Tag: japan

Press Used To Print Millions of US Banknotes Seized In Quebec

An anonymous reader writes “The Canadian Royal Mounted Police report: An offset printing press used to manufacture counterfeit $20 banknotes was seized by the RCMP and US Secret Service. This significant seizure was made earlier today in the Trois-Rivières area. The authorities had been looking for this offset press for several years. A large quantity of paper was also seized by police, that could have been used by the counterfeiters to manufacture from $40-$200 million. The very high quality counterfeit notes were virtually undetectable to the naked eye. Some of the features they had were uncommon, including the type of paper used, which was especially made with a Jackson watermark and a dark vertical stripe imitating the security thread found in authentic notes.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Press Used To Print Millions of US Banknotes Seized In Quebec

These Low-Power LCD Displays Work Like e-Ink To Prolong Battery Life

The simple black and white e-ink display inside your Kindle lets you read book after book on a single charge, but when it comes to devices displaying multimedia content like your smartphone, a monochrome display just doesn’t cut it. You want color, and lots of it, so Japan Display has created a new type of full-color LCD display that promises fantastic battery by emulating many of the tricks that e-ink displays employ. Read more…        

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These Low-Power LCD Displays Work Like e-Ink To Prolong Battery Life

First 3D Printed Liver Expected In 2014

Lucas123 writes “After 3D printing has produced ears, skin grafts and even retina cells that could be built up and eventually used to replace defective eye tissue, researchers expect to be able to produce the first functioning organ next year. The organ, a liver, would not be for the purpose of human implant — that will take years to complete clinical trials and pass FDA review. Instead, the liver would initially be for development and testing of pharmaceuticals. The field of 3D printing known as organs on a chip, will greatly increase the accuracy and speed of drug development and testing, researchers say. The company producing the liver, Organovo, has overcome a major stumbling block that faces the creation of any organ: printing the vascular system needed to provide it with life-sustaining oxygen and nutrients. Typically, 3D printed tissue dies in the petri dish before it can even be used because of that. ‘We have achieved thicknesses of greater than 500 microns, and have maintained liver tissue in a fully functional state with native phenotypic behavior for at least 40 days, ‘ said Mike Renard, Organovo’s executive vice president of commercial operations.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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First 3D Printed Liver Expected In 2014

CryptoLocker Gang Earns $30 Million In Just 100 Days

DavidGilbert99 writes “A report from Dell Secureworks earlier this week reported that up to 250, 000 systems have been infected with the pernicious ransomware known as CryptoLocker. Digging a little deeper, David Gilbert at IBTimes UK found that the average ransom being paid was $300, and than on a very conservative basis just 0.4% of people paid the ransom. What does this all add up to? $30 million for the gang controlling CryptoLocker — and this could be ‘many times bigger.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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CryptoLocker Gang Earns $30 Million In Just 100 Days

Square Acquires Evenly, A Venmo Competitor For Sending And Receiving Payments With Friends

Square has just announced that it has acquired Evenly , a company that was built to make it easy for friends to send and receive payments for splitting bills and other expenses. The company was founded in 2012, and was similar in concept to Venmo, an NYC-based startup that was acquired by Braintree last year . Evenly offered a mobile app that let people send and receive requests for funds from their contacts list, organized around events and experiences. For each participant in a pool, it would list what a user owed and what they’d already paid, if any, and you could see progress towards the total cost of an event displayed visually, as well as send reminders to all parties involved that they have to pay up. There’s also an activity feed that tracks progress and adds a social element to the bill sharing. Evenly will remain open and active until January 15, 2014 for existing users, and the team says on its own blog that it will give existing users “plenty of time” to get money out of the app and finish collections. Users can find out more here at an FAQ designed to guide those who will be transitioning off of the service. The app has been removed from the App Store, however, and new user registrations are turned off completely. On Square’s Engineering blog, the payment company’s Product Engineering Lead Gokul Rajaram says that the Evenly team will be working on “seller initiatives,” and it seems likely this is designed to bring Evenly’s talented five-person engineering and design team into the fold to boost Square Cash and help it continue to ‘square’ off against the now Braintree-owned Venmo and Google Wallet.

