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Lawnmowers have come a long way since Edwin Budding invented the first real alternative to the scythe in 1827. His mower featured a cylinder with a series of blades attached to cut grass as the mower was pushed. His design still closely resembles that of classic reel mowers today, but it is worlds away from the lawn tractors that currently populate the market. Today’s high-end mowers can boast a third the horsepower of a small car, cruise at 15 mph and come with more bells and whistles than a small yacht....

RELATED STORIES* COMICCON LIVE BLOG: News on X-Files, Indy, Batman and More!Hollywood has never been a safe place for smart science fiction. Since square-jawed actors first stepped into soundstage rockets, geeks have watched countless classic sci-fi novels beaten into 90-minute pulp, often filled with useless comic relief, bizarre romantic subplots featuring implausibly attractive research types, and a bold corruption of core scientific principles. Either that, or the movies just didn’t make any sense–the 1984 David Lynch film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic Dune was so incomprehensible to the uninitiated that some theaters passed out a glossary of the film’s lingo to moviegoers....

Media Platforms Design TeamQ: My Macintosh MacBook has a slot-loading optical drive. About a month ago, I got a DVD stuck inside. The eject button isn’t working. Is there a manual way to pop out the disc?A: There is no physical button or trigger like those on tray-loading drives that can be pushed in with a paper clip. And you don’t want to fish around inside the drive slot because you risk scratching the disc, as well as damaging the drive....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you’re looking for a way to flex your DIY muscles, then bust out the tools, because we’ve got the perfect winter woodworking project. It’s possible to build a fun and versatile contemporary furniture system that consists almost entirely of stackable plywood cubes. The beauty of it is that the parts can be arranged in various configurations in minutes, adapting to your needs or sense of design. From these basic parts, we’ve been able to create shelving, a desk, a work table, a coffee table, a bed–and you can innovate just about any other form of furniture you need....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen it comes to the U.S. government’s computer security, we in the tech press have a habit of reporting only the bad news—for instance, last year’s hacks into Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Labs, a break-in to an e-mail server used by Defense Secretary Robert Gates … the list goes on and on. Frankly that’s because the good news is usually a bunch of nonevents: “Hackers deterred by diligent software patching at the Army Corps of Engineers....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn sale date: Available nowPrice: around $650 off contractSmartphones are not what they were five years ago, and no one can know what they’ll be like five years from now. Like any industry, smartphones are also subject to certain fashions, long-lasting trends, and fleeting whims. When LG announced the G Flex in October 2013, the South Korea-based company introduced a new kind of smartphone to the world: the first flexible, curved display....

Media Platforms Design Team Microsoft is stepping into the world of holograms. At today’s Windows 10 launch announcement, the company introduced the HoloLens, which combines advanced sensors and sound features in glasses that are designed to create an augmented reality experience. Strap on the glasses and you’ll see a sort of Minority Report-style display that’s fully interactive through actuators in the glasses. If preliminary images are correct, then we’re talking about the kind of functionality that Google Glass aspired to....

It could be a rule of modern urban warfare: Send the robot in first. After all, it’s better to risk an unmanned air or ground vehicle than an infantry squad. While the United States has already deployed thousands of robots in Iraq and Afghanistan, its allies are lagging behind. Following the lead of DARPA’s high-profile Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge, both Singapore and the United Kingdom are staging robotics competitions this August to develop their own autonomous war machines....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe worked with National Instruments, an industrial test and measurement company, to create a data-logging device that could gauge and record vibration, temperature and orientation. Here’s our package at the end of its journey.A few years ago, Popular Mechanics shipped a custom-built gaming PC—a rather heavy and cumbersome beast—to a New Hampshire woman who’d won it in a sweepstakes. The computer arrived in pieces, delivering a crushing blow, so to speak, to the nice lady as well as to the PM staffers who’d built the computer....

Media Platforms Design TeamDrive SafeQ: Some laptops have hard drives that manufacturers claim can sense when they are falling and take measures to protect themselves. How does this technology work? Is it effective?A: One of the most fragile parts of any laptop is the hard drive. Because of the high speeds at which their platters rotate, hard drives are especially susceptible to damage–even from normal, everyday jostling.Inside any drive are a number of arms, similar to a tonearm on a record player....

