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In a Security Test, 3-D Printed Gun Smuggled Into Israeli Parliament

GenieGenieGenie writes “After all the talk of printed guns and the problems they pose to traditional methods of perimeter security, we get a live demo courtesy of some rather brave journalists from Israel’s Channel 10, who took the plastic weapon known as the Liberator past security into the Israeli parliament, and held it within meters of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I say brave because had they been caught pulling this stunt, which involved taking their toy out of the bag while sitting in the audience of a speech by the prime minister, they would have faced some real steel. Haaretz has the video (sorry, Hebrew only at the moment) [Google-translated version of the article — Ed.] where you can follow the breach (from ~6:30) and see them pass the metal detector and the moment when the gun comes out. The movie also shows some testing of the gun in a police-supervised weapons range. Parliament security officials said that ‘this is a new phenomenon and they are checking the subject to give it a professional solution as quickly as possible.’ I hope this doesn’t mean we will now officially face an era of ever more intruding security checks at entrances to events like this.” Would-be Liberator printers, take note: the testing shows the barrel violently separating from the rest of the gun. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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In a Security Test, 3-D Printed Gun Smuggled Into Israeli Parliament

What Your Flight Number Actually Means

Traveling this summer? Don’t forget to pack the suntan lotion. And check in to your flight online. And check if your flight is delayed using your flight number. Speaking of, how the hell do airplanes come up with flight numbers? Apparently there’s a system! Like did you know flights that go east or north are usually given even numbers while west and south flights have odd flight numbers. Read more…

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What Your Flight Number Actually Means

Navy awards weaponized railgun manufacturing contract to BAE Systems

Just over 18 months after making its video debut , the Navy’s electromagnetic railgun has a manufacturer. BAE Systems — known for e-ink-powered tank camouflage , autonomous spiderbots and machine-gun-mounted lasers — won the government contract and hopes to have phase-two prototypes ready “as early as next year.” While the current design is capable of firing one shot, the Office of Navy Research hopes for six to ten shots per minute. If that doesn’t scare you, consider this: The pulse-driven projectiles travel at Mach 6 and can hit targets over 100 nautical miles away. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to rethink that career of sailing the high seas as a pirate and get to work on that accounting degree instead. Filed under: Science Comments Via: Defense Tech Source: BAE Systems

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Navy awards weaponized railgun manufacturing contract to BAE Systems

Bluebox reveals Android security hole, may affect 99 percent of devices

Researchers at Bluebox Security have revealed a disturbing flaw in Android’s security model, which the group claims may affect up to 99 percent of Android devices in existence. According to Bluebox, this vulnerability has existed since Android 1.6 (Donut) , which gives malicious app developers the ability to modify the code of a legitimate APK, all without breaking its cryptographic signature — thereby allowing the installation to go unnoticed. To pull off the exploit, a rotten app developer would first need to trick an unknowing user into installing the malicious update, but hackers could theoretically gain full control of a user’s phone if the “update” posed as a system file from the manufacturer. Bluebox claims that it notified Google of the exploit in February. According to CIO , Bluebox CTO Jeff Forristal has named the Galaxy S 4 as the only device that’s currently immune to the exploit — which suggests that a security patch may already exist. Forristal further claims that Google is working on an update for its Nexus devices. In response to our inquiry, Google told us that it currently has no comment. We certainly hope that device manufacturers do the responsible thing and distribute timely security patches to resolve this issue. Absent that, you can protect yourself by installing updates through the Play Store and Android’s built-in system update utility. Filed under: Software , Mobile , Google Comments Source: Bluebox Security , CIO

What Are the Weirdest Languages in the World?

