If you’re not the type to tiptoe around the truth with your kids, Rachel Ciavarella’s incredibly-detailed plush anglerfish ‘toy’ called Morris is the perfect way to give your children a somewhat disturbing crash course in anatomy. Read more…
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Teach Kids Frank Lessons About Anatomy With This Inside-Out Anglerfish
If you’ve been dreaming of a Tesla but can’t afford a Model S and its $70k+ sticker price (before tax credits), the company is announcing a major step towards building an electric vehicle in your price range. CEO Elon Musk has targeted 2017 for building a vehicle that costs half that , and has released details ( PDF ) of the “Gigafactory” he expects to have building batteries by then . The company predicts that by 2020, it will pump out more batteries alone than the world manufactured in 2013, keeping prices down while Tesla ramps up production on the unnamed “Gen III” vehicle. To do that, it’s raising $1.6 billion from a group of investors — rumors suggest Model S battery provider Panasonic could be in for as much as $1 billion — in a pair of bond offerings, with an option for an extra $240 million. The plant isn’t built yet of course, but Tesla has pointed out four southwestern states (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada or Texas) as possible locations, ideal for its solar and wind renewable energy plans. The plant will lower costs by working on the raw materials, cells, modules and battery pack enclosures all in one place, employing as many as 6, 500 people. Check out some details about what the Gigafactory will look like: http://t.co/L90AIYv8R8 pic.twitter.com/i5mEwMjFKA – Tesla Motors (@TeslaMotors) February 26, 2014 Filed under: Transportation Comments Source: Gigafactory (PDF) , Tesla Motors Blog , Tesla 8-K Filing
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Tesla’s raising $1.6 billion to build its battery ‘Gigafactory’ and mass-market $35k car
One of the greatest benefits of Automatic’s Link driving assistant dongle is that it finally made it possible to hook your car’s metadata to the web. You could then use your smartphone to do things like track your trips, note your parking spot and even figure out your Check Engine light problem without going to a mechanic. Well today, it’s about to go one step further thanks to a partnership with IFTTT . IFTTT, if you’re unaware, is a service that hooks up a variety of apps and services together with a series of “If This, Then That” formulas. Now with Automatic, you can create recipes that’ll prompt an action once it detects certain information from your car. For example, you can set it so that you get a text message every time the car starts up, or send a push notification to your spouse whenever you’re running late. You can automatically post trip summaries to Facebook, tweet if you’re ever in an accident or keep track of your mileage in a dedicated Google Spreadsheet. It even works with other Internet connected hardware — a possible recipe is to turn on all your Philips Hue lights as soon as you get home. IFTTT’s Automatic channel already has a pretty healthy set of triggers, but Lljuba Miljkovi, Automatic’s chief product officer, tells us they’re hoping to build more around activities like speeding or braking hard. “We see this as a step toward Automatic really being connected to the wider world, ” says Miljkovi. “For example, we announced that the Link now has iBeacon thanks to a software update. We really see third party integration as a big thing in our future We’re making it possible to add your car to the Internet of Things .” If that sounds like an exciting proposition to you, head on over to the source to find out more about the Automatic Link, IFTTT and its plans for an even more connected car . Comments Source: Automatic , IFTTT
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Automatic Link driving assistant can now auto-post to Facebook, other apps
We know that it’s no longer rare to discover alien worlds, but NASA just made it downright commonplace. The space agency has confirmed the existence of 715 exoplanets discovered using the Kepler space telescope , ballooning the number of verified planets to nearly 1, 700. Scientists validated the huge number of celestial bodies by looking for targets in batches — the more objects were clustered together, the more likely it was that there would be multiple exoplanet candidates. The bonanza helps illustrate the frequency of planets among the stars, and it has also uncovered four more potentially habitable worlds. Researchers might not but much closer to finding the Holy Grail of a life-bearing planet, but they’ll at least know where to focus their attention. Filed under: Science , Alt Comments Via: Space.com Source: NASA
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NASA discovers 715 alien planets by looking for them in groups
