In 1937, Amelia Earhart’s plane, the aluminum-clad Electra, disappeared somewhere over the Pacific during the course of her global circumnavigation attempt. Now 77 years later, historians and aviation experts are confident they have found a part of her downed aircraft . Read more…
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We May Have Finally Found a Piece of Amelia Earhart’s Lost Plane
There are lots of ways to get a free car to drive on your next road trip . TransferCar makes it even easier to find free one-way rental cars by showing specific routes and perks that come with the drive (such as free gas, expenses, or insurance coverage). Read more…
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TransferCar Lets You Rent a Car One-Way for Free
The folks at MegaBots Inc. dream of making humongous machines: 15-foot-tall, 15, 000-pound piloted robots to be exact. And they don’t want to build them for rescue missions or military use — nope, these robots are designed to duke it out in an arena à la Real Steel , except instead of using fists, they shoot each other with high-powered paint guns. A now-defunct convention called RoboGames used to have a real-life robot combat event, but this startup’s plans are obviously a lot grander in scale. Each MegaBot is big enough to carry a pilot and a gunner within its body (just like in mecha anime), with the latter in charge of firing paint-filled projectiles going at 120 mph at their opponents. While all these giant fighting robots deal sound too unreal, the team has managed to build a prototype upper body, arm, gun placement and weapon system these past months. The startup obviously still needs a ton of cash to make its fantastical dreams come true, though, so it’s trying to raise a whopping $1.8 million via Kickstarter . In case it does reach its goal, the money will be used to build two robots and make them “fight to the death, ” or more like fight until the other’s armor and panels start coming off. A very generous $10, 000 pledge will get your logo emblazoned on one of the MegaBots. But if you’d rather own it yourself, well, you’ll have to empty your coffers, so to speak, as a single one will cost you $1 million. Filed under: Robots Comments Source: Megabots , Kickstarter
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Startup wants to raise $1.8 million to build giant fighting robots
HP has just revealed a lot more information about the 3D printing technology it teased dramatically a few months ago. Called “Multi Jet Fusion, ” the company wants nothing less than to “change entire industries” with the tech. In case you forgot, the original goal was to make 3D printers build objects at higher resolution and much, much faster, speeds. If the claims we heard today are true, Multi Jet Fusion looks mighty impressive. Essentially, it’ll print 3D parts in a similar way that an inkjet printer produces documents. The system uses a four-step procedure in which the “ink” is applied to a material coating, then heated and fused to build up layers (see below). HP said that products like gears could be produced at least ten times faster than using conventional manufacturing techniques. It demonstrated one 3D printed product strong enough to pick up a car, and showed another part for the 3D printer, that was itself printed by the 3D printer. The company also said that it’ll print colors far more accurately than any 3D printer has yet, and showed several sample thingamajigs to prove it. HP’s VP dad-joked that it wasn’t a very good business idea, because someone could buy a single printer and print all the printers they’d need. It developed a prototype model (shown at the top), but for now, it’ll be strictly aimed at manufacturing businesses. Obviously, there’s no word yet on pricing or whether you’ll be able to start manufacturing widgets at home. Filed under: HP Comments
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HP wants to be a 3D printing giant with new ‘Multi Jet Fusion’ tech
aojensen writes: ExtremeTech reports that the most recent build of Windows 10 Technical Preview shows that Windows is finally getting a package manager. The package manager is built for the PowerShell command line based on OneGet. OneGet is a command line utility for PowerShell very similar to classic Linux utilities such as apt-get and yum, which enable administrators and power users comfortable with the command line to install software packages without the need for a graphical installer. ExtremeTech emphasizes that “you can open up PowerShell and use OneGet to install thousands of applications with commands such as Find-Package VLC and Install-Package Firefox.” It’s a missing feature Linux advocates have long used to argue against Windows in terms of automation and scale. The package manage is open to any software repository and is based on the Chocolatey format for defining package repositories.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Windows 10 Gets a Package Manager For the Command Line
Sure, Apple’s already fixed that buggy iOS 8.0.1 update that disconnected devices from their networks and just pretty much broke iPhones for a while. It’s even been a month since then, but you still can’t let it go until you get an explanation, huh? Well, friends, this is probably the closest thing you’ll ever get: apparently, there was nothing wrong with the update itself, and it was Apple’s distribution methods or how the update was “wrapped” that broke devices. At Recode’s Code/Mobile conference earlier, Apple product marketing executive Greg “Joz” Joswiak said the issue resulted from “the way the software was being sent over servers, ” though he didn’t go into specifics. He also defended his company, claiming that mistakes are inevitable when you’re pushing software and that Apple always tries to fix them quickly. Since Joz dismissed questions on whether he thinks the company has bigger quality control issues, you’ll just have to speculate about that on your own. Filed under: Cellphones , Tablets , Mobile , Apple Comments Source: Recode
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Apple explains its busted iOS 8.0.1 update
I’m not exaggerating the tiniest bit when I say I want to fly to Japan right now and park myself right in front of this man’s hand made wooden doll shop in Japan and just watch him work. Imagine the earnest smell of the woodworking, the sound of the lathe spinning and the beauty of his concentration in making art. Read more…
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The meticulous process of making a Japanese wooden doll is impressive
Stock Photos are glorious things. Yes, they’re an important tool for sites such as our own, but they’re also, perhaps more often than not, unintentionally hilarious. Services like Thinkstock, Shutterstock and Getty Images have birthed fantastic Tumblrs and Twitter accounts like StockFinds , Completely Unusable Stock Photos , and the somewhat-NSFW Porncomnents . They’re solidly embedded in internet culture, and they’re now also the inspiration behind A Contemporary Portrait of the Internet Artist , a collection of hand-painted copies of stock images of artists created by “underpaid Chinese painters.” The artworks are essentially counterfeits of Getty Images, and in an accompanying press release the team behind the project — the IOCOSE collective — explains the methodology by which they were created will be naturally replicated. “The digital images of the portraits will circulate online, be copied, posted and tweeted by journalists and bloggers. The portraits might be bought and become private property, but also continue being exhibited and photographed.” IOCOSE’s copyright-skirting sourcing of these images, and their intent for them to be replicated, is conceived as a subversive commentary on exploitation, outsourcing, and copyright issues surrounding modern creative industries. You can see the collection below, and if you’re intrigued as to what the originals look like, you can follow the link in each image. Comments Source: IOCOSE
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Chinese artists create counterfeit stock images of artists
DARPA’s boffins have just set a new world record in computing with a solid-state integrated circuit that packs the power of a supercomputer into a single chip. You thought your six-core, 3.9 Ghz Mac Pro was a computational powerhouse? This single chip is around 250 times as fast. Read more…
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DARPA’s Chipset Runs an Astonishing 1 Trillion Cycles Per Second
HughPickens.com writes: Ron Nixon reports in the NY Times that the United States Postal Service says it approved nearly 50, 000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations, in many cases without adequately describing the reason or having proper written authorization. In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests. The surveillance program, officially called mail covers, is more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful investigative tool. The Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100, 000 requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an average of some 8, 000 requests a year — far fewer than the nearly 50, 000 requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit (PDF). In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor, discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county’s sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Arpaio, objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his immigration sweeps. Wilcox sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. Andrew Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. “I don’t blame the Postal Service, ” says Wilcox, “but you shouldn’t be able to just use these mail covers to go on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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US Post Office Increases Secret Tracking of Mail