Tonight, at 9:55 PM Pacific Time, a U.S. Airways jet will take off from San Francisco to make the redeye run to Philadelphia. When the plane lands in the City of Brotherly Love on Saturday morning, the passengers will disembark into a world where that airline is no more.Flight 1939 marks the final flight that will ever be badged as U.S. Airways, as the company is about to complete the merger with American Airlines that it began in 2012....
Media Platforms Design TeamI remember back in the mid-1990s when Bill Gates started building his massive Medina, Wash., mansion. I was impressed with how guests could clip on a small radio transmitter that would tell the house who was where, allowing it to adjust the environment according to pre-determined guidelines. I assumed there must have been some hierarchy, or the system would have crashed trying to maintain a happy temperature if, say, my wife and I were in the same room at the same time....
A brilliant Redditor built a door in their home like one that’s right out of The Hobbit. Meet the basement-level apartment version of the Mines of Moria entrance. It’s a plywood door filled with LED lights, sensors, and other electronics. When someone touches the door—in exactly the right spot—it lights up. At that point, the door opens for them, allowing them into the dark mines of … a basement room.Reddit-user Eclipse_007 is even working on integrating voice recognition so he can speak “friend” (in English or in Elvish) and enter right in....
Media Platforms Design Team It certainly wasn’t a quick getaway. Riley Walker speculates that the thief who stole the grocery go-kart featured in PM’s DIY Rally last year spent the better part of an hour pushing it away from the scene of the crime in Richmond, British Columbia. The cart, which Riley and his friend Michael Pallot outfitted with a 5.5-hp motor from a Honda lawnmower, could reach 37 mph—but not with flat tires and a broken pull cord, which is how it spent the winter under a tarp in Pallot’s driveway....
The fierce urgency of China’s building obsession has rarely been clearer than in this time-lapse video of a skyscraper going up right before our eyes. The video captures the tower, made of modular blocks, going up at a rate of three floors per day.Says Sploid:This building has 19 10-meter-high atriums, 800 apartments, and office space for 4,000 people. [Xian Min Zhang, who provided the video,] claims that the use of modules reduced the use of concrete by 15,000 trucks, which he says almost eliminated all the release of dust in the air, an important advantage in pollution-ridden China....
The camera attached to this drone is a Phantom Flex 4K, over 15 pounds of camera that costs $110,00 and up. Yes, $100,000-plus worth of hardware floating above the hard ground. To get that camera in the air, Brain Farm Cinema of Jackson, Wyoming, worked with Swedish drone-builder Intuitive Ariel to create a craft that could handle what ended up being about 30 pounds of gear, including a cradle to steady the camera....
Media Platforms Design TeamFollowing a recent 10-day naval exercise and threats to shut down shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, an enormously important shipping lane for petroleum, Iran once again upped the ante in its standoff with the U.S. this week. The nation threatened to retaliate if the United States sends its aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, back to the Persian Gulf. While the United States has already rejected Iran’s demands, the U....
Media Platforms Design TeamJust one year after Hurricane Irene battered the East Coast, Superstorm Sandy shredded parts of New York and New Jersey. It’s also left many people wondering why. “Every two years, we have a 100-year flood,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a press conference last week, referring to the back-to-back storms. “There have been a series of extreme weather events… Anyone who says there is not a change in weather patterns is denying reality....
In one of my restaurants, a cook once came up to me and announced in disgust that he couldn’t possibly work in a kitchen that used frozen peas. It didn’t bother me that he had challenged my authority. It did bother me that he was dead wrong about frozen peas. Many people think of frozen food as a cheap shortcut, a last resort. All of them need to get off their high horse and make a batch of pea soup, immediately....
Media Platforms Design Team With a house full of hand-built mission-style furniture, Dusty Jerzak’s talent in the woodshop isn’t in question. The craftsman’s collection, featured in PM’s DIY Rally 2007, includes more than 140 pieces he created in his workshop. But after Jerzak took a class on building stained-glass windows, he decided to challenge himself with a project he’d never seen installed in a home before: a stained-glass ceiling. “I had no idea if this was going to work or not,” Jerzak says....
