STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[thecrowder]

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How much more? Well, on ships like these, the crew costs an average of $US3299 a day, a figure that amounts to 44 per cent of the total operating expenses.

Wow, I would have guessed that the cost of fuel was more than just a few thousand dollars a day.

[MIKA27]

Wow, I would have guessed that the cost of fuel was more than just a few thousand dollars a day.

the logistics running the ship and crew is mind boggling. I'm in the wrong line of work!

[tmac77]

The Return of the Polar Vortex Is Actually a Good Thing

Just when you thought it was safe to go outside again, the polar vortex is back, blasting the Midwest and eastern half of the U.S with very cold weather. While this will undoubtedly be unpleasant, there is an upside.

You might remember the polar vortex from January and later in January, when it brought extremely low temperatures to a good deal of North America. Starting next week the atmospheric phenomenon, usually confined to the Arctic regions of our planet, will be dipping down once again into many states.

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Just how cold it is, of course, depends on where you are. While some states, like Wisconsin, are experiencing what may be in the top five or 10 coldest winters on record, California is in the middle of a warm and dry drought. But a lot of the U.S. hasn’t been having anything really out of the ordinary weather-wise.

Polar Vortex... mmmmph....Here in Canada we just call it Winter.

[MIKA27]

Life In The Movie Business: An Inside Look At The VFX Crisis

There is no doubt that the visual effects (VFX) crisis affecting the film industry right now is going to have an enormous impact on how movies are made in the future. We’re just not sure how long it’s going to take and what that solution looks like just yet. Here’s an insight into the problems plaguing the film industry, what life is like as a VFX artist, and the Oscars controversy that pushed the whole thing over the edge.

How the VFX business works is perhaps best explained as a game. There are three teams: the big American film studios, the VFX vendors and the VFX artists. Each team has a unique strength and weakness. The big American film studios have money (strength) and technology (weakness), the VFX vendors have infrastructure (strength) and mismanagement (weakness), and the VFX artists have creativity (strength) and disorganisation (weakness). The objective is to use your team’s unique talents to make blockbuster movies that generate tens of billions of dollars at the box office. Grab as much of that money as you can while low-balling all the other teams and exploiting their weaknesses. The team that has the most money, the most power and the most glory wins the game. The only rule is that all three teams must remain in play — or it’s game over for everyone.

Of course, it’s a bit more complicated in real life. The vendors serve as middlemen between the film studios (which hand out the work) and the artists (who do the work). And the day-to-day competition exists not so much between the three teams as it does within the teams themselves. The film studios compete with each other for distribution rights to the next big thing, the vendors try to outbid each other for whatever projects the film studios come up with, and the artists compete with each other for jobs created by vendors to work on those projects.

You don’t need to look far to see just how tough it is to succeed in the VFX business. Here’s a partial list of what we’ve seen in the past 12 months alone:

• George Miller’s Dr D Studios (Happy Feet Two) shuts down its production facility in Sydney and dumps 600 workers
  
• Sydney-based Fuel VFX (Prometheus, Iron Man 2) goes into voluntary administration and lays off all 80 of its employees before being snatched up by Animal Logic (Legend of the Guardians, Australia)
  
• Matte World Digital (Independence Day, Titanic) closes its California offices
  
• Digital Domain files for bankruptcy protection and is subsequently purchased by Chinese company Galloping Horse
  
• DreamWorks Animation announces that it’s laying off 350 employees
  

And then there’s industry veteran Rhythm & Hues, which is considered to be one of the best in the business for its photorealistic creatures in such films as The Incredible Hulk and The Chronicles of Narnia. That wasn’t enough to save it from having to file for bankruptcy protection a couple of weeks ago following a failed acquisition. According to the bankruptcy filing, Rhythm & Hues could not cover the cost of doing the work at the agreed price:

Unfortunately, with respect to current projects, the company will be unable to complete them at the bid amount and therefore needs additional funding to pay the costs, mostly labour, for the projects to be completed.

Rhythm & Hues is now facing a class-action lawsuit over unpaid wages and termination without cause.

Right: Guillaume Rocheron, Bill Westenhofer, Donald R. Elliott and Erik-Jan de Boer, winners of the Best Visual Effects award for Life of Pi.

“Box Office + Bankrupt = Visual Effects”

Unsurprisingly, VFX artists were outraged that yet another VFX house had bitten the dust. How is it that VFX companies are struggling so much despite the films they work on being so successful at the box office?

Hundreds of VFX artists converged outside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles where the Oscars were being held to draw attention to poor working conditions and the unsustainable business model forcing VFX vendors to their knees one by one. A chartered plane flew overhead pulling a banner that said: “Box Office + Bankrupt = Visual Effects vfxunion.com”.

And then things get really interesting. As the VFX artists protested outside, Rhythm & Hues was inside winning the Best Visual Effects Oscar for Life of Pi. Bill Westenhofer, VFX supervisor at Rhythm & Hues, accepts the award, but he runs out of time and his speech gets cut off as he tries to talk about the VFX industry’s financial problems.

Westenhofer later tells reporters that he was trying to draw attention to the fact that VFX companies are struggling at a time when VFX movies are dominating at the box office. “…I wanted to point out that we aren’t technicians. Visual effects is not just a commodity that’s being done by people pushing buttons,” Westenhofer says.

“We’re artists, and if we don’t find a way to fix the business model, we start to lose the artistry. If anything, Life of Pi shows that we’re artists and not just technicians.”

