Chevrolet Corvette Adds Another 2.5 Miles to the Odometer at Indy 500

Chevrolet Corvette Adds Another 2.5 Miles to the Odometer at Indy 500:

The 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray will lead the field and a hungry pack of Chevy powered Indy Cars to the green flag of the Indy 500, serving as the pace car for the 97^th running of the Memorial Day weekend classic. Seventeen other Chevrolet cars earned field spots and driver Ed Carpenter will start off the pole with fellow Chevrolet drivers Carlos Muñoz and Marco Andretti completing the front row. Chevrolet is excited to continue its historic relationship with the race.

“It is an honor to help inaugurate the all-new Corvette Stingray at the hallowed Brickyard and further the legacy between Chevrolet and the Indianapolis 500,” said Jim Campbell, GM U.S. vice president of Performance Vehicles and Motorsports.

The Chevrolet IndyCar drivers are looking forward to the whole experience too.
“I really enjoy the [Indy 500] and all that goes with it,” said Carpenter. “There is nothing else in racing like the tradition of the opening ceremonies.”
The pace laps were implemented to give drivers the chance to warm up their engines, tires and allow for a rolling start. This marks a record 12th time Corvette has held the pace car honor since its first pace lap in 1978. It also marks the 24th time that Chevrolet has served as the pace car at Indy.
Known as “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing”, the Indy 500 is about much more than which driver will take the checkered flag. It is an opportunity for auto makers to take a production car and make it worthy of the Indy 500 badge. The Indy pace car represents the best in American automotive technology.

“Chevrolet is a great partner of the Speedway,” said Jeff Belskus, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation president and chief executive officer. “That connection is heightened this year with the next-generation Corvette in front of a very talented field of racers.”
The Corvette Stingray Pace Car will be virtually stock, as is traditional, but it will have the Z51 Performance Package, which adds an electronic limited-slip differential, a dry-sump oil system, an aero package for high-speed stability, and integral cooling for the brakes, differential and transmission.
The only difference between the pace car – decked out in Laguna Blue Tintcoat with official Indy 500 graphics on the doors – and Stingray production models are track-mandated safety features and strobe lights. The strobe lights are added so drivers and fans can see the car. Turning them off indicates the race will begin on the next lap.
No powertrain upgrades are required to run in front of the IndyCar pack, thanks to its all-new 6.2L LT1 engine, which features advanced technologies including direct fuel injection, continuously variable valve timing and Active Fuel Management (cylinder deactivation). They help efficiently produce an estimated 450 horsepower. Pace cars traditionally travel 70-80 mph with a max around 100 mph.
San Francisco 49ers head coach and former Indianapolis Colts quarterback, Jim Harbaugh, will be the official pace car driver. Several celebrities have been Chevrolet Corvette pace car drivers over the years, including Morgan Freeman, Gen. Colin Powell, Patrick Dempsey and The Food Network’s Guy Fieri.
All the action starts at 11 a.m. EDT Sunday, with live television coverage on ABC. In addition, the famed race will be broadcast by the IMS Radio Network, including on Sirius and XM Channels 211 and www.indycar.com.

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Microsoft's new ad slams Siri hard

Microsoft's new ad slams Siri hard:

Microsoft has released a new ad featuring the Windows 8 ASUS VivoTab Smart tablet and an iPad. The commercial slams the iPad pretty hard by picking and choosing examples of things the iPad can't do that Windows 8 tablet can, like live updating of tile apps, its inability to use multiple apps at once, and lack of Microsoft PowerPoint support. The kicker here is that the ad is narrated by actual responses from Siri. The ad ends with Siri asking, "Should we just play chopsticks?" -- poking fun at a previous iPad mini commercial.

Windows 8 has received significant criticism for its elimination of the Start button and there are strong reports that Microsoft is looking to redesign the OS in a hurry to stop plummeting PC sales.

