Just over a week ago, film teams arrived in Wellington, New Zealand, and an area of ferns and pine trees in the bush was converted into the lush environment of Hyrule. You can only image the situation as a camera records Bo Bragason, playing Princess Zelda, standing among the trees with two horses close.
Matt Denton, a legend when it comes to transforming tiny models into full-size sit-ins, has spent years making the unthinkable a reality. His new creation, a monstrous version of the 1981 LEGO Technic Dune Buggy (8845), is no exception. What began as a simple kit of 174 plastic parts has been expanded to accommodate a large adult behind the wheel.
The OnePlus 15 was announced today and the timing couldn’t be better. With phones in an arms race to be thinner and brighter, this one is a deliberate counterpoint – a phone for people who want reliability without the constant hunt for a charger. It comes with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor and a battery that will last you two full days of normal use.
Austin’s evening traffic can be a real pain in the neck, turning a routine errand into an endurance test as you’re stuck in traffic with a slew of other disgruntled drivers. The incessant beeping of horns as people cut through lanes, combined with a short lack in judgment at a merge point, can lead to disaster. That’s the backdrop for Tesla’s latest Full Self-Driving update, 14.1.7, which showed up on a Model Y’s screen last week. Anyone who’s spent hours behind the wheel of a Tesla, watching the software try to learn to read the road like a local, knows the impact this update is going to have.
Hong Kong’s Direct Drive Technology has spent years perfecting motors that spin without gears and now those efforts have borne fruit as the D1, a machine that folds two walkers into a single four-legged hauler. Each half weighs 24.3kg, light enough to slip through tight spaces on its own, yet when they snap together via a magnetic latch in the middle, the pair weighs 48.6kg and is ready for heavier work. That combined form can haul 100kg over rough terrain, and 80kg when standing on end without straining. A 43.2v 9ah lithium battery powers each section for more than 5 hours after a 2 hour top up, and over 25km unloaded in wheel mode.
Grogu has a completely new wheel situation, and it’s as awesome as it gets – in LEGO form, with the 75403 Star Wars set. That’s right, Grogu has snuggled into his hover pram, the floating bassinet from The Mandalorian series that always appears to propel Grogu through his space escapades. Just released not too long ago, now is a great time for fans to pick one up for $49.99 (was $99.99) because it’s just in time for next year’s big screen chapter.
Erik Spijk spent more than a year transforming a failed 2017 experiment into a functional drone that displays graphics in mid-air. He calls it Zippy, and it’s a small-scale tribute to Las Vegas’ gigantic LED-covered Sphere. A ring of 144 LEDs spins quickly enough to trick the eye into perceiving solid images, writing, or basic animations, while the entire contraption hovers on its own power.
Bentley has just unveiled a Continental GT that elevates its model lineup to new heights. The Supersports brand has returned for the first time in seven years, and this small number has not only lost a lot of weight, but it has also dropped hybrid technology and all-wheel drive. The end result is the sharpest, most engaging Continental in decades, and just 500 lucky customers will have the opportunity to own one, with the first keys changing hands as early as 2027.
Photo credit: Veritasum
There is a quiet little corner of precision engineering where the roar of factories and the rumble of particle accelerators is miles away, a place where a tiny, gleaming silicon sphere sits at the center of all attention – the Avogadro Sphere. Made from a single isotope, silicon-28, it measures just under 4 inches across and weighs a precise 1 kilogram.
Photo credit: Mario Rodriguez | UC Davis College of Engineering
Engineers at UC Davis, led by Jeremy Munday and his super talented PhD student Tristan Deppe, have come up with a way to harness the power of nighttime darkness and turn it into – wait for it – actual motion. They were working with a pretty basic Stirling engine (one of those engines that generates power by using heat to push mechanical parts around) and took it to the next level, basically.