The US Navy’s brand new $4 billion warship is an incredible technological feat. The futuristic DDG 1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer is equipped with two guns that can hit targets from a stunning 80 miles away. The only problem? Rounds for the guns cost over $800, 000 each. And the Navy has now decided that it can’t justify spending that much. Read more…
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The US Navy’s New Warship Gun Costs $800,000 to Fire
Part 1 of Ben Heck’s SNES-CD restoration project (part 2 at the bottom of this post). Since a prototype of the fabled, unreleased SNES-CD (aka the “Nintendo PlayStation”) was first found and disassembled last year, we’ve learned enough about this one-of-a-kind piece of hardware to actually emulate homebrew games as if they were running on its CD-ROM drive. The prototype console itself, though, has never been fully functional—it couldn’t generate sound, the CD-ROM drive wouldn’t spin up, and, after a recent trip to Hong Kong, it actually stopped generating a picture. That’s when the prototype’s owners, Terry and Dan Diebold, went to famed gaming hardware hacker Ben Heck . They want this piece of gaming history up and running again. Heck documented his efforts in a fascinating two-part YouTube series that reveals a lot about the system and what makes it tick. Terry Diebold starts off talking about how he first discovered the prototype SNES while boxing up an estate sale, where it was sold in a lot alongside CDs, cups, saucers, and other knickknacks. After paying $75 for the entire lot, Diebold recalls, “if you break it down to everything I did buy, I probably paid a nickel for it.” Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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The quest to get a unique SNES CD-ROM prototype working again
SEATTLE, Washington—How many times can a publication attend a virtual reality showcase and walk away stunned by something it’s never seen before? Judging by the past few years of Ars’ VR explorations, quite a few . As such, we don’t blame readers who might say, “Tap the VR brakes, Ars.” Still, this week’s SteamVR Developer Showcase event is forcing us to reach into the hyperbole bag once more. The event blew us away thanks to a number of never-before-seen stunners, along with previously announced HTC Vive titles that have only gotten better in the oven before their retail launch later this year. (April, we hope .) “Room scale” VR is a tough sell, especially for people whose homes don’t easily accommodate enough cleared-out space for walking around with a headset on, but while we’ve already been impressed with what the platform can support, we didn’t think we could be impressed any further. We were wrong. Read below to see why we’re currently trying to put our kids, pets, beds, and significant others up for adoption—so we can hurry up and make space for this incredible new platform. (Sorry, sweeties.) Read 42 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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VR games Audioshield, Hover Junkers lead latest wave of HTC Vive stunners
His true passion might be designing and building some of the most ridiculous slingshots the internet has ever seen, but even Joerg Sprave needs to stretch his creative wings from time to time. Which is why Joerg’s most recent creation is an insane chainsaw-powered wooden machine gun that can decimate a target firing nothing but marbles. Read more…
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Stop and Stare In Awe At a Chainsaw-Powered Marble-Firing Machine Gun
jfruh writes: Japan has some of the strictest anti-gun laws in the world, and the authorities there aim to make sure new technologies don’t open any loopholes. 28-year-old engineer Yoshitomo Imura has been sentenced to two years in jail after making guns with a 3D printer in his home in Kawasaki. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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3D-Printed Gun Earns Man Two Years In Japanese Prison
Protesters in Hong Kong have started communicating via FireChat, an app that lets people send messages without cell reception . Read more…
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Protesters Are Using FireChat’s Mesh Networks To Organize in Hong Kong
The military masterminds at DARPA have just changed everything you think you know about bullets. Meet the Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance, or EXACTO , a .50 caliber bullet that maneuvers itself midair to stay locked on target . Here’s footage of the first live test : it sure as hell looks like the technology works. Read more…
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Self-Guided Bullets That Change Course Midair Are Now Terrifyingly Real
This is the USS Iowa, the first of the largest, most powerful battleship class ever in the United States Navy, equipped with nine 406mm cannons that could fire nuclear shells —the only American ship in history with this capability. This photo series is old but still stunning. Read more…
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Spectacular photos of the US Navy’s most powerful battleship ever
We’ve seen real laser guns before, pulling off tricks like starting small fires, or popping black balloons . That’s cool, sure, but it’s got nothing—and I mean nothing —on this crazy handheld laser rifle that eats metal for breakfast. Read more…
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Holy Crap, This Real-Life Laser Rifle Cuts Through Metal Like Nothing
Virtucon writes “U.S. Magistrate William Callahan Jr. of Wisconsin has ruled in favor of the accused in that he should not have to decrypt his storage device. The U.S. Government had sought to compel Feldman to provide his password to obtain access to the data. Presumably the FBI has had no success in getting the data and had sought to have the judge compel Feldman to provide the decrypted contents of what they had seized. The Judge ruled (PDF): ‘This is a close call, but I conclude that Feldman’s act of production, which would necessarily require his using a password of some type to decrypt the storage device, would be tantamount to telling the government something it does not already know with “reasonably particularity” — namely, that Feldman has personal access to and control over the encrypted storage devices. Accordingly, in my opinion, Fifth Amendment protection is available to Feldman. Stated another way, ordering Feldman to decrypt the storage devices would be in violation of his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination.'” If the government has reasonable suspicion that you have illicit data, they can still compel you to decrypt it. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Federal Magistrate Rules That Fifth Amendment Applies To Encryption Keys