Not long afterwards, Ang Lee, who accepts the Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi, seemingly acknowledges everyone except Rhythm & Hues in his acceptance speech. He also reportedly made a comment a couple of weeks ago about how he would like visual effects to be cheaper. That drove at least one VFX artist to Facebook to vent in a scathing post:

Neither Ang nor his winning cinematographer, Claudio Miranda felt they needed to thank or even mention the VFX artists who made the sky, the ocean, the ship, the island, the meerkats and oh yeah… the tiger. Ang thanked the crew, the actors, his agent, his lawyer and the entire country of Taiwan right down to the team that built the wave-pool on the soundstage where Pi was shot. But failed to mention 100′s of artists who made, not only the main character of the tiger, but replaced that pool, making it look like a real ocean for 80% of his movie…

If you’ve seen Life of Pi, there is no doubt that the film’s success largely comes down to the visual effects — it did just win an Oscar saying they were the best after all. Indeed, Hollywood’s record-breaking $10.8 billion box office haul in 2012 would not have been possible without the visual effects that made blockbusters such as The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man possible in the first place.

Life in the VFX Industry

The VFX industry is notorious for its insane working hours and family-unfriendly demands that regularly draws comparisons with sweatshops in the manufacturing industry. And because it’s a relatively young part of the film business, there is no official union at this stage to look out for VFX workers.

They are also not as well-liked by the broader film business and are typically seen as a necessary and expensive evil. This disdain is reflected in any movie you watch: If you pay attention to the credits at the end of a movie beyond the top-billed cast and crew, you’ll notice that the names of the VFX crew are always listed closer to the end — underneath the name of the receptionist, the caterers and the company that provided the security guards — even when the film is almost entirely created with visual effects, as was the case in Life of Pi.

We spoke to two active VFX workers, but they asked not to be named because speaking to the media without permission breaches the non-disclosure clauses in their employment contracts. We’ll call them Bert and Ernie.

Most VFX artists develop and maintain a specific set of skills that allow them to specialise in such areas as animation, effects or lighting. They work up the ladder from junior positions to mid-level and senior roles that eventually offer leadership and management opportunities. Some choose to specialise in animated features, live-action movies or TV commercials. Artists also have IMDB profiles with a reverse chronological list of films they’ve worked on along with their job titles.

Bert says artists are usually required to work in the dark — much like photographers and dark rooms.

“It’s purely for technical reasons,” Bert says. “We can’t have glare or outside light sources getting in the way, and we need to see the image in the same lighting conditions people will be seeing it in the cinema.”

Most artists consider themselves to be independent contractors and rely on overtime rates to make their budgets stretch between jobs — they are hired by VFX vendors as required on a project by project basis with no expectations of continuing work. Many artists are compelled to chase short-term contracts overseas and spend months at a time away from their families. Coworkers are more often than not the only friends you have, and romantic relationships can be more trouble than they’re worth when you know you’ll only be in town for a little while.

Moving around becomes especially difficult when kids enter the equation. Some switch industries entirely while others transition sideways into video games.

“You can spend two years working on one video game as opposed to one movie every four or five months,” Ernie says. “And you get royalties if a game does well, especially if you’re in a higher up position.”

It’s not unusual for post-production staff to be required at work 12-15 hours a day, seven days a week in order to deliver a film in time for Boxing Day or the Easter long weekend. These deadlines are mandated by the motion picture studios — the same studios crying poor over online piracy even though it continues to rake in billions of dollars in revenue each year.

From the VFX protest outside the Oscars on February 24, 2013.

What Now?

Efforts to unionise are currently underway, but it requires the cooperation of the entire VFX industry. Financially strained VFX houses are understandably reluctant to take on the costs of negotiating a collective bargaining agreement, and artists who rely on short-term contracts are reluctant to put their jobs on the line.

Where the work goes is largely determined by where the biggest tax incentives are located. For instance, the Canadian province of British Columbia has paid out $437 million in tax credits to the big film studios in 2012/2013, which Canadians now have to make up for by paying more for healthcare and increased taxes. VFX vendors have no choice but to take jobs away from places like Los Angeles in favour of Vancouver in order to compete on a level playing field.

And it’s not over yet for Rhythm & Hues. The film studios have agreed to give the vendor “emergency loans”so that it can finish the films it has yet to complete. Of course, the film studios have everything to gain by ensuring those projects are completed. Those box office takings are not shared with the vendors nor with the artists who bring the projects to life.

Murmurs of strike actions have gained momentum — and such a move would paralyse not just the film studios and the vendors but the entire entertainment business. Films would halt production, release dates would be missed, merchandising agreements would be broken, the cinemas would have nothing to show, and we would have nothing to watch. If we don’t start addressing these problems soon, there might not be any other way around it.

[MIKA27]

Surgeons Attach Man's Calf To His Arm To Save His Life

Ian McGregor lost his entire leg to a cancerous tumour, but he’s lucky to be alive thanks to a weird, never-before-attempted 18-hour surgical procedure: First doctors removed his calf and attached it to his arm to keep it alive during the tumour and leg amputation.

Then they used the calf to fix the huge hole that resulted from the operation.

While attaching removed body parts to other body parts to keep them alive is not a new technique,surgeon Dr. Mani Ragbir told the BBC that this is the first time that this leg amputation procedure has been attempted:

We are not aware of anyone having done this particular procedure before. It’s not easy for a surgeon to tell a patient that they haven’t done this particular procedure before.

When they told Ian about it, he just agreed to it. “It felt like something out of Star Trek,” he said.