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Square Acquires Evenly, A Venmo Competitor For Sending And Receiving Payments With Friends

UK Home Office Clarifies Rules Against 3D Printed Guns

The UK Home Office has clarified the rules against 3D printed guns, finally stating unequivocally that 3D-printed firearms are prohibited under the Firearms Act 1968. According to an informational release, it is an “offence for an individual to possess, purchase or acquire any component part of a firearm without a certificate.” 3D printed guns have yet to be officially criminalized in the US but it is increasingly harder to find and download the plans to the first 3D-printed gun, the Liberator from Defense Distributed. In fact, this original zip-gun style 3D model has been eclipsed by a real, fireable pistol made entirely out of metal and 3D printed using laser sintering . Regardless, the average consumer is miles away from being able to print a real gun at home, but that hasn’t stopped the UK authorities from fully outlawing the practice. The release states: [blockquote]The manufacture, purchase, sale and possession of 3D printed firearms, ammunition or their component parts is fully captured by the provisions in section 57(1) of the Firearms Act 1968. The definition of firearm in the Act includes any component parts. 3D printed firearms are subject to strict control in the following respects: a. under section 1 of the 1968 Act, it is an offence for an individual to possess, purchase or acquire any component part of a firearm without a certificate; b. under section 3 of the 1968 Act, it is an offence for a person to manufacture or possess for sale a component part of a firearm acting by way of trade or business; and c. under section 5 of the 1968 Act, it is an offence for a person to manufacture, possess, purchase, sell, transfer or acquire a component part of a prohibited weapon without the authority of the Secretary of State for the Home Department or by Scottish Ministers in Scotland. [/blockquote] Considering the possible threat from 3D printed guns is approximately zero, it’s brave of the UK Home Office to get out in front of the problem. In fact I’d wager that the moment 3D metal sintering becomes an amateur pursuit we will have far more societal problems to deal with than 3D-printed pop guns. via 3Ders

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UK Home Office Clarifies Rules Against 3D Printed Guns

How Chopsticks Were Invented

Created roughly 4, 000-5, 000 years ago in China, the earliest versions of something like chopsticks were used for cooking (they’re perfect for reaching into pots full of hot water or oil) and were most likely made from twigs. While it’s difficult to nail down a firm date, it would seem it wasn’t until around 500-400 AD that they began being used as table utensils. Read more…        

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How Chopsticks Were Invented

Space Dandy, from the creator of Cowboy Bebop, coming to Adult Swim!

We’re beyond excited about Space Dandy , a brand new anime from the folks who brought you Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist. And now, this new teaser trailer reveals it’s coming to Adult Swim’s Toonami… in January! Read more…        

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Space Dandy, from the creator of Cowboy Bebop, coming to Adult Swim!

Hydrobee Lets You Charge A Battery From A Fast-Flowing River To Juice Up USB Devices Off-Grid

We’ve seen fire harnessed to power a phone charger for the great outdoors, with the nifty  FlameStower , now meet Hydrobee: another Kickstarter project aiming to provide an off-grid alternative for charging a battery you can then use to juice your phone. But, as its name suggests, Hydrobee is all about water. There’s two parts to Hydrobee. When wearing its ‘Stream Body’, the gizmo can be placed in a river or dragged behind a boat – so long as the water is flowing faster than 1.8m/s (or 4mph+) – and two to four hours later its battery will be fully charged. A smaller inner unit can also be attached directly to a flowing faucet to charge – so could be used as a back-up power generator for your phone during a power outage (so long as your taps don’t require electricity to pump the water to them). Once Hydrobee’s battery is juiced, you can then plug in a USB device to charge it – a secondary charging process that presumably takes several more hours. Hydrobee reminds me of a CDT project I worked on in school, where we stuck a dynamo on a paddle wheel-bearing rig designed to float in