Hasta La Gadget!

Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc is touting what it thinks could be the future of shipping on the high seas. The company has been working on a design for drone ships that ditch the crew so they can carry more cargo and cut expenses. The ships would be controlled by sensors and a captain that sits in a remote VR cockpit on land that shows them what they would see standing on the deck of a ship.

The firm says that the drone ships would not only be cheaper to operate, but they would be safer and less polluting as well. The idea is to get rid of the bridge and all systems that are needed to support a living crew and replace that with more space for cargo.

By eliminating the crew on the ships, the company thinks it could cut 40% of the costs of a cargo shipment right away. The drone ship would have redundant systems like an aircraft and would be able to continually monitor itself to improve efficiency. Supporters of human-crewed vessels say that nothing can replace the eyes and thought processes of humans aboard a ship in the ocean.

The remote-controlled ships could be ready to sail the seas in the next decade.

[via Bloomberg]

The scene: I’m in my closet-sized cabin, inside a white dome built to house a crew of six for four months as part of an isolation experiment. As a crew, we are working and living as ‘explorers’ stationed on the surface of ‘Mars’. Our colony is lifelike and NASA-funded, but it is situated in a place quite a bit closer to home, on a remote slope of a Hawai’ian volcano.

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The Swiss Alpine Club built its first shed on this Alpine peak back in 1929 to serve as a refuge for climbers. But Savioz Fabrizzi Architects recently replaced the aging shack to offer more modern comforts—like solar energy. Since the site is 9,768 feet above the ground, each piece of the building was dropped off by helicopter. [ArchDaily]

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There are pretty weather apps, and there are useful weather apps. The best ones, such as Yahoo Weather and Dark Sky, manage to be both. AccuWeather’s completely overhauled app may be prettier and more useful than either of them.

Looks like a big monster is in town.

(Credit: Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)

You’ve probably heard there’s a new “Godzilla” coming, and the pointy fella’s not looking to give humanity a hug. The last time this happened on a large scale, with the 1998 “Godzilla” remake, I yawned, dragged my butt over to the theater to watch Matthew Broderick go to battle, and left feeling thoroughly unimpressed.

I have memories of weekend mornings as a child, hiding behind a pillow as my brother and I watched old black-and-white monster movies on television. “The Deadly Mantis” was particularly terrifying, but I always got a thrill when spiny-backed Godzilla showed up, rising out of the waves, hauling a desperate nuclear legacy behind him. It didn’t matter if he was stomping on cities or going at it with Mothra. Godzilla was a star of my childhood movie memories.

The poster for the 2014 "Godzilla." (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Warner Bros.)

It’s hard for slick modern films with overloaded GGI graphics to rekindle the visceral sensations of watching these movies as a kid. But the trailer for the new “Godzilla” is as close as I’ve come since I reache… [Read more]

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