According to Idibon, a company that makes language processing applications, these are the weirdest languages on different continents: In North America: Chalcatongo Mixtec, Choctaw, Mesa Grande Diegueño, Kutenai, and Zoque; in South America: Paumarí and Trumai; in Australia/Oceania: Pitjantjatjara and Lavukaleve; in Africa: Harar Oromo, Iraqw, Kongo, Mumuye, Ju|’hoan, and Khoekhoe; in Asia: Nenets, Eastern Armenian, Abkhaz, Ladakhi, and Mandarin; and in Europe: German, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech, and Spanish. But is weirdness relative? Maybe the World Atlas of Language Structures provides a source for objective evaluation. Here’s what Idibon did with it: For each value that a language has, we calculate the relative frequency of that value for all the other languages that are coded for it. So if we had included subject-object-verb order then English would’ve gotten a value of 0.355 (we actually normalized these values according to the overal entropy for each feature, so it wasn’t exactly 0.355, but you get the idea). The Weirdness Index is then an average across the 21 unique structural features. But because different features have different numbers of values and we want to reduce skewing, we actually take the harmonic mean (and because we want bigger numbers = more weird, we actually subtract the mean from one). In this blog post, I’ll only report languages that have a value filled in for at least two-thirds of features (239 languages). What’s the weirdest language (subjectively speaking) that you’ve ever encountered? Link -via Marginal Revolution (Photo: Amazon.com)

The Fast, Fuel-Efficient Adastra: Officially the World’s Most Bad-Ass Superyacht

If there’s one thing we all hate, it’s losing a yacht race. Owning a yacht and taking the time to think up a really clever name for it, only to become the laughingstock of the marina because it’s too slow, is a feeling few of us enjoy. That’s why when my next paycheck comes in, I’m going to pick one of these Adastra superyachts up. The trimaran design keeps most of the boat out of the water, allowing for swift speed with less fuel consumption; as soon as I’m skipper, I’ll ensure my old yacht-racing nemesis, Blake Chambers, will regretta his next Regatta. Every time I turn these lights on, I whisper to myself: “Boo-yah” (more…)

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The Fast, Fuel-Efficient Adastra: Officially the World’s Most Bad-Ass Superyacht

Accept The Fact That You’re Aging Breath Spray

Accept The Fact That You’re Aging Breath Spray We heard that you were getting old. Not to worry. Now you can make the bitterness of life more palatable with The Accept The Fact That You’re Aging Breath Spray from the NeatoShop. This spearmint-flavored breath spray is less emotionally painful than therapy and much cheaper than plastic surgery. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Personal Care items. Link

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Accept The Fact That You’re Aging Breath Spray

Hawkmoths use their genitals to scare off bats

Bats hunt moths and other insects by using echolocation, where they emit ultrasonic calls and analyze the rebounding sound. So to avoid getting eaten by hungry bats, hawkmoths blast the flying mammals with their own ultrasound…which comes from their genitals. Seriously. Read more…

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Hawkmoths use their genitals to scare off bats

IKEA Uses a Staggering One Percent of the World’s Wood

The easiest joke to make about IKEA is that few of its products—from shelves to meatballs—are made from what they seem. But even particleboard still requires wood—and a lot of it, when you’re selling 100 million products every year. Read more…

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IKEA Uses a Staggering One Percent of the World’s Wood

Optical transistor switches states by trapping a single photon

NIST Optical connections are slowly replacing wires as a means of shuffling bits in between systems—there are already plans afoot to have different components within a single system communicate via an optical connection. But, so far at least, all the processing of those bits is taking place using electrons. Yesterday’s edition of Science includes a demonstration of an all-optical transistor that can be switched between its on and off states using a single photon. Although it’s an impressive demonstration of physics, the work also indicates that we’re likely to stick with electrons for a while, given that the transistor required two lasers and a cloud of a cold atomic gas. The work relied on a cold gas of cesium atoms. These atoms have an extremely convenient property: two closely separated ground states, each with a corresponding excited state. All of these states are separated by an energy that corresponds to a specific wavelength of light, so using a laser of that wavelength allows you to shift the system into a different state. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ken May

Author: kenmay