Even the nicer drones you can buy typically last for just minutes in the air, which isn’t much help if you’re delivering packages or shooting movies. Horizon Unmanned Systems (HUS) thinks it has a solution, however: hydrogen power. Its recently unvei…
Unless the technology, somehow, proves to be drastically limited, 3D printing is likely to the genesis of a manufacturing revolution. Now, a team in San Francisco believes that it has taken another leap towards our utopian future by building a “3D pr…
When you’re in a risky situation, you need to make sure you’re prepared for anything. While resourcefulness can help, it will only get you so far. It’s rather important to have tools that won’t snap when you need them the most, and aren’t just a one-trick pony. Since we’ve all been excited about post-apocalyptic scenarios thanks to zombies and Mad Max, it wouldn’t hurt if a practical tool also had weapon capabilities.
This Li’l Trucker was developed for rescue workers, but could be a life-saver on the road or in the wilds. This is made of 1055 carbon steel, and only weighs 1.3 pounds, making it worth the space in your backpack. The handle is made of a composite reinforced nylon, and there’s a tungsten carbide glass breaker that has been machine sharpened. It can function as a hex wrench, wedge, pry, hook, hammer, nail puller, saw, gas valve wrench, spanner, hatchet, can opener, strap cutter, and more.
Whether you need to make some adjustments to your vehicle or bash some zombie brains, the Li’l Trucker will be there for you. There is a survival companion that will tack more onto the $69 price, but will give you a whistle, tinder, flint, and a sharpener. While there are a lot of multi- and EDC tools out there, you’ll need to make sure you pick the right one, as not all are built to face everything life can throw at you.
Available for crowdfunding on Kickstarter
[ The Lil Trucker Multi-Tool could help you fix a war rig copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Most quadcopters and consumer drones have a central case that holds its other electronics and rotors branching out of it. But Ascent AeroSystems’ Sprite looks like a toy propeller, with two pairs of rotors mounted on top of a tubular frame.
Ascent Aero didn’t just design the Sprite to stand out; its unique form lends to its portability and durability. The rotors fold about 90º downwards when not in use so you can easily stuff it in a backpack. The rotors can also fold down automatically before Sprite lands, reducing the risk of getting stuck in branches or bushes. The case is also shock-, dust- and water-resistant.
The Sprite’s shell is also modular; it’s main components can be unscrewed from each other without the need for tools. This makes it easy to replace its battery and add modules. For instance, it will come with both a 1080p/30fps camera module with a 1-axis gimbal and a GoPro mount module with a 2-axis gimbal. Other planned modules include a proximity sensor and an LED light ring.
Sprite also has onboard GPS and telemetry modules and runs on the open source APM firmware. It supports auto follow and GPS-based waypoint and flight path creation, but it also works with third-party remote controls.
Pledge at least $799 (USD) on Kickstarter to receive a Sprite UAV as a reward. Head to Ascent AeroSystems’ website for more details on Sprite.
[via Mikeshouts]
After a brief – but energetic – flirtation with hardware startups, Radio Shack went bankrupt, leaving many creditors in the cold. The hardest hit? Those same hardware startups. According to an open database of creditors, Radio Shack owes the likes of Afinia, Parallax, and LittleBits thousands of dollars. Seeed Studio is owed the most: $806,051.63 Maker Media (MAKE Magazine) is owed… Read More
We already know by now that the Verizon Droid Turbo will be updated straight to Android 5.1 Lollipop but what the company hasn’t revealed is that when this update will be sent out. According to a Verizon device test engineer who has a Droid Turbo unit that’s running a test build of Android 5.1, the Lollipop update for this handset is going to be released in “mid June.”
Jose Arturo, the device test engineer, went on to reveal in his Google+ post why the update hasn’t been released yet. One of the reasons he gives for this is that they’re still working on ironing out some bugs and until that’s done the update can’t be pushed out, because it would be a disaster to release a bug ridden update.
Still, Arturo’s claims have not been backed by an official statement from Verizon so take the expected release timeframe with a grain of salt for now.
The Motorola-made Droid Turbo is an exclusive to Verizon and just yesterday the carrier started offering this device in three limited edition metal accent colors.
There’s no doubt in the fact that many Droid Turbo users simply can’t wait for the Lollipop update to arrive, seeing as how majority of the high-end devices by other OEMs have already received said update. Hopefully they won’t have to wait past “mid June.”
Droid Turbo Lollipop Update Likely Arriving In ‘Mid June’ , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
Earlier today we reported that select Netflix users were seeing a new user interface for the web version of this popular online streaming service. It appeared that the company had started testing the waters with this new user interface before possibly rolling it out for all users. Netflix has now confirmed that it will roll out the new user interface to all of its users next month.
Earlier this year Netflix did outline its plan to provide a similar user experience across all of the platforms that it’s available on, which is why this UI doesn’t really come as a surprise.
This new interface was first demonstrated by Netflix back at CES and Mobile World Congress, it brings the UI of the web version more in line with what users get on smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles and set-top boxes.
