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

[MIKA27]

A Common Liver Drug Could Be Key To Curing Parkinson's

The tragedy of Parkinson’s, which progressively robs patients of their physical abilities, is that while certain drugs, therapies and devices can restore some quality of life, so far we haven’t found a way to stop brain cells from dying. Now, researchers in the UK and Norway have found a drug that could keep brain cells functioning normally — and it’s been used to treat liver disease for years.

The research team, led by Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience’s Dr Oliver Bandmann, discovered that the drug ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) helps heal faulty mitochondria, the energy-providing cellular organ whose malfunction causes brain cell death. The drug, used to treat gallstones and some forms of cirrhosis, was found to be the most effective among 2000 compounds tested on the mitochondria of skin cells from Parkinson’s patients over five years. Since mitochondria function the same way in every type of cell, the finding holds big promise for preserving brain cell function.

Since UDCA has been in use for many years, researchers can move directly to clinical trials to determine the drug’s safety and optimum dosage in Parkinson’s patients. And for the first time, researchers can point to compounds that tackle the cellular cause of the disease, rather than simply treating the symptoms as they appear.

[MIKA27]

John McCain Caught Playing Poker During Syria Hearing

John McCain. United States Senator. 2008 Republican Presidential Nominee. American Hero. iPhone Poker Player during a fairly important Senate hearing about the use of force in Syria. Yep, The Washington Post captured Senator John McCain fooling around on his iPhone during a three-hour hearing about Syria.

McCain caught word that he’d been, well, caught and tweeted:

Scandal! Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing – worst of all I lost!

– John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 3, 2013

You can see the original photo of John McCain playing poker taken by photographer Melina Mara over at The Washington Post.

John McCain, he’s just like us!

[MIKA27]

Chrome App Launcher Comes To The Mac, Runs Chrome Apps From Your Dock

Mac: Chrome’s new app launcher, which has been available on Windows since July, is now available on the Mac. With it, you can launch Chrome apps directly from your dock via a popup menu.

If you haven’t seen Chrome’s app launcher before, it’s very simple: it sits in your dock and when you click on it, you can launch any of your favourite webapps and Chrome apps. You can set each app to open as a regular tab, as a pinned tab, or as a maximised window. To enable the launcher, make sure you’re on the Dev or Beta channel and hit the link below to try it out.

The app launcher is available in the stable channel, too! Just head to chrome://flags and enable “App Launcher OSX App Bundle.

Chrome Launcher

[MIKA27]

The Mechanical Wizardry Behind the Teeny, Tiny New Jambox

Jawbone’s first wireless speaker was something of a rarity when it was released at the end of 2010. At a point when so many of our favorite gizmos were being subsumed by our smartphones, the Jambox was, quite simply, a standalone survivor. It did something novel–music! wirelessly!–it did it well, and it did it all in an attractive, I-wanna-play-with-one-of-those-things package, courtesy of designer Yves Behar.

And while some of its competitors have since bested its audio quality, it has always retained an undeniable cool factor, and thus a good deal of visibility in the increasingly crowded category. Last year, Jawbone expanded the line with the dance party-ready Big Jambox. Now comes the Mini Jambox, which takes advantage of an all-new manufacturing approach to retain some of the cool factor of the original, and then some.

The Mini Jambox, available for preorder today at $179, is a slimmer, sharper version of the original. Gone is the rubber that capped the top and bottom; the new device is cool metal all the way around. In terms of first impressions, it might seem slightly less friendly than the first Jambox, but it proves no less touchable. And, once you get your hands on it, it exudes superior quality–not unlike the difference between the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4 that followed it.

Of course, the Mini Jambox makes good on its name: It’s nearly half the size of the original Jambox by volume. And while it doesn’t necessarily look mini, it does feel mini, and when you’re talking about something that’s supposed to go in a pocket as much as a purse or a backpack, that’s important. Behar and Hosain Rahman, Jawbone’s CEO, were determined to bring it in at under an inch of thickness–it ended up a millimeter or two under–and while there may not be room for it in your skinny jeans, you could certainly slip one in a jacket, or a hoody’s pouch.

The biggest departure, though, is in the way the Mini Jambox is manufactured.

The original Jambox was basically built like any other speaker: The drivers, passive resistor, Bluetooth antenna, and all the other guts were housed in a sealed plastic enclosure, a package that was then in a thin piece of metal, stamped with industrial-grade presses to lend the speaker its beloved texture. Creating that internal seal is essential for good sound, but in the case of the first Jambox, that outer, stamped piece was largely cosmetic–the Jambox Remix, introduced last year, gave users the chance to swap in differently colored grills and end caps as they desired. In other words, the stuff going on inside the speaker was altogether separate from the stuff going on outside.

With the Mini Jambox, the outside is integral to the functioning of the inside. For the new version, Jawbone moved from stamping to CNC milling, allowing them to streamline the internal design of the speaker to a remarkable degree. The Mini’s body is a single piece of extruded, anodized aluminum which serves not only as the device’s outer shell, but as the sealed box for the sound cavity inside, too. With the original Jambox, all the actual speaker business was held in place by a skeleton, with a skin wrapped around it. With the Mini Jambox, the skeleton and the skin are one in the same.

Opting for CNC instead of stamped metal might not seem like a big deal, but it informs the Mini’s design through and through. As Behar explains it, “This is a complete reinvention of everything we’ve done in the past, for the purpose of sound and size.” In terms of size, the unibody design allowed Jambox to eliminate several layers of stuff inside the speaker, making for greater internal volume–and thus better and louder sound–in a package that’s half the overall size. It’s the same idea behind the celebrated unibody design of the Macbook Air. Where the design for the original Jambox demanded several layers–maybe 3 millimeters for the plastic box, one millimeter for space around that, another millimeter for the metal skin–with the Mini, Behar says, “that 1.1 or 1.2 millimeter wall thickness is all you’ve got.”