Say you want to push a big, heavy box across the floor. First, you’ll probably try simply pushing the front of the box. If it doesn’t budge, you might hunch over and push it a little lower to get physics on your side. If it still doesn’t move, you might try any manner of cartoonish positions, such as putting your back against the box and pushing with your legs.This robot out of the University of Tokyo’s JSK Laboratory can do the same calculus, which is more amazing than you might think, reports IEEE Spectrum....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast Super Sunday, we on its biggest night, expecting more from one-minute nerd theater than , and . But after last night’s surprise-free, nearly humorless follow-up—an , a and those damn weren’t much of an upgrade—we’re still scratching our heads. When did we gravitate away from of digital tech, automotive engineering and startup hilarity? How did we descend from Apple’s “1984” to Amp’s fat dude ? By night’s end, Eli Manning’s on-field heroics had us more excited than any between-snap entertainment, but these five ads still managed to make us laugh, gawk and hold out hope for next year…....

Media Platforms Design TeamSitting is killing you. If the reports are to be believed, all that time you spend working while sitting down will shave precious years off your life expectancy. last year that said “sitting 6 or more hours a day makes you 40 percent likelier to die within 15 years than someone who sits less than 3 hours a day.“Medical Billing & Coding issued a gloomy reportPartly as a result of all this sitting bashing, standing desks have begun to creep into workplaces around the country....

Let’s get this out of the way: In no way is Night of the Comet a bad movie. It may not have been an Academy Award (or even Saturn Award-winning) movie, but it was a wonderfully executed mixture of survival horror movies and teen comedies. Plus, it has Robert Beltrane, aka Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager.The title pretty much gives away the plot, but here it is: A comet hurdles toward Earth, dusting the atmosphere with a mutant pathogen....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhy fly a rocket into orbit when you can just hop in an elevator? Since it served as the focal point for Arthur C. Clarke’s in 1979, the concept of a space elevator¬ has permeated both and futurists’ plans for space exploration. The Fountains of Paradisesci-fi cultureBasically, a space elevator would consist of a long cable extending from the surface of the planet about 22,000 miles up into geosynchronous orbit, where the end-point would move in sync with the planet’s rotation and stay above the same point on the surface at all times....

While deftly maneuvering between trees and other obstacles, the northern goshawk can reach speeds of up to 55 miles per hour in pursuit of its prey, flying through some of the world’s densest forests, no less. Biologists have long admired the bird’s airborne precision, but engineers are taking notice now too. They’re hoping to emulate the hawk’s unparalleled speed and agility in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). With the help of Harvard University biologists, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated theoretical speed limits for a given density of obstacles through which these birds fly unscathed....

Scientists have developed a $25 device that could test a person’s blood for the presence of disease, check local water supplies for toxic pollutants such as cadmium, and beam that information directly to the cloud so that a doctor could perform remote diagnosis or a monitoring service could warn people not to drink the water. The device beams all that information via the headphone jack of any phone, not just 3G/4G smartphones, meaning it could perform scientific, medical, and environmental tests using any cell phone over any cell network anywhere in the world....

Media Platforms Design Team DETROIT — The all-new 2009 Hyundai Genesis luxury car is something of a revelation. It’s the first rear-drive sedan Hyundai has ever produced; it’s the first Hyundai powered by an optional V-8 engine and it’s the first Hyundai to package real luxury in a Korean-built sedan. That’s certainly a lot of firsts. The Genesis sedan, which will be followed by a high-performance coupe in the spring of 2009, fits into the same class, size-wise, as the much more expensive BMW 550i and the Mercedes-Benz E550 sedans, yet the Genesis V8 is priced more like a loaded Chrysler 300C Hemi at around $37,250....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph courtesy of 20th Century Fox)A leading climate scientist argues that overbroad claims by some researchers–coupled with overblown reporting in the media–can undermine the public’s understanding of climate issues. Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate modeler, author and PM editorial advisor, concurs with the consensus view that the planet’s temperature is rising due largely to human activity. But, he says, many news stories prematurely attribute local or regional phenomena to climate change....

OV-10 BroncoMedia Platforms Design TeamOriginally used for helicopter escorts and antiguerrilla operations in Vietnam, this two-seater carries the mission supervisor. Circling 1000 ft. above the other planes, he monitors the airspace and directs tanker runs.Grumman S-2F TrackerMedia Platforms Design TeamThe retrofitted “stoof,” as it’s known, carries a relatively small payload—but its 230-mph top speed and precise handling make the Tracker perfect for initial attacks in tight spaces. The S-2 was designed in the early 1950s to hunt and kill submarines, yet be agile enough to land on aircraft carriers....