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

[MIKA27]

This Short Film Is Arguably The Cutest Prequel To Star Wars: The Force Awakens

If you were a kid between the release of the first Star Wars movie — in 1977 — and today, you’ve probably played with as many awesome Star Wars toys, action figures, vehicles, aircraft, LEGO sets, plush toys, anything as possible. This great short film about being a kid will instantly bring you back all those childhood memories and take you to your happy place.

Summer ’78 is a cute short film directed by J.C. Reifenberg. It shows a young boy during the late 70s creating a home movie with his favourite toys from Star Wars.

[MIKA27]

Huawei's Android Wear Watch Will Be Out In Australia On October 15

Been waiting for an Android Wear smartwatch with a little more style than the LG G Watch R? Not a fan of Apple and the Apple Watch? Huawei’s new and fancy Watch finally has an — imminent — Australian release date and price tag.

Huawei’s first Android Wear smartwatch in Australia, aptly named the Huawei Watch, has a round sapphire crystal-covered AMOLED display across its 1.4-inch, 42mm face. Using a standard 18mm watchband means you should be able to buy any number of moderately priced alternatives, and Huawei is including 40 different and customisable watch faces on top of the standard Android Wear suite.

It has an integrated heart rate monitor as well as the now-standard accelerometer and gyroscope for motion/step tracking, but it’s Huawei’s novel magnetic charger — which has its own internal rechargeable battery, which can charge the Watch in 75 minutes — that will be the Watch’s big selling point.

The Huawei Watch will be available from Harvey Norman, JR Duty Free, **** Smith Move, JB Hi-Fi, and a small number of jewellery stores, as well as Huawei’s own kiosks, from October 15. It’ll cost you at least $549, for the silver case and black leather band. For $100 more at $649 you can choose either a silver link bracelet or a silver mesh strap with the silver case, and $749 will get you the more stealthy black case and black link bracelet. At the moment, there’s no price for the 23-karat gold version or the rose gold version.

[MIKA27]

Shell Concedes That Oil Drilling Off The Alaskan Coast Is A Really Bad, Really Expensive Idea

After spending $US7 billion drilling for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska, oil giant Shell announced today it will cease all drilling due to “a clearly disappointing exploration outcome.” This means there might be zero drilling off Alaska’s Arctic coast in the near future.

Shell has called off all drilling for oil and gas in the region because, according to a press release, not enough fossil fuels were obtained to justify continued operations. Vox predicts that this could lead to zero drilling off Alaska, period — at least for now — especially since Shell competitors have also backed out.

The Chukchi Sea, the area in question, is known for its tempestuous, icy, wavy, dangerous conditions that all make drilling really tough. Even more, it’s really far away, expensive, and a very messy problem to clean up in the event of an oil spill. That’s why drilling in the region had been pretty inactive since the ’90s. Sure there are 40 million barrels’ worth of oil in the area, but it’s expensive and dangerous to get it out of the ground.

Low crude oil prices are batting down the corporate drive for expensive exploration, while at the same time incentivizing greater pursuit for home-based oil alternatives. What’s more, US and EU sanctions that hope to help us ditch our oil dependency over global warming fears have only turned up the pressure on companies like Shell. Sure we can’t get off oil tomorrow, but turning our attention in a new direction is key to ensuring the feasibility of oil and gas alternatives in the future.

The good news is, there’s no shortage of research being done, from solar or wind power and electric cars to algal biofuels and hydrogen-powered buildings and cars. The bad news is that development of realistic alternatives is going to be a long process. And during that time, we’re still going to need fossil fuels.

For now, environmentalists can be happy that we might be crossing Alaska off the list of places where the US will dig for that black gold. Still with those pregnant barrels chilling off the Alaskan coast, this certainly isn’t the last we’ve heard of oil companies trying to dredge up those goods.

[MIKA27]

500 Year Floods Now Coming To New York Every 24 Years

Bad news for New Yorkers: The inundation of Hurricane Sandy might have been billed as a 3,000 year flood, but according to new research, the recurrence interval for Sandy-sized flood events has shrunk. By a factor of 23.

We already knew that New York City was on the front lines of sea level rise, but research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science finds that the Big Apple has also become a lot more susceptible to inundation from massive storms. Historic records of flooding in New York only date back to the mid-19th century, but by examining the distribution of microfossils called foraminifera in nearby salt marshes, researchers were able to reconstruct the history of tropical cyclones and flood events all the way back to 850 AD.