The approach came with its challenges. “There’s a lot of innovation around how you essentially put this not in a sealed box, but rather have all of this seal itself,” Behar says. For one, it necessitated a switch to the aluminum body–a material whose rigidity made that tight seal possible (and ultimately allowed the engineers to better fine-tune the sound the Mini was producing.)

But the milling also presented a challenge in terms of the patterns that decorate the front and back of the speaker. Compared to stamping, CNC work is pricey, so Jawbone and Behar had the unique challenge of figuring out what sort of patterns they could make using as little machine time as possible. Some early ones took upwards of a hundred minutes under the drill. But by working out the unique geometries possible with a gigantic, robot-controlled drill bit–how intersecting imprints and fast sweeps of large, circular bit, for example, could result in diamonds or other angular patterns–Jawbone got the high-tech choreography down pat, with the final textures taking just about two minutes of machine time on average. “These are actually made with single bits, extremely fast,” Behar says, examining one variety of the Mini’s fine metal grills. “But you’d never be able to tell.”

After all the experimenting, Jawbone settled on five different patterns (and nine colors) for the final product. Getting those right was key. “Color and textures have always been a way that we take these technological products and make them human and personal–to allow people to have opinions, to like something or not like something,” Behar says. “A very different philosophy from other design-leading companies out there.”

Arriving at that final product involved some dead ends along the way. For every texture the designers were able to execute in a cost-efficient way with CNC, there was another that was left in the sketchbook. More unusual form factors were ultimately dropped in favor of the simple box, and other features were phased out as the design took shape. At one point, a skinnier prototype sported a rubber foot that pinched open, offering some support for the tottering unit. The final design was thick enough to stand on its own, but the aluminum bottom introduced another problem: when the bass got pumping, the lightweight speaker would start to walk across the table, even with sizable rubber feet. The solution, interestingly, was to make the feet smaller. The less rubber they used, the designers found, the better the speaker clung in place; in the end, the Mini has just two small strips on either side of its bottom face.

The Mini, like its forebear, is still a speakerphone, though the omnidirectional mic has been moved to the side of the speaker for better coverage. It still includes Jawbone’s LiveAudio DSP tech. But there are a few new updates to the package. To keep bass in the mix, the Mini borrows a clever trick from the Big Jambox; as you turn the volume down, the bass isn’t lowered as much as the rest of the track, so you can still hear bass lines and kick drums even at lower decibel levels. Another new bit is the Jambox app–a smartphone application that slurps down playlists from disparate music services–iTunes, Spotify, Rdio, etc–and gives you access to all of them in one bubbly interface. The app lets you control the Jambox, too, reassigning its hardware buttons and changing the device’s computerized voice.

As Behar explains it, the design of the Jambox Mini was one driven by process. “Part of designing this,” he says, “was asking ourselves, ‘What’s the next method that we can develop that’s going to give us as much volume as possible.’” Of course, when he says this, he’s talking about the space inside the unit–not the decibels you’ll be able to crank out of it. Which gets at the heart of what’s really interesting about the new Jambox, from a design perspective. While the Mini may indeed jack up the outward cool-factor of the original, the coolest stuff is all happening out of sight–underneath the swooping arm of a gigantic drill bit somewhere in China and packed tightly inside that cool unibody shell.

[MIKA27]

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear Is a Very Samsung Smartwatch

In which Samsung's "spare nothing" approach becomes a burden.

It’s big. It’s gaudy. It’s packed with fancy hardware and comes loaded with software features–some of which you’d probably never use.

No, I’m not talking about Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3. The device I refer to is the Samsung Galaxy Gear, the company’s first attempt at a modern smartwatch. In typical Samsung fashion, it’s a smartwatch, with everything on it.

For specs, the Galaxy Gear has a 1.63-inch AMOLED display (320-by-320) resolution, an 800 MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage. It has a 1.9-megapixel camera and speaker built into the wrist strap, and there’s a microphone on board for making calls over a Bluetooth smartphone connection.

As with earlier smartwatches like Pebble, the Galaxy Gear aims to be a glanceable notification machine, informing you of incoming calls, texts, messages and alerts. But the Gear also has some clever integration with Samsung’s smartphones, so when you take the phone out of your pocket, those messages instantly appear on the big screen.

Samsung is cramming more than just notifications into the Galaxy Gear. With the built-in microphone and Samsung’s S Voice virtual assistant, users can dictate text messages, set alarms and create calendar entries. The watch can also serve as a hands-free speakerphone, relying on the user’s smartphone for the voice connection. A “safety assistance” feature sends the user’s location to a trusted contact, and when the watch is within 1.5 meters of a paired smartphone, it allows the user to bypass the phone’s lock screen.

Additional apps and watch faces round out the feature list. There’s a remote music playback app, a stopwatch, a bundled pedometer and support for RunKeeper and MyFitnessPal. Other third-party app partners include Path, Pocket, Vivino Wine Scanner and TripIt. It’s safe to assume Samsung will see more app support during its developer conference next month.

Now for the bad news, of which there is lots:

At launch, the Galaxy Gear will only work with Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 and upcoming Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition. Future software updates will allow the Gear to pair with the Galaxy S4, Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, but it doesn’t look like Samsung’s going to support other phones, even those that run Android.

The price is a doozy as well. At $300 (according to Bloomberg and The Verge), it costs twice as much as a Pebble, and in the United States it’ll be more expensive than most on-contract phones.

Then, there’s the battery life. Samsung says the Galaxy Gear will last for about a day’s worth of use. Again, compare that to the Pebble or Sony’s upcoming SmartWatch 2, both of which get at least a few days on a charge, and the Gear’s AMOLED display seems like a major liability. To make things worse, you don’t just plug the watch directly into a charger. CNET reports that you must clip the Gear into a dock, which then charges the watch via Micro-USB. If you don’t take the dock with you, you won’t be charging your smartwatch.

Finally, according to Engadget, the Galaxy Gear “feels awfully sluggish, whether you’re launching an app such as Evernote or Path, or swiping down from the home screen to activate the camera.”