You can’t describe the feeling, you think you’re at death’s door and then you wake up and think wow, I’m here. It’s a wonderful feeling.

The operation

For the past 10 years, Ian has suffered with a large aggressive tumour running from his pelvis into his upper left thigh. When previous treatments proved unsuccessful, the only option left was to amputate Ian’s leg. But since the amputation would occur at Ian’s hip, his surgeons struggled to figure out how to close up the resulting hole.

They realised that the calf muscles would be the right size and shape to close up the wound from the amputation. To keep it alive during the operation, they connected the calf muscles to Ian’s forearm, temporarily patching the leg muscle’s arteries and veins into the circulatory system in Ian’s arm. With the muscle on life support, the surgeons completed the amputation, then transferred the calf muscle to Ian’s lower torso to fill in the hole. The entire procedure was done in a single 18-hour marathon surgery.

[MIKA27]

The World's Longest Aircraft Finally Gets Off The Ground

The HAV304 took the crown of “world’s longest aircraft” with its inaugural flight today.

The gargantuan spans a football field and towers just over two stories in height, owing its construction to pure metal. It sacrifices little in being the world’s longest, as it still reaches 100 mph, which is triple that of the dwarfish Goodyear blimp. Further, it can stay airborne for just over three weeks (and hypothetically, if it could maintain its maximum speed for all that time, it would travel over 80,000km.)

All in all, the HAV304 offers nothing short of the glory one would expect from a gargantuan blimp-hybrid-aircraft that is partially funded by the lead singer of Iron Maiden. So run to the hills, tundra, or any extreme environment, as this runway-free goliath will soon be delivering supplies to you.

[MIKA27]

Boarding An Amphibious Assault Ship Seems Like A Lot Of Fun

From the US Navy: “Marines assigned to 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit enter the well deck of the forward-deployed amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard.” That looks like an amazingly fun ride to me.

A lot more fun than this:

Sgt. George Cardenas, an explosive ordnance disposal technician with the Maritime Raid Force, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, climbs a ladder onto a cargo vessel from a rigid hull inflatable boat off the coast of Camp Pendleton, Calif., Feb. 26, 2014.

[MIKA27]

Lightsaber BBQ Tongs For The Evil Sith Grillmaster In Your Life

The Star Wars movies kind of painted the Sith as evil, unredeemable monsters. But between blowing up planets and wiping out the Jedi, even Darth Vader and the Emperor must need some R&R time, and presumably that involves the occasional BBQ where these lightsaber tongs would be invaluable. In a space station the size of the Death Star, there has to be a deck somewhere, right?

Featuring a transparent red cover that can be removed for functionality over authenticity, this simple set of tongs even includes sound effects powered by a pair of AA batteries. That’s right, you can now add BBQ tongs to the list of things that will need new batteries every few months. You can pre-order a pair for around $US33 from The Fowndry, or just stick with the tongs you already use and just add your own lightsaber sound effects.

[MIKA27]

19th Century New York Was Covered In An Insane Web Of Telephone Wires

Alexander Graham Bell may have invented the telephone in 1875, but the first phone installation didn’t come about for another three years. And that’s what makes these photos from 1887 so incredible; this tangled mass of telephone wires had already wound itself around New York City’s streets just seven years after that first installation.

Then in 1888, just a year after these photos were taken, a massive snowstorm dumped nearly two feet of snow onto the city and ravaged the massive web of wires in the process. Only then did the city’s officials think that it might be a good idea to bury telephone lines instead of weaving them around buildings. Just imagine, if the wires hadn’t moved underground when they did, that growing knot might very well have blacked out the sky entirely.

[MIKA27]

The Best Squirrel Feeder Is A Horse-Head Squirrel Feeder

It’s a goddamn beautiful thing when internet memes and nature collide into one glorious split-screen of a squirrel eating out of a Horse Head feeder. It just doesn’t get much better than this, people.

Photographer Jim Zielinski snapped the first pics of this product in the wild, but you too can humiliate the little guys right in your own backyard; the jokers at Archie McPhee — are selling the equine noggins for $US15, which you can buy here.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: Israel Is Putting Frickin' Lasers On Its Commercial Airliners

It’s not just IDF forces and Israeli settlements that come under rocket fire; militant groups have been known to take pot shots at commercial airlines as well — such as when a pair of SAMs narrowly missed an Israeli charter shortly after it took off from a Mombasa, Kenya airfield, in 2002. To protect vulnerable aircraft from future attacks, Israel has developed this belly-mounted laser shield for commercial jets.

Dubbed the Sky Shield — no, not that Skyshield — this Multi-Spectral Infrared Countermeasure (MUSIC) system from Elbit first identifies incoming threats with an integrated thermal camera, then hits it with a fibre-laser based Directional InfraRed CounterMeasure (DIRCM) to deflect heat seeking anti-aircraft missiles

Work on the system began in 2009 when the Israel Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Transportation selected it from a field of proposals to defend the nation’s three commercial airlines. It just recently passed a major development milestone, completing a series of qualification tests involving multiple threat engagements a variety of MANPADS (Man-portable air-defence systems), with a perfect record. The system was “100 per cent successful” in the qualification testing, according to Brig. Gen. Eitan Eshel, head of research and development at the ministry.

http://youtu.be/uVlERTFVSpo

Despite the impressive test results, Eshel was unable to disclose when the system would eventually become operational, but did expect the Sky Shield to be integrated into every commercial Israeli jetliner in short order once it does. El Al airlines has reportedly already signed on to use the technology, according to Eshel.