Their findings? Modern times are getting weird. Focusing on the neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan known as the Battery, the researchers found that while a Sandy-sized storm — which produced 9.2 feet (2.81 meters) of surge — used to be a 3,000 year event, a flood of its magnitude could now occur every 130 years. 500 year floods, which cause 7.4 feet (2.25 meters) of storm surge, are now predicted to smack Manhattan ever 24 years. New Yorkers can thank a combination of sea level rise and more extreme storm events for their flood-filled future.

What’s the city to do about this sorry forecast? First off, New York needs to start investing in storm-proof infrastructure, whether that means higher seawalls, sturdier building foundations or new outflows for waterlogged streets. Second, its 8 million-ish voters could, you know, start using their political weight to help elect candidates who actually want to tackle climate change — which is, of course, the undisputed root of the problem.

If they don’t like either of those options? Buy a kayak. [Read the full scientific paper at PNAS h/t New Scientist]

[MIKA27]

Space Igloos, Lava Tubes And Hobbit Holes: Here Are Our Future Martian Habitats

The discovery of liquid water on Mars is great news for would-be settlers, but we’ll need more than H2O if we actually want to live there. The only cost-effective way for humans to colonize the Red Planet is for us to start building infrastructure out of local materials. I’m talking rovers made of Martian metals and greenhouses built on Martian cement. A series of fascinating new designs are helping NASA imagine what that locally-sourced space colony could look like.

Earlier this year, NASA and America Makes challenged Mars enthusiasts to design 3D printed habitats for future astronauts. After a four-month submission period, 30 design competition finalists were selected and displayed at the New York Maker Faire this past weekend. There, teams were judged based on their architectural concept and design approach, in addition to the habitability, functionality and constructibility of the concept using 3D printing. The top two design teams took home a $US25,000 and $US15,000 prize, respectively.

Let’s have a look at some of the wonderfully weird habitats creative, space-addled minds have dreamt up

The Space Igloo of Your Dreams

If you can’t beat the cold — and trust me, on Mars you really can’t — you might as well embrace it. The first place prize went to Team Space Exploration Architecture and Clouds Architecture Office for “Ice House,” a space igloo that takes the edge off the bitter Martian winters with gently sloping glacial facades. The team envisions human colonists extracting ice from the regolith near Mars’ north pole to construct a “pressurised radiation shell” that encloses a habitat and gardens.

Not totally clear on how you go outside, but hey, Martian north pole? You probably won’t want to.

Go Modular or Go Home

Space habs are vulnerable in a big way. If a single piece of shrapnel pierced the hull of the ISS, the atmosphere would quickly fizzle off into space. If we’re going to put humans on Mars, we want to make sure there’s enough redundancy built into their infrastructure that one leaky roof doesn’t bring on the apocalypse.

That’s the philosophy behind “Gamma,” the second place design built by acclaimed architectural firm Foster + Partners. As Gizmodo’s Jamie Condliffe describes in detail, this scheme involves deploying a set of modular, inflatable habs to the Martian surface to scout a suitable location before humans arrive. Once the habs are in place, a “multi-robot regolith additive manufacturing” system will begin construction of an outer hab shield made of Martian regolith — a sort of high-tech termite mound.

As Mark Watney’s fictional survival saga reminds us, there are going to be lots of unforeseen difficulties on Mars. A design that acknowledges this reality gives us a better chance of beating the odds.

Waste Not, Want Not

“Recycle everything” will surely become one of the Ten Martian Commandments. But team LavaHive, the third place runner-up in the design competition, takes the environmentalist mantra to a new level by cleverly incorporating spacecraft components into its design. (Not like you’ll need those spaceships for running back to Earth or anything, hah!)

Once an Entry, Descent and Landing system deploys construction rovers to the surface, its back shell pops off and becomes the roof for an inflatable habitat. Next, the team proposes using a novel “lava casting” method — melting basaltic rocks into hot lava and moulding them into walls and floors and such — to build connecting corridors between the main habitat and various subsections. With greater structural strength and density than traditional sintered materials, basaltic lava could offer better radiation shielding, atmospheric containment, and protection from those deadly Martian dust storms. It’s also the ultimate reusable material.

Let the Robots Build It

Machines are a wonderful perk of living in a technological society. But in space, they’re literally going to be our lifeline. Embracing the fact that we’ll need robots to do just about everything, team MASS puts them to work. Large, earth-moving robots to excavate the Martian regolith. Swarms of smaller, legged robots to laser sinter rocks into structural components, explore the surrounding region, and build the hab from the ground up. Robots, robots, everywhere — let’s just hope they don’t turn against us.

The anthill-like dome depicted above is only the tip of this Martian habitat: To avoid exposure to surface radiation, colonists will sleep and spend their downtime in a cavernous below ground structure, nesting away the cold Martian winters like the happy space hobbits they are.

