Make your own $1.6 million Bugatti Veyron

That`s right! You too can have your own Bugatti Veyron and the best part is you get to make it!..... out of paper that is. This is a 76cm long paper replica of one of the world's fastest and most expensive super-cars, the Bugatti Veyron, consisting of 159 parts on 44 pages.

You can get the plans here



She is a beaut!

Totally awesome: Micro Star Wars arcade game

A fully functional 1:6 scale reproduction of the classic 1983 Atari Star Wars coin-op game. Built on a GPX Caanoo with custom cabinet, yoke, mechanics, and coin door. Enjoy..




Must have this.

Fringe season 5 preview

Hurray! Fringe has been renewed for another (final) season. That means another year of more Walterisms!

Watch Kim Dotcom racing an F1 racer

Before Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom got busted by the feds he shot this video of himself and partner Finn Batato racing Germany's famed Nürburgring race track in three of his highly modified Mercedes Benz AMG CLK DTM supercars with F1 driver Kimi Raikkonen. A fun day on the most famous race track in the world. This video shows one full lap around the "ring" and according to Dotcom the final cut was "seized by the FBI."

MIT`s web spinning robot

The Mediated Matter Group at MIT's Media Lab is working on a robot that will one day be able to scan its surroundings and weave a structure that's attached to elements in the environment autonomously. The machine isn't able to do this just yet, but it can be preprogrammed to weave a web using pegs and hooks that it's been told the positions of.

AT-AT Imperial walker for your cat, booze included

If I was a cat, this is exactly the kind of pad I`d want to spend my day sleeping in. This thing also sports an internal trophy room along with some liquor to entertain your feline guests. Hey, I got a name for it, call it the CAT-CAT.

Check out the birds mounted on the wall as trophies and the mini bar behind this lucky guy.

Launching 55 gallon drums skyward AKA the Borat space program

What can be more fun, a lively village festival, folksy music, some rustic food and beverages and of course launching 55 gallon drums skyward.

Apparently there`s a bit of science behind all of this:
" If you mix calcium carbide and water, it produces acetylene. Acetylene is extremely flammable and can launch 55-gallon drums into the air when ignited."
YIKES!




DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, OR INDOORS! EVER!

New Prometheus featurette

Just released featurette with some behind the scenes with Ridley Scott along with some new Prometheus film footage.

Is there a drone in your neighbourhood?

Below we have a map showing at least 63 active drone sites around the U.S, federal authorities have been forced to reveal following a landmark Freedom of Information lawsuit.
The unmanned planes, some of which may have been designed to kill terror suspects are being launched from locations in 20 states. Most of the active drones are deployed from military installations, law enforcement agencies and border patrol teams, according to the Federal Aviation Authority. But, astonishingly, and oddly 19 universities and colleges are also registered as owners of unmanned aerial vehicles. It is thought that many of institutions, which include Cornell, the University of Colorado, Georgia Tech, and Eastern Gateway Community College, are developing drone technology.

more

Cosmopolis full trailer

With French subtitles.

Saturn`s weirdest ring

Mysterious objects appear to be doing some damage to Saturn's weirdest ring, otherwise known as the F ring. Detailed photos taken of the Saturn system by NASA's Cassini orbiter show strange objects about a half-mile (kilometer) wide tearing through Saturn's F ring, the thin outermost discrete ring around the planet. As these objects pass through the ring they drag glittering ice particles out with them, creating visible trails of debris scientists are calling "mini jets." The F ring is held in check by two tiny moons, Prometheus and Pandora which weave in and out of the outer ring occasionally perturbing it.

Found: Original vision of the Android phone

Here`s an interesting revelation that surfaced during the Oracle Google trial. Two years before the release of Android, Google shopped a device to carriers that contained a “basic phone user interface.” The company approached T-Mobile and called the device a win-win when combined with the carrier’s unlimited data plan. The original designs surfaced during Google’s trial against Oracle over the use of Java in Android. Additional documents revealed that Google was looking to offer unlimited data for $9.99 a month. To subsidize the reduced cost, the Internet giant would have agreed to not take the commission it might earn from the carrier when it referred Android buyers to its online store. Google’s original plan never became a reality and the first commercial Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 was released with $25 and $35 data plans. Correct me if I`m wrong but doesn`t this thing look like a Blackberry? I wonder what gave them the idea to add a touch screen interface and dump the keyboard? Hmmm. Things will get interesting over the next couple of months as this trial progresses.

The Verge has more, more

The lounging frog

Looks like someone`s enjoying the warm weather. All he needs are a couple of beers and some friends. Oh yeah, a pond too.




Maybe he`ll burst out in song, "Hello My Baby, Hello My Honey, Hello My Ragtime Gal"

Did Iran REALLY hack a US spy drone?

Wired has scored some intel from a Pentagon drone manager and breaks the following interesting revelation. According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, he believes its not very likely Iran has penetrated the drone`s encryption he told reporters. “I would seriously question their ability to do what they say they’ve done.” A Pentagon drone program manager was far more blunt. Speaking to Danger Room on condition of anonymity, the program manager said Iran’s claim “sounds like complete bullshit.”
Details of the uber-stealthy RQ-170, which played a supporting role in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, are hard to come by. But the Iranians claim the drone stores its missions like tweets, ready for someone to scroll through. Most autonomous warplanes load their missions during pre-flight preparation, and don’t store their records in an onboard hard drive.