[MIKA27]

Why This Red Smudge Is The Most Valuable Stamp In The World

It may be hard to believe, but that faded bit of paper you see above is actually the most sought-after and revered stamp in the world. Or at least, it will be this June, which is when it’s poised to pull in a whopping $US10-20 million at auction — the most money ever spent a dirty piece of paper.

This particular jewel of the stamp-collecting world has broken single-stamp auction records a total of three different times since 1856. So what is it that makes this 19th century lickable worth the tens of millions of dollars it’ll be going for come auction day?

What Is It?

For something that costs about 20 times the recently vandalised Ai Weiwei vase , the stamp itself, measuring in at a hearty one and one-and-a-quarter inches, is a pretty innocuous-looking purchase. If you found it in your pocket, you’d throw it away in a heartbeat. But in doing so, you’d be throwing away the only remaining 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta stamp, one of the rarest stamps in the world.

Printed in black ink on magenta paper, the stamp features an image of a three-masted ship and the colony’s motto: We give and expect in return. Because everyone knows British colonists were nothing if not generous. The ship itself is framed by four thin lines, with the country of issue and value written along the outside edges. All of that is nearly impossible to see in the above, but this enhanced image does a bit of a better job of illuminating the details.

This particular stamp hasn’t been on display to the public since 1986. Even royalty couldn’t sneak a peek; it’s the only major stamp missing from the British Royal Family’s private Royal Philatelic Collection. While the Queen was busy fuming over her missing precious, it remained in the private collection of John E. du Pont until his death in 2010. Now, du Pont’s estate is finally auctioning off this Ark of the Postal Service Accessory Covenant at Sotheby’s this coming June.

Where’s It From?

Back in the early 1850s, a shipment of stamps from London to its British Guiana colony got delayed, forcing the postmaster to look elsewhere for replacements. He ultimately went to a local newspaper, the Royal Gazette, and commissioned them to produce placeholder stamps until the real deal arrived.

Obviously, not-totally-up-to-code stamps could cause a major problem as far as forgeries are concerned, so to minimize potential stamp fraud, a post office employee had to individually initial each and every proxy stamp before it could go into circulation. This is one of those stamps — the only one left.

The stamp’s first owner belies its record-setting potential; an unassuming 12-year-old Scottish boy found it amidst his family’s clutter of papers in 1873. For some reason, he held onto it.

A man named Neil McKinnon came next, buying the stamp from the boy for a few shillings. At the tail-end of the 19th century, it passed hands to a collector in Liverpool who was the first to recognise its rarity, ultimately selling it for a healthy 120 pounds (roughly $US20,000 today) to the (very fancily named) Count Philippe la Renotiere von Ferrary — one of the world’s most prominent stamp collectors.

When the Count kicked the bucket, the Postmuseum in Berlin became the Magenta’s newest owner until the entire collection was seized by France as part of the reparations for World War I. The French proceeded to sell the stamp off at auction for $US35,000 in 1922 (roughly $US500,000 today) — its very first single-stamp record. After that owner died, it was put to auction again in 1970 for $US280,000 (equalling what would be about $US1 million today for record number two). Then in 1980, its most recent (and soon to be broken) record came in at just under $US1 million (almost $US3 million when adjusted for inflation).

And come June 14, you could be next! Assuming you have $US10-20 million to spare. That’s just the current estimation, though, so the stamp could very well go for more or less. One thing, though, is almost entirely for certain — it’s about to have four records under its belt.

Why Is It So Valuable?

As with all stamps, it’s valuable because it’s rare. After all, it technically wasn’t even supposed to exist in the first place. But even though this notably unattractive collectible has been regarded as the rarest stamp in the world, there are actually quite a few other wholly unique stamps circulating around the collector’s sphere.

For instance, the current auction record for a single stamp is held by the Treskilling Yellow (below), which sold for $US2.3 million in 1996. Converted for inflation, that’d be about $US3.5 million today. A hearty sum, certainly, but nowhere near the $US10 million the Magenta will likely go for (and that’s just the lower estimate).

So why is the Magenta even more valuable than these others?

Partly because it’s literally the only one of its kind that remains, but also because it’s been blessed by the notoriety of its owners.

After all, its most recent owner, John E. du Pont, was actually in prison when he passed away in 2010. His crime? The “irrational” murder of world-class Olympic wrestler David Schultz, whom du Pont had sponsored. There’s even a movie about this very same murder set to come out later this year starring Channing Tatum as Schultz and Steve Carrell as the insane, stamp-loving du Pont.

So it’s understandable that the wealthiest of stamp enthusiasts are eager to own something that’s not only incredibly rare and produced under unlikely circumstances, but it also comes surrounded in a darkly fascinating mythos that, apparently, is worth tens of millions to the people who can afford it. Not bad for a filthy little smudge.

[MIKA27]

The Exosuit: What Tony Stark Would Wear Underwater

Meet the Exosuit. It’s a $600,000 atmospheric diving suit capable of taking a human 300m underwater at surface pressure, and it’s the first of its kind. If you have dramatic music handy, you should go ahead and play it, because this thing is insane.

What is it?

It’s what Tony Stark would wear to go hang out with Namor. Built and designed by Vancouver’s Nuytco Research, the Exosuit is 2m tall aluminium alloy rig that weighs more than 240kg and allows scientists and researchers to research unknown creatures at extreme depths where the pressure is 30 times that of what it is on land. The Exosuit is also fitted with an oxygen system with 50 hours of life support, as well as powerful LED lights for full visibility, and a teardrop-shaped viewport that lets the operator look down to chest-level.

