Trampolines can be tons of fun, but with most of them there isn’t enough room to try out anything truly spectacular.

That’s not a problem with this humongous 170-foot long monster, which gives you plenty of room to combine your bouncing skills with a gymnastic tumbling routine. Just try to avoid going off the center line as the trampoline isn’t any wider than standard.
via Read More → "Every park should have its own awesome 170-foot long trampoline"

Stunning views, lots of elbow room, and complete custom living are just a few of the benefits of space settlements — and we might just be closer to attaining them than you’d think. 

Elon Musk, founder of the private space transport company SpaceX, earlier this month outlined plans for the colonization of Mars, something he says can get under way in the next 10 to 20 years with the first manned mission to the Red Planet. If the first settlement is designed to build and sustain additional settlements, colonization could proceed from there quite rapidly, … Read More → "Elon Musk’s plan for life on Mars"

… Read More → "3-D printing on a budget"

Remember those BASIC programs you typed into your C64? Now there’s a book written about one. And the program is only 1 line. And 10 people wrote this book. As one. And they’re not lunatics but teach at MIT and USC and other fancy places. And they even wrote programs to study it.
via Boing Boing

< … Read More → "Collaborative critical study of one-line BASIC program written for the Commodore 64"

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Hirobo is a Japanese company that’s best known for its line of smallish remote control helicopters. So that’s nice. But now, the company is thinking bigger. Not a lot bigger, but just big enough to carry you to work and back every day in a one-seater coaxial personal microhelicopter.

Called the HX-1, Hirobo’s helicopter can hoist a single person into the air at speeds … Read More → "R/C aircraft company developing personal electric helicopter"

With the recent launch of Windows 8 and the Surface tablets, Microsoft has reversed its user interface strategy. From a traditional Gates-driven GUI style that emphasized powerful commands to the point of featuritis, Microsoft has gone soft and now smothers usability with big colorful tiles while hiding needed features.

The new design is obviously optimized for touchscreen use (where big targets are helpful), but Microsoft is also imposing this style on its traditional PC users because all of Windows 8 is permeated by the tablet sensibility.

How well does this work for … Read More → "Windows 8 — disappointing usability for both novice and power users"

… Read More → "The first crowd-funded citizen science project to map the human microbiome"

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, says that the missions to Mars by his company will use rockets powered by methane, which can be manufactured on the Red Planet. The announcement came last as the South-African born entrepreneur was giving a lecture in November to the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, where he was presented with the Gold Medal – the society’s highest award.
via Read More → "SpaceX Mars mission will fly on methane"

We’ve all heard of drum machines, but you’ve probably never heard of a bass machine. Appartently at least one exists, and it’s awesome.

This MechBass by a student named James at Victoria University of Wellington rocks out harder than any two-handed bassist ever could by four separate picks, one for each roboticly fingered string. Awesome as that is, it seems like we meatbags might have an advantage when it comes to peddling between two notes on the same string. Maybe.
via Gizmodo</ … Read More → "This crazy bass guitar robot shreds like a total machine"