Month: January 2016

If there’s one thing that rankles about The Force Awakens, it’s that a lot of its world-building is left to the array of tie-in media that launched with the movie on December 18th. It’s a bummer that there are so many questions left unanswered, but we’ve combed through all these books for all the most important details about this new look at the Star Wars galaxy.

Naturally, there are going to be major spoilers for the entirety of Star Wars: The Force Awakens below.

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Much of the information sourced for this article comes from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary, a guidebook released by DK to coincide with the film’s release. Like several other tie-ins such as Alan Dean Foster’s novelization or The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it gives some fascinating insight into the world behind the movie, and it’s all straight from Lucasfilm’s story group, ensuring that everything sits right in Disney’s still fledgling reboot of the Star Wars canon.

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Who the Hell Is Lor San Tekka?

Max Von Sydow’s mysterious character Lor San Tekka is barely in the film; he’s the old man who gives Poe Dameron the missing piece of the map to Luke Skywalker at the beginning of the film, and shortly thereafter he gets cut down by Kylo Ren in a fit of rage. Some of his dialogue (including some pointed remarks about Ren’s heritage that act as teasers for the eventual reveal of his real name) hints that Tekka was meant to be a big mystery, perhaps a connection to Star Wars’ past—many rumors pegged him as an elderly Boba Fett, or even a character from the prequels!—but the real answer is rather simple.

Since the fall of the Empire, Lor San Tekka has been a galactic traveler who eventually worked with the New Republic (and later the Resistance) mapping the remote fringe of the galaxy, before retiring to Jakku. Additionally, Tekka is also a religious man. He and most of the villagers he lives with are followers of the “Church of the Force,” a faith that gathered people who were not sensitive to the Force, but worshippers of Jedi codes and practices. The church operated in secret during the time of the Empire, but apparently flourished after Palpatine’s death.

Throughout his mapping expeditions, Tekka became intimate with the history of the Jedi and Sith orders, making him a prominent figure in the Church and giving him a reputation as a source for galactic secrets the Empire had clamped down on for decades.

The Resistance Is Much Smaller Than You Think It Is…

The Rebel Alliance was always meant to be seen as a plucky upstart group striking out at the big evil force, but by the time of Return of the Jedi, they’re massive: they’ve got capital ships, wings of fighter squadrons, the whole shebang. On the other hand, the Resistance is tiny.

Although the novelization emphasized Leia’s distaste for the New Republic, in The Visual Dictionary it’s pretty much acknowledged that the Resistance is an independent, private force “tolerated” by the New Republic, but not officially condoned or supported, due to a fear of conflict with the First Order.

This makes the Resistance’s actual military might incredibly small. In terms of ships, the organization has no capital vessels to call on, and its Starfighter corps is woefully light—two squadrons, Blue and Red, and Poe in the lead with his Black X-Wing. That’s it. On the ground, it fares slightly better, but there is apparently an emphasis on droid support, charged and used constantly to support what little the Resistance has in terms of ground crew, while the biological members often pull double duty as support and frontline staff.

…And the First Order Is Much Bigger

The First Order, on the other hand, is far bigger than the New Republic hopes it is. Hiding in a section of space called the Unknown Regions, the First Order has been building itself out of a group of dissident Imperial Admirals and Moffs who openly defied the signing of a peace treaty (dubbed “the Galactic Concordance”) after the Battle of Jakku 30 years ago, taking what soldiers and ships they could to the fringe of the galaxy to rebuild the Empire.

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And rebuild they did. Despite officially being defanged militarily and forced to pay huge reparations to the Republic, the Empire secretly pumped what money it could into building new fleets of ships, and invaded fringe worlds to establish itself as a dominant power again. The Finalizer, Kylo Ren’s Star Destroyer seen in The Force Awakens, is massive—twice the size of the Empire’s old Destroyers—and this isn’t a solitary vessel, but the flagship of a massive fleet of similar capital ships.

With the New Republic fleet largely wiped out during Starkiller Base’s attack in The Force Awakens, it seems like there’s a really grim fight ahead for the Resistance.

The Mystical Secrets of Maz Kanata

Maz Kanata is one of The Force Awakens’ biggest mysteries. We know some of her scenes were cut from the film too, leaving her even more mysterious.