I usually avoid condemning products before spending time with them, but this looks like a case where Samsung’s condiment-laden approach to mobile computing has become a burden. The technology doesn’t yet seem powerful enough, miniature enough or inexpensive enough for everything Samsung wants to accomplish. Advancements in watch tech are on the horizon, but until we get there, you might be better off with a smartwatch that shows some self-restraint.

[MIKA27]

REMORA WALLET CASE

This has to be the simplest iPhone card case available. The minimalist Remora is a razor slim, simple, and secure card case. The minimalist case lets you securely store up to two cards and also squeeze in some cash, with an unique snap feature it locks your cards into place with a "click" sound letting you know they are secure. watch the video and check out how it works. Available now at amazon

[MIKA27]

BEAR GRYLLS SURVIVAL ACADEMY

Bear Grylls has survived places few would dare to go, now he is giving us a chance to learn some of the best techniques for surviving in the outdoors. The "Bear Grylls Survival Academy" offers several courses including the grueling 24 hour course and the intensive 5 day wildness survival course, Bear wanted this to be the most challenging but empowering survival course on the planet. Participants have to survive in demanding and challenging environments, learn to forage, identify animal runs and lay traps, skin and gut, navigate by day and night, build emergency shelters, rappel, climbing, knife skills…From hour one you will be lead into the wilderness with no tent, water or food!

[Fuzz]

REMORA WALLET CASE

Hey Rob! Now you can lose your mobile and credit card in one go instead of one at a time!!

[MIKA27]

Hey Rob! Now you can lose your mobile and credit card in one go instead of one at a time!!

Nice! Don't know about Rob reading this thread mate? Does he?

I always figured the 12K+ reads/posts were an accumulation of yours and my posting!!

[MIKA27]

The Newest Gravity Trailer Makes Space Look Like A Scary Roller Coaster

Are you ready for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity? Alternatively, are you ready for a panic attack to melt your brain into grey ooze? This latest trailer basically takes you on a roller coaster of fear through the gigantic emptiness of space.

You’ll see Sandra Bullock twist and turn and spin and basically lose all control and kill any dream to become an astronaut. Nuts.

The movie comes out on October 3.

[MIKA27]

Nobody Knows What Built These Weird Little Web Structures

For some baffling reason, a bunch of tiny, fence-like web structures keep showing up in the Peruvian jungle. Measuring about two centimetres across and delicately constructed, they’re beautiful in a way. And since scientists have no idea how they got there, they’re also totally mysterious.

Georgia Tech grad student Troy Alexander first spotted the strangle little structures on the underside of a blue tarp three months ago. Three more later showed up on tree trunks but offered no clues about what built them. They were all found on the same small island off Peru’s coast, making it entirely possible that an isolated, never-before-seen species of spider or insect was the architect. But frankly, scientists just don’t know what made it or what it’s for.

Wired talked to entomologists and arachnologists alike, all of whom were stumped by the picket fence structure. One insect expert summed up the sentiment well. “We are all guessing,” Gwen Pearson told Wired.“We have no freakin’ clue. And that’s my expert opinion.”

Comforting, right? Truth be told, a few different kinds of spiders and insects make weird structures, so we can probably rule out aliens. Pearson says that the consensus among scientists right now is that whatever built the structure comes from the Bucculatricidea moth family, which is known to build similar structures to protect their cocoons. Pearseon personally believes it was actually built by a member of the Urodidae family, another moth family that builds baskets for their cocoons. Like Pearson said, though, nobody has a clue.

[MIKA27]

You Can Own This Adorable 2-Inch Cube PC For $45

This super-cute little PC measures just two inches along each edge, runs Linux and Android Jelly Bean — and only costs $US45.

Yes, you did just read that right.

Developed by SolidRun, the CuBox-i comes in a variety of specifications, but the base model — which costs $US45 — packs a single-core 1GHz processor, ethernet and 512MB of RAM. You can, of course, opt for something more meaty: for $US120, you get a quad-core 1GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and more, all in that same wee package.

Price aside, they all spit out 1080p video via HDMI, feature SATA support and boast optical audio ports, which means that an XBMC install could make this a great addition to your living room. Especially at $US45.

CuBox-i

[MIKA27]

Sony MDR-10 Headphones: Legendary Audio Brand Gets Back To Basics

Sony has been a leader in personal audio since the very beginning. They basically invented it. Remember the Walkman? The new MDR-10-line headphones are a new mainstream offering that might reclaim your heart by focusing on the basics — no matter what kind of headphones you’re looking for.

The MDR-10 closed-back headphones come in standard (MDR-10R), Bluetooth (MDR-10BT) and noise-cancelling (MDR-10NC) varieties, covering most of the major categories people are looking for. All of the headphones have 40mm drivers, and cost $US200, $US250 and $US270, respectively.

The BTs have an NFC chip inside for easy pairing with compatible devices. They support both AAC and aptX wireless streaming codecs.

The NCs have three active noise-cancelling modes, which the headphones select depending on the noise environment around you.

Both the BTs and NCs have about 20 hours of battery life, and the NCs will continue to play passively even after they’re out of juice.

On paper, the whole line of MDR-10 headphones have top specs, and they’re priced competitively with other gear out there. We haven’t heard them yet, but the function-oriented designs suggest a return to what the company does best.

Sony has always been good at no-frills headphones that sound great even if they’re not as flashy as others. Even today, some Sony cans are great. The MDR-7506 are the industry standard for affordable production-quality headphones, and the MDR-NC500s are amongst the best noise-cancelling headphones I’ve ever used.

[MIKA27]

HDMI 2.0 Is Here: 60fps 4K, 18Gbps, 32-Channel Audio

HDMI 2.0 has just been officially announced, just in time for the world to adopt Ultra HD TVs. And it looks set to provide your AV set-up with some kick arse capabilities.

Announced by HDMI Licensing, the new connection standard boasts a bandwidth capacity of up to 18Gbps, which means it can carry 3840×2160 resolution video at up to 60fps. That’s pretty impressive. It also supports up to 32 audio channels.

Fortunately, the physical connector itself is unchanged — which is relief for anyone concerned about backwards compatibility. Expect to see devices using the new standard late this year.

