energy frontier....

The hidden champion of online privacy is the random number. When you’re making a credit card purchase online or simply sending an email, you rely on encryption techniques that use long strings of random numbers to conceal your information. But there’s a big problem with this approach: True randomness is incredibly difficult to create digitally. Computers are not random.“It’s actually impossible for a computer, following a predefined algorithm, to generate a truly random number,” says Bruno Sanguinetti, as physicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast Wednesday, we ran an analysis from the 2008 RoboBusiness Conference in Pittsburgh that included a comment from an Army Program Manager, Kevin Fahey, about the SWORDS armed unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) system. This program, which resulted in the first armed UGVs to be deployed—specifically, three were deployed in Iraq in June 2007—has been the subject of considerable online rumors, after reports surfaced that the program was in trouble....

Here’s a robot gunning for one of Peter Parker’s main jobs: spinning a web of any size.Lei Yu, a Ph.D. candidate at Tsinghua University, took inspiration from arachnids when he devised this 3D printing robot that spins a spider-like web around itself. Initially he was hoping for something closer to a caterpillar before realizing the great amount of materials that would be needed for that design. Instead he created the spider-inspired bot, which blends four filaments to create the durable web....

Want to know what television series is airing on a planet 39 light years away right now? Or maybe you want to be notified every time that planet zips around its star in a few days, completing a “year?” Or maybe, just maybe, you’re dying to know what the inhabitants of a faraway planet see if they were to look on Earth with an improbably big telescope. Brett Morris, a grad student at the University of Washington, has the answers to that....

(Above: USS Farragut)Update, April 30: With Navy warships now escorting U.S. flagged vessels, the chance of an Iranian ship bullying commercial ships into submission is a lot less likely. But we might expect Iranian warplanes to act aggressively overhead and on-shore batteries to track ships with fire acquisition radar as they go past.View full post on TwitterTuesday, April 29: Yesterday, Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats fired shots at a commercial cargo ship, the MV Maersk Tigirs, which was under U....

1971-1977 Chevrolet VegaMedia Platforms Design TeamLegend has it that when Chevrolet Division Manager John DeLorean went to the GM Proving Grounds to get his first look at a prototype of the new 1971 Chevrolet Vega, the front of the car literally fell off onto the ground. But that bad omen didn’t keep DeLorean from putting the Vega on the market.Responding to increased import sales, the Vega showed up at the same time as Ford’s similarly ill-fated Pinto....

Media Platforms Design Team1. The recession has reshaped fatherhood.“The economic downturn has had a disproportionate effect on men. Men have lost jobs at a greater rate than women and have been much slower to rebound in terms of income and employment. What this means is that there are more stay-at-home dads, and dads who work part-time, and men are not necessarily the majority breadwinner in the family. Part of what we hope Fatherly....