Author Archives: Carol Edwards

In a drone vs. ambulance showdown, first aid supplies get to patients faster when flown rather than driven through surface streets, sirens wailing.

That’s what researchers from Iraq and Australia found during test scenarios with a DJI Phantom 3 Professional remote-controlled drone pitted against a human-driven ambulance vehicle in a busy Iraqi city.

In four tests, the drone raced an ambulance from a hospital in Erbil, Iraq, to crowded neighborhoods near schools and markets with narrow streets. Each delivery method was timed to see how long it took to get the first aid kit to “patients.”

The results from the team — comprised of people from Middle Technical University in Baghdad, University of Mosul, University of South Australia, and the Defence Science and Technology Group — were published in July in the Sensors journal. The findings made it clear that drone transport reduces delivery time and gets there quicker. Read more…

More about Research, Drone, Tech, and Drones

A year in the life of Starman lasts about 557 of our Earth days.

The Tesla Roadster that SpaceX sent into outer space in Feb. 2018 has now completed one full  orbit around the sun. The distance “driven” amounts to roughly 762 million miles which, according to Where Is Roadster?, means the car’s 36,000 mile warranty has been exceeded more than 21,000 times.

Good luck getting that thing serviced, Starman.

It’s been quite a journey for the spacesuit-clad dummy who should still be positioned at the wheel of the spacefaring Roadster. He ended up there initially as part of a test launch for the Falcon Heavy, a reusable SpaceX rocket that’s designed to carry heavy payloads beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Read more…

More about Spacex, Tesla Roadster, Starman, Science, and Space

Follow your dreams. 

That’s nice advice and all, but you’ve got bills to pay and tons of other responsibilities. So when another online contest pops up asking you to create an online video for a chance to earn big money and do something fantastic (become a “bacon intern” or “chief taco officer”) it’s easy to pass over.

But this one seems different. Instead of a prescribed “dream” opportunity to travel the world, taste the wines of Croatia, or live smartphone-free, you get to set the terms of your dream. Outdoor clothing brand Prana opened the “The Day Job to Dream Job” contest this week, offering $100,000 for the next year to do whatever you want. You don’t have to post about hotels, eat bacon in every state, or push tacos — unless you want to, of course. Read more…

More about Video, Contest, Dream, Job, and Culture

Now that the HBO series is over, George R.R. Martin is feeling good about the future of A Song of Ice and Fire.

The books that provided the narrative foundation for HBO’s Game of Thrones is still an ongoing and not-yet-finished series. In a new interview with The Observer, Martin admitted that he had a hard time working on his own vision of Westeros while the HBO take played out.

There’s apparently a good reason he only published one book during the show’s eight season run, all the way back in 2011 (just a few months after HBO’s premiere): it wasn’t a great time for him.

“I don’t think [the TV series] was very good for me,” Martin said, in a frank admission. “The very thing that should have speeded me up actually slowed me down. Every da]y I sat down to write and even if I had a good day … I’d feel terrible because I’d be thinking: ‘My God, I have to finish the book. I’ve only written four pages when I should have written 40.'” Read more…

More about Game Of Thrones, A Song Of Ice And Fire, George Rr Martin, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

Most of you probably think mattresses are inanimate objects, forever lying stationary until some living creature, typically a human, picks one up and moves it. You’ll all think differently after seeing this video.

The video, shot in Colorado on Aug. 17, claims that this mass mattress migration is an accident. “We were hanging out by the pool and apparently they were setting up for ‘movie night under the stars’ with pillows and mattresses and then a storm rolled in.”

Maybe that’s true. Or maybe someone set these mattresses up, knowing the looming storm would bring about this dramatic scene. Whatever the truth really is, this shit is hilarious. Read more…

More about Mattresses, Culture, and Web Culture

Marvel Comics wants to steer clear of politics. Even in the introduction to an anthology spanning the period of time during and immediately after World War II.

Marvel: The Golden Age 1939-1949 was originally supposed to include an intro penned by Art Spiegelman, the famed graphic novelist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on Maus — a personal story about the Holocaust, featuring a cast of cartoon animals. But now Spiegelman claims that the essay he wrote, which refers to Donald Trump as the “Orange Skull” — a reference to Captain America’s Nazi nemesis, Red Skull — didn’t fly with Marvel. Read more…

More about Donald Trump, Marvel Comics, Art Spiegelman, Entertainment, and Activism

Marcel was always bound for great things.

It’s been a lot of years since we spent any time with Ross Geller’s pet capuchin monkey on Friends — she’s actually a female named Katie with her own IMDb page. But that may change once Y: The Last Man, a Brian K. Vaughn comic book adapted for TV, hits FX.

It’s not yet certain that Katie will make the final cut, but FX CEO John Landgraf confirmed it was her during the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, per The Hollywood Reporter. He first noticed — and recognized — Katie as he looked through early cuts of Y.

In a subsequent check-in with Katie’s trainer, THR was able to confirm her involvement in the show. It’s been a long time since that first season of Friends, which premiered in 1994, but Katie — who must have been so young back then! — is apparently in her mid-to-late 20s. Read more…

More about Friends, Monkey, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

After eight hours of driving through heavy traffic, re-routed directions to avoid congestion, and a close call with the highway patrol, I was more than grateful for the bright glow of information projected onto my windshield.

The 2019 Lincoln Navigator I was driving from New York City to northern Vermont had a “heads/head-up display,” or HUD, with navigation directions, driving speed, speed limits, the time, temperature, and other information superimposed onto the road ahead. The display worked just as well during the day or night, showing me which exit I should take or the speed I should drive. It immediately became an essential driving tool. Read more…

More about Tesla, Hud, Heads Up Display, Tech, and Elon Musk

Don’t have any plans for Labor Day weekend? Why not use this opportunity to kit out your house with smart home products. With Amazon offering up to 42% off select Echo devices and saving up to $250 off LG 4K TVs that are Alexa compatible at Rakuten, allowing you to control your entire connected home.

Check out more of today’s best deals from Amazon, Walmart, Dell, Best Buy, Rakuten, and BuyDig for Sunday, Aug. 18.

Read more…

More about Smartwatch, Smart Home, Laptops, Lg Tv, and Mashable Shopping

If you’ve ever used Siri or Google to call a business, you could be in danger of falling victim to a new scam. 

Phone calls made with voice assistants could open people up to scammers, who have found a clever new way to exploit our growing dependence on Siri and Google. That’s according to the Better Business Bureau, which issued a warning about the scheme.

Here’s how it goes down, according to the BBB: you need to call a business, like an airline, but you don’t know what number to call. So you do what many of us do and ask Google or Siri to “call [business name]” for you you. 

But instead of calling your bank or your airline, the assistant calls a scammer impersonating someone from the company, who will try to trick you into sending them money. Read more…

More about Tech, Siri, Google Assistant, Tech, and Consumer Tech