When the subsea suit is submerged, the weight is completely neutralized, and the wearer can communicate with and constantly send info to the surface. The result of more than 35 years of research, it’s propelled by four 1.6hp foot-controlled thrusters with foot pads on the bottom that give the pilot full control of where he or she is going. Most importantly, the noble Exosuit has 18 oil-filled rotary joints on the arms and legs to ensure smooth movement. In fact, the hands are so dexterous, people with just an hour of training have been able to easily pick up a dime off the ground when wearing it.

More practically, they’re also capable of using scalpels and syringes, custom manipulators that act as grips for collecting and photographing, and other tedious tools you need when researching small sea creatures. AMNH Ichthyology curator chief John Sparks explained that the possibilities are really endless:

Just going down in the submarines for those few [research and testing] trips gave me a bunch of ideas and we saw creatures that we could study and extract their proteins for use in biomedical work and the first thing I thought was it’d be neat to have this suit and have eyes on them then just seeing them on a TV screen from an ROV with that limited ability to interact with that it just didn’t give you the same understanding of the physiology. You’re actually in the environment. [in the Exosuit], you’re there and immersed almost like one of the other organisms.

Technically, yes, you could dive 1,000 feet in a normal diving skin suit. But you wouldn’t last long down there. The pressure is so great at that depth that you’d only be able to stand it for a few minutes. This is the first contraption that lets you not only go deep, but stay there long enough to capture a specimen and handle it with dexterity.

What’s it going to do?

The Exosuit already had some water time this past summer in the Solomon Islands. But this July the Exosuit will get its sea legs when it’s used as a test tool on the Stephen J. Barlow Bluewater Expedition, 100 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. There it will be used to explore an area of the ocean called “The Canyons,” which is named for its series of steep drop offs from the continental shelf to almost 10,000 feet below. But the Exosuit, specifically, will be used in the mid-ocean range to peep bioluminescent creatures, beings we don’t know all that much about yet.

We want to know more about their biological make-up for several different reasons. So far, scientists have actually only identified 180 species of bioluminescent fish, despite being convinced that there are orders of magnitude more. So there is a simply a fact-finding angle.

We’ve also been in the dark over not just how many there are, but how they live, Sparks said:

What we want to be able to do is get down deeper and see these animals alive. So currently on this expedition we could bring them up in a trawl, which is pulling a deep net from behind the boat, but what tends to happen is the fish get crushed and mangled and very few come up alive which doesn’t allow us to observe their flashing patterns, so what we’re left with is just basing these inferences on anatomy, what they look like, but we really need the flashing patterns to go along with that, and that would give us the evidence to go a-ha!, they ARE communicating, if we could get an image or a video of unique flashing patterns for these different species then we know they’re using this light to communicate with each other.

The Exosuit also travels with a sidekick, the DeepReef-ROV, a National Science Foundation-developed $600,000 vehicle that is designed with the express purpose of studying bioluminescence by taking high-res images of these critters in their natural habitats. The ROV is amazing in its own right. It’s fitted with three cameras (but can have up to 10), and it’s always sending up information to the surface via fibre.

Why does it matter?

Studying bioluminescent beings isn’t just an end unto itself. It has implications for humans too. There is a protein that exists inside bioluminescent creatures that has a similar counterpart in the human brain. Discovered in the ’60s, it’s called the “green protein,” and if we learn more about it, scientists couple potentially unlock a lot of information previously unknown about how our brains signal, how they deteriorate, and so forth. This could be applied to epilepsy research, Alzheimers research, cancer detection, and on and on and on.

Bioluminescent proteins can also show us a lot about the otherwise unseen processes that happen within cells, because when they happen in these glowing animals, they’re expressed in flashes of light. So scientists can learn more about cell function as well as disfunction that would be hidden in other organisms.

And that’s just this one study. Having access to the Exosuit means that eventually we’ll have access to lots and lots of Exosuits, which means we’ll be able to explore the ocean not just in more depth, but with more granularity than we ever have before. You can take your 20,000 leagues; we’ll take 1000 feet any day.

[MIKA27]

Rumour: Microsoft Is Considering A Free Version Of Windows 8.1

If you can’t make people buy your new OS, why not give it away for free? At least, that’s what Microsoft is thinking of doing with Windows 8.1, according to rumours.

Both ZDNet and Verge are reporting that Microsoft is building and trialling something called “Windows 8.1 with Bing”. Sources say that this version of the OS will be bundled with “key Microsoft apps and services” — and be free to upgrade, or at least very, very low cost. The reports suggest that the Bing-centric version of Windows 8.1 may even be offered to PC makers, in a bid to offer a lower licence price point, making cheaper devices more affordable.

Essentially, you’d be looking at a version of Windows 8.1 literally dripping with Bing. Bing as every turn. Bing, Bing, Bing. Bing? Bingo! It’s not so much that the OS would be ad-supported, more that every thing you do would be through a prism of Microsoft’s search and, in turn, ads. That would means that you wouldn’t see any more promotional content, but you’d be served the ads that Microsoft wanted you to see — as opposed, to say, the ones you’d see if you were using exclusively Google products.

Of course, even if Microsoft is working on a project like this, it’s not clear that it will ever make it out of the research lab. But if it were to, it might not be the worst thing ever — with ads no more explicit than a usual computing experience, offering yourself up to Bing could be worth it. Just. Maybe.