While the film does heavily hint that Maz can use the Force, the Visual Dictionary confirms that she is indeed Force Sensitive—Maz is familiar with the Jedi and had many Jedi acquaintances before the Empire, but “never went down that path,” according to the book. Instead, she quietly used her Force abilities to keep her alive during her hundreds of years of adventures as a pirate.

When Maz retired to Takodana in the wake of Palpatine’s death, she began using her abilities openly—tracking force-strong relics and collecting them as a safeguard… which led to her sensing Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, lost in the bowels of Bespin after the end of The Empire Strikes Back, and eventually retrieving it for her collection.

The Force Really Did Awaken

A minor thing, but the book also does briefly mention why Force-strong people like Rey and Kylo Ren have started emerging again around the time the movie begins—apparently the Force went dormant after Ben Solo and the Knights of Ren slaughtered Luke’s fledgling Jedi order:

Since the disappearance of Luke Skywalker and the shattering of his fledgling Jedi following, the cosmic Force has lain dormant, seemingly quieted to those able to sense its presence. The adventures of Rey and Finn on Jakku coincide with a turbulence in the cosmic Force, a sudden ripple indicating the awakening of newfound ability. With the Jedi and their records vanished, few—other than Kylo Ren and his mysterious master—are able to appreciate the occurrence.

The Force Experiences Turbulence was probably seen as being nowhere near as catchy as The Force Awakens.

Why the Starkiller Base Didn’t Blow Up Coruscant

When The Force Awakens first came out, there was a lot of incorrect information that the planet destroyed by Starkiller Base as the seat of the Republic Senate was Coruscant, the capital world of the Republic shown in the prequels. Later it was confirmed to be Hosnian Prime, a previously unheard of planet.

So why didn’t the Republic use the former Capital after it signed its treaty with the Empire? Apparently, to convince New Republic worlds that this government was different. Just as Chancellors served terms, the Senate also regularly voted to move itself to a different member world, to reflect that all worlds in the Republic had an equal say in the shaping of Galactic politics. Hosnian Prime was just the unfortunate current host.

Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber Has Important Links to the Old Expanded Universe

There are still many fans left sore at the ejection of the old Star Wars expanded universe in favor of Disney’s own canon material, and some of the sorest are fans of the “Old Republic” era, a setting thousands of years before the events of the films popularized by the hit Knights of the Old Republic video games. Although Disney have remained quiet about whether that era still remains part of the new canon, The Visual Dictionary does throw KotoR fans a bone in a description of Kylo Ren’s unorthodox lightsaber design.

As well as revealing that the saber housed a cracked crystal (hence its volatile beam and the need for crossguards to vent the energy), the description describes Kylo’s saber hilt as “an ancient design, dating back thousands of years to the Great Scourge of Malachor.” Malachor, or more specifically, Malachor V, played a huge role in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and was a major planet in the Sith Empire and had powerful links to the Dark Side of the Force. Not exactly confirmation that Knights of the Old Republic is canon, but interesting insight into how deep Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke are plunging into Sith history.

Insight Into Deleted Scenes

First Order snowtroopers board the crashed Millennium Falcon on Starkiller Base. Source: Visual Dictionary, via /Film.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about The Visual Dictionary is that it’s packed with pictures of scenes that didn’t make it into the film’s final cut. Snowtroopers actually make up most of the new images, from a shot of them inspecting the downed Millennium Falcon after Han crashes it on Starkiller Base, to scenes of a snowspeeder chase featuring Finn and Rey.

Also included are several shots of Maisie Richardson-Sellers’ cut character, Korr Sella. Sella, a diplomatic aide to Leia, would have been sent to Hosnian Prime to petition the New Republic for the Resistance, with Starkiller Base as proof that the First Order broke the peace treaty—only to die when the planet was destroyed. J.J. Abrams has stated that there’s probably only around 20 minutes of cut scenes from the film, but so far this is our only official look at some of the filmed moments that didn’t make it into the movie.

via Gizmodo
All the Backstory You Desperately Want to Know About The Force Awakens

Last night, electric car startup Faraday Future served up the wild FFZERO1 concept as “the most extreme iteration of what it can build” with a barrage of buzzwords that left most people wondering what the hell was actually going on. But according to two company officials who spoke to Jalopnik, there is a real car out there testing on actual roads. We just haven’t seen it yet.