Bio-Inspired

A little biomimicry could go a long way toward making Mars feel Earth-like. “Mollusca L5,” designed by LeeLabs, draws inspiration from shell-building creatures on Earth, which, like Martian settlers, are just trying to keep their soft squishy parts safe. In this concept, inflatable habitats for living and growing crops are protected by a vaulted, shell-like structure composed of high strength glass panels refined from Martian minerals.

It isn’t clear whether the entire enclosure, or just its sub-components, would contain an atmosphere. But one way or another, the “shell” creates a sense of protected open space outside the hab — a sort of Martian backyard, if you will. If you squint, you can even see room for a jogging track around the outer perimeter.

Despite its recent case of Mars-mania, NASA recognises that a human colony on the Red Planet is a distant dream — and as such, all outlandish ideas are still on the table. But the philosophy that unites these concepts — of using and reusing the resources at hand — is one that we’re going to have to embrace if our crazy life-in-space dream is ever to be realised.

[MIKA27]

The Slave-State Origins of Modern Gun Rights

Source: The Atlantic

The idea that citizens have an unfettered constitutional right to carry weapons in public originates in the antebellum South, and its culture of violence and honor.

Gun-rights advocates have waged a relentless battle to gut what remains of America’s lax and inadequate gun regulations. In the name of the Second Amendment, they are challenging the constitutionality of state and municipal “may issue” regulations that restrict the right to carry weapons in public to persons who can show a compelling need to be armed. A few courts are starting to take these challenges seriously. But what the advocates do not acknowledge—and some courts seem not to understand—is that their arguments are grounded in precedent unique to the violent world of the slaveholding South.

Claims that “may issue” regulations are unconstitutional have been rejected by most federal appellate courts—that is, until last year, when a court in California broke ranks and struck down San Diego’s public-carry regulation. This year, a court did the samewith the District of Columbia’s rewritten handgun ordinance. Both decisions face further review from appellate courts, and perhaps also by the Supreme Court. If the justices buy this expansive view of the Second Amendment, laws in states such as New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Hawaii with the strictest public carry regulations—and some of the lowest rates of gun homicide—will be voided as unconstitutional.

Public-carry advocates like to cite historical court opinions to support their constitutional vision, but those opinions are, to put it mildly, highly problematic. The supportive precedent they rely on comes from the antebellum South and represented less a national consensus than a regional exception rooted in the unique culture of slavery and honor. By focusing only on sympathetic precedent, and ignoring the national picture, gun-rights advocates find themselves venerating a moment at which slavery, honor, violence, and the public carrying of weapons were intertwined.

The opinion most enthusiastically embraced by public-carry advocates is Nunn v. State, a state-court decision written by Georgia Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin in 1846. As a jurist, Lumpkin was a champion both of slavery and of the Southern code of honor. Perhaps, not by coincidence, Nunn was the first case in which a court struck down a gun law on the basis of the Second Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court cited Nunn in District of Columbia v. Heller, its landmark 2008 decision holding, for the first time in over 200 years, that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. Why courts or gun-rights advocates think Lumpkin’s view of the right to bear arms provides a solid foundation for modern firearms jurisprudence is puzzling. Slavery, “honor,” and their associated violence spawned a unique weapons culture. One of its defining features was a permissive view of white citizens’ right to carry weapons in public.

As early as 1840, antebellum historian Richard Hildreth observed that violence was frequently employed in the South both to subordinate slaves and to intimidate abolitionists. In the South, violence also was an approved way to avenge perceived insults to manhood and personal status. According to Hildreth, duels “appear but once an age” in the North, but “are of frequent and almost daily occurrence at the outh.” Southern men thus carried weapons both “as a protection against the slaves” and also to be prepared for “quarrels between freemen.” Two of the most feared public-carry weapons in pre-Civil War America, the “Arkansas toothpick” and “Bowie knife,” were forged from this Southern heritage.

The slave South’s enthusiasm for public carry influenced its legal culture. During the antebellum years, many viewed carrying a concealed weapon as dastardly and dishonorable—a striking contrast with the values of the modern gun-rights movement. In an 1850 opinion, the Louisiana Supreme Court explained that carrying a concealed weapon gave men “secret advantages” and led to “unmanly assassinations,” while open carry “place[d] men upon an equality” and “incite[d] men to a manly and noble defence of themselves.” Some Southern legislatures, accordingly, passed laws permitting open carry but punishing concealment. Southern courts followed their lead, proclaiming a robust right to open carry, but opposing concealed carry, which they deemed unmanly and not constitutionally protected. It is this family of Southern cases that gun-rights advocates would like modern courts to rely on to strike down popularly enacted gun regulations today.