MIKA: Bing =

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: Boeing's Bird Of Prey

From the U-2 Dragon Lady and A-12 Oxcart, to the SR-71 Blackbird and D-12 Ramjet Drone, there’s been no shortage of exotic aircraft (and UFO sightings) in the skies over Nevada’s Area 51. But among the most extreme examples of bleeding-edge avionic design tested was the otherworldly Boeing Bird of Prey.

One of the most intriguing products of the Phantom Works that really was a denizen of Area 51 on George Muellner’s watch was the Bird of Prey. Visually, this aircraft possessed the strange, but sleek design characteristics that are appreciated by those in the world of extraterrestrial buffs. It was even named after an alien spaceship. According to James Wallace, writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of 18 October 2002, it is named for a class of Klingon starships first seen in the 1984 motion picture Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

The Bird of Prey project began at the Phantom Works in 1992, and the aircraft made its first flight eight months earlier than the X-36 on September 11, 1996. Unlike the publicly acknowledged NASA X-36, the Bird of Prey was a classified program, funded by the contractor but apparently managed by the US Air Force. Like Tacit Blue, it was successfully obscured from public view until its flight test program concluded in April 1999 after 40 successful flights.

The Bird of Prey program, like many of the projects that have come out of the Phantom Works, utilised rapid prototyping techniques to cut both costs and development time. According to the company, the program “pioneered breakthrough low-observable technologies and revolutionised aircraft design, development and production”. The Bird of Prey was also one of the first aircraft programs to “initiate the use of large, single-piece composite structures; low-cost, disposable tooling; and 3D virtual reality design and assembly processes to ensure the aircraft was affordable to build as well as high-performing.”

The aircraft was not, however, one to push the edge of the performance envelope. The Bird of Prey had a reported cruising speed of 480km/h and a modest service ceiling of 20,000 feet (6000m). The aircraft was 14m long and had a wingspan of about 7m. It weighed about 3356kg and was powered by an off-the-shelf Pratt & Whitney JT15D-5C turbofan engine.

The man who is considered to have been the “father of the Bird of Prey” was Alan Wiechman, the director of signature design and applications for the Phantom Works whose career in LO design had begun at the Lockheed Skunk Works where he worked on Have Blue and the F-117 program, as well as the Sea Shadow, Lockheed’s stealth warship.

In April 2002, six months before the Bird of Prey was officially declassified, Wiechman received the 2001 Technical Achievement Award from the National Defence Industrial Association (NDIA) for his work in LO aircraft design. The

NDIA called him “a giant whose work to date has given the United States a legacy of improved survivability and influenced an entire generation of combat vehicles,” adding that “because of Wiechman’s work, the United States gained a 15-year lead over potential adversaries that it has not relinquished, and the effectiveness of his designs and products has been thoroughly proven in combat operations.”

On 18 October 2002, the Bird of Prey was made public. According to Boeing, the reason was that “the technologies and capabilities developed [in the program] have become industry standards, and it is no longer necessary to conceal the aircraft’s existence.”

Jim Albaugh, president of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, proudly bragged that with the Bird of Prey, the Phantom Works “changed the rules on how to design and build an aircraft.”

George Muellner, a man with two decades of experience in black world aeroplanes and now an executive with Integrated Defencs Systems, added that the Bird of Prey program “is one of many that we are using to define the future of aerospace.”

The fact that Boeing itself funded the project to the tune of $US67 million hints that “the future of aerospace” involves secrets more intriguing than the Bird of Prey that have been in the sky over Area 51 since before 2002.

They may be revealed tomorrow, or they may remain mysteries indefinitely.

Area 51 – Black Jets: A History of the Aircraft Developed at Groom Lake, America’s Secret Aviation Base by Bill Yenne is available from Amazon.

[MIKA27]

How A Mass Whale Graveyard Ended Up Beneath A Highway

Connecting Alaska to Argentina, the Pan-American Highway runs some 48,000km north to south. Construction to widen the highway briefly stopped, however, to make way for dead whales back in 2010, when workers digging through a remote stretch of the Chilean desert found a huge trove of bones millions of years old. Now, scientists think they have figured out how the extinct whales ended up on land in the first place.

Because the road would only pause — but not detour — for the whales, paleontologists rushed in and worked feverishly to document the site before it was paved over. 3D photographs (below) preserved the site digitally. The bones themselves now sit in museums in Santiago and the nearby city of Caldera. As for the site, the northbound lane of the Pan-American Highway current runs through it.

The roadside discovery, detailed in a new study, turned out to be the densest collection of extinct marine mammals ever. The 40 whale skeletons were found in four distinct layers stacked on top of one another, meaning the creatures were beached in four separate events. But how did they all end up in this small, arid region of Chile called Cerro Ballena?

With only whale bones and dirt, scientists began piecing together the clues. Millions of years ago, Cerro Ballena was a tidal flat where whales could have gotten stranded. There were several different whale species, making a single disease a less likely cause.

One set of whales was found largely undisturbed and belly-up, meaning they were already dead when they washed to shore. The best explanation for recurring whale deaths was toxic algae: blooms of toxic algae can still cause whale strandings today.

Hundreds more fossils could still be hidden near the highway, and the University of Chile in Santiago plans to open a research station in the area, turning this desert highway into a fascinating and unexpected site for marine paleontology. The act of construction is often at odds with history, but it can occasionally uncover extraordinary pieces of it.

[MIKA27]

Your Phone's Wi-Fi Hotspot Could Act As An SOS Beacon In A Disaster

Trapped under rubble, unable to move following a natural disaster, it would be easy to assume the worst. But soon the Wi-Fi hotspot on your phone may be able to help raise alarm — acting as an SOS beacon to guide rescuers your way.