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Those seeking real answers about Faraday Future after last night’s sometimes bizarre obfuscation-fest will be unsatisfied, however. At least for now.

For those who didn’t watch Faraday Future’s Las Vegas unveiling live, let’s recap. The startup, flush with cash from the billionaire behind China’s version of Netflix, would like you to know that they have an Amazing Team, a Transformative Vision, Incredible Alliances, and They Are Very Fast.

Also, they said, here is an amazing electric race car that we won’t build.

Journalists and casual observers alike found this frustrating. I was one of them. Faraday Future’s marketing message of being “a new kind of car company” that would “disrupt the industry” and “change everything we know about cars” rang more than a little hollow with little else to go on besides the undeniably radical looking concept before us.

Still, I was willing to reserve judgement until I got to sit down with Faraday Future’s chief designer Richard Kim and a communications representative this morning.

Kim’s not some geek off the streets when it comes to designing cars. He’s the man behind the BMW i3 and i8, two of the most fascinating and progressive approaches to new car building and green performance we’ve seen in years. His sidekick was a comms veteran of Jaguar Land Rover.

Here’s what I was able to glean from them about the company’s inner-workings, feasability, and (no pun intended) future.

Do you guys have a real car or what?

“It’s already through the feasibility shakedowns and test-driving out on roads,” Kim said. But it doesn’t look anything like the spaceworthy Batmobile we saw last night.

So why show us a ridiculous, unbuildable car?

Both balked at the word “unbuildable.”

“All the dimensions, suspension geometry, it’s all real,” Kim said. Apparently the FFZERO1, as insane as it looks, would actually be drivable if only it was connected to a powered platform.

But the answer to the question was simple: they wanted wow-factor.

The car was a passion project, something Kim and his design team were working on nights and weekends. It had them fired up. From a business perspective, Faraday Future figured it’d get the public fired up too. “Whet our appetite” for excitement to increase hype for the real deal, they said.

Will we see elements of this concept in your production car?

“Almost everything on the FFZERO1 has a connection to the production car,” Kim said, adding that the concept was “a distant cousin.”

Kim’s communications guy brought up the (very literal, in this case) smartphone integration in the steering wheel. “You get in a $100,000 Range Rover with your phone in your hand, then use the phone for navigation, and fumble for a place to put it,” he said. The company sees the FFZERO1’s steering wheel cellphone mount as a seamless solution to that problem, and it was hinted that such a feature might be in the road car.

But neither would get specific about the “realistic” feasibility of light strings, air tunnels, yoke-style steering thing or jet-fighter cockpit: any of the other outlandish things we saw on the prototype last night.

When will we be able to drive, or ride in, one of your vehicles?

Faraday Future’s chief engineer has been as specific as “a couple years” on this one. Kim basically told me it’ll happen when the car is good and ready.

In stark contrast to Faraday Future’s party line of “We Are Very Fast,” company officials seemed wary of going to market too soon. “The consumer wants quality, performance, price, it take time to satisfy all these demands,” Kim said.

What price range are you shooting for?

No comment whatsoever on this one.

The FFZERO1 looks like a million dollar hypercar, but if Faraday Future wants to “remix the auto industry,” it’s going to have to build something people can actually afford to use.

Who are your competitors?

The answer here from Kim was a nebulous (and very Silicon Valley) “we don’t see ourselves as a car company.” So no automakers, but also all of them, would be competitors for the consumer’s dollar. As for a price or performance segment in which to benchmark it, we’re just going to have to wait.

What are the biggest challenges you’re still working through?

“Everything,” they said. Not surprising when you’re a startup.

The gentlemen from Faraday Future were not interested in discussing specifics on how they’re planning on selling or servicing their cars, let alone getting them road legal for consumer purchase. But that didn’t stop me from pressing.

How are you planning on selling, servicing, maintaining your products? Getting them government-certified?

The answer sounded like an honest “we don’t know” from Kim and has communications guy.

That’s the scary part. Designing an extreme, aesthetically challenging concept is one thing; making it functional is another, getting it to pass federal and state safety and environmental standards is yet another.

