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Megan Miller

Science

This Week in the Future, October 19-23, 2009

By Posted on 10.24.2009 23 Comments
China engineers the world's smartest rat? The mayor of Moscow wants to control the weather? Skiing robots?. What a week. See the stories, and win the shirt!

10.25.2009 at 05:37pm - Comment by Megan Miller

Love this! Great idea and great drawing, Aaron!
Science

Singularity Summit 2009: Open The Pod Bay Door, HAL

By Stuart Fox Posted on 10.3.2009 7 Comments
Ray Kurzweil's concept of the Singularity rests on two axioms: that computers will become more intelligent than humans, and that humans and computers will merge, allowing us access to that increased thinking power. So it only makes sense to begin the conference with discussions of those two fundamental concepts. No one disputed the emergence of intelligence beyond our own, but they did give me plenty of reasons to worry about how that process might take place.

10.3.2009 at 12:25pm - Comment by Megan Miller

Amazing headline. That popped up in my RSS reader and I laughed out loud...
Science

A Ramen-Making Robot From Japan

By Val Wang Posted on 7.14.2009 2 Comments
Combining two of Japan's greatest strengths, a noodle-shop-owning electronics wizard has invented a robot that can make the perfect bowl of ramen. It took the 60-year-old shop owner Yoshihira Uchida about 20 million yen and five years to develop the ramenbot. Now customers of his shop, Momozono Robot Ramen, in Minami-Alps, a town 90 miles from Tokyo, can customize their broth, adjusting everything from the levels of soy sauce and salt to the richness of the soup. There are reputedly 40 million different possible flavor permutations.

7.14.2009 at 12:38pm - Comment by Megan Miller

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, John Mahoney is back in the driver's seat at PopSci.com....
Entertainment & Gaming

Was That A Burger That Just Flashed By?...Mmm, I'm Hungry

By Rachel Durfee Posted on 4.2.2009 4 Comments
Thanks to the glorious invention of television recording devices, like TiVo and DVR, boob tube connoisseurs can watch their favorite shows and fast-forward through all those pesky commercials (I'm looking at you, Geico). This is great news for everyone, except advertisers. As the popularity of DVR continues to grow, 21st century Mad Men are scrambling to come up with new ways to get people to pay attention to their ads. But a new study by a group of Boston College researchers shows that watching ads in fast-forward can still influence consumer behavior, if done in the right way.

11.7.2008 at 04:47pm - Comment by Megan Miller

Nice story! Not so keen on the tucked jeans and guy-liner, though.
Science

The Physics of Surfing (Part One: Dropping In)

By Adam Weiner Posted on 10.29.2008 3 Comments
There are few things more impressive than watching a big-wave surfer dropping into a monstrous "bomb" 60 or 70 feet high. Actually doing it must be quite an adrenaline rush. (I've been out in waves maybe a fifth that size and even then the energy of the wave can be, well... terrifying!) In the video we can see that the surfer gets towed into the wave with the aid of a jet ski. If you're familiar with surfing you might be aware that once waves get big enough (wave faces larger than 40 or 50 feet) it's impossible to paddle into them in the "traditional" way: you have to be towed in. Why is this? Not surprisingly, it all has to do with some basic principles of physics.

10.29.2008 at 11:04am - Comment by Megan Miller

AMAZING! Great video clip and explanation, Adam.
Science

Behind the Scenes: The Making of a Cover

By Sam Syed Posted on 10.9.2008 5 Comments
Welcome to Intelligent Design, the PopSci art department blog. Our first story brings you into the world of covers. The Future of Sports issue was quite unusual for us, bringing together both an unfamiliar image and an unfamiliar topic, and presented some unique challenges. The process, however, is pretty typical. in this film, we'll take you from concept to complete image and hopefully reveal just how much work goes into producing our unique 3-D CG images. Purists note: I've glossed over the typography part: we'll cover that in a future installment. Come back each Wednesday for upcoming stories which will include product reviews that you won't find in PopSci, movies, TV, books and the arts in general and of course more insider secrets. We hope you like what we're doing and we'd love to hear from you, about these stories and the magazine's design in general. Intelligent Design. The science behind the art. The art behind the science. In this installment, watch creative director Sam Syed's video explanation of all the details that go into making a good first impression.

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10.9.2008 at 03:32am - Comment by Megan Miller

Kudos, Sam. This is really fun stuff!
Entertainment & Gaming

The Breakdown: Tic The Spinning Hamster

By Posted on 3.8.2008 7 Comments
Tic, the unfortunate hamster in this video, loses his footing while getting some exercise and gets pulled into the spin cycle, completing nearly 12 revolutions in about four seconds before ignominiously dropping out of the wheel. However, while Tic may be bewildered by what happened during his morning training session, we need not be. Why does he get pulled into the spin? How does he remain in orbit for 12 rotations before falling off of the wheel? How does he finally escape? These are the questions we will address for Tics sake.

3.10.2008 at 03:28pm - Comment by Megan Miller

Here ya go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbmovjSI7I0
Entertainment & Gaming

A Cure for Subscription Fatigue

By Posted on 2.26.2008 9 Comments
Perusing my cable/Internet bill this month from my local de facto monopoly, I picked my jaw off the floor and found myself on the horns of an ethical dilemma: To be a bandwidth thief, or not to be? That is indeed the question, as the fleetfooted Roadrunner has once again jacked prices through the stratosphere, leaving us folk on terra firma scratching our heads. The deal is, I get the same TV channels, and less bandwidth, but for more money. Genius! Tallying the rest of my monthly bills up against my humble paycheck, I started to get queasy, lightheaded and tired, and then I realized what it was. Ive got a full-blown case of Subscription Fatigue.

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2.26.2008 at 11:13pm - Comment by Megan Miller

If you live in an apartment building, you could do what I did and create a Meraki mesh network. Popular Science gave a 2007 Best of What's New award to Meraki for their ingenious hardware--a series of router/booster boxes that allow you to spread a single Web connection through multiple units in a building. Basically, you get one person who has a wired Internet connection and you connect one Meraki unit to her router. Then you put more Meraki units at intervals of 600 feet or so throughout the building. We did this in my building, and with 3 units (which cost $50 apiece), we created a mesh network for all 8 apartments. The signal weakens at about three hops from the original connection, but each node works as a booster, so you've got a strong signal up to three hops. After the initial investment, which we split 8 ways, we all just paid the girl with the Internet bill $5 apiece per month and had great service. The idea behind Meraki is that it’s a way to cheaply spread Internet service through low-income communities such as housing projects, and there are outdoor units as well that can be used for areas where the connection needs to spread from house to house rather than apartment to apartment. People often ask me about the legality of this scheme and the answer is kind of fuzzy. Certain Internet providers allow you to transmit a single connection anywhere throughout a building, and others forbid you from sharing your connection at all. Best to check the terms of the original user's service agreement if you don't want to be a scofflaw.
Science

Welcome to the New PopSci.com

By Posted on 2.1.2008 13 Comments
Organization
The first thing you may notice is that PopSci.com now looks like a blog. That's because we think the organizational style of blogs is elegantly simple to navigate and search. Dig into the content, however, and you'll find the authoritative Popular Science articles you're used to, plus the up-to-the-minute news and expert opinions you'd expect from a top-notch tech site. And here's what really gets us excited: you can arrange the "posts" on PopSci.com in just about any way you can imagine.

1.23.2008 at 12:55pm - Comment by Megan Miller

We've been working on it for about 4 months, but we just turned it on today.