“Also,” wonders the Pentagon program manager, “exactly how would the aircraft ‘know’ it was ‘sent’ to California? It can’t fly from Afghanistan to Lockheed Martin’s Palmdale plant without stopping for gas a few dozen times. If it did go to home in 2010, it was probably in a C-17. My hunch is that the Iranians gathered some information using other sources and claimed it was obtained by hacking the 170′s systems.”

If the Iranians are correct, and the RQ-170 really does keep all its mission data onboard, then that’s a stunning, amateurish security vulnerability. Drones malfunction. Drones crash. If a secret drone that flies over hostile territory actually contains a treasure trove of data for an adversary to recover, that might turn an embarrassment for the U.S. into a scandal. This is not over yet.

full story

Behold: A full size inflatable Stonehenge

Have a look at Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller's new artwork named Sacrilege. Unveiled at the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (20 April 2012 - 7 May 2012) Situated on Glasgow Green, Sacrilege was revealed as a full-scale, inflatable replica of Stonehenge, one of the UK's most recognisable heritage sites.




I`m so jealous.

Camilla the space chicken

Meet Camilla the space chicken, Her mission: to conquer the upper atmosphere in a knit space suit. She was fitted with radiation badges and sent aloft on a giant helium balloon launched by students at Bishop Union High School in Southern California.

The mission goal was to measure the energy released by an M8-class solar flare that occurred on March 10, 2012. Camilla was tucked into her spaceship, a lunch box and climbed for two hours until the balloon exploded. You can see Camilla pause for a moment in the low gravity before starting her 500 mph descent to Earth. Along with Camilla were seven insects and two dozen sunflower seeds, which the students are analyzing along with radiation measurements. None of insects survived, no word yet on the seeds.

Google and friends to go asteroid mining

Google executives Larry Page, Eric Schmidt and filmmaker James Cameron are among those bankrolling a venture to survey and extract precious metals and rare minerals from asteroids that orbit near Earth. They`re calling this venture Planetary Resources. Planetary Resources' first customers are likely to be science agencies, such as NASA, as well as private research institutes.

The first step would be launching a series of private telescopes that would search for rich asteroid targets. This will be done with the next 18 to 24 months. Within five to 10 years, however, the company expects to progress from selling observation platforms in orbit around Earth to prospecting services. It plans to tap some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth and extract their raw materials.

Not all missions would return precious metals and minerals to Earth. In addition to mining for precious metals, the company plans to tap asteroids' water to supply orbiting fuel depots, which could be used by NASA and others for robotic and human space missions. The company plans to develop technologies to cut the cost of deep-space robotic probes to one-tenth to one-hundredth the cost of current space missions, which run hundreds of millions of dollars. Among the targeted technologies is optical laser communications, which would eliminate the need for large radio antennas aboard spacecraft.

Planetary Resources, which currently employs about 20 people, is overseen by former NASA Mars mission manager Chris Lewicki. It was founded about three years ago, but has been operating quietly behind the scenes until now.

more

Very bold

Geometric band flies by turning inside-out

Meet the Festo SmartInversion, a flying geometrical band with inversion drive. This device is a helium-filled flying object that moves through the air by turning inside-out. This constant, rhythmically pulsating movement is known as inversion and gives the flight model its name. Pretty cool if you ask me.




More info here

New G.I. Joe Retaliation trailer

Official synopsis:

"In this sequel, the G.I. Joes are not only fighting their mortal enemy Cobra; they are forced to contend with threats from within the government that jeopardize their very existence. The film stars D.J. Cotrona, Byung-hun Lee, Adrianne Palicki, Ray Park, Jonathan Pryce, Ray Stevenson, Channing Tatum with Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson. Directed by Jon M. Chu, and produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Brian Goldner, from a screenplay by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick based on Hasbro's G.I. Joe® characters."

G.I. Joe Retaliation opens June 29th.

Crazy old man shoots up speed camera truck

This unidentified senior Audi driver in Sante Fe New Mexico apparently fed up with the city's unmanned speed camera truck took action and fired shots from a handgun into the vehicle's windshield. The man was wearing a white nightgown.

The vehicle had police markings on it and was equipped with radar and cameras to capture speeders. At around 1:20 in the morning on April 11th the truck's video cameras captured the suspect pulling up in what appears to be an Audi Q5. He gets out of the Audi, walks over to the speed camera windshield, and fires at least five shots from ten feet away. Only three of the shots hit the vehicle and none damaged the camera. The man then yells something and gets back in his Audi.




Go on git, ya hear!

Iran cracks American stealth drone secrets

The commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards' air force chief Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh spoke on Iranian state television claiming that Iran has cracked US encryptions systems present on its super secret spy drone known as "The beast of Kandahar" or the Lockheed RQ-170 Sentinel.

To quote the General:
"I am giving you four codes so the Americans understand just how far we have gone in penetrating the drone's secrets. In October 2010, the aircraft was sent to California for some technical issues, where it was repaired and after flight tests, it was taken to Kandahar (in Afghanistan) in November 2010, when a series of technical problems still prevailed. In December 2010, it was sent to an airport near Los Angeles for repair of its equipment and sensors, and flight tests. The drone was then sent back to Kandahar."

While cracking the encryption does not allow the Iranians to reverse engineer the Sentinel drone it does represent a major intelligence coup d`etat for them. Don`t be surprised if this information reaches the hands of the Chinese and/or Russian military. 

New international Dark Shadows trailer

Contains some extra footage not seen before in the North American version.




Dark Shadows opens May 11th.