At least, that’s if Amro Al-Akkad, an engineer with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology in St Augustin, Germany, has his way.New Scientist reports that, inspired by cheeky Wi-Fi names near his apartment — like “no smoking on the balcony” and “turn the noise down” — he realised that an app could insert a short SOS message into the name of a phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot too.

In collaboration with emergency workers, Al-Akkad and his team have developed “victim” and “seeker” apps which allow the one to locate the other. New Scientist explains that the app allows a victim to write a 27-character message — such as “need help fire on 4th floor” — and a seeker app can spot it from 100m away. It’s already been successfully used in disaster simulations in Norway.

The beauty, of course, is that phone networks often become saturated during times of disaster, while a Wi-Fi hotspot will go about its own business. There does, of course, remain the issue of limited battery life when using a smartphone as a hotspot — but it’s at least a step in the right direction. The work will be presented at a computer interaction conference in Toronto in April.

[MIKA27]

Incredible Photo Of A Supernova At Peak Brightness Captured By Hubble

Even if Hubble had been a total disaster spewing one crappy image after the other for more than two decades, it would have been worth it just for this single image: a supernova explosion in the galaxy M82, taken on January 31, as it approached peak brightness.

From NASA Goddard:

This is a Hubble Space Telescope composite image of a supernova explosion designated SN 2014J in the galaxy M82. At a distance of approximately 11.5 million light-years from Earth it is the closest supernova of its type discovered in the past few decades. [...]

Astronomers using a ground-based telescope discovered the explosion on January 21, 2014. This Hubble photograph was taken on January 31, as the supernova approached its peak brightness.

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Scientists: Beijing's Air Pollution Is Like Being In Nuclear Winter

The alarmingly thick cloud of smog often found floating over China’s capital city is nothing new at this point. But as the situation continues to worsen, Chinese scientists are warning that the city’s toxic air pollution has become so dire that it now resembles a nuclear winter.

This has been a particularly bad week for China’s pollution levels, with six of the country’s northern provinces covered in a cloud smog that isn’t expected to lift until at least Thursday. Beijing is certainly faring the worst, though, with its concentration of PM2.5 particles (the particles that cause all those health risks in the first place) hitting a solid 505 micrograms per cubic metre — or about 20 times higher than the World Health Organisation’s maximum safe level.

It’s not just people at risk though. The smog is even affecting China’s plants, preventing them from successfully photosynthesising, which in turn threatens the population’s food supply. With visibility down to less than 50 metres in parts, He Dongxian, an associate professor at China Agricultural University’s College of Water Resources and Engineering, notes that these kinds of conditions are “similar to a nuclear winter”.

And as The Week points out, this unsettling warning has come just after Shanghai Academy of Scoial Science’s report that Beijing’s extreme air pollution makes the city nearly “uninhabitable for human beings”. With prospects like this, all those desolate science fiction future scenarios may be a lot less fiction than we’d like to hope.

[MIKA27]

Flying Man In Wingsuit Comes Close To Crashing Into Rio's Jesus Statue

A good policy on all wingsuit jumps is to never crash into anything. A secondary policy to follow would be if you do crash into something, make sure it’s soft and not Rio de Janeiro’s 38 tall Christ the Redeemer statue. Jesus Christ may be forgiving, but his statue made of 635 tonnes of reinforced concrete and soapstone is not.

Norwegian Espen Fadnes and Frenchman Ludovic Woerth were the two real life Supermen who made the wingsuit flyby from 2000m to zip right underneath the Christ the Redeemer statue’s arms.

[MIKA27]

Navy’s Tiny 5-Pound Missile Packs a Big Punch

If the Pentagon is going to increasingly rely on drones to carry out precision attacks, the military is going to need access to smaller munitions than one-ton JDAMs.

While most defense contractors are designing drones to accommodate the already-existing larger weapons, the Navy has taken the opposite approach with Spike, a five-pound, 25-inch mini-munition which it likes to call “the world’s smallest guided missile.”

Relying on commercial-off-the-shelf components such as cellphone camera technology, Spike can be launched from the air or the ground and is being developed so it can even be shoulder-fired.

And at sea, it can fill a particular gap against the increasing threat of small boat swarms, the fast attack craft (FAC) and fast inshore attack craft (FIAC), according to the Navy.

“With a number of targets coming at you, there’s potential for some to get through,” said Greg Wheelock, a Navy Weapons Division technical lead, in a statement. “Spike is a good option for taking out those leakers. It’s not going to blow those boats out of the water but it can take the boat out of commission.”

“What we lack in warhead size is compensated for in accuracy, and we have the ability to put that charge where it will have the most effect,” he said.

That precision could go a long way toward curbing criticism of U.S. drone policy where too often innocent civilians are among the casualties.

At the moment, however, Spike is completely conceived, designed, developed and tested in-house, so Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) engineers could learn on the job. But the Navy says 10 positive test results show it could easily make its way to the battlefield.

The Navy says developing Spike in-house has resulted in better advancement response times and significantly lower costs, at about $50,000 a piece.

“We own the technical drawing package, we own all the intellectual property, we have the capability to develop it, take it out on the range, test it, come back and tweak it, and go back to test it and do limited rate production right in our own backyard,” Wheelock said.