But no similar record of court cases exists for the pre-Civil War North. New research produced in response to Heller has revealed a history of gun regulation outside the South that has gone largely unexplored by judges and legal scholars writing about the Second Amendment during the last 30 years. This history reveals strong support for strict regulation of carrying arms in public.

In the North, publicly carrying concealable weapons was much less popular than in the South. In 1845, New York jurist William Jay contrasted “those portions of our country where it is supposed essential to personal safety to go armed with pistols and bowie-knives” with the “north and east, where we are unprovided with such facilities for taking life.” Indeed, public-carry restrictions were embraced across the region. In 1836, the respected Massachusetts jurist Peter Oxenbridge Thacher instructed a jury that in Massachusetts “no person may go armed with a dirk, dagger, sword, pistol, or other offensive and dangerous weapon, without reasonable cause to apprehend an assault or violence to his person, family, or property.” Judge Thacher’s charge was celebrated in the contemporary press as “sensible,” “practical,” and “sage.” Massachusetts was not unusual in broadly restricting public carry. Wisconsin, Maine, Michigan, Virginia, Minnesota, Oregon, and Pennsylvania passed laws modeled on the public-carry restriction in Massachusetts.

This legal scheme of restricting public carry, it turns out, was not new. Rather, it was rooted in a longstanding tradition of regulating armed travel that dated back to 14th-century England. The English Statute of Northampton prohibited traveling armed “by night [or] by day, in [f]airs, [m]arkets, ... the presence of the [j]ustices or other [m]inisters” or any “part elsewhere.” Early legal commentators in America noted that this English restriction was incorporated into colonial law. As early as 1682, for example, New Jersey constables pledged to arrest any person who “shall ride or go arm’d offensively.” To be sure, there were circumstances where traveling armed was permitted, such as going to muster as part of one’s militia service or hunting in select areas, but the right of states and localities to regulate the public carrying of firearms, particularly in populated places, was undeniable.

Today, Americans disagree about the best way to enhance public safety and reduce crime, and that disagreement is voiced in legislatures across the nation. Throughout most of the country and over most of its history, the Second Amendment has not determined the outcome of this debate nor stood in the way of popular public-carry regulations. Then, as now, such regulations were evaluated based on the impact they would have on crime and public safety. At the end of this deadly summer, the debate rages on over how best to balance public safety against the interests of people who wish to “pack heat.” If elected officials decide to restrict the right to carry to those persons who can demonstrate a clear need for a gun, present-day judges should not intervene on the basis of opinions about the right to bear arms from the slave South and its unique culture of violence.

[MIKA27]

PROSPECTOR BOOMCASE

BoomCase have been building custom boomboxes since 2009, the company specialises in taking old suitcases and converting them into portable stereos with their own lithium ion battery systems, bluetooth and headphone jack connectivity, and a built-in amplifier.

The Prospector BoomCase you see here has been built using a former carpenter’s box, it has 2 full range point source drivers, 2 dome tweeters, 18 hours of battery life and it measures it at 10″ x 8″ x 5″ with a weight of 9 lbs. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

Putin’s Jets in Syria Are a Threat to the U.S.

Putin just deployed an array of jets and missiles to the Middle East. But they’re not the kind of weapons he’d need to fight ISIS. They’re built for countering another major power.

On September 30, Russian lawmakers unanimously approved President Vladimir Putin's plan to begin combat operations in Syria—and hours later Moscow's warplanes in the region began attacking what the Russians said were ISIS militants.

Right before the bombs rained down, a Russian general arrived in Baghdad warned the U.S. military planners to keep America's own warplanes out of the way. U.S. officials said they would not alter their flight plans.

This is the beginning of a dangerous new phase of the international intervention in the Syrian civil war. Not only has Russia tried to order U.S. forces to step aside, it actually has the firepower to back up its demands. Some of the 35 warplanes Russia has deployed to Syria are specifically designed for fighting foes like the United States, not ISIS.

Seemingly out of nowhere on September 21, they appeared at an air base in Latakia, a regime stronghold in western Syria—28 of the Russian air force’s best warplanes, including four Su-30 fighters and a number of Su-25 attack planes and Su-24 bombers.

Soon six more Su-34 bombers and at least one Il-20 spy plane followed, part of a contingent of Russia forces reportedly including some 500 troops plus armored vehicles and SA-15 and SA-22 surface-to-air missiles.

For U.S. and allied officials observing the deployment, there has been plenty of cause for confusion…and alarm. It’s not just that, more than four years into Syria’s bloody civil war, Russia has decided to jump in and make things more complicated.

No, it’s what kinds of weapons—planes and missiles, especially—Moscow decided to send, and what those weapons say about the Kremlin’s ultimate plan in Syria. Many of them don’t seem to be well-suited to fighting ISIS. They’re built to battle adversaries like the United States.