The Kepler spacecraft NASA Today, NASA’s Kepler team has announced that it has developed a new technique to verify the existence of many of the planetary candidates in its back catalog. The technique, which relies on the presence of multiple planets in the system, has led to the single largest announcement of new planets in history: 715 of them, orbiting a total of 305 stars. Most of these are small, between the sizes of Earth and Neptune, and are tightly packed in the inner regions of the systems in which they reside, but four appear to be in the habitable zone. If you visit Kepler’s home page , you’ll see a count of confirmed planets in the upper right (it’s currently at 961). Hover over it, and you’ll see there are over 3,800 unconfirmed planetary candidates. Those candidates come from the method that Kepler uses to discover planets: watching for a mini-eclipse that causes a slight dimming of their host star’s light. A similar pattern can be caused by a dim star orbiting in the system (a configuration called an eclipsing binary system), which raises the prospect of false positives. In the past, this has generally involved multiple follow-up observations with a large telescope, which has held back the announcement of confirmed planets to a relative trickle. However, there have been a number of discoveries that have been based on Kepler data alone. These discoveries have come from multi-planet systems, where the planets gravitationally interacted, speeding up or slowing each other down. This activity creates regular variations in the timing and duration of the eclipses as the exoplanets transit between their host star and Earth. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Exoplanet discovery rate goes from a trickle to a flood
In January, Naoki Hiroshima lost his Twitter handle, @N, to the hands of a hacker who used social engineering and extortion to wrest the username from Hiroshima’s hands. But today Twitter restored it to him after more than a month of the username being suspended. After @N was stolen, Hiroshima wrote a post explaining how the theft happened. Ars published the story (which originally appeared on Medium ), as well as an account of a man whose more valuable @jb handle was almost hijacked using the same methods. In Hiroshima’s case, a hacker was able to obtain some credit card information from his PayPal account and used that to reset the login credentials on his GoDaddy account. Then, the thief modified several details pertaining to Hiroshima’s domain so that he was unable to access his own site’s information. When the thief couldn’t reset the password for @N, he turned to extortion, contacting Hiroshima and demanding he reset the password to his Twitter account or suffer the destruction of his website’s domains. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Twitter restores $50,000 @N username to its owner
Oh baby. The US Navy is saying a prototype of the solid state Laser Weapons System (LaWS) is ready for deployment. This summer in the Persian Sea, the USS Ponce will be outfitted with lasers that can shoot down aerial drones, speedboats and swarm boats that are miles away. It’s going to be Star Wars in the open sea. Read more…
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The US Navy is finally deploying giant lasers
Wired’s Greg Miller takes a look at the huge risks involved in digging enormous, container-ship size canals . There are many lingering questions. How HKND–apparently the only company to submit a bid–managed to land the deal, isn’t clear, leaving many Nicaraguans frustrated by their government’s lack of transparency. … Exactly where the money to build the canal will come from is another mystery, as is the role, if any, the Chinese government will play. Wang Jing has denied that the government is involved in the project, as have government officials. But some analysts suspect otherwise. … Nor has any assessment of the environmental impacts of the project.
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Work to begin on 180-mile "Nicaragua Canal" to rival Panama
Several companies and organizations have already come forward to test out iOS7’s Bluetooth-based iBeacon technology for tasks like shopping and navigation , but it could become a lot more commonplace in the near future. That’s because the Cupertino company has quietly released the iBeacon specification for its Made for iPhone program, signifying a stronger push to make the technology more widespread. In essence, it ensures that any future product that bears the iBeacon logo will be fully compliant with Apple’s standards. What does this mean for you? Well, as a brief reminder, iBeacon is a location-based technology that allows iOS products to talk to each other using low-power Bluetooth signals. This means that whenever you see something with that iBeacon logo, you know it should work seamlessly with your iDevice. If we dare speculate, this could pave the way for a potential iWatch — it makes obvious sense for it to communicate with the iPhone using iBeacon. Indeed, now that Apple is showing signs it’s pushing the standard forward, we wonder if this is a not-so-subtle hint to developers to start incorporating iBeacon into their apps. As rumors of an Apple wearable heats up, we think that’s certainly more likely than not. Filed under: Mobile , Apple Comments Source: 9to5Mac , Beekn
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Apple formalizes iBeacon Bluetooth spec in the hopes of wider adoption
Part of the joy of preparing meals while camping is that you don’t have to worry about keeping everything neat and tidy. But the last thing you want to do is put a scorched and filthy grill in the trunk of your clean car. So Front Runner’s solution lets you simply strap it to your vehicle’s spare tire when it’s time to head out. Read more…
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A Campfire Grill That Hugs Your Spare Tire For Easy Storage