Category: technology

The biggest plane ever built takes off

June 16, 2020 • 1:30 pm

Lookie! Here’s a mesmerizing video of the world’s heaviest aircraft, the Russian Ukrainian Antonov An-225 Mriya, taking off from Toronto.  It’s the heaviest aircraft ever built (640 tonnes fully loaded, where a tonne is 1000 kg), and only a single plane was ever built—in 1985.

This fairly new video from Ross’ Aviation World will probably have you glued to the screen until the end, for once you see this hefty behemoth painfully trundling down the taxiway, accompanied by fire engines and other vehicles, you’re gonna ask, “Can that damn thing actually get airborne?”  And you’ll want to satisfy yourself that it can.

Another video, which is longer, gives details about this plane, which was designed to carry heavy loads, in particular this one:

With the six powerful engines, loads of up to 250 tons are no problem for the Antonov An-225. The plane was originally intended to take the Soviet Buran space shuttle back from its landing site to the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan. After the end of the space program, Antonov Airlines converted the An-225 into a cargo plane. The next order: the transport of twelve electrical transformers from Chile across the Andes to Bolivia with twelve flights in just four weeks.

It also appears to have a gazillion wheels!

Here are the YouTube notes from Ross:

I am absolutely lost for words. In my opinion, I think that this was the best video I ever filmed in my 11 years of spotting (as of date of upload).

Here is the world’s heaviest aircraft, the mighty Antonov An-225 rocketing off of RWY 06L on a beautiful morning. The aircraft was flying back to China via Anchorage. The An-225 flew in the day before to bring in medical supplies related to COVID-19. Something really good came out of this awful pandemic.

TIME STAMPS:

0:59 – Antonov An-225 taxiing

1:20 – Head-on with the An-225, taxiing on Delta

4:25 – Engine run-up

5:38 – Takeoff roll on 06L

6:15 – Liftoff

Vatican launches smart “e-rosary” that connects to an app and tracks your “bead progress”

October 24, 2019 • 1:00 pm

No, this e-rosary is not a joke, but a real item launched by the Vatican, during the Month of the Rosary, clearly in a desperate attempt to keep young people wedded to Catholicism. You can read about this remarkable religious innovation at the two sites below (click on screenshot):

From Fox 35 Orlando:

Verification via the Vatican News:

Here it is!

And how it works (my emphasis):

In an effort to get more young people to pray for world peace, the Vatican has launched a $110 wearable digital rosary, called the “Click To Pray eRosary.”

The “Click to Pray” eRosary can be worn as a bracelet and links to a mobile app that becomes activated when the user makes the sign of the cross. The beads of the bracelet are made of black agate and hematite, and the digital device is in the shape of a cross.

. . . Aimed at the peripheral frontiers of the digital world where the young people dwell, the Click To Pray eRosary serves as a technology-based teaching tool to help young people pray the Rosary for peace and to contemplate the Gospel,” the Vatican explained.

The smart rosary links to the official player app of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, called “Click To Pray,” that connects thousands of praying people worldwide daily.

Once the device is activated, users can choose whether they want to pray a standard rosary, a contemplative rosary or one of the thematic rosaries, which are updated annually. The smart rosary keeps track of and displays the user’s progress and tracks when each rosary is completed.

The part that needs fixing here is that apparently users still have to do manual work, moving the beads through their hands. If the Vatican were really savvy, they’d have the e-rosary move itself at preset times, making it even easier to use than the Buddhist prayer wheels that you can twirl in your hands, sending a prayer each which each revolution.

Package thief owned by tech geek

December 19, 2018 • 11:30 am

UPDATE (2019): Reader Bryan writes me that at least 2 of the 5 packages may not represent real thefts, but favors done by friends of the people who left the packages on their porch. This tweet tells the tale:

___________________

From C|Net and other sources, we hear of the cleverness of Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer who devised a clever (and diabolical) way to foil package thieves. In America, at least, this is the time of year when people steal packages left by delivery services on people’s porches: these thefts are almost a fixture of the nightly news. The thieves are hard to catch, even with porch camera video, as they often cover their heads.

Well, Rober developed a way to foil them by making fake packages that explode with glitter, emit fart smells and noises, and have phones in them to not only photograph the perpetrators, but send the video to a cloud. The phones also have GPS sensor that enabled Rober to recover the discarded packages and the phones.

Here’s what he did, and it’s way cool. Sadly, there’s no information about whether any of these thieves were caught; I suspect not.

Henry Studley’s beautiful tool chest

November 27, 2018 • 2:30 pm

Look at this beautiful tool chest! It was designed and created by Henry O. Studley (1838-1925), a carpenter and an organ- and piano-maker.  This is a work of art in itself.