To be clear, 35 warplanes and a few surface-to-air missiles aren’t a lot in the grand scheme of things. There’s no shortage of military aircraft flying over Syria five years into the country’s bloody civil war.

Every day some of Syria’s aging Soviet-made planes—from the 300 or so that have survived four years of combat—take off from regime airfields to bomb ISIS militants and secular rebels slowly advancing on Syria’s main population centers.

Meanwhile hundreds of jets from the American-led international coalition have been waging, since the fall of 2014, an intensive air campaign against ISIS and al Qaeda targeting just the militants.

What’s weird and alarming about the Russian contingent is that it’s not really optimal for attacking lightly armed insurgent fighters. Surface-to-air missiles are only good for destroying enemy aircraft, which Syrian rebels do not possess. And the Su-30s are best suited for tangling with other high-tech forces.

Who in region possesses these high-tech forces? The United States, for one. Israel, too. Why, the United States, of course. Russia’s warplanes and missiles in Syria could pose a threat to America’s own aircraft flying over the country—all in order to carve out and preserve a portion of Syria that the United States can’t touch.

Officially, Russia has deployed its forces to Syria to reinforce embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and help defeat the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

“There is no other way to settle the Syrian conflict other than by strengthening the existing legitimate government agencies, support them in their fight against terrorism,” President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with American news networks ahead of his September 28 meeting with President Obama at the United Nations in New York City.

“There are more than 2,000 militants in Syria from the former Soviet Union,” Putin said. “Instead of waiting for them to return home we should help President al-Assad fight them there, in Syria.”

Sure enough, Su-25s, Su-24s, and Su-34s are capable ground-attack planes, roughly equivalent to U.S. Air Force A-10 attack jets and F-15E fighter-bombers.

But that’s only a portion of the Russian air arsenal. The problem is, the Su-30s are next to useless for fighting ISIS. The Sukhoi fighters are primarily air-to-air fighters—and some of the best in the world. Besides Russia, China also flies versions of the twin-engine, supersonic Su-30 and has even begun outfitting them with new air-to-air missiles that U.S. Air Force Gen. Herbert Carlisle has repeatedly described as one of his biggest worries.

In a series of aerial war games in the last decade, India’s own Su-30s have tangled with—and reportedly defeated—American and British fighters in mock combat, sparking minor controversies in both countries as their respective air forcesscrambled to explain why the Russian-made planes weren’t necessarily superior to U.S. F-15s and British Typhoon jets.

It’s obvious why Russia, China, and India, among other countries, would deploy Su-30s to counter heavily armed enemies possessing high-tech fighters of their own. But that doesn’t explain the Russian Su-30s in Syria. “I have not seen [iSIS] flying any airplanes that require sophisticated air-to-air capabilities,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, the military head of NATO, told an audience in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 28.

Moreover, Breedlove said Russia didn’t need to deploy the SA-15 and SA-22 surface-to-air missiles to Syria if its mission is to help Assad beat ISIS. “I have not seen ISIL flying any airplanes that require SA-15s or SA-22s,” he said, using one of several acronyms for the militant group.

Breedlove said he suspects Russia is trying to set up what the military calls a “anti-access, area-denial,” or A2AD, zone in western Syria. Moscow has recently established these zones in the Baltic region and in the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014. “We are a little worried about another A2AD bubble being created in the eastern Mediterranean,” Breedlove said.

The point of these zones is to give Russia exclusive access to strategic regions, Breedlove claimed. In the case of western Syria, an A2AD zone helps to ensure that Moscow can send forces into the eastern Mediterranean, which NATO has dominated since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.

Russian access to the Mediterranean via Syria requires that Assad’s regime survives, however. In that sense, Moscow’s strategic aims dovetail with the Syrian regime’s goals. Thus the Su-25s, Su-24s, and Su-34s very well could end up joining Damascus’s air war on the rebels and militants. The Su-30s, however, will probably be guarding against a very different enemy.

Of course, high-end warplanes can be repurposed to fight lower-tech foes—the U.S. has done just that, in its decade and a half bombing Afghanistan and Iraq. And many militaries deploy air-to-air fighters merely as precautions. A small contingent of U.S. Air Force F-22 stealth fighters, which can carry bombs but are best at aerial fights, plays a leading role in the coalition air campaign targeting ISIS.

The F-22s act as “quarterbacks,” according to Carlisle, using their sophisticated sensors to spot targets for other planes and also protecting those planes against Syrian fighters and missiles. To date, the Syrian regime has not attempted to interfere with the U.S.-led bombing runs, but the F-22s keep flying.

But neither has the coalition tried to interfere with the Syrian air force’s attacks on opposition fighters—yet. U.S. Army Special Forces have been training, at great expense, a small number of Syria rebels the Pentagon had hoped could form the core of a reinvigorated, secular rebel force that can knock back ISIS.

The problem is, many rebel trainees in the American program have made it clear they prefer to fight the regime first. Many have dropped out of the program in the face of Washington’s demands, compelling the Pentagon to remove them from the training effort. U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told Congress, using the administration’s preferred acronym for ISIS, that he wants recruits “to have the right mindset and ideology, not be aligned with groups like ISIL...[and] to fight ISIL.”

“It turns out to be very hard to identify people who meet both of those criteria,” Carter added.

Worse, once the recruits complete their training and go to fight ISIS, the U.S. military will have “some obligations” to protect them, Carter said. If U.S.-trained rebels turn their weapons against the Syrian regime and Russian warplanes bomb them, would that compel American F-22s to attack the Russians—and then force the Russian Su-30s to intervene?

It’s not hard to see how Russia’s support of Assad could run afoul of America’s support for secular Syrian rebels—and how Moscow’s effort to establish an aerial foothold in Syria could draw U.S. and Russian jet fighters into battle with each other.

Don’t pretend for a moment that that terrifying notion hasn’t crossed the minds of generals and politicians in both Moscow and Washington.

[MIKA27]

Timex Weekender Oversized Chrono

An iconic watch possess timeless style. No matter the decade, you can strap it to your wrist and look sharp. This blue-faced Timex Weekender Oversized Chrono fits the mold at a fraction of the price of other iconic watches. Complete with an interchangeable leather NATO strap, the stylish timepiece is outfitted with a chronograph, date window, and an Indiglo night-light. And with the ability to swap straps, the Timex Weekender Oversized Chrono can move effortlessly from poolside to office to date night and back.

[MIKA27]

The Sonos Play:5 Speaker Adjusts to the Room You Place It In

The acoustics in every room of your house are different. If you take a Bluetooth speaker into the kitchen for tunes while you cook, it will sound different than when you take it into your study to bang out some work. That is, of course, unless you use the newly redesigned Sonos Play:5 with Trueplay.

Trueplay is a forthcoming app that will work with the redone Sonos speaker to calibrate it for the room it’s in. Perfect sound every time. And while the app is exciting, the speaker also got some nice improvements—touch sensors that can move with the speaker’s orientation, six drivers, and a redesigned grill. Sound, as you would expect from Sonos, is impressive, and the large size and impressive components allow it to fill any space with your music. The new Play:5 ships later this year.

[MIKA27]

CHROMECAST & CHROMECAST AUDIO

Google have updated their popular Chromecast Streaming Media Player, just like the previous version, you can stream online video, music, photos and more to your TV using your smartphone, tablet, or laptop. Google have also introduced the Chromecast Audio, letting you stream your from your favorite devices to any speaker (with any RCA, 3.5mm jack, or optical input) wirelessly. watch the video after the jump.

[MIKA27]

OVERFINCH DEFENDER SVX

Building off of a base like the iconic Land Rover Defender is a nice head start, but the upgrades and attention to detail added to this Overfinch Defender SVX make it even more desirable. The SVX is one of the latest from the Overfinch crew, known for their eye popping upgrades, and adds bells and whistles to make it another standout. Included are LED daytime running lights, grille and lamp pod detailing, Weir Cherry leather interior, and Overfinch accessories, pedal set and control pack to help let it blaze any trail. And the specially commissioned teak wood storage box with white chalk decking is the icing on this already enticing cake.

[Habana Mike]

Only 552 posts away from the lead Mika. My over/under is 10/24!

[MIKA27]

Only 552 posts away from the lead Mika. My over/under is 10/24!

HAHA!! 551

[polarbear]

Everyone Thinks Sam Smith's New Bond Tune Is Rubbish

We’re just weeks away from the release of the latest James Bond epic Spectre, and now we know what the theme music will be. This time around the film-makers have opted to commission Sam Smith (the singer, not the beer as everyone knows that Bond drinks Martinis), and he’s come up with a track titled “Writing’s On The Wall”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjuuXgWhD3E

The song premiered on the radio this morning and is currently available for listening on Spotify. There’s just one problem though: it is slightly more than a Quantum of Rubbish. Sam Smith admitted that the track only took 20 minutes to pen — maybe a little more time spent on the drawing board would have been welcome?

Imagine the world’s most generic man writing a slightly off-key song that is supposed to sound like a Bond theme tune while not breaking any copyright rules, and you’ll end up with what we are presented with today.

