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Had some spare time before returning East out of LAX on Wednesday. So we borrowed a Softail Springer Classic (FLSTSCI) from Harley-Davidson, invited some pals and hit the canyon roads north of Santa Monica. All three bikes were Twins, but they couldn’t have been more different. Honda’s Jon Seidel brought along a 2006 RC51 high-performance, top o’ the line, superbike (its last year in production), while Ty van Hooydonk from Discover Today’s Motorcycling showed up on Kawasaki’s all-new Ninja 650R sporty all-purpose bike....

The march toward self-driving cars comes with plenty of big legal and regulatory questions. How do we design laws to shape the testing and rollout of autonomous features when the whole field is brand new and always changing? Well, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration just gave us an answer—sort of—with its new document, “A Vision for Safety 2.0.“There are two sections to “A Vision of Safety 2....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe inner tracker barrel of the LHC’s Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector. (Photo Credit: Maximilien Brice/CERN © CERN)The Large Hadron Collider was built to find the elusive Higgs Boson, a particle responsible for giving matter its mass. But along the way, the enormous particle collider made other surprising discoveries, including this week’s announcement of two previously unknown particles. They belong to the class of particles known as baryons, which are particles composed of three quarks....

If you were alive thousands of years ago, chances are you’d have built your share of fires. Whether to keep warm or cook food, it’s one of the regular habits you’d have likely developed. That’s why tracking prehistoric campfires is a good way to track prehistoric populations, scientists have found.Where there was a campfire, there were people.A group of Australian researchers and archaeologists used radiocarbon dating on more than 1,000 prehistoric campfires to better understand the population levels in prehistoric Australia....

Update, Oct. 8: Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., died today.DALLAS—Lots of people here are playing a mental game against themselves. Let’s call it the Ebola Odds. I played the game myself this weekend as I strolled through the Texas State Fair.At one point, walking past a pen of baby goats in a livestock display, my forearm pressed against someone’s bare arm as they passed by....

Scope out the exterior of several new cars, and you may be surprised to find some regulars missing: no radio antennas, no rear widow grids, no satellite radio “shark’s fin” sprouting out of the roof. So where are they? Mercedes has the answer. On some models—S-Class and C-Class included—the antenna is stowed in the trunk, out of sight and protected from damage. Actually, the antennas are arranged in the trunk lid, completely hidden even when the trunk is lifted....

If you have been on Facebook at all today, you may have noticed something weird. The social networking service—despite being only 11 years old itself—is congratulating all kinds of people on 46 years of friendship, including a lot of people who aren’t even 46 years old. Why? Well it’s a software bug. You can break down the weird little thing into two parts, the first of which is something called UNIX time or “Epoch time....

View full post on YoutubeOne of the defining features of smartwatches might also be one of their weakest security links, Ars Technica reports. The critical link between the smartwatch on your wrist and the smartphone in your pocket—which allows you to receive texts on the watch or sync fitness data to the phone—could be vulnerable to attacks.It boils down to this: A PIN is sent between the smartwatch and the smartphone to secure the connection....

MATERIALS LIST–NIGHTSTANDKeyNo.Size and description (use)A41-3/4 x 1-3/4 x 22-3/4" mahogany (leg)B161/8 x 1/8 x 22-3/4" wenge (inlay)C43/4 x 1-3/4 x 1-3/4" wenge (foot)D23/4 x 12-3/4 x 16-1/4" MDF (side core)E212-3/4 x 16-1/4" mahogany veneerF212-3/4 x 16-1/4" pomele sapele veneerG21 x 1-3/4 x 12-3/4" mahogany (side rail)H23/4 x 1-3/4 x 19" mahogany (bottom rail)I13/4 x 4 x 19" mahogany (back rail)J13/4 x 14-1/4 x 17-1/2" mahogany plywood (shelf)K13/4 x 15-7/8 x 20-1/4" MDF (top core)L115-7/8 x 20-1/4" pomele sapele veneerM115-7/8 x 20-1/4" mahogany veneerN11/8 x 1/8 x 20-1/4" wenge (inlay)O*21/8 x 1/8 x 15-3/4" wenge (inlay)P113/16 x 1-1/8 x 22-1/2" mahogany (edge band)Q213/16 x 1-1/8 x 17-3/8" mahogany (edge band)R13/8 x 13/16 x 20-1/4" mahogany (edge band)S13/4 x 31-5/16 x 17-3/8" mahogany (drawer face)T21/2 x 2-1/2 x 13-1/4" maple (drawer side)U11/2 x 1-3/4 x 16-1/2" maple (drawer back)V11/4 x 12-1/4 x 16-1/2" plywood (drawer bottom)Was reqd....

PETOSKEY, Mich. – Okay, we’ve had a whole year to bask in the warm glow of the limited-production, $39,000 Dodge Challenger SRT8, with its 21st-century muscle updating the classic hemi models in a run of retro Detroit updates. Now it’s time to talk about the car that most of us will end up buying, the fuel-sipping 2009 Dodge Challenger SE. After driving it for a day this summer, we just finished putting a whopping 669 miles on a Challenger SE over the weekend, driving from our base near Detroit up to the Bay Harbor resort community that lies between Petoskey and Charlevoix on Michigan’s Little Traverse Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan....

SWORDSWeight: 200 lb.Speed: 4 mphWeapons: M249 light machine gunNotable feature: First armed robot deployed to Iraq; didn’t fire a shot align=“center” style=“background-color:#ececec;">Warrior X700Weight: 250 lb.Speed: 10 mphWeapons: A .30-caliber machine gunNotable feature: Articulated arm that can lift 150 lb. swaps in for weapons. align=“center” style=“background-color:#ececec;">MAARSWeight: 235 lb.Speed: 7 mph Weapons: M240B medium machine gun Notable feature: Programmable no-fire zones to prevent fratricide.At a muddy test track in Grand Prairie, Texas, 13 miles west of Dallas, the robot is winning....

The Germany company Liebherr makes some of the biggest pieces of construction equipment on the planet. And the engineers like to have a little fun with their monster machines.In this video from 2012, the company demonstrates the raw power of its biggest beast, the LR 13000, by having it pick up three smaller cranes. The big boy, which has a max lifting capacity of 3,000 tons, lifts a LR 11350, which has a max of 1,080-tons....

It’s a mercilessly hot day in Robot City, Carnegie Mellon University’s 40-acre test site on the banks of Pittsburgh’s Monongahela River. Dozens of spectators line the bleachers overlooking a looping, two-lane test track. One of them raises his hand and asks the question on everyone’s mind: “What are the chances that it could turn into a HAL?“The “it” refers to Boss, the robotic Chevy Tahoe being inspected by officials from DARPA, the Pentagon’s research and development wing....

When the iPhone 6S first came out, a few folks who like to live on the edge just threw it in some water. You know, just for fun. As it turns out, the iPhone 6S is actually pretty water-resistant, and this might be how Apple finishes the job and makes its next phone completely waterproof. As you’ll find out if you tear one apart, the iPhone 6S gets its waterproof superpowers thanks to some silicone sealant and rubber gaskets that guard its more important inner bits....

One basic thing can make the difference between a room looking cluttered or put-together: storage. Of course, getting rid of excess stuff also helps. But even after you’ve pared down your possessions, having an attractive place to stash essential items is key. Enter the two-door cabinet, a minimalist solution that’s been around for centuries. Our take on the classic fits just about anywhere, and its panels can be made from a variety of materials—metal mesh, glass, or wallpapered plywood, for example—to suit your decorative palette....

This afternoon, NASA scientists announced the findings of their NEOWISE Space Infrared Survey of near-Earth asteroids. The good news: They found 40 percent fewer medium-sized ones than were previously believed to exist, meaning that perhaps there aren’t as many potentially dangerous rocks passing near the planet as scientists once believed. The bad news: Even so, tens of thousands are left to be discovered. While NASA can now keep tabs on (most of) these asteroids, its next big objective is to visit one....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen iRobot unveils a brand-new robot, it tends to be big news. After all, these are the guys who made the chore-doing Roomba and the war-going Packbot. Compared to those two robotic rock stars, it’s easy to underestimate the company’s newest creation, Ava 500, which acts like a roving videoconference terminal. But you shouldn’t.Ava 500 pushes self-guided, autonomous robotics closer to ubiquity. Like iRobot’s RP-VITA, which is now being deployed in hospitals to help physicians interact remotely with patients, Ava 500 uses laser, sonar, and 3-D vision sensors to navigate its environment to waypoints the user selects on a tablet (if it comes to a closed door, it waits patiently for a human to open it)....

Media Platforms Design TeamOf all the world debuts here in LA this year, the Porsche Macan is one of the ones we’d most like to see in our own garage. We sure like the squaty, broad-shouldered stance and of course, we can’t wait to sample the turbocharged powertrains.The Macan small crossover is about the size of an Audi Q5. In fact these corporate cousins share the very same platform. But you can bet the limits of the chassis was pushed for Porsche duty....

Media Platforms Design TeamTwo researchers at NASA Ames have worked on a unique robot design for the last two years: the Super Ball Bot. Rather than roaming terrain on wheels, the machine is a series of rods connected by cables that strengthen and loosen to create movement through the structure. NASA recently uploaded this video of the Super Ball Bot at work. The tensegrity structure, modeled on the work of Buckminster Fuller, is meant to make it more of an all-terrain rover, one that can lay flat in a spaceship before being deployed on the ground....

Media Platforms Design TeamFinal REPORT - August 2009Media Platforms Design TeamOur Maxima’s fuel economy has improved steadily as the engine breaks in—finally delivering an average over 20 mpg in a combination of urban traffic jousting and road trips. A few days before the scheduled 7500-mile service, a warning light announced that the battery in the key fob needed replacing. The battery was replaced by the dealer for the princely sum of $35....