The idea of a dealer network was obviously unformed as well. Whether Faraday Future is even planning on selling cars in some semblance of a “traditional” model or wants to go a completely different route is also yet to be determined. We know they’re big on autonomy, so that will have a big impact on the idea of ownership and mobility.

But the Nevada factory’s going up in a couple weeks.

In case you didn’t know, Faraday Future in December secured $335 million in state incentives from Nevada to build what it says will be a $1 billion manufacturing plant. And the company says groundbreaking is set to begin this month. Is this for real, I asked?

There was no doubt on the face of either Kim or his accomplice about the company’s commitment to building their megalithic assembly facility in North Las Vegas. By the end of January, Faraday Future will be building their plant, they insisted.

Both Kim and his fellow representative have worked at large traditional automakers, so I asked: Why don’t shops like BMW and Jaguar Land Rover pull stunts like Faraday?

“I can’t speak to their business plans,” Kim said, “but companies like that are big machines, and things move slowly.” Remember how this one is supposed to be faster?

Faraday Future says they’re building cars without clay models, going straight from digital rendering to tangible parts. This speeds along the production process.

Does that mean it allows for more mistakes? I guess we’ll see how the first batch of Faraday Futuremobiles come out. Or we won’t.

Does Faraday Future still have something interesting up its sleeve, or will it just go up in a smoldering pile of defaced dollar bills?

This, of course, is the only question you’ve got and probably the reason you’re reading this. The answer is still disappointingly insipid because it’s the only thing Faraday Future is really willing to support their claims with: “Trust us.”

We were told Faraday Future will disrupt, then we sat though a presentation I would have expected from any high-end automaker down to the well-dressed woman posing with the product. We were told that crazy concept would work if made real; “Just look at the suspension and frame!”, they said, but who can tell a properly-positioned shock absorber from a prop?

Finally, I felt myself holding back a chuckle when I heard that Faraday Future will “Think Different.” Both Kim and his assistant seem like intelligent people with earnest confidence in their product, not to mention good resumes; the rest of the company’s personnel lineup seems much the same.

But with so many significant questions still unanswered about this Great Disruptor, it was hard for me not to feel like I was less in a presentation by a major automotive force to be reckoned with and more in an episode of Silicon Valley.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Faraday Future has in store, but I’m still deeply skeptical. And I know I’m not the only one.

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Contact the author at andrew@jalopnik.com.

via Gizmodo
Faraday Future Says It Has A Real Car Too But You Haven’t Seen It Yet

szczys writes: You take tape for granted, but it’s truly an engineering wonder. For instance, Scotch Magic tape exhibits triboluminescence; it will generate a bit of bluish light when coming off the roll in a darkened room. It emits X-Rays if unrolled in a vacuum. But this common tape is just the tip of the iceberg. Nava Whiteford looks at lab uses of many different types of tape. Kapton tape is thermally stable and non-conductive. Carbon tape is conductive but resistive. That moves into the non-resistive and more niche tape types. There’s a tape for every function. This instant and non-messy way to connect two things together has a lot of science behind it, as well as ahead of it in experimentation, manufacturing, and of course household use.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

via Slashdot
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Adhesive Tape

John Farnham writes [via Ammoland.com]

“Given that some attacks have been stopped by gun-carrying civilians, Israeli Public Security Minister, Gilad Erdan, in October eased citizens’ access to guns, calling gun-owners a ‘force multiplier’ in combating nearly daily Palestinian stabbing … Read More

The post Israel Discovers the Value of Armed Self-Defense. Again. appeared first on The Truth About Guns.

via The Truth About Guns
Israel Discovers the Value of Armed Self-Defense. Again.

It’s winter. If you drive a car that’s parked outside, you know what that means. It’s frigid as hell inside your car and the windshield is totally opaque from all the foggy ass frost. Not cool. How do you get rid of it? Hit the defrost button right? That’s not all. The always inquisitive Mark Rober tested out every combination on how to defrost your windshield and came up with a way that is twice as fast as other methods. That means you’ll get a clear windshield in half the time.