The writing IS on the wall

MIKA: Pretty lame compared to previous movies which are always epic IMHO

They just should've gotten Adele back to sing Skyfall but change that one word to Spectre

No one would have minded

[MIKA27]

Into The Sun

This amazing shot may look like a perfectly-photographed and staged action movie — but it was actually taken this morning as pilots prepare for the largest NATO exercise in 13 years.

These two Royal Air Force Chinook helicopters are taking off from the Royal Navy’s amphibious helicopter carrier, HMS Ocean, to take part in Exercise Trident Juncture 2015 — which will be held through October and November, in, over and on the seas around Portugal, Spain and Italy, drilling over 36,000 personnel from 30 nations.

[MIKA27]

The Future Will Be Full Of Mushroom Batteries

The portabello mushroom: Great with grilled onions and ketchup, sure, but this fungus can do a lot more than console vegetarians at barbecues. In the future, the humble portabello mushroom might power everything from our smartphones to our cars.

The anodes in the lithium ion batteries that charge our devices are made of graphite, a material that’s expensive to produce and leaves a trail of toxic waste along the way. But as researchers are now discovering, portabello mushrooms — biodegradable by nature — might do the job even better. Their molecular structure is sturdy enough to store energy while porous enough to enable efficient energy transfer.

And while graphite slowly decays due to electrical damage, the high potassium salt concentration in mushroom skin actually improves its capacity over time.

“With battery materials like this, future cell phones may see an increase in run time after many uses, rather than a decrease,” Brennan Campbell, a materials science graduate student at UC Riverside said in a statement.

Diagram showing how mushrooms are turned into a material for battery anodes.

Campbell is part a team of engineers that’s just developed the world’s first fungal battery anode, built of the heat-treated skin of portabello mushrooms. The concept, detailed today in Nature Scientific Reports,probably sounds a bit funky, but we ought to get used to the idea: This is but one of many ways that fungi can help build our future. Whether it’s feeding the planet during a global food shortage, cleaning up our environment, or reinforcing our infrastructure, nature’s decomposers are full of untapped potential.

And when it comes to batteries, we’re unlocking that potential just in time. Analysts predict that by 2020, we’ll need to fabricate nearly 816,466,266kg of raw graphite for EV anodes alone. If mushroom farms can help reduce that demand, well, sign me up for the leftovers.

[MIKA27]

Japanese Six-Year-Olds Can Ride Trains Alone Thanks To The Country's Amazing Infrastructure

Over at The Atlantic‘s CityLab, there’s a great post about how Japanese kids can run errands around town and take public transportation free of worry or supervision. It’s thanks to the country’s incredible infrastructure and culture of safety.

Broadly speaking, in Japan, folks generally assume they can depend on others. (Japan’s rock bottom crime rates back this up.) This mindset infiltrates so many aspects of Japanese life, with its infrastructure as one of the best examples. It’s one of the reasons kids as young as six navigate the human-filled labyrinth of Tokyo solo.

The trains are spotless, on time, and safe. A respect for others and an attention to detail give Japan’s public transportation the best customer service on Earth. Engineering is concerned with the greater good: Japan’s world-famous bullet train, for example, sees an average delay of 36 seconds. Plus, it’s so safe that zero people were killed or injured while 27 trains were in operation during the 2011 earthquake. Part of why Japanese parents let their kids go it alone is a desire to instill independence, but it’s also because the country is run in such a way that it makes parents feel comfortable enough to do so.

Of course, the full reason why little kids can bop around alone in Japan is incredibly complex, with tons of cultural forces that can be explained and examined. But Japan’s remarkably maintained infrastructure is a big part of it. Public transportation has been made a top priority in the densely packed archipelago — something many other countries could learn from.

[MIKA27]

The Fascinating People And Stories Behind Making Scotch Whisky

We love whiskey, we drink whiskey, we’ve seen whiskey get made. But what’s cool about this latest episode of Raw Craft with Anthony Bourdain is how we meet the people behind the alcohol we all love. It’s combining generations of knowledge with unique skills and a real passion to just make good things. Thankfully, these guys make whiskey.

It is the only distillery that still grows its own barley, malts in its own traditional malting floor, employs coopers to tend every cask, a coppersmith to maintain the stills and a malt master to ensure the resulting spirit is consistently excellent.

[MIKA27]

TAG Heuer's Luxury Android Smartwatch Will Be Even Pricier Than We Expected

Crazy expensive watches usually do well — we have the back links to prove it. But would you really fork over $2,550 for some ritzy wrist candy? TAG Heuer’s CEO, Jean-Claude Biver seems to think so.

