New rules issued by the Department of Transportation insist that travelers who get involuntarily “bumped” from their flights receive substantially bigger payouts than before. Given the higher pay-out rates, volunteering to be bumped gives you more negotiating room, and booking non-emergency flights on busier travel days might not be such a bad idea. More
Lexus has developed a circular loom for weaving 3D objects out of carbon fiber. It’s a pretty mesmerizing process.
Video of Lexus’ 360-Degree Carbon Fiber Loom
(Thanks, Alpacaman!)
First they came for Jeopardy!, then they came for our vibraphones. We still own baseball, but the “humans only” list has grown one shorter now that the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Club has birthed Vibratron, a robotic vibraphone. Vibratron’s Arduino Mega controls 30 solenoid gates that drop steel balls onto the vibration keys, producing a note; an Archimedes screw recycles the bearings, turning them once more into sweet, sweet music. We should also note that Vibratron doesn’t put decent, salt-of-the-earth vibraphonists out of work. That cacophony in the video is “Circus Galop,” written for two player pianos and impossible for humans to perform — and still pretty hard for humans to listen to. See, Vibratron is here to help you, fellow humans. At least for now. Click the video above to get acquainted.
Vibratron plays impossible music with ball bearings, is your new master (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Apr 2011 01:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Sony’s hosting a press event in Tokyo today where it just made the first announcement: a pair of Android 3.0 tablets — yes, the very two Honeycomb slabs we told you about exclusively back in February. The first is the 9.4-inch S1 media tablet (aka, Qriocity focused) with a curved top much like a folded magazine and both front- and rear-facing cameras. The S1 features a Tegra 2 SoC and customized “Quick and Smooth” touch panel UI with “Swift” web browser. It can also be used as a remote control for Sony gear thanks to integrated infrared.
The second tablet is the dual-screen S2 clamshell with its pair of 5.5-inch 1,024 x 480 pixel displays, Tegra 2 SoC, and camera. While it sounds bulky, Kunimasa Suzuki just pulled the hinged tablet from his jacket pocket on stage. Sony takes advantage of the two screens with a custom book-style UI layout for its e-reader app, email (keyboard on one display with your messages on the other), and others. Both the S1 and S2 are PlayStation Certified and are WiFi and 3G/4G “compatible” according to Sony. Expect to see them ship globally in the fall. See the Sony tablets codenamed “S1” and “S2” in action after the break.
Gallery: Sony S1 and S2 tablets press shots
Continue reading Sony S1 and S2 dual-screen Honeycomb tablets get official (video)
Sony S1 and S2 dual-screen Honeycomb tablets get official (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
In addition to the first PlayStation tablet device, the S1, Sony has today also unveiled a second, the S2, a tablet that can fold into a DS-like clamshell. More
Australian designer Marc Newson makes hourglasses by hand. He does it with fire and glass and a sculptor's touch. And while the final products—10 and 60 minute timepieces from Ikepod, each filled with countless stainless steel nanoballs—cost more than any of us is able to afford, this intimate look at the process is priceless. [Ikepod via Metafilter via Laughing Squid] More
Researchers at the University of Iceland have discovered genetic evidence that suggests at least one woman from North America may have traveled to Europe 1000 years ago.
Ten years ago, Agnar Helgason, a scientist at Iceland’s deCODE Genetics, began investigating the origin of the Icelandic population. Most of the people he tested carried genetic links to either Scandinavians or people from the British Isles. But a small group of Icelanders — roughly 350 in total — carried a lineage known as C1, usually seen only in Asians and Native Americans. “We figured it was a recent arrival from Asia,” says Helgason. “But we discovered a much deeper story than we expected.”
Helgason’s graduate student, Sigridur Sunna Ebenesersdottir, found that she could trace the matrilineal sequence to a date far earlier than when the first Asians began arriving in Iceland. In fact, she found that all the people who carry the C1 lineage are descendants of one of four women alive around the year 1700. In all likelihood, those four descended from a single woman. And because archeological remains in what is Canada today suggest that the Vikings were in the Americas around the year 1000 before retreating into a period of global isolation, the best explanation for that errant lineage lies with an American Indian woman: one who was taken back to Iceland some 500 years before Columbus set sail for the New World in 1492.
For now, the story of the lone American Indian woman taken on a Viking ship to Iceland remains a hypothesis. To prove it will require finding the same genetic sequence in older Amerindian remains elsewhere in the world — family members, as it were, of that 1,000-year-old woman who ended up so far from home.
Via Indian Country
Read More:
A Native American woman in Iceland
To shop at Costco, people need to pay an annual fee UNLESS you have a Costco Cash Card. Costco Cash Card is Costco’s gift card.
Just show your Costco Cash Card at the door to get in. Any extra balance that cannot be paid with your Costco Cash Card can be paid normally.
You do miss out on being able to return the item months later, but you get to enjoy the low cost even on gas without having to pay for membership.
So the next time your friend is shopping at Costco, ask them to buy you multiple Costco Cash Cards with $10 each on them!
See the article here:
Tip – How to Shop at Costco Without a Membership
When you think of manufacturers that create products to go hand-in-hand with the Apple iPhone, Leica probably wouldn’t come to mind. The seemingly brilliant minds at Black Design Associates hope to change that, however. The Leica i9 concept pairs an iPhone 4 with a fixed-lens rangefinder camera, and the result is nothing short of extraordinary. Slipping your iPhone 4 — black or white — into the back of the i9 brings the camera to life, activating the compact optical zoom, dedicated aperture and shutter dials, flash and light meter. Images are instantly viewable on the iPhone, where it’s safe to assume they’re stored as well. The camera back doubles as a case, but you’re probably going to want to use it with a headset, unless you like talking to a camera. There’s no sign that the i9 will even reach the prototype phase, but nobody is going to stop the high-end camera’s designer from dreaming — especially when said dreams make us weak at the knees.
Continue reading Leica i9 concept pairs $1,000 camera with $200 iPhone
Leica i9 concept pairs $1,000 camera with $200 iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