It removes the scrolling carousel that has irked many users because it makes content discovery a pain, and also increases the chances of accidental misclicks when going through the library to find content to watch.
While Netflix has confirmed that the global roll out of this new interface is going to start from June 2015, it didn’t say how many users will start seeing it before next month. From the reports so far it appears that the UI is being pushed out gradually to a few users.
Netflix Confirms New UI Will Roll Out Next Month , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
Spotify conducted an event in New York City today to make a string of announcements related to its service. It was rumored that the music streaming service was looking to make a move into video and indeed it has, Spotify has inked deals with various partners to provide video content inside its apps. The company has also significantly improved the Spotify Running playlists to offer a better experience to the runners amongst us.
It’s a simple equation, people like to run and people like to listen to music while they run, and already Spotify is the streaming service of choice for millions of people around the world.
The company wants to make Spotify running playlists the “perfect” companion for your runs, bringing up the best music on the planet based on users’ listening history and genre preferences, as well as original running compositions from popular composers and DJs.
Spotify will also tap into the sensors on the smartphone to detect the pace at which the user is running, when the user hits the running man button in Spotify the app will gauge the tempo and automatically play tracks that match the tempo. If the tempo changes the app will adjust automatically.
The company says that it developed this feature after consultation with runners and fitness experts, and will also team up with RunKeeper and Nike to integrate this experience later this year.
Spotify Running playlists roll out to iPhone users across the globe today.
Spotify Running Playlists Get Revamped , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
On May 14th, Governor Hogan passed 150 Bills into law and stated:
Additionally, we are taking action to address public safety issues in Baltimore City and around the state, including legislation that will work to ensure that every child in Maryland has access to a quality education.
One of those bills was going to provide $68 million to the state’s most expensive school districts, $11.6 million to Baltimore City, but instead funds were rerouted to stabilize state pensions. I have family that has dedicated their life in state jobs helping people, I know the need, and don’t agree that to help one, the other has to be ignored. At a time when Baltimore City youth needs more help than ever, Governor Hogan made it clear that those needs are not a priority.
Governor Hogan quickly claimed his administration had invested $6.1 billion in Maryland’s K-12 schools, the most any MD governor has provided in history.
Baltimore City Schools By the Numbers
This may be a fact but that funding apparently is not enough for the 84, 976 Baltimore City students:
And it certainly won’t be enough for the 76,667 children 0-17 years of age that live 200 percent below the poverty level, 84 percent of them being black as reported by the Kids Count Data Center, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
What is clear is where Governor Hogan’s priorities lie, as he announced the next day the re-opening of state police barracks in Annapolis, one of the wealthiest areas of Maryland, and adding 100 state troupers.
Maybe Governor Hogan misunderstood Baltimore City’s plea. I believe I heard over and over, “open more recreation centers,” “open more libraries,” “we need more jobs,” “we need help to get out of poverty,” “protect and serve us, don’t kill us,” “please help.” I definitely did not here “we need more cops.” It is a reactionary answer to a system that needs a preventative solution.
“More cops and jails and less funding for schools makes for a great society,” said no one ever.
The Collateral Damage of Poverty
The unrest still lives in the hearts and minds of city residents, but has predictably been forgotten about by big media. Gone is the shock value of youth acting out their frustrations in a manner that people finally heard. Gone are the millions of dollars poured in to protect the city from a group of frustrated people. Where have the funds gone that enraged citizens pledged to help at the grass roots level?
The Small Business Administration, a federal agency, reported to the Baltimore Sun, estimated damages caused during the riots of about $8.9 million to about 285 business and $60,000 to two houses — with at least 30 sustaining major damage.
It is hard to make sense of a system that responds more quickly to damaged brick and mortar, than to the living. Before this, there were, and still are, 54,801 vacant homes in Baltimore City. There wasn’t a national outcry to help the families surrounded by urban decay and attempting, at all costs, to thrive on barren soil.
There are no major news reports about the continued violence in the city. Since May 1st, according to the Baltimore City Police Twitter feed, there have been 59 shootings, 19 dead as a result, mostly in West Baltimore. That is in two weeks. In comparison, in a report by New York State’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, NYC has had 16 firearm related crimes in the first four months of 2015. It is possible that violence within high poverty areas may not gain as many ratings as violence that crosses its economic, social and racial divide.
What is the collateral damage to generations of children living below the poverty line? The children do not make the choice to live in substandard, lead filled homes, surrounded by drugs, community and police violence. Many have parents who have limited job options, limited wages and transportation, but try their best to compete in a market where even working over time at minimum wage simply leaves them in the same place they started, surrounded by rows upon rows of boarded up housing and nowhere to go. Investing in city schools will help break the cycle.
Baltimore’s Answers Come From the Ground Up
City schools struggle with the management of quality and quantity of teachers, students, materials, updated buildings, and an innovative curriculum on any given day. $11.6 million dollars could have alleviated a struggling system, giving it some breathing room. Room to focus on the actual business of schools — to help children’s minds move beyond survival into thriving.
