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Power Ascender: Ballsy Tool Yanks People, Equipment up Walls more»»
What it is: Atlas Power Ascender
What it's used for: Rapidly pulling people and their gear up the side of a building or canyon
The prototype of the Power Ascender was not easy to use. The battery-powered, waist-mounted climbing assistant yanked people up a dangling rope at a blistering 10 feet per second — almost 7 mph — fast enough to snap their limbs back. So Atlas, a company run by four mechanical engineers outside Boston, set the maximum speed to a more reasonable 5 feet per second and added a variable- speed trigger like on a power drill. Now customers — such as US military personnel — simply clip the 25-pound device onto a climbing harness, push any nonbraided rope through the top, and let it fly. Inside the gizmo, a network of grippers scurries up the line and ensures that it threads cleanly out the side. The Ascender's 10-kilowatt output can lift up to 350 pounds, which is no easy task. "Having that much power that close to your crotch is a huge engineering challenge," says Atlas' Bryan Schmid, "and frankly a bit risky." Sounds pretty ballsy.
Wired.com
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Hands On: 'Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep' more»»
Birth By Sleep, the upcoming PSP entry in the Kingdom Hearts series, reminded me of why I like this Square Enix/Disney crossover in the first place. Beating things up with a giant key is fun.
Wired.com
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Nintendo DS Steals the Tokyo Game Show more»»
At the Tokyo Game Show, it's the year of the Nintendo DS. With more than 23 million units sold in Japan alone, and an updated version of the hardware called the DSi on the way next month, there isn't a gamemaker at the show that isn't preparing one or more big-budget games for DS.
Wired.com
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Inside Operation Highlander: NSA's Wiretapping of Americans Overseas more»»
A top secret NSA wiretapping facility accused of wiretapping innocent Americans abroad was hastily staffed with inexperienced reservists in the months following September 11, where they worked under conflicting orders and with little supervision, according to three former workers at spy complex.
Wired.com
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