[Fuzz]

I always figured the 12K+ reads/posts were an accumulation of yours and my posting!!

I'd buy that for a dollar!

[MIKA27]

iPhone 5C Already Involved In Labour Violations Scandal

A little less than a week before it’s supposed to be unveiled to the public, the iPhone 5C is attracting attention from human rights groups for possible labour violations. While it feels like deja vu after the many Foxconn scandals, there’s an important difference this time. The factory is American-owned.

On Thursday, China Labour Watch spoke up about a number of ethical and labour violations by US electronics manufacturer Jabil Circuit who is reportedly building the iPhone 5C. Among other things, the human rights group accused the company of owing workers millions in unpaid overtime wages, forcing workers to stand for 11 hours a day with only a 30-minute lunch break and failing to provide adequate training.

The list goes on: discriminating against applicants for being too old or having tattoos, forcing up eight workers to live together in a cramped dorm room and making overtime mandatory. The situation at Jabil Circuit’s factories hasn’t quite escalated to the level of Foxconn and its suicide pact scandal, but it’s certainly not a good way to kick off a new Apple product.

It’s also pretty sad that we’ve come to expect labour violations from the manufacturing partners that supply Apple as well as its competitors with cheap labour. You would think that the situation would improve after The New York Times summed up Apple’s labour woes in frightening detail with its Pulitzer Prize-winning “iEconomy” series, but building iPhones and iPads in China sounds as miserable as ever. Apple’s made an effort to address the problems through regular audits and the decision to move Mac manufacturing to the US. They even cut ties with a manufacturing partner after there were allegations about underage labour.

But the complaints keep rolling in. This is the second situation at factories producing goods for Apple and its competitors that’s been flagged in as many months.

Time will tell whether or not Apple will address this latest outrage. And if you think Apple moving iPhone manufacturing back to the US is the answer, don’t hold your breath. That’s just not going to happen. [China Labour Watch]

Update: Well, that was quick. Apple has already issued a lengthy statement saying that they’re investigating the allegations. Here’s a snippet, courtesy of AllThingsD:

As part of our extensive Supplier Responsibility program, Apple has conducted 14 comprehensive audits at Jabil facilities since 2008, including three audits of Jabil Wuxi in the past 36 months. We take any concerns about our suppliers very seriously, and our team of experts is on-site at Jabil Wuxi to look into the new claims about conditions there. Jabil has a proactive auditing program of their own and they have an excellent track record of meeting Apple’s high standards.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Find World's Largest Volcano On Ocean Floor Near Japan

The biggest volcano ever found on Earth — one of the biggest we know of in the solar system — has been hidden for ages. But now scientists have found it, just chillin’ beneath the sea. It’s a monster.

Tamu Massif sits on the floor of the Pacific off the east coast of Japan and occupies 308,000 square kilometres at its base. And even though it doesn’t come close to the breaching the ocean’s surface, its peak is 3.5km high. That’s roughly half the size of Mount Everest.

While Tamu Massif is a bit more squat than the the 19km high Martian mammoth Olympus Mons — the largest known volcano in our solar system — its overall volume is only 25 per cent less.

It’s hard for something that gargantuan to go unnoticed, and scientists had an idea that something was down there. But they assumed it was a giant system of multiple volcanoes until a research team at Texas A&M University discovered that it’s actually just one and had their findings published in Nature Geoscience. Oh and the name Tamu? That’s no mythic Kaiju; it’s just short for Texas A&M University.

Fortunately, Tamu Massif is probably long dead. The eruptions that helped it grow to its massive size happened 114 million years ago, and things have been quiet ever since. Hopefully things stay that way.

There could be other sleeping giants lurking out there too; the ocean is a big place. But until we find some other ancient colossus lurking in the depths, Tamu Massif is a pretty impressive reigning king.

[MIKA27]

Watch LG Use 4K TVs To Trick People Into Thinking A Meteor Hit Earth

LG, maker of fine displays and wonderful prankster of innocent people, has cooked up another beautiful visual trick: installing LG 4K TVs as fake window units and tricking people into believing a meteor has crashed onto Earth. Because the screen is so clear!

Supposedly, the people in the video are all innocent bystanders trying to apply for a job but hey, if the LG 4K TV is that clear (and it probably is), I’m pretty sure I’d fall for the same prank too. I’ve watched too many apocalyptic movies to not properly freak out.

[MIKA27]

The Race To Build The Biggest Ferris Wheel On Earth

For more than 100 years, every Ferris wheel on the planet was roughly the same size and height as the 1893 original. But in 2000, something changed: London debuted the London Eye, an enormous juggernaut of a tourist trap. Its success sparked a global race to build higher and faster wheels in the sky — and it’s only heating up. So who’s winning?

The original Ferris Wheel in Chicago.

For 100 years after it debuted at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, the Ferris wheel was nothing more than a folly on the urban landscape. This feat of engineering intended to “out-Eiffel Eiffel” but was still perceived as a carnival ride, relegated to amusement parks, shopping malls and smarmy boardwalks thick with taffy and funnel cake. In 1999, the world’s tallest Ferris wheel rotated a mere 377 feet above Tokyo, which was only a slight innovation: the original had reached 80m a century before.

The London Eye towers over the Thames.

Then the London Eye came along in 2000. At 135m, it rather triumphantly claimed the title of tallest in the world. It accommodated 800 passengers at a time, who rode in 32 cushy capsules high above the Thames, not at some theme park. The London Eye was a critical and cultural success. Suddenly, the now-named “observation wheel” had been transformed into a civic icon, a symbol of urban progress — that just happened to turn a hefty profit. And cities around the world wanted their own little wheels of fortune.

Six years later China’s Jiangxi province had surpassed it with the 160m tall Star of Nanchang, and only two short years later, the Singapore Flyer reigned supreme at 165m. From 2000 to 2008, the wheel had claimed another 30m in elevation.

And the race was on.

The High Roller in Vegas will be 167m when completed in 2014.