These communities are doing the best they can to fill the gaps with courageous community organizations like the 300 Men March, COR, Bea Gaddy Family Center, The Door, Operation Help or Hush, Angels of Addiction, Known As Monique, and Yes Drop In Center, armed with books, food, job resources, beds, health and nutrition programs the schools can’t provide. They are relentless people that carry light into the most unseen places of Baltimore.
They hope that tomorrow will be better because they chose to embrace today and live with the idea that change will come, a hope so deep that even lack of funding, persistent violence, and boundless poverty can’t crush it. It may shake it and bring it to its knees but, it won’t crush it.
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Specialization, a bedrock of our modern economy, is generally held in a positive light. The notion of gaining expertise in a specific field is widely celebrated, and our fascination with the “10,000 hour rule,” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell (i.e., it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert), is based on this premise.
But with specialization often comes tunnel vision, and we fail to recognize what other disciplines can teach us about how to excel at our own. As world-renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes in his book Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, “It is important to keep in mind that most breakthroughs are based on linking information that usually is not thought of as related. Integration and synthesis both across and within domains.”
Through our (i.e., Steve and Brad’s) collective experience working with elite performers in sport and intellect, we have recognized two practices common in great athletes that can also be used to enhance more cerebral work: (i) taking control of personal evolution; and (ii) cultivating a self-transcending purpose.
Personal evolution, be it physiological or psychological, results when a stressor challenges the body or mind and then is followed by adequate recovery, yielding a positive adaptation. The hard part is striking the right balance between stress and recovery.
World class endurance athletes are masters at manipulating this balance through a longstanding process called periodization, or systematic training that elicits peak performance at a particular time. On a micro level, training alternates between hard days (e.g., intervals until the brink of muscle failure and total exhaustion) and easy days (e.g., jogging at a pedestrian pace). On a macro level, master athletes intentionally design their seasons to include only a few “peak events” that are followed by periods of physical and psychological restoration.
This ebb-and-flow contrasts mightily to the constant grind of most thinkers and businessmen in the knowledge economy, where individuals either (i) perpetually work in an “in-between zone” of moderately hard work, or (ii) work at the utmost intensity non-stop. Neither approach is ideal – the former leads to under-performance and the latter to cognitive fatigue and burnout.
Instead of taking either of these sub-optimal approaches to “getting work done,” those whose work relies on more cerebral endeavors (and the organizations that support them) could model elite athletes – alternating between bouts of stress and recovery – to foster growth and enhance performance over time. In fact, research shows that creative thoughts and subsequent intellectual breakthroughs tend to occur after periods of stress followed by recovery.
For instance, a recent study out of Stanford suggests that taking a break and going for a walk outside is one of the most potent ways to increase creativity. But this shouldn’t be surprising. Years earlier, in Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Csikszentmihalyi highlighted a common theme across field-changing geniuses; they all tend to operate at polar ends of the activity-rest spectrum, either pursuing their activity with ferocious intensity, or engaging in restoration and recovery.
Even after following periodization to a tee, reaching and sustaining the highest levels of performance proves elusive to all but a select few. A key contributing factor manifests itself in memorable post-game interviews, where after breakthrough performances, athletes often thank god, their parents, or another pivotal figure in their life.
Having an overarching purpose that is beyond oneself (i.e., a self-transcending purpose) is common amongst great performers in athletics. In his book, On Purpose, Dr. Victor Strecher, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, explains that nurturing a self-transcending purpose decreases the impact of our ego. When our ego is minimized, so too are constraining emotions, like fear and worry, that are associated with it.
No longer in a guarded state trying to protect our literal “self” from failure, and in the case of athletics, physiological pain, we become more open to taking calculated risks and venturing past of our own perceived limits. Perhaps it was this greater sense of purpose that propelled Lelisa Desisa who, after winning this year’s Boston Marathon on April 20, told reporters of his driving force, “Number one reason is Boston Strong, Boston Strong 2013.”
In a paradoxical twist, thinking less about yourself is one of the best ways to improve yourself.
Those whose work falls in the domain of knowledge can also benefit from nurturing a self-transcending purpose and methodically reminding themselves of it. In a meta-analysis of over 200,000 workers (i.e., non-athletes) across industries, the belief that one’s job had a positive impact on others was associated with heightened motivation and performance. Be it on the playing field or in the office, connecting work to something greater than yourself holds promise as a performance enhancer.
In the end, performance is performance, whether it is a ballerina perfecting a pirouette, a pitcher throwing a flawless curve-ball, or an author devising the perfect prose. While narrowing focus within a particular field is required to gain expertise, looking across domains — in this case, from intellect to athletics — is useful to unlock novel performance insights.
***
This post was co-authored by Steve Magness who is a cross-country coach at the University of Houston where in addition to his college athletes, he coaches a group of professional runners. He is also the author of the book The Science of Running and writes a regular column for Running Times Magazine. You can follow Steve on Twitter @SteveMagness.
Brad Stulberg writes about the art and science of health and performance and is a regular contributor to Outside Magazine. He was formerly a McKinsey and Company Consultant. You can follow Brad on Twitter @Bstulberg.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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