But the price of the Swiss company’s Android watch wasn’t always that steep. Earlier in the year, TAG Heuer stated that it was planning to release the Android smartwatch this fall with a price sitting roughly around $1,990 — but it seems the price has gone up. Until now, even the most expensive Google wearables cost no more than around $700. So we’ll only have to wait about another month before we can weigh in on its worth.

The Android software smartwatch is expected to launch at TAG Heuer’s event at their LVMH building in New York on November 9th.

[LLC]

TAG Heuer's Luxury Android Smartwatch Will Be Even Pricier Than We Expected

Crazy expensive watches usually do well — we have the back links to prove it. But would you really fork over $2,550 for some ritzy wrist candy? TAG Heuer’s CEO, Jean-Claude Biver seems to think so.

But the price of the Swiss company’s Android watch wasn’t always that steep. Earlier in the year, TAG Heuer stated that it was planning to release the Android smartwatch this fall with a price sitting roughly around $1,990 — but it seems the price has gone up. Until now, even the most expensive Google wearables cost no more than around $700. So we’ll only have to wait about another month before we can weigh in on its worth.

The Android software smartwatch is expected to launch at TAG Heuer’s event at their LVMH building in New York on November 9th.

$2500 is inexpensive relative to most Tag prices but I haven't warmed up to the smart watch trend.

[MIKA27]

Previously Unreleased Footage Of 1955 Atomic Bomb Testing, In Glorious HD

Atom Central recently published these four unreleased videos of atomic bomb testing in 1955. The footage, taken from Operation Teapot at the test site in Nevada, is in glorious HD so it’s pretty incredible but watch out for the blinding light. Even in a small little YouTube window, it hurts.

[MIKA27]

An Ancient Volcanic Collapse Triggered An 240 Metre Tsunami Wave

Scientists have just uncovered one of the largest tsunami events in the geologic record, and naturally, it started with an epic splash. 73,000 years ago, the eastern flank of Cape Verde’s Fogo volcano collapsed into the sea, kicking up an 240m wave.

Think about that for a sec. That’s three-quarters the height of Sydney Tower. If a mega-tsunami of that size struck a coastal city today, the consequences would be pretty apocalyptic. And such events aren’t outside the realm of possibility.

“Most of these fairly young oceanic volcanoes — such as in the Azores and the Canary Islands and Hawaii — are incredibly high and steep, so the potential energy for a collapse to happen again is there,”saidRicardo Ramalho, a co-author on a study describing the mega-tsunami that was published this week inScience Advances.

A researcher chiselling a sample of one of the massive boulders found in Santiago Island’s highlands.

Evidence for the big splash came from Santiago Island in Cape Verde, where massive boulders and a trail of marine fossils lie strewn across a plateau as far as 610m inland and nearly 200m above sea level. The boulders are composed of marine rock types that typically ring the island’s shoreline, and the only reasonable explanation for their inland location is that a giant wave lofted them up. According to the team’s calculations, a wave powerful enough to carry the largest boulders would have had to have been at least 240m high as it approached the coastline.

Using the concentration of helium-3 isotopes on the outside of the boulder, the researchers pinpointed the disaster to 73,000 years ago.

Fogo remains one of the world’s largest and most active island volcanoes. We can only hope its days of shedding large chunks into the ocean are long over.

[MIKA27]

Guy Builds Amazing Steampunk Amplifier And Matching Speakers

If you’re going to go to the trouble of building your own amplifier, you might as well dress it up, right? Rather than just throw on a wig and some lipstick, creative tinkerer Mark William Chase decided to give his amp a steampunk theme and the results… the results are glorious.

Chase describes the build process over on Instructables, but it’s sufficient to say he put a lot of effort into not only selecting and collecting all the necessary pieces, but sticking them together in a fancy way.

At first glance it looks like an organ (well, a steampunk organ), but once you peer inside, its true purpose is more obvious.

OK, you might need to know a bit about electronics to decipher the above image. He also built a matching pair of speakers, which look equally amazing:

[MIKA27]

10 GALLON WHISKEY STILL

Even when you’re just looking at The Whiskey Still Company’s 10 Gallon Still, you’re somehow overcome with the urge to find a bottle of whiskey immediately. Is it the shiny copper calling your name? Possibly.

The pot is handcrafted from copper, and provides huge distillation versatility, allowing users to craft whiskey, scotch, rum, bourbon, cognac, schnapps, tequila, vodka and moonshine. Whatever you choose to make, you’ll have room for 10 gallons of it. The still uses gauge 20 copper, which is about .80mm thick, creating the perfect environment for distilling. It comes with a two year warranty from the company, covering manufacturing defects, but the makers claim that their stills can last an entire lifetime if treated properly. Don’t worry, we won’t abuse you, you gorgeous pot of wonderful. It’s available now for $670. [Purchase]