In 2011, Las Vegas, that bastion of understatement, announced The High Roller, eeking out the Singapore Flyer by centimetres. The wheel is currently a half-moon under construction as part of the massive Linq development on the Strip. But hold up there, Vegas! The New York Wheel, which received community approval earlier this year to rise on Staten Island, saw the High Roller’s bet and raised its height to a stunning 190m.

And since nothing is allowed to be built on the planet without a bigger one being planned in the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Eye (WAY TO BE ORIGINAL, GUYS) quickly staked its claim for somewhere between 210m and 210m, depending on reports. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s 1.5 times the size of theother Eye.

Totally realistic rendering of the Giant Observation Wheel proposed for Japan.

It seems that all this wheeling and dealing has given Japan the itch to reclaim its title with the Giant Observation Wheel (aka Nippon Moon), which was announced this week for a secret location. The height has also not yet been disclosed, but if the renderings are to be believed, it’s only slightly smaller than the actual moon. But for real, according to the Dutch firm UNStudio: “It’s almost twice the scale of the wheel in London.” Let’s say, conservatively, that would make it 244m tall. That’s good enough for us to declare a winner. JAPAN IS BACK ON TOP!!!

Why is everyone so excited about going in circles all of a sudden? And more importantly, have we reached Peak Wheel?

New York Wheel, proposed for a 2016 completion on Staten Island.

While we’ve always liked to stand on top of tall buildings and gaze out over the grid below, the observation wheel has seemingly supplanted the observation deck as the must-have for a big city. One major reason is likely a safety issue. While we’ll probably always be able to mount the Burj Khalifa for kicks, after 9/11 it’s tougher to rationalize shuttling millions of people through a busy office building just to look. Observation wheels still have massive security, of course, but they’re practically transparent and have slender footprints that don’t take up much space.

Remember observation towers? They used to be trendy in a ’70s kind of way: Toronto’s CN Tower, the Sydney Tower, Seattle’s Space Needle. But let’s face it, towers aren’t nearly as fun as spinning around in circles, seeing a city at all different angles and pressing your face against the curved glass of your own personal spacecraft hovering above the metropolis. (That’s next, by the way.)

The Dubai Eye was announced in February 2013.

And that’s the other thing: Wheels are good branding. They add a distinctive flair to the skyline that’s aesthetically much more interesting than the typical spire. And they’re playful in a nostalgic way that appeals to the masses. London: We’re Fun, We Swear!™ Observation wheels signify a blissful celebration of a city, a permanent World’s Fair, if you will. George Washington Gale Ferris Jr would be proud.

[MIKA27]

The Gear Crews Use To Snuff Out The Rim Fire

As of this morning, the Rim Fire burning through Yosemite National Park has scorched 237,341 acres since it caught on August 17, presumably from an illegal marijuana grow operation. Firefighters have been battling the blaze nonstop and currently have the fire 75 per cent contained. Crews credit better, wetter conditions for making the containment gains easier. But it’s their equipment that makes it even possible in the first place.

To date, no fewer than 16 helicopters, 49 bulldozers, 454 fire engines and 39 water tenders, and a small fleet of tanker planes have been pressed into service against the wildfire. Here are a few of the tools firefighters are using to extinguish the fifth-largest fire in California history.

Smokejumper Equipment

Smokejumpers are the first line of defence against forest fires, especially those burning in remote locations or in difficult terrain. Where sending a crew in by truck or on horseback may take a full day, smokejumpers can reach a fire in few hours via airdrop.

In addition to their basic protective clothing kit — fire-resistant shirts and pants, gloves and boots, eye and head protection, and a fire shelter — smokejumpers also carry a variety of hand and power tools. This can include conventional saws and shovels as well as specialised firefighting tools like the Pulaski above, a combination axe/hoe. The McLeod rake, a two-sided hard rake/cutting hoe developed at the turn of the 20th century, was built to rake the fire line with its teeth and effortlessly slice through branches and soil with the opposite end.

Interestingly, all of the firejumpers’ equipment is dropped out of the plane with them. “It’s delivered as paracargo,” Keith Windell, of the Forest Service’s Missoula Technology and Development Center, told National Geographic.

However, delivering crews and cargo can be dangerous for all involved as the planes have to fly extremely low (as low as 60m) in order to precisely deliver their loads. “So what we’re doing is looking at a couple of different ways to do precision drops from a higher altitude so the plane doesn’t have to drop down so low,”continued Windell. One solution the Forest Service is working on is a timing mechanism to delay the cargo ‘chutes from opening. This would allow planes to drop the equipment from roughly four times as high as current methods allow.

“The other option is to bundle the paracargo together so we can kick out more cargo in one pass,” Windell explained. “That way it reduces the number of cargo runs, so overall there’s less exposure.”

Air Tankers

If the smokejumpers on the scene cannot contain a blaze, they’ll call in air tankers: planes and helicopters designed to attack fire lines from above with fire-retardant gel and water. The largest of these are a pair of modified DC-10 jumbo jets capable of drowning the fire with 45,000kg of gel per pass — quadruple what the Evergreen 747 Super Tanker can accommodate.

“It’s kind of the difference between a Dixie cup and a Big Gulp,” US Forest Service spokesman Mike Martin told The California Report.

Owned by the 10 TANKER company of Southern California, these DC-10s utilises large, computer-controlled underbelly storage tanks that pour the gel out in a controlled flow. This provides a broader, more effective stream of gel while helping the pilots maintain control as the plane suddenly lightens.

Bulldozers

As planes and helicopters provide heavy equipment support from the air, a fleet of bulldozers are doing the same on the ground. Originally adapted from military bulldozers after World War II, these machines are invaluable in clearing fire lines, moving debris, and forging through thick brush ahead of plows and crews (who then further churn up and clear the line). Though they are hindered by dense tree stands and steep slopes, expensive to run, and difficult to deliver to remote fire sites, they are a vital tool for firefighters.