A lot of Apocalyptic scenarios bring up the volcano under a big chunk of Yellowstone Park as a possible culprit. Which is understandable, given that the thing is just disgustingly gigantic. A new discovery is giving researchers more insight into just how massive it is – and why it could be a very, very bad thing if it ever erupts. The newest discovery is a giant chamber hiding beneath another, already known chamber....
Media Platforms Design TeamLAS VEGAS — Dodge is finally crashing the raging crossover SUV party with its all-new Journey. This midsize rig is unique among its peers in this size class because unlike the Ford Edge, Hyundai Santa Fe and Chevy Equinox, the Dodge is available with three rows of seating. The Journey is built on a stretched version of the platform that underpins the Dodge Avenger and Chrysler Sebring. Base level SE models come standard with a 173-hp 2....
Media Platforms Design Team2009 Dodge Challenger R/T vs. 2010 Ford Mustang GT Premium (Photograph by Ture Lillegraven)SAN DIEGO – It’s been five long model years since Ford introduced the retro-cool 2005 Mustang and kicked off the second coming of the musclecar wars. Dodge answered with the 2008 Challenger and now, the 2010 Camaro is in production and generating a massive buzz. Three historic icons of American performance–finally–in the metal and on the street....
Ben GoldsteinChemist Paul Edmiston has plenty of data to prove how well Osorb, a glass substance, soaks up petroleum, solvents and other organic contaminants. But he’s most convincing when he mixes motor oil with water, adds Osorb, filters off the swollen powder and drinks the remaining liquid. “It works like a nanomechanical sponge,” he says. “I’ve done trace analysis, and the water’s totally clean.” A graduate student of Edmiston’s stumbled upon the material while experimenting with molecules for a bomb-detection device....
Airbus has had plenty of truly horrifying ideas for how to pack more passengers onto a single plane, but the newest patent from the airplane giant is actually pretty easy to get behind. Though it is far from implementation (and may never even happen) the dream is simple: planes with cabins you can just swap out. We all know how annoying and arduous it is to file into an airplane cabin....
Media Platforms Design TeamUpdate: March 20, 9:40 a.m. Eastern: It’s nighttime in Australia, and the first day of aircraft and ships searching for the debris possibly related to MH370 spotted by an Australian satellite has turned up empty. The search will continue in the morning, Australia time (Thursday night U.S. time). .More info hereJohn Young of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority just finished a press briefing discussing a new potential lead related to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370....
Media Platforms Design TeamEarlier this week, public health officials worried that a Canadian man who recently returned from West Africa had brought home a deadly infection. The man exhibited symptoms of Ebola—a disease characterized by headache, fever, and hemorrhaging, which has reached epidemic proportions in some parts of Africa. Laboratory tests have since that the Canadian patient has Ebola, and they now suspect he may have a severe form of malaria....
A worldwide spate of earthquakes this year demonstrated that preparedness makes the difference between a disaster and a catastrophe. So how would U.S. buildings fare in the next big quake? The answer begins with the U.S. Geological Survey’s hazard maps, which gauge the probability and intensity of future earthquakes. Statisticians combine global seismic readings of faults with historic records and soil conditions, then plot the data to a probability curve. “This allows them to forecast future ground motions,” USGS seismic hazard mapping chief Mark Petersen says....
Media Platforms Design TeamFRANKFURT — Ford previewed the first of a new generation of small crossover vehicles here yesteday, the Kuga—the first crossover designed and developed in-house by Ford of Europe. Sure, the name sounds like a British person pronouncing “Cougar,” but the company says Kuga’s design was inspired by two previous concepts, the Iosis and the Iosis X, and shows Ford’s new European “kinetic” design trend.The Kuga is based on European Focus underpinnings, using both front-drive and all-wheel-drive, powered by a 2....
Media Platforms Design TeamEve: Valkyrie, the followup to the hugely popular online multiplayer game Eve Online, is set to become one of the first big games for the new generation of virtual reality hardware. In this new trailer, VR space war never looked so good. The video is meant to offer a taste of what it looks like when you get to play Eve’s signature space battles from within the cockpit, using the VR headset to look around in all directions....
