A damaged thermal tile on the shuttle Endeavor’s heat shield has raised some eyebrows with the mission’s management team. The tile will be inspected using the shuttle’s robotic arm, outfitted with a high-res camera and a laser, for safety’s sake. More »
newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http://www.youtube.com/v/-2hwBgRtBjQ&hl=en&fs=1&hd=1","customParams":[] ,"width":500,"height":332.5,"ratio":0.615,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube","wrap":true,"agegate":false} ); Logan McMillian turned on his videocamera just a minute after his home in Christchurch, New Zealand was ravaged by a 6.3 earthquake. The resulting footage shows the surreal state of affairs moments after everyone’s world was shaken up. [Gorilla Pictures via Laughing Squid] More »
The new MacBook and MacBook Pro don’t just want to impress you with their fancy new fabrication techniques, unibody designs and bolstered performance: they want to make you more honest, at least when it comes to reporting water damage. According to the service manuals, the new line of MacBooks include submersion sensors, designed to indicate if the laptops have been exposed to excessive levels of moisture and/or dropped in your toilet.
You’d think a laptop from the One Laptop Per Child project would, I don’t know, account for the fact that it’s being used by a child? A child that likes to tear crap apart? Stuff like keyboards? No? Which is why people are seeing keyboards being ripped up rubber piece by rubber piece. A few of the commenters in the forums (no doubt just regular folks buying them for their kids) say that their units were developing rips within days. If this is happening in the relatively safe conditions in the US, how are these laptops going to fare in the harsh conditions they were supposedly designed for? [Laptop.org]
newVideoPlayer("touchscratch_gawker.flv", 475, 376); Look out, iPod touch! There comes a scratch test with a safety pin, a car key and then even a razor blade. But this tester doesn’t seem too hell-bent on damaging his precious touch. Would a jackhammer scratch it? How about a blowtorch? We could run over it for you, guy—that might help. But still, this touch is a lot tougher than that first iPod nano we got, looking like a skating rink after about six hours. [YouTube] More »
There are a variety of scratch removal devices for CDs and DVDs, but whoever thought of using such a readily available in prosaic device, that proof of creation itself, the everyday banana? Watch the video to see how to render your videos suddenly watchable, using banana goo and the banana’s waxy peel to miraculously fix that Netflix disc that arrived at your house looking like a skating rink. [Neatorama] More »
