No Tech Magazine

Automobiles on Steroids

"This paper estimates the technological progress that has occurred since 1980 and the trade-offs that manufacturers and consumers face when choosing between fuel economy, weight and engine power characteristics. The results suggest that if weight, horsepower and torque were held at their 1980 levels, fuel economy for both passenger cars and light trucks could have increased by nearly 50 percent from 1980 to 2006; this is in stark contrast to the 15 percent by which fuel economy actually increased."

Via Treehugger.

Guido Vigevano's Wind Car (1335)

"Chapter XII. On the way of making a second waggon which is propelled by the wind without draught animals, and which dashes violently over open country to the confusion of all troops"

Cargo Trams, Trolleytrucks & Road Trains

Cargo Trams, Trolleytrucks, Electric road trains and the whole story.

Walk-Behind Tractor

MicroTrac is a small scale, walk-behind version of LifeTrac.

Polynesian Stick Charts

"The Polynesians, scattered as they were over 1,000 islands across the central and southern Pacific Ocean, were master navigators who tracked their way over huge expanses of ocean without any of the complex mechanical aids we associate with sea fairing. They didn’t have the astrolabe or the sextant, the compass or the chronometer. They did however have aids of a sort, which though seemingly humble, were in fact the repositories of an extremely complex kind of knowledge. Called Rebbelibs, Medos. and Mattangs, today we call them simply Stick Charts." Via Tecob. Related: Satellite navigation in the 18th century.

Los Grumildos in NYC

Los Grumildos, the low-tech mechanical puppets by Ety Fefer, are coming to the US for the first time. July 28 - August 2 in New York City.

Antivirus Software Sucks

And:

"It's not just AV software. The entire software industry operates this way.

1. Shovel feature-rich bug-ware onto unsuspecting schlubs to build "brand" (especially in the enterprise/IT market where the person purchasing the software is often not the person who has to use it, so they make decisions based on feature list and brand name rather than quality)
2. Wait for hobbyists, researchers, or smaller companies to figure out how to do it right
3. Buy their companies
4. Repeat"

Quoted from the discussion at Slashdot.