These dozers come in three class sizes. Type 3 dozers are the smallest class and best suited for light brush work on wet ground. They’re small, manoeuvrable, and do less collateral damage to the environment than their larger counterparts. Type 2 dozers are the most used class, capable of working on moderate slopes in heavy brush without being overly cumbersome. Type 1 dozers are the largest and most difficult to manoeuvre class but also the most powerful. Type 1′s are used primarily to clear heavy brush on level ground as they don’t handle slopes well at all.

Sprinklers

The Rim Fire is also burning within 16km of two of Yosemite’s most treasured Majestic Giant Sequoia groves, Tuolmne and Merced. While sequoias rely on naturally occurring wildfires to reproduce — the fires kill off competing plants, fertilize the soil, and trigger the tree’s seed release — the Rim Fire is burning far more intensely than natural ones. In fact, its the hottest-burning wildfire that the Forestry Service has measured.

To prevent these 1000-year-old trees from going up in flames as well, fire crews have surrounded them with sprinklers and cleared extra-wide boundaries around them. This provides a double layer of protection for the trees. The wide fire line starves the fire of fuel before it can reach the grove while the sprinklers generate humidity and cool the air, negating the flame’s damaging heat.

Predators

In addition to the air tankers, the skies above the Rim Fire also host an MQ-1 Predator drone, operated by the 163rd Wing of the California National Guard at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside. This Cessna-sized UAV is helping map the fire as it expands, providing Incident Cmdr. Mike Wilkins with real time information of the fire’s movements.

“The drone is providing data directly back to the incident commander, allowing him to make quick decisions about which resources to deploy and where,” California fire spokesman Daniel Berlant told the New York Daily News. The UAV first launched last Wednesday to providing a perpetual eye in the sky for up to 22 hours at a time.

With continued favourable conditions, crews should have the Rim Fire bottled up within the next few days. However, fire season is far from over and recent drying trends in the West is worrisome. Compared to 40 years ago, the fire season lasts two months longer and burns double the area, according to Thomas Tidwell, the head of the United States Forest Service. And as Matthew Hurteau, assistant professor of ecosystem science and management at Penn State University, told Mother Jones, there could be “as much as a fourfold increase in parts of the Sierra Nevada and California” in the coming years.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: This Failed Flying Bomb Could Have Been A WWI Cruise Missile

In 1915, nearly two decades after patenting the world’s first radio-controlled boat, famed Serbian-America inventor Nicola Tesla imagined fleets of unmanned aerial combat vehicles being sent to war instead of pilots. Little did he know, the US Navy was already hard at work on that very same vision.

Between 1898, when Tesla first demonstrated remote control via radio waves, and 1914, the start of World War I, inventors around the world tinkered with Tesla’s revolutionary idea. One such man was American inventor Elmer Sperry, a naval gyroscope maker in Lake Success, New York. See, hitting another ship with naval artillery in the open ocean is really tough on account of the rolling seas constantly throwing the gun barrels out of aim. Sperry’s gyroscopes auto-corrected and balanced the these naval guns, essentially cancelling out the rolling of the waves. And if the gyroscopes could do that for boats, Sperry realised in 1911, they could do the same for remotely operated aircraft.

He took his proposal to the Naval Consulting Board, who approved $US50,000 in research funding and in 1913 provided a “flying boat” — a fixed wing aircraft with a hull for water landings instead of landing gear — to test the gyro system. By 1916, Sperry and his son Lawrence, who also worked as an engineer on the project, teamed up with Peter Hewitt, an early R/C developer, to further develop the radio control mechanisms. Together, they developed an early autopilot system that would allow for a plane to be launched from a naval ship, fly a predetermined course before either dropping a load of bombs or suicide diving its target.

The plane’s autopilot suite consisted of Sperry’s adapted gyroscopic stabiliser, a directive gyroscope, an aneroid barometer for maintaining altitude, servo-motors to control the steering mechanisms, and a distance gearing device that measured how far the plane traveled based on the number of engine revolutions. When the distance gear hit a preset limit, the flying bomb would (or at least should) have dived back to earth.

The first iteration of the Sperry Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Aeroplane system flew successfully in September 1917. An on-board backup pilot handled the takeoff and landing while the plane’s autopilot took care of the in-flight aviation. By November that year, the plane’s distance gearing had been refined enough to drop test bombs (rather than dive) within 3km of its intended target. With these early successes, the US Senate approved the design and ordered the Navy to provide seven Curtiss N-9 seaplanes as well as purchase six of Sperry’s automatic control units for further development. The Navy pumped another $US200,000 into the project and set up a research centre in Copiague, Long Island.

Unfortunately, the Curtiss N-9 quickly proved to be an unsuitable platform for the project and a series of specially-built Curtiss aircraft were ordered instead. These aircraft, combined with Sperry’s gyroscopic stabilisers and Hewitt’s radio control mechanisms would become the Sperry-Hewitt Flying Bomb, an explosive-laden pilot-less aircraft (aka an aerial torpedo or flying bomb) and precursor to the modern cruise missile.

Measuring 4.5m long with a 8m wingspan, the 680kg auto-plane could hit 145km/h (just slightly slower than the roughly 200km/h average top speed of manned bi-planes of the era) thanks to its 100 HP Curtiss OX-5 piston engine, and reach more than 80km/h while toting a thousand pounds of explosive. Designed as a dedicated UAV, the planes did not include seats or conventional pilot controls. And, being the middle of WWI, these flying bombs underwent precisely zero flight or wind-tunnel testing before being produced, an oversight that would almost immediately be regretted.

Just getting the flying bombs into the air proved nearly impossible. Unlike the catapult-launched N-9 seaplanes, Hewitt and Sperry first attempted to launch the flying bombs by sliding them down a long wire. Three wrecked flying bombs later, the team switched back to a conventional catapult, which scooted them down a 45m track using a three-tonne weight as a fulcrum. This was barely better. The next two flying bombs, launched in early 1918, got into the air but were too tail heavy, stalled immediately and crashed.

After destroying five of their precious prototypes, Sperry and Hewitt went about redesigning the airframe so that it could, you know, actually fly. Sperry’s assistant, N. W. Dalton, was able to get his hands on a newfangled Marmon automobile, so the team strapped the Flying Bomb to the car’s roof and sped down the Long Island Motor Parkway at 80 mph to calibrate and optimise the flight controls.

The Marmon proved to be a promising launch platform as well. In March of 1918 the Flying bomb successfully lifted off from the vehicle’s roof and flew a controlled path of more than 1000 yards, making it the first heavier-than-air UAV to ever take flight. It would also be the only time the Flying Bomb actually flew. Subsequent car-based launches were unsuccessful, even after the vehicle was outfitted with rail wheels and driven along the Long Island Rail Road to reduce pre-launch turbulence. And, after that, further catapult-based platforms and the addition of extra gyro stabilisers proved ineffective too. Every time, the plane would take off and then immediately crash. By September of 1918, Sperry and Hewitt had to abandon the Flying Bomb design because they had crashed all of their prototypes, and nobody on the team thought that they were air-worthy anyway.

For the remaining duration of the War, Sperry and Hewitt focused their attention on the N-9 platform, with a small degree of success. Using a new catapult design, the team successfully launched an unmanned N-9. It flew closely to its intended flight path but was lost at sea when its distance gearing failed to bring down the plane after 13km. The plane was last seen above Bayshore Air Station before disappearing into the Atlantic.

When World War I came to an end in November of 1918, Sperry and Hewitt had notched fewer than 100 successful N-9 flights and just one (debatably) successful Flying Bomb launch. But they had proven that the concept of unmanned aerial combat was at least plausible. The Navy subsequently took control of the program from Sperry, though it would be nearly a century before anybody figured out how to land a UAV at sea.

[MIKA27]

Inside Al Qaeda's Half-Baked Plans To Take Down US Drones

As much as we like to gripe about it stateside, our complaints about the drone program are nothing compared to those of Al Qaeda.

The terrorists don’t like drones, because drones are designed to kill terrorists. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, however, Al Qaeda’s about to fight back.

The Washington Post gained access to the leaked documents and found some pretty interesting facts about Al Qaeda’s relationship to drones. In brief, they do not like drones, or as the online jihadist magazine Azanput it, “evil missiles designed by the devils of the world.” Drones keep the terrorists holed up in their caves and otherwise living in constant fear of an attack, so Al Qaeda’s been busy over the past few years, exploring ways to fight back and neutralize the threat.

At present, Al Qaeda is recruiting engineers to help out in its anti-drone mission, but it’s also giving guidance about how to evade an attack to all its members. In 2010, for instance, the organisation distributed a “strategy guide” with tips on how “to anticipate and defeat drones”. According to the Post, “Al Qaeda was sponsoring simultaneous research projects to develop jammers to interfere with GPS signals and infrared tags that drone operators rely on to pinpoint missile targets.” One idea is to use “lasers and dazzlers” to blind the drone’s cameras and disable the GPS. Meanwhile, leaders have been working on more creative methods to fight drones, including using weather balloons and hobby planes to monitor the flight patterns of the US aircraft.

What’s become increasingly clear to Al Qaeda, however, is the fact that there is no silver bullet when it comes to taking out drones.

There is a major vulnerability in the drones’ satellite links, though. Occasionally, a drone will drop its connection to the satellite that was steering it and will circle the air until the connection is reestablished. This is called a “lost link”, and it’s already claimed a few drones in recent years. It’s not clear if Al Qaeda had anything to do with those accidents.

In the long run, US drones are only going to become more and more sophisticated, giving Al Qaeda’s engineers plenty of problems to deal with. The US Navy’s already developed a next generation drone that can take off and land on an aircraft carrier. Now if the military could just convince some soldiers to fly the dang things…

[MIKA27]

Pioneer's New HUD Brings Augmented Reality To Cars

Just a couple of years ago, the idea of a device projecting information driving directions onto a car’s windshield seemed super futuristic. Now they’re becoming a reality, with the European release of Pioneer’s NavGate head-up display the latest. And believe it or not, this one’s actually pretty affordable.

The new but long-awaited augmented reality NavGate system clips onto the driver’s side visor and uses lasers to create an image that’s equivalent to a 30-inch display placed about 5m in front of the vehicle. It displays everything from turn-by-turn directions and estimated time of arrival to the current speed and speed limits. It can also pair up with a smartphone and works with the CoPilot and iGo Primo navigation apps. BMW makes a similar system for some of its models, while other companies like Garmin and Cadillac offer more basic versions. If you’re having a hard time imagining what all this might look like, rewatch RoboCop, and it should make more sense.

Pioneer’s NavGate will be available in Europe next month for a cool £600 (about $1021). It’s unclear when the technology will make it over to this side of the pond. At that price, though, it ought to make a splash when it does.

[MIKA27]

Richard Branson’s Space Machine Flies Higher and Faster Than Ever Before

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo completed its second powered flight this morning, flying faster and higher than any previous flights. It’s been nearly three years since SpaceShipTwo’s first glide flight, an indication of the challenges of developing a space vehicle that is safe enough for passenger flight, something that has been one of the main concerns since the sub-orbital space tourism idea kicked off a decade ago.

Today’s flight flew under rocket power four seconds longer than the first powered flight back in April, with the total burn time lasting 20 seconds after being dropped from 46,000 feet. After igniting the rocket, Scaled Composite test pilots Mark Stucky and Clint Nichols accelerated to Mach 1.43 and reached an altitude of 69,000 feet. It was the 29th flight for the future spaceliner, part of the extensive flight testing program Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites is completing before flying the first group of more than 600 people who have signed up for the sub-orbital ride. Today’s flight also marked the first time SpaceShipTwo’s “feather” re-entry system has been tested after a powered flight.

“It was particularly thrilling to see for the first time today the whole elegant system in action during a single flight, including the remarkable feathering re-entry system,” Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson said in a statement released after the flight. “It was this safety feature more than anything else that originally persuaded us that the overall design of the system was uniquely fit for purpose.”

The long gap between powered flights follows a similar testing schedule for SpaceShipOne, Scaled Composites X-Prize winning spacecraft that flew three times into sub-orbital space back in 2004. That airplane made its first powered flight in December of 2003, and the second one nearly four months later in early April. SpaceShipTwo’s flight test program has been much more extensive, with more than twice as many glide flights before the first powered flight.

Founded by Burt Rutan in the 1980s, Scaled Composites has developed numerous unusual and cutting edge aircrafts over the years, and has always been known for its secrecy surrounding future flying plans. Sir Richard Branson, Scaled’s customer on the SpaceShipTwo project isn’t as reserved. He’s dropped a few hints about upcoming flights, and earlier this year he mentioned in an interview that the first passenger flight (with him on board) could take place on Christmas day.

SpaceShipOne did manage its first flight past the 100 kilometer altitude mark — an arbitrary, but widely accepted altitude known as the Karman line, marking the beginning of space — just over two months after its second powered flight. But the SpaceShipOne flights were designed to win the X-Prize, a $10 million dollar award for the first team to fly past 100 kilometers twice within two weeks. No passengers were on board SpaceShipOne, and it was a much more aggressive flight test program. Later in 2004 the Scaled Composites team managed to complete the two flights just five days apart, taking home the prize.

SpaceShipTwo is designed to carry passengers and is being carefully watched by the Federal Aviation Administration which will ultimately decide if the spacecraft is safe for commercial flights. Last month the FAA accepted Virgin Galactic’s application to be a commercial space system operator. Now, the agency must now decide if it will approve the license so the company can fly passengers into space. There is normally a six month window for the FAA to consider applications, but it can pause the process as needed.

One of the repeated refrains from Burt Rutan during the early days of SpaceShipTwo and the space tourism idea, long before delays pushed passenger flights back several years, was the need to make sure the entire space flight system was “orders of magnitude safer” than other space systems. Such comments made it clear for both passengers and engineers that SpaceShipTwo was not going to carry passengers until it had been tested thoroughly enough to ensure safe flight. Launching from an airplane, and Rutan’s feather system, which essentially folds the airplane in half — allowing it to re-enter the atmosphere in a fairly simple, and slow speed configuration — are two key components of increasing the safety of sub-orbital space flight.

A third component of safe space flight may be a reason for future delays: the hybrid-rocket motor. Today’s flight used the same type of nitrous oxide and rubber engine as the first powered flight and is similar to the motor used on SpaceShipOne. The hybrid motors use the nitrous oxide as its oxygen supply for combustion, and hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (fancy rubber) as the solid fuel. Both Scaled Composites and motor manufacturer Sierra Nevada Corporation have been working on updated motor designs, but it’s unknown whether or not a new design will be used to power SpaceShipTwo on its first test flight into space.

During a motor test in May, Scaled says it intentionally introduced flaws into a motor to “improve knowledge of different design components.” That motor was tested to failure when the engine exploded at Scaled’s test facility in Mojave — the same day Sierra Nevada Corporation tested a standard version of the hybrid motor successfully at its facility near San Diego. But other than mentioning the claimed test to failure in Mojave, there are no other details available about the motor and whether it was part of a new design.

Scaled is expected to perform several more powered flights, slowly expanding the flight envelope of SpaceShipTwo, before flying past the 100 kilometer mark for the first time. The first space flights with just test pilots on board are expected to take place in Mojave, California where Scaled Composites is based. Virgin Galactic’s passenger space flights will take place at the company’s appropriately future looking “Spaceport America” in New Mexico. But still no date on when the first passengers will enjoy the black sky of space and a bit of floating around the cabin.

[MIKA27]

G20 'divided' on Syria as US envoy Power criticises Russia

US envoy to the UN, Samantha Power: "Russia continues to hold the Council hostage"

G20 leaders were divided over Syria at the end of the first day of their Russian summit, as the US envoy to the UN showed her frustration at Moscow.

Italian PM Enrico Letta said the splits were confirmed at a working dinner.

At the UN, US ambassador Samantha Power accused Russia of holding the Security Council hostage by repeatedly blocking resolutions.

She said the Security Council was no longer a "viable path" for holding Syria accountable for war crimes.

The US government accuses President Bashar al-Assad's forces of killing 1,429 people in a poison-gas attack in the Damascus suburbs on 21 August. The UK says scientists at the Porton Down research laboratories have found traces of sarin gas on cloth and soil samples.

But Mr Assad has blamed rebels for the attack, and China and Russia have refused to agree to a Security Council resolution against Syria.

The US and France are the only nations at the G20 summit in St Petersburg to commit to using force in Syria. China and Russia insist any action without the UN would be illegal.

'Divisions confirmed'

Ms Power told a news conference in New York: "Even in the wake of the flagrant shattering of the international norm against chemical weapons use, Russia continues to hold the council hostage and shirk its international responsibilities.

"What we have learned, what the Syrian people have learned, is that the Security Council the world needs to deal with this crisis is not the Security Council we have."

US President Barack Obama is thought to be trying at the G20 summit to build an international coalition to back strikes against military targets in Syria.

But the Italian prime minister said in a tweet that "the G20 has just now finished the dinner session, at which the divisions about Syria were confirmed".

President Obama said last week the US military was prepared to launch a "limited, narrow" strike on targets in Syria, but promised to allow Congress a vote on the issue.

The BBC's Bridget Kendall in St Petersburg says the views of the G20 leaders on any US action could be the least of Mr Obama's worries as his real difficulties might lie back in the US.

President Obama cancelled a trip to California on Monday to lobby Congress, as a poll commissioned by the BBC and ABC News suggested more than one-third of Congress members were undecided whether or not to back military action.

A majority of those who had made a decision said they would vote against the president.

Syria's parliamentary speaker has written to the speaker of the House of Representatives urging members not to rush into an "irresponsible, reckless action".

The Assad regime has been accused of using chemical weapons against civilians on several occasions during the 30-month conflict.

Some 100,000 people have died in the conflict, and more than two million Syrians are classified as refugees, according to the UN.