Hasta La Gadget!

The Mars Rover Curiousity landed safely this week, and surprisingly, some other things still managed to happen as well. Between massive security exploits regarding Amazon and Apple, a terrifyingly odd message written on an airplane wing, a stupid DMCA takedown, and yes, a bunch of Mars Rover stuff, a lot went down. Catch the juiciest bits below. More »

LONDON (AP) — Mo Farah won the 5,000 meters to complete an Olympic distance double for Britain on Saturday night.

Backed by a boistrous, capacity crowd at 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium, Farah surged ahead late and held on to win in 13 minutes, 41.66 seconds. He still had the energy to do a few playful situps on the track before he grabbed a flag for the real celebrations.

Dejen Gebremeskel of Ethiopia won silver in 13:41.98, while Thomas Longosiwa of Kenya took bronze in 13:42.36.

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WASHINGTON — Polls show that Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s pick as vice presidential running mate, was still unknown to a majority of Americans as Romney announced his selection on Saturday. While Ryan’s controversial budget plan has suffered in similar obscurity, polling also shows that it will be a potential weakness for Republicans because of a wider debate over its impact. It explains why Democrats are already leaping at the chance to make the Ryan budget a central focus of the fall campaign.

A CNN/ORC International poll conducted just last week asked a national sample of Americans about “Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.” Twenty-seven percent rated him favorably and 19 percent unfavorably, but many said they had either never heard of Ryan (38 percent) or had no opinion of him (16 percent). Ryan’s positive marks on the new poll were only slightly better than on polls conducted by CNN and other national news organizations a year ago.

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More on Paul Ryan

A couple of months back, DARPA announced it’d been working on developing technologies to help during natural or “man-made” disasters, and this TEMP plan (Tactically Expandable Maritime Platform) included the addition of four key modular systems — one of which was sea-delivery vehicles such as that monstrous one pictured above. Dubbed Captive Air Amphibious Transporters, or CAAT for short, the rugged wheeler gets its drive-on-agua powers from air-filled pontoons, with its main purpose being to carry “containers over water and directly onto shore.” However, according to DARPA’s program manager, Scott Littlefield, it is more about the big picture, saying, “To allow military ships and aircraft to focus on unique military missions they alone can fulfill, it makes sense to develop technologies to leverage standard commercial container ships.” Thanks to a vid uploaded by DARPA itself, you can now get a feel for what CAAT’s all about, so head over past the break — where you’ll find a quick preview of the ATV carrier in action.

Continue reading DARPA’s Captive Air Amphibious Transporter can drive on water, help during disaster relief (video)

Filed under: Transportation

DARPA’s Captive Air Amphibious Transporter can drive on water, help during disaster relief (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Aug 2012 13:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Feds are pounding at your door. You have to destroy the evidence now. But they’ve cut the power! Your sophisticated top-of-the-line paper shredder needs electricity. What now?! The manual shredder has your back. More »