Microsoft's new ad slams Siri hard originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 23 May 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Titanium ring whose jewels glow through induction

Titanium ring whose jewels glow through induction:

Ben Kokes wanted to give a ring to his sweetheart, and to make it interesting, he decided to create a ring with an inductive loop that would cause the stones to light up when they were close to a power-source. He documented the tricky technical problems that cropped up during the build, and it sounds like the romance part came out well, too:

The final idea was to embed a LED and copper coil assembly inside the titanium ring, illuminating it from under the stones when it was in close proximity to an induced alternating magnetic field (henceforth called 'the transmitter'). Autodesk Inventor helped me develop all of the dimensions and constraints for the design. Having some help, I was able to obtain her ring size and the rest of the measurements were based from there (15.72mm if anyone was wondering)...
... Of all the challenges presented in making the ring, affixing the stone is the most difficult. Traditionally, stones are affixed by mechanical means -- prongs, groves or snaps. Epoxies will delaminate from the attachment surfaces due to microstresses, thermal cycling, and other unmentioned movements. The stone may be attached now, but eventually it will fall out. It's just a matter of time.
With that in mind, I had 4 initial ideas for affixing the stone: thermally expanding the hole, hole deformation, point expansion deformation, and epoxy. Ultimately, I went with the epoxy method for attaching the stones.
The first test was to try and heat the ring, expand the hold and drop in the stone. When the hole cooled and contracted, it would hold the stone in place. Not only does the hole not expand enough, if I was lucky enough for it to happen (it did once), the stone would fracture along pre-existing crack lines.

Project Longhaul (via Hacker News)

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Navy Completes First Flight Of Game-Changing MQ-4C Triton Spy Drone [Video]

Navy Completes First Flight Of Game-Changing MQ-4C Triton Spy Drone [Video]:

Triton on the Tarmac, May 21, 2013
U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Northrop Grumman by Chad Slattery

The long-range maritime drone will give the U.S. unprecedented surveillance of the world's oceans.
For the U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman, it's shaping up to be a banner year in unmanned flight. While the carrier-based autonomous X-47B continues to hit milestones aboard the USS George H.W. Bush somewhere off the East Coast, out west in Palmdale, Calif., today the Navy flew its MQ-4C Triton maritime drone for the first time, marking the beginning of a sea change (pardon the pun) in the way the U.S. military patrols the oceans. The drone flew for 80 minutes and reached an altitude of 20,000 feet.
The Triton isn't a completely new platform. If it looks familiar, that's because everyone from the U.S. Air Force to NASA has been using its cousin--Northrop Grumman's reliable Global Hawk--for years now, for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, environmental monitoring, and meteorological data gathering, among other things. Triton is essentially an upgrade of the Global Hawk, optimized for maritime environments, with a strengthened airframe and de-icing features that allow it to rapidly ascend to and descend from high altitudes.
Those upgrades allow Triton to fly at altitudes nearly ten miles above sea level (its ceiling is listed as 60,000 feet, though it will likely stick to the 53,000-55,000 for most missions) for 24 hours at a time. That high vantage point allows its advanced sensors to take in a 2,000-nautical-mile view of the ocean in every direction. Carrying the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) sensor package (Popular Science awarded BAMS a Best of What's New award last year) along with a classified advanced radar system, Triton will be able to both detect and identify ships on the water.
That is, rather than registering as a simple blip on the radar screen, BAMS will be able to generate a picture of the shape of the ship and use that to identify it by profile. In that way, it will be able to tell a container ship from a Chinese frigate from a surfacing Russian submarine--from up to 2,000 nautical miles away (we felt that point was worth stressing here). Triton's strengthened airframe, augmented with de-icing technology, will then allow it to rapidly descend and ascend, so it can swoop in for a closer look at vessels of particular interest.

That's if everything works as advertised, and both Triton and BAMS are still in the early stages of development. The first flight by Triton is a big step forward. Though it's built on the back of the tested Global Hawk platform, the tweaks that have been made to the design are significant. In fact, a Global Hawk lent to the Navy by the Air Force for testing crashed at Naval Air Station Pax River last year--an event that was seen at the time as a potential setback for Triton and BAMS. So today's first flight is significant, as it marks the first airborne tests of a Triton and the beginning of the shift toward a brand new maritime capability.
That new capability is also quite significant. The Navy wants 68 Tritons based at five locations around the globe. Flying in rotations, they will be able to keep unprecedented tabs on the world's critical sea lanes and important littorals, working alongside and supporting the manned P-8A Poseidon mission (the Poseidon is replacing the P-3 Orion anti-sub warfare aircraft; basically the Triton, which is unarmed, will conduct the ISR and the Poseidon will handle any kinetic strikes or electronic warfare, should it be necessary). And because the Triton is unmanned and autonomous, it will require less intensive human labor to fly as well as less risk to human pilots.
"When operational, the MQ-4C will complement our manned P-8 because it can fly for long periods, transmit its information in real-time to units in the air and on ground, as well as use less resources than previous surveillance aircraft," said Rear Adm. Sean Buck, Patrol and Reconnaissance Group commander, in a statement. "Triton will bring an unprecedented ISR capability to the warfighter."
That's still a few years away, but today marks a critical step for the maritime capability, and a second huge leap forward for autonomous flight in just more than a week.

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Hands-on with Kwikset and UniKey's Kevo keyless entry system

Hands-on with Kwikset and UniKey's Kevo keyless entry system:

Kwikset and UniKey are set to update their home entry systems, which have remained largely unchanged since they were first invented more than a hundred years ago. Using a Bluetooth daughter card in the lock mechanism, a couple Bluetooth antennas and a clever app this lock opens by simply touching a finger to the outside of the housing when you approach the door.

At its simplest, the companies' Këvo system isn't too unlike a keyless car entry system, though it takes advantage of your iPhone's Bluetooth LE -- Android and BB10 versions will arrive as soon as those platform's stacks are sorted -- or the included keyfob for the proximity technology. Security is handled through the phone or desktop app enabling you to share keys with your family as administrative users, normal users, one-off entry or even scheduled access. For those concerned about leaving your phone too near the door and thereby allowing anybody access, the system actually uses two antennas, one on the inside and one out. So should you stand behind the closed door the system won't trigger access to those outside. Battery life for the four AAs is rated for a year, and you've no need to worry about being surprised by an outage, either: the system will notify you well in advance using the lock's eight RGB LEDs or through the app. Pricing will be somewhere in the $199 range when it hits the shops, though sadly we don't have an exact date to share. We're pretty stoked to get a chance to check this system out for ourselves but until that time, check out the quick video of it in action below.

Gallery: Kwikset and UniKey's Kevo keyless entry system hands-on

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Following roll-out, MSN001 to be handed over to flight test department soon

Following roll-out, MSN001 to be handed over to flight test department soon:





Airbus is understood to be handing over the first A350-900, MSN001, to the flight test department on May 17, industry sources tell Aviation Week. The aircraft will then undergo its last campaigns of ground testing, including high speed taxi tests. Airbus did not comment on the timing.


People familiar with the matter say that around 20 days are planned to prepare the aircraft for first flight. Airbus only says that the aircraft will make its maiden flight “this summer”. The manufacturer has indicated that it is unlikely the A350 will fly before the Paris Air Show in June, but the 20 day period would put that date around one week before the opening of Le Bourget. First flight dates can shift at the last minute because of weather or last minute technical issues.





Airbus rolled out MSN001 from the paint hangar on Monday in what is a further step towards first flight. The aircraft was painted in less than week. It has the flight test instrumentation largely and its Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines installed. MSN001 has also completed a series of ground vibration tests. Industry sources say the aircraft is mature enough to fly very soon.


Unlike for previous programs, Airbus did not hold a grand roll-out ceremony, but presented the aircraft to a group of employees only.





Airbus holds 414 firm orders for the A350-900, 92 for the A350-800 and 110 for the A350-1000. Given a recent surge in demand, Chief Operating Officer Customers John Leahy has hinted that he would like to see production rates for the aircraft to go up sooner rather than later. Kuwait Airways could become the next customer for the -900 with an order for ten aircraft in the final stages of negotiations.

All photos: Airbus

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Photos of Likely 802.11ac 'Gigabit Wi-Fi' Card From Next-Generation iMac Surface

Photos of Likely 802.11ac 'Gigabit Wi-Fi' Card From Next-Generation iMac Surface: Tonymacx86 points (via 9to5Mac) to recently discovered photos of a Broadcom BCM94360CD Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card that supports the 802.11ac "Gigabit Wi-Fi" standard rumored to be coming to Apple's Mac lineup later this year. While the photos were posted to Chinese site VR-Zone in early March, they are only just now being noticed by those following Apple rumors.


While the reports suggest that the new card is intended for the next-generation MacBook Pro or MacBook Air models rumored for launch at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), a commenter on the Tonymacx86 discussion thread points out that the card is actually nearly identical in size, shape, and layout to the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card found in the current iMac.


The BCM94360CD card, which is very likely a custom design for Apple, contains Broadcom's BCM4360 802.11ac transceiver chip, offering support for the in-process Wi-Fi standard that allows for triple the speeds of the current 802.11n standard. An apparent date code of "1240" on the part suggests that it was manufactured in early October 2012, several months before Apple was reported to have struck a deal with Broadcom to bring 802.11ac support to its 2013 Macs.


Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card from Late 2012 iMac (Source: iFixit)

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Microsoft Unveils Xbox One, an All-In-One Entertainment System with Revamped Kinect and Fully Integrated SmartGlass

Microsoft Unveils Xbox One, an All-In-One Entertainment System with Revamped Kinect and Fully Integrated SmartGlass: Microsoft today released details on its next generation console at an event hosted at its Redmond campus in Washington. Called the Xbox One, the new console is designed to be the ultimate all-in-one home entertainment system with a heavy focus on both gaming and interactive television watching.

The Xbox One recognizes individual users and presents a customized home screen filled with content like TV and movies, games, and music, along with a new Trending section that displays friend activity and a live TV system.

Xbox One utilizes voice commands, motion control via the Kinect, and a new feature called Instant Switching to allow Xbox users to switch from gaming to TV to other types of entertainment with quick commands that work as fast as swapping channels on the TV. Home screen sharing, called Snap Mode, allows users to display multiple items on the television screen. The Xbox One's comprehensive voice commands, such as "Watch CBS" or "Play Game" are what many imagined Siri integration with the Apple TV might look like.


The new Xbox sports 8GB of RAM, an 8-core CPU, a 500GB hard drive, USB 3.0 ports, and a slot-loading Blu-ray drive. It also comes equipped with a newly redesigned Kinect sensor that is far more robust for better motion sensing and an updated controller that has an updated d-pad, impulse triggers and a more ergonomic design, in addition to several other improvements.

Xbox's second-screen companion app SmartGlass, which was originally introduced last year, has been improved to allow smartphones and tablets like Apple's iPad and iPhone to connect seamlessly to the Xbox one. According to Marc Whitten, SmartGlass is "fully integrated" into the new console.

SmartGlass in its current form is designed to allow users to interact with the Xbox 360 in a number of ways, namely navigating through menus, controlling video, browsing the internet, and using the keyboard to type on the console.

A number of games were also revealed at the Xbox One event including Madden NFL 25, NBA Live 14, EA Sports UFC, FIFA 12, Forza Motorsport 5, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Quantum Break, a new game from Remedy that aims to blend television and gaming. 15 new games will be released during the first year that Xbox One is available, with eight of those being new franchises.

Though no exact release date was given, the Xbox One will launch around the world "later this year." More information about the console and its upcoming games will be available at E3 in June.

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Reconstructing The Oklahoma Tornado From Start To Finish, In Videos

Reconstructing The Oklahoma Tornado From Start To Finish, In Videos:

The EF-4 Moore, Okla., Tornado, May 20, 2013

This is what real destruction looks like.
The devastation wrought by the mile-wide, EF-4 tornado that ripped through Moore, Okla., and south Oklahoma City yesterday is really difficult to put into words. You could start with the huge path of destruction, more than a mile wide at places, that wiped entire neighborhoods clean off the map like they were never even there. It's more difficult when you get to the two elementary schools--concrete and cinder block buildings that gave way to the truly devastating force of this storm.
It's tough to describe and easier to show. And given the camera-fication of everything these days, there's plenty of footage floating around the web today, enough that one can pretty much reconstruct this twister--which was on the ground for 40 minutes with winds up to 200 miles per hour--from start to finish. Which is exactly what we've done below.
1. In Newcastle, Okla., (just southwest of Moore and due west of Norman), the funnel drops from the sky and starts picking up steam (and debris).

2. By the time this thing reaches Moore, it's a monster. Even seasoned storm chasers can't believe what they are seeing.

3. It doesn't get better. The video below begins with footage shot near South Moore High School but culminates with scenes shot from a devastated neighborhood just minutes after the storm more or less flattened it.

4. Another perspective captured by a storm chaser from the east side of Moore offers a clear view of the massive, swirling debris field gathered by the funnel. At this point the tornado has traveled roughly three-quarters of its total journey and is tearing through the heart of Moore.

5. Just west of Lake Stanley Draper the tornado stops moving and begins to rope out and dissipate.

6. And of course there's the timelapse, which quickly conveys--in a few brief, sped-up clips--just how destructive this storm was as it gathered steam and then slammed into the sprawling suburbia of Moore.

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Unknown Mathematician Proves Surprising Property of Prime Numbers

Unknown Mathematician Proves Surprising Property of Prime Numbers:

An unknown mathematician, Yitang Zhang, has revolutionized his field and helped move forward a 2,000-year-old conjecture about prime numbers. His counterintuitive findings show that special pairs of primes, called twin primes, can never be more than 70 million places away ...

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