Media Platforms Design TeamThere don’t seem to be a lot of friends for SOPA on the Internet today. The Stop Online Piracy Act, which is pending in the House of Representatives, along with its sister legislation in the Senate, the Protect IP Act, have caused a massive 24-hour protest by sites such as Google and Wikipedia. The former has blacked out its logo, and the latter has disabled its English-language site for 24 hours....
The first man-made object in orbit didn’t look like much. An aluminum sphere about 2 ft. across, it was filled with pressurized nitrogen and carried two small transmitters that beamed wavering radio signals to the planet below. On day 22, the batteries ran out and the satellite fell silent. A few weeks later, the craft most likely vaporized as it plunged back to Earth.To Americans at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1 on Oct....
The Microduino mCookie is a stackable microcontroller that looks like a high-tech LEGO brick, with all the capabilities of an Arduino microcontroller and then some. It’s also compatible with either of those products, meaning it can click in to LEGO bricks and use the Arduino programming language to command those blocks into action. The device is also designed with a built-in graphic-based programming language called Scratch which makes it easy to do basic commands without a long background in programming....
Self-driving cars have been on the horizon for the past few years, as companies like Tesla and Waymo have been focused on bringing autonomous vehicles to the market. Even though self-driving tech has been improving, it seems perpetually a few years away. Now, the U.S. House just passed legislation that could accelerate the development of self-driving cars by allowing them to be driven in all 50 states.The House bill, called the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research In Vehicle Evolution Act (SELF DRIVE), exempts automakers from some safety standards that aren’t relevant to autonomous vehicles and permits selling up to 25,000 cars per year without needing to meet current auto safety standards....
Media Platforms Design TeamIn the future, sports cars will have to provide exemplary fuel efficiency and performance in equal parts. Volkswagen appears to be on point to deliver just that—at least in concept form. The VW Concept BlueSport promises to squeeze low emissions, high fuel economy and scintillating performance out of a roadster that’s just a shade shorter than a Mazda Miata MX-5. With a top speed of 140 mph and returning up to 50 mpg highway, the Concept is said to deliver efficiency and performance thanks to a carefully chosen powertrain and a curb weight of only 2600 pounds....
Media Platforms Design TeamDuring its very brief scientific mission, the Philae comet lander discovered organic molecules on comet C-G last week. That’s the word today from the scientists and engineers at the European Space Agency. According to a German-led ESA group, one of Philae’s several chemical detectors sniffed out these (unspecified) molecules in the comet’s atmosphere during its ill-fated descent.Scientists have long theorized that comets may have carried important organic molecules to Earth, which could have jumpstarted the genesis of life....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhen Bryan Singer bailed on his beloved franchise to lens 2006’s , it all but doomed Marvels’ Merry Mutants. And we know how well that turned out— flopped so badly that the studio had to reboot their reboot, and even worse, Brett Ratner’s was a giant middle finger to anyone who was a fan of the first two films.X-MenSuperman ReturnsSuperman ReturnsX-Men: The Last StandThankfully, Matthew Vaughan’s clever X-Men: First Class proved there is still a wealth of stories to be told with one of the richest and most diverse casts in all of comics....
Media Platforms Design Team17th Century: The of Hispaniola cooks meat on a frame of sticks over a fire, calling it barbacòa. No surprise: Spanish conquerors take the idea.Arawak tribe18th Century: BBQ comes to southeastern America, where pigs are pit-roasted for hours and devoured. Different styles emerge during westward expansion, varying in sauce, cut of meat, and use of wood smoke. All taste great with beer.1897: Ellsworth B. A. Zwoyer patents a design for charcoal briquettes....
SUTTGART, Germany — Until very recently, Mercedes-Benz had a big problem: storage. The 120 year old German luxury carmaker had saved simply too many of its classic roadsters, sedans, trucks, prototypes and race cars. The company’s museum was bursting at the seams with classic Benzes. But instead of selling off these treasures, they built a new museum here in Stuttgart. Actually, it’s more like a $63-million, 177,600 sq-ft., 9-level, concrete, steel and glass work of art....
Media Platforms Design TeamA bright light streaked across the skies of Las Vegas and Los Angeles, but don’t worry. It was no alien invasion or missile attack. Instead, it was something much more common: a fragment of space junk. Two SL-4 Soyuz rocket bodies have re-entered the atmosphere over the past few days, according to Aerospace.org. The first came down on December 17, while the other re-entered on December 22. The former came from a crewed mission, while the latter (the one seen over the west coast) was from a resupply mission....
Media Platforms Design TeamOnStar continues to be a boon for General Motors. The telematics platform that began as an analog emergency response and turn-by-turn navigation system has become the largest digital vehicle-based cloud network and the linchpin to GM’s connected-car future. Now it’s going 4G LTE.GM announced at its press conference at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show that beginning this summer 10 Chevrolet vehicles will have an optional AT&T 4G LTE connection through the OnStar platform....
Media Platforms Design TeamSad news from Digital Hollywood this week: Stan Winston, the special-effects guru who turned sci-fi fantasy into believable big-screen reality even before the days of CGI, has died at 62. Winston received four Oscars for his work—for visual effects on James Cameron’s Aliens and Terminator 2 (for which he also won Best Makeup) and for Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. He was nominated for several other Academy Awards on films including Edward Scissorhands, A....
The term geo-engineering—direct technological interventions to reshape the planet—calls to mind the dark laughter of a science-fiction villain. But researchers are pondering ways to use geo-engineering to counter the effects of global warming. This past year, three European institutions released reports on the benefits and risks of “climate engineering.” Recommendations vary, but the reports each conclude that the most promising technologies should be tested on small scales. Scientists worry that some nation’s future unilateral geo-engineering project could cause frightening side effects that cross national boundaries....
Media Platforms Design TeamMotorcycles are notoriously bad aerodynamically, and aerodynamics are especially important on electric bikes. Just how much of the bike’s power goes toward moving the air out of the way?Somewhere around 90 percent. Certainly, accelerating and decelerating consumes a lot of energy, but at some places like the Isle of Man or on the freeway, where you’re sustaining speeds, 90 percent of your energy is going to part the air....
Media Platforms Design TeamMonaco has always been known for its annual Formula 1 Grand Prix, in which racers whip around the hairpin turns of the principality’s narrow streets, and its annual yacht show, in which some of the world’s largest and most luxurious boats dock in Port Hercule. This summer, , the Monaco Yacht Club, and Dutch design firm Vripack are combining the two to launch the first solar-powered-yacht Grand Prix at the Solar1 race, set to take place July 10 to 12 in Monaco....
UPDATE, 8:30 a.m.: Here’s the last photo New Horizons took before entering flyby mode. View full post on TwitterAfter nine and a half years, New Horizons has arrived, with NASA receiving the “I’m here” message just before 7:50 a.m. Thanks to the travel time for the message, the craft actually entered the system four-and-a-half hours ago. For the next 12 hours, the craft will be collecting data as it passes between Pluto and Charon, snapping pictures and collecting data as it goes....
Great White, Jaws (1975)[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/g9DCAbPmvHQ&hl=en_US&fs=1[/youtube]Great white sharks are formidable predators. On average, they’re 15 feet long, weigh 5000 pounds and have 300 serrated, triangular teeth. The colossal great white in Jaws is 25 feet long and weighs 6000 pounds. To imagine something that big (not to mention hungry) lurking under the surface is terrifying. This movie made us think twice before getting in the water.Church, Pet Sematary (1989)[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/tMja9C6Htts&hl=en_US&fs=1[/youtube]Stephen King has a history of bringing creepy critters to the written page—Cujo, anyone?...
