Faced with rising cyberattack numbers and heckling by the likes of Anonymous, the Pentagon has decided to increase its staffing from 900 to 4,900 workers, according to the Washington Post. [Read more]
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Pentagon to boost Cyber Command fivefold, report says
Sure, 3D printing is fun and cute. And products like the Makerbot and Form 1 will most certainly disrupt manufacturing, even if it’s only on a small scale. But the possibilities of 3D printing stretch far beyond DIY at-home projects. In fact, it could entirely replace the construction industry. We’ve already seen folks at MIT’s Research Labs working on ways to 3D print the frame of a home in a day, as opposed to the month it would take a construction crew to do the same. But it isn’t just geeks taking an interest; a Dutch architect is interested in 3D printing a home, with the hopes that it’ll be ready by 2014. The architect’s name is Janjaap Ruijssenaars of Universe Architecture, and his project is a part of the Europan competition, which lets architects in over 15 different countries build projects over the course of two years. Ruijssenaars will work with Italian inventor Enrico Dini, founder of the D-Shape 3D printer. The plan is to print out 6×9 chunks of frame, comprised of sand and inorganic binder. From there, they’ll fill the frame with fiber-reinforced concrete. The final product will be a single flowing design, a two-story building. Here’s the project in Ruijssenaars’ words: One surface folded in an endless möbius band. Floors transform into ceilings, inside into outside. Production with innovative 3D printing techniques. Architecture of continuity with an endless array of applicability. As I said, he doesn’t plan on realizing the dream until 2014. So just because he has plans to build the world’s first 3D printed building, it would appear that others have time to nab the title first. [via 3ders.org ]
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The World’s First 3D Printed Building Will Arrive In 2014 (And It Looks Awesome)
An anonymous reader writes “Chris Testa recently presented at TAPR Digital Communications Conference and annouced his development work on a hand-held software defined radio. Running uClinux on an ARM Corex-M3 coupled to a Flash-based FPGA, it will be capable of receiving and transmitting from 100MHz to 1GHz. Designed to be low power, Chris has designed the radio primarily with the Amateur 2m and 70cm bands in mind. Currently in early prototyping stage, Chris intends to release the design under the TAPR Open Hardware License.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Open-Hardware Licensed Handheld Software-Defined Radio In the Works
If Bravo’s Start-Ups: Silicon Valley makes you gag and, in turn, makes your gags want to gag , you could be in luck. HBO has bought the pilot for a very different Silicon Valley that might serve as an effective antidote to that reality TV schlock. More »
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HBO Just Greenlit a Silicon Valley Comedy By Mike Judge That Could Actually Be Good
MrSeb writes “In its continuing mission to build a ‘Wiki Weapon,’ Defense Distributed has 3D printed the lower receiver of an AR-15 and tested it to failure. The printed part only survives the firing of six shots, but for a first attempt that’s quite impressive. And hey, it’s a plastic gun. Slashdot first covered 3D-printed guns back in July. The Defense Distributed group sprung up soon after, with the purpose of creating an open-source gun — a Wiki Weapon — that can be downloaded from the internet and printed out. The Defense Distributed manifesto mainly quotes a bunch of historical figures who supported the right to bear arms. DefDist (its nickname) is seeking a gun manufacturing license from the ATF, but so far the feds haven’t responded. Unperturbed, DefDist started down the road by renting an advanced 3D printing machine from Stratasys — but when the company found out what its machine was being used for, it was repossessed. DefDist has now obtained a 3D printer from Objet, which seemingly has a more libertarian mindset. The group then downloaded HaveBlue’s original AR-15 lower receiver from Thingiverse, printed it out on the Objet printer using ABS-like Digital Material, screwed it into an AR-57 upper receiver, loaded up some FN 5.7x28mm ammo, and headed to the range. The DefDist team will now make various modifications to HaveBlue’s design, such as making it more rugged and improving the trigger guard, and then upload the new design to Thingiverse.” Sensible ammo choice; 5.7x28mm produces less recoil than the AR-15’s conventional 5.56mm. I wonder how many of the upper’s components, too, can one day be readily replaced with home-printable parts — for AR-15 style rifles, the upper assembly is where the gun’s barrel lives, while the lower assembly (the part printed and tested here) is the legally controlled part of the firearm. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Wiki Weapon Project Test-Fires a (Partly) 3D-Printed Rifle
Lytro is on a roll. After launching manual controls just last month, the company today release a real treat. The Lytro desktop software just received an update that brings two new features into the mix: perspective shift, which slightly adjusts the perspective of the camera after the picture’s been taken, and living filters. Best of all, these new features work with previously taken Lytro photos. And just when you had finally wrapped your head around a picture changing focus after it’s been taken… In case you’re late to the game, Lytro launched a brand new type of camera which captures an entire light field, rather than one plane of light, allowing for interactive images which can change focus with a single click. This was magical enough in itself, but the company promised that with this disruptive technology would come even more creative benefits: changing focus was just the beginning. Today, the company delivers on that promise with not one, but two, new features. The first is shifting perspective, and it’s certainly the most important. One of the main reasons our eyes sense a third dimension besides length and width is the fact that we’re always moving slightly. These slight movements communicate with our brain to mark that the computer is closer than the coffee table is closer than the tv is closer than the wall. It’s basic stuff, to the point where it’s so obvious you’d never think about it on your own, but Lytro has found a way to integrate it into its software. This means users can not only change focus of the photo, but swivel it around to check out the perspective. All you do is hold click and move around within the frame. On the iPad, the experience is even better, as Lytro has used the gyrometer to control the perspective shift based on which way you tilt the device. It’s only a slight shift in perspective, the same shifts you make standing, walking, or looking around a room, but it’s a fundamental part of establishing distance and depth. This is possible on exsiting photos thanks to the sheer amount of data embedded in each photo taken by a Lytro. There’s enough data for the company to keep building features for a long while on the software side, and they prove with this update. The second new feature is called Living Filters, and it’s essentially adding photo filters but on steroids. For example, Black and White is actually called “Film Noir” and it leaves just the slightest bit of color in a photograph. It’s with this color that you know the girl on the left is a red head and the girl on the right is a brunette. Other filters like Carnival (think fun house mirror) and Line Art (which is like a cartoon drawing) are more on the fun side, while Crayon (for example) brings a professional grade quality to photos by letting you choose which parts of the photo are in color and which fade to black and white. What’s important is that no matter the filter, all the images maintain the same interactivity. To meet demand, Lytro amped up distribution in a huge way. The company’s previous backlog of orders has been fulfilled entirely, so if you order a Lytro today on Amazon, it would arrive tomorrow — something the company couldn’t previously state. The update is available for all Lytro users in the desktop software, but once you’ve enabled the update and opted in to perspective shift for your library (which is undoable), all photos you’ve taken (even existing photos you took months away) will be enabled for perspective shift whether you’re in the software, on the web, or in a Facebook newsfeed.
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Lytro Reinvents The Camera Once Again, Now Lets Photos Change Perspective Along With Focus