Watch the video below to see Rober explain what he is trying to achieve and how he conducts his experiments (it’s really fascinating) and the results are truly impressive but the nut of it is rather simple:

1. Turn heater on at full blast
2. Turn AC on
3. Turn off the inside air circulation
4. Crack open the windows

Turning on the windshield defroster is obvious, right? But definitely check out the video because Rober has some tips that would speed up the defogging process even more.

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via Gizmodo
Here’s the Fastest Way to Defrost Your Car Windshield According to Science

LastPass is one of the best password managers around. Today it gets a bit better with an improved interface and a handful of new features.

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The new interface makes LastPass much easier to use, concentrating on bigger icons, simpler navigation, and brighter colors. The password vault now has big icons that include a site’s logo, you can now swap between a grid and list view, and the “Add” menu has been simplified to easy save new info. You can also now bulk select items to quickly make a bunch of changes at once. Plus, in case you hate the new interface, you can toggle back to the old one with the click of a button.

Also new is an Emergency Access feature where you can designate trusted people to gain access to you vault in case of an emergency. When someone does attempt to access your account, you’ll have the chance to deny them in case if you’re able. As for shared passwords, the new Sharing Center allows you to easily share passwords over an encrypted network so you don’t have to rely on texts or emails. All the new features are rolling out to the web and mobile apps today.

LastPass 4 | LastPass

via Lifehacker
LastPass Revamps Its Interface, Adds Emergency Access and Better Sharing

If you’re a homeowner, you’re probably always thinking of ways you can increase your home’s resale value. Here are the best additions you can make to your home if you want to increase your return on investment.

This handy visual guide from Northshore Fireplace lists the top five highest return on investment renovation projects, as well as additional helpful information for each type of project. For example, replacing your main entry door with a new steel door is a fairly easy way to up the perceived value of your home. Other projects that can help your return on investment include installing a new fireplace, replacing the siding on your house, remodeling your kitchen, and turning your attic into a bedroom. Some projects are best avoided, however, like adding a sunroom or a fancy garage. You can check out the guide in its entirety down below.

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Get the Best Return on Investment with Your Next Home Improvement Project | Northshore Fireplace

via Lifehacker
The Best and Worst Projects for Increasing Your Home’s Return on Investment

Almost every wrist-worn fitness tracker now includes a sensor that can track the wearer’s heart rate as another useful fitness metric. But Omron is the first company with a wearable device that can also monitor blood pressure which provides more useful insights into the wearer’s health.

That’s not to imply that you shouldn’t seek medical attention when your heart rate soars after simply struggling to open a fridge door, but there’s a good reason why hospitals strap the inflatable cuff of a sphygmomanometer to your arm as soon as you’ve been admitted.

Measuring your blood pressure can reveal serious conditions like hypertension or hypotension, but until now the most accurate way to get a reading was using a large inflatable cuff wrapped around a patient’s upper arm. Measuring blood pressure at the wrist is an option, but the Omron Project Zero Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor is the first watch-sized sphygmomanometer that promises readings as accurate as what you’d get from upper arm models.

Pricing and availability for the Project Zero is still undetermined as Omron works to complete certification and FDA-testing on the device, but the company claims it will be accurate enough to be certified for use in hospitals and medical facilities.

Because Omron uses a miniaturized version of the inflatable cuff found on larger blood pressure monitors, the Project Zero isn’t quite as svelte as a wearable like the Apple Watch, but it can still be worn day and night as a fitness tracker if you don’t mind a little extra bulk on your wrist.

In addition to measuring blood pressure, Omron’s over-sized wearable also tracks other fitness metrics like physical activity, or even the quality of your sleep over night. And all of that information can be wirelessly synced with the Omron Connect app, available for iOS or Android devices, allowing users to keep tabs on their health progress over time, or to send health reports to a physician for remote monitoring of a condition.

Most fitness enthusiasts probably don’t need to keep tabs on their blood pressure on a minute-by-minute basis, and there’s little doubt the Project Zero Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor will eventually hit the market at a price point higher than most fitness trackers. But compared to the blood pressure monitors that hospitals have to wheel from room to room and patient to patient, the Project Zero will also certainly be a cheaper and more convenient solution for keeping tabs on a patient’s blood pressure. In other words, there will be no shortage of interested buyers for this one.

[Omron]

via Gizmodo
Omron Squeezed an Inflatable Blood Pressure Monitor Into a Watch