[MIKA27]

Obama Officials Threaten Punishment for Putin, Downplay Military Option

Two days after Vladimir Putin defied President Obama’s warning not to intervene in Ukraine‘s Crimea region, administration officials said they are already taking punitive economic and diplomatic action against Russia and warned, in the words of one, that “the Russians have badly miscalculated here.”

But the same officials steered clear of suggestions that they are considering a U.S. military role to protect Ukraine from Russian encroachment.

“Right now I think we are focused on political, economic and diplomatic options,” said an administration official, when asked whether the use of force was under consideration.

“I don’t think frankly that would be an effective way to de-escalate the situation.”

De-escalation is clearly the administration’s preference. On a Sunday conference call with reporters, officials suggested that international monitors under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe could ensure the protection of ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. On a trip to Vienna this week, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will discuss with OSCE officials whether monitors could replace Russian forces in those regions “if Russia can be persuaded to pull back,” one official said.

Putin has claimed the threat to Russians within Ukraine from anti-Moscow nationalists—often described by Kremlin allies as “fascists”—as a justification for Russian military action. His rejection of a credible plan to send monitors would affirm suspicions that his actions constitute a grab for territory and an effort to intimidate Kiev, where street protesters toppled a pro-Moscow government last month. In a 90-minute telephone conversation between Putin and Obama on Friday, the official said, Putin “did not slam the door” on the idea of OSCE monitors, “but there was agreement to continue to discuss.”

There’s little sign that international condemnation is giving Putin pause, however. One official said that more than 6,000 Russian airborne and naval forces have “complete operational control” over the Crimea, a peninsula which belonged to Russia until 1954 and where the country still operates a major naval base with the consent of Ukraine, its former fellow Soviet Republic.

“They are flying in reinforcements,” added this official, “and they are settling in.”

Efforts are thus underway in Washington to isolate Russia internationally. They include the cancellation of planning meetings for U.S. attendance at a G8 summit in Sochi this June—and a potential move to kick Russia out of the union of economic powers altogether.

“Russia’s actions are incompatible with the underlying principles that allowed us to bring them into the G8 in the first place,” said one official.

While some observers warn that Washington’s leverage over Moscow is highly limited, the officials portrayed Putin as having committed a strategic blunder that will bleed his country’s economy, which has been boosted in recent years by high oil prices—Russia is a major exporter—but has recently grown stagnant.

“What we see here are distinctly 19th and 20th century decisions to address problems, deploying military forces rather than negotiating and talking,” said one official. “But [Putin] lives in a 21st century world” of interconnected economies, leaving his country exposed to potential sanctions from its European trade partners in particular. “Russia’s economy is quite vulnerable, given the level of integration, to market reactions,” said another official, adding that the ruble has lost 8.6 percent of its value this year.

The official also would not rule out the possibility of highly targeted sanctions, like those applied to Iran and North Korea, singling out key individuals and companies at the center of the country’s power structure.

But when asked whether they think Putin is prepared to change his behavior in response to the tough talk from Washington and other European capitals, the officials demurred.

“We in this administration have made it a practice to not look into Vladimir Putin’s soul,” said one.

[MIKA27]

This Man’s Tearful Story Will Change The Way You View The Homeless

This is Ronald Davis, a homeless man based in Chicago. For the vast majority of the year, he is forced to sleep on its bitterly cold streets, unless people have been generous enough to provide him with a few dollars for a room in a shelter.

“I go for a job interview, but because I don’t look presentable I don’t get it. They always say “We’ll call you” but how can they call me when I don’t have a phone?”

In this tearful and candid interview Ronald insists he actively wants to actively change his situation, being homeless and trying to take those first few steps up the ladder back into society can be an almost impossible task.

I depend on the people who are coming off the train because most of them I give them respect, you know most of them like me, they come out and give me clothes and food so I can survive. They give me a few bucks and at the end of the day, I add it up to see if i can get a room in shelter that night.

And whenever I’m not fortunate enough to get that, I just sleep in the street or wherever I can. It’s really humiliating to be shaking a cup 24hrs a day and people look at you like you’re some kind of bum. I’ve had people walk past me and yell “Get a job bum” and I say “Wait a minute, I’m not a bum man. I’m a human being.”

If there is one video you watch and share today, one story you have the time to listen to, make sure it’s Ronalds.

Since the video was posted, the Reddit community has rallied around Ronald and are currently working together to help change his situation and give him the opportunity to get his life back on track.

So next time you see a homeless or disadvantage person, remember Ronald, remember his story and remember to be the change you want to see in the world.

[MIKA27]

MERCEDES-BENZ ZETROS | 6X6 EXPEDITION VEHICLE

The awesome Mercedes-Benz Zetros is a luxurious hunting and expedition vehicle. The all-wheel drive Zetros can conquer practically any terrain, under the hood sits a 7.2 liter in-line six-cylinder with an impressive output of 240 kW (326 hp). It delivers a maximum torque of 1300 Nm from 1200 to 1600 rpm. Also impressive is the interior, complete with fully equipped kitchen, bedroom and flat screen TV, bathroom with marble floor and underfloor heating as well as a quad in the rear garage! More photos of this impressive vehicle after the jump…

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NIFTY MINIDRIVE

The Nifty MiniDrive is the simplest way to increase your MacBook´s storage capacity. The sleek little device slips right into your Macbook Air or Macbook Pro´s SD card slot adding 64Gigs of extra storage and looking fully integrated with your Mac. It´s main selling point is its elegant design, made from the same aircraft-grade aluminum as you Mac, the Minidrive fits seamlessly into your machine, you can just leave it there and make it part of your laptop, you won´t even notice it whilst backing up your photos