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Lifehacker
As we move towards battery and hydrogen cell breakthroughs that could wean us off our addiction to oil, here's at least one engine design from yesteryear that ought to be examined a bit more. The free-piston engine, first invented in 1920, are cheap to build and roughly twice as efficient as current gas engines.
That headline may seem like an exaggeration, but we're talking about a country that uses sex robots to promote energy companies. Tokyo Gas is airing this commercial in which a typical salaryman takes a down and out attractive female robot home only to be educated in the practical wonders of natural gas (before his natural instincts kick in). Japanese advertisers, I have no clue what you're saying, but you're certainly speaking my language. [Tokyo Gas via DVICE]
A couple of weeks ago we brought you the shocking news that your LCD HDTV probably contained a nefarious gas called Nitrogen Trifluoride (NF3) that was far more harmful to the environment than many other sources, including CO2. The Linde Group, who manufactures many of the LCD panels used in several popular LCD HDTVs, says that they've tweaked their manufacturing operations to use Fluorine instead of Nitrogen Trifluoride, replacing the dangerous gas with a fairly harmless one. Kudos to The Linde Group, and let's hope the other manufacturers follow step. [CE Pro]
Add this to my "Things to hyperventilate over" list: British police are on the lookout for something called a WASP Knife, a weapon that injects a ball of compressed gas into its victim that then expands to the size of a basketball, instantly freezing and exploding their internal organs. The blade, which was designed to help hunters and divers bring down large wild animals quickly, could possibly be bought on the internet by serial killing-minded crooks. Look at what it does to a watermelon!
Being the world's largest beef producer with 55 million cows, Argentinian scientists tested claims about bovines being one of the worst polluters on the planet thanks to the methane they produce. To do this, they used big pink tanks on top of the cows, connected to their intestines with a tube inserted into their rear end (what scientist technically refer to as "That Cow's Ass").
This specially-created one-off steampunk gas mask was made from leather, brass, and a Soviet-era gas mask. What's special about this isn't that it looks incredibly creepy and incredibly cool, it's that it looks kinda similar to that Nazi villain from the first Hellboy movie. Maybe it's just us and our excitement for Hellboy II that we're even thinking of buying this on eBay for US$650 to use in our "LARPing". Yeah, that's the ticket. [ebay via Livejournal via Steampunk Workshop via Wired]
Did you know that your HDTV has a gas in it that could make you and your family sick and destroy the planet? It's true, a gas called Nitrogen Trifluoride, and it's bad stuff. Apparently thousands of times worse for the planet than CO2, it's a greenhouse compound that could significantly contribute to global warming. And it's bad to inhale, poisoning your liver and kidneys. It's not a real issue right now, but when landfills of the future start filling up with older HDTVs, it could be a problem. Luckily by then we'll have colonised another planet to mess up. [CrunchGear]
It's not totally carbon-free, and it's probably ugly as sin, but a man in Ohio has found a way to get 110MPG out of a 1987 Mustang. He and his team made many modifications, but it's not a hybrid. The man's not a total altruist, though; he's entered in the Progressive Automotive X Prize contest, a race to be the first to develop a commercially viable car that can get over 100MPG. No details on how they're doing it, so you can't quite try it yourself yet. If we were Doug Pelmear, the man who invented the system, we'd watch our backs, as the oil companies have killed people like him before. It's true, I read it on the Internet. [Local 6]
PLX Kiwi, as seen above, is a plug-in device that analyses how you drive and teaches you how to do it in the most gas-efficient way possible. Although you could easily accomplish the same thing by yourself after reading some tips online--Kiwi says you get about 20-33% improvement in your fuel efficiency--it's easier to have something always there reminding you to not gas so hard or drive so fast or brake so much. There's also "challenges" that teach you how to do this, which could be a fun distraction when you're driving along a long stretch of highway. On the other hand, the Kiwi has a MSRP of US$299, which takes a bit of savings to earn back. [PLXDevices]
E-Fuel's MicroFueler, the home-based ethanol production system that makes gas from sugar or stale beer, was unveiled for the first time today in New York. E-Fuel says it will now take preorders for the US$10,000 system, and will ship it by the end of the year. As you can see, it's not the smallest thing—no wonder the original image of it only showed a corner. Given its bulk and its price, what makes investing in this particular ethanol machine really worth it?