According to Wikipedia, there are 220 tools in here, though Twisted Sifter says 300. I’ll let you count them and tell me who’s right.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about it, which, aside from the disparity in tool number, accords with the Twisted Sifter account:

Studley gave the tool chest to a friend. That man’s grandson, Peter Hardwick, loaned the chest to the Smithsonian in the late 1980s as part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, until it was purchased by a private collector for an undisclosed amount of money. The current owner continues to lend the chest to the Smithsonian on occasion. It has been featured on an episode of The New Yankee Workshop and is the subject of a May 1993 article in Taunton’s Fine Woodworking and a popular wall poster.

When closed and hanging on a wall it takes up an area of approximately 39 inches by 20 inches with a 9 inch depth. It opens to become a 40-inch by 40-inch tool chest. It is made out of mahogany, rosewood, walnut, ebony, ivory and mother of pearl, materials that were probably taken from the Poole Piano Company’s scrap material. The fine craftsmanship is exhibited by the way each tool fits snugly into its space, often with an audible click as the tool snaps into its close-fit cavity. Sections of the chest swing out to allow access to a second or third layer of tools. The tool chest features Masonic symbolism, including the Square and Compasses emblem and Royal Arch symbols.

And here’s a video of the chest (you can find everything on the Internet). It’s from the television show The New Yankee Workshop, but I can’t remember the name of the guy narrating it. (Is it “Norm”?)

 

 

The downfall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes

June 25, 2018 • 1:00 pm

Many of you will know about the downfall of Theranos, the Silicon Valley company started by Elizabeth Holmes, who claimed to have devised a machine that could do multiple physiological tests on just a single drop of blood. It never really worked, even though investors (including Rupert Murdoch) pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Holmes’s startup. At one time Theranos was worth over 9 billion dollars on paper.  Then her chicanery was uncovered and published by The Wall Street Journal.

Now Theranos, and Holmes, are bankrupt. And ten days ago, both Holmes and Theranos’s former president, Ramesh Balwani, were indicted for wire fraud: for deliberately lying to investors and the public. (For a brief period Theranos partnered with the pharmacy chain Walgreen’s in a blood-testing collaboration.)

This 31-minute video is an interview of John Carreyrou by Nick Gillespie of ReasonTV; Carreyrou was the Wall Street Journal reporter who unmasked Holmes through dogged reporting.  It is an absolutely fascinating conversation, and Carreyrou is eloquent and thorough.

Based on this interview, I went to the library to get Carreyrou’s new book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, and am reading it now. It’s a page-turner. Holmes was a sociopath but was so charismatic that she managed to dupe lots of investors and persuade famous people like Henry Kissinger to join her board of directors (big names lure big money). Meanwhile, the company was totally dysfunctional, with Holmes firing people right and left and lying to everyone about the ability of her “Edison” machine to test blood (it never worked, and she knew it).

You won’t be wasting your time if you watch this video. If you like it, get hold of Careyrou’s book.

If you don’t have the time, there’s a similar but shorter interview (6 minutes) here.

A Rube Goldberg machine

February 11, 2018 • 2:30 pm

From Matthew, who says, “It’s not a really an RG machine but it is smart and has >1 m views in a week…”  This is a really cool contraption, and uses just ordinary household stuff, along with springs and magnets. I can only imagine the work it took to make this!

And the video’s notes:

After 3 months of work and probably more than 500 fails, I’m happy to present you my best video ever. Since magnets and marbles I’ve always wanted to make a big chain reaction in one take with this 2D style ! It’s also a “one marble path” which means you have to follow the same marble for all the tricks (in that case the little blue one.) Because everything is in a tilted plane, the hard part was to find different ways of having the marble riding up along the table (magnets, falling weight, catapult …). To do that, the marble has to be light. And because everything has to be triggered by this little marble, all the tricks are very unstable. Most fails happened when an element fall down earlier than expected. I learned a lot about chain reaction, and I discovered the amazing power of the hot glue gun !

How an IMAX projector works

August 14, 2017 • 3:15 pm

I’m worn out by the Charlottesville business, and depressed that some readers are calling for speech bans. We won’t discuss that in this thread (there are other posts where you can do that). Instead, let’s learn how an IMAX projector works. I’ve been to a few IMAX movies, the first being “Flying” or “Flight” (can’t remember the name [a reader below says it’s “To Fly”]) at the Smithsonian. They’re stunning, and until I saw this video I had no idea that a.) they involve real film stock (70 mm) and b.) they’re bloody COMPLICATED! I found this fascinating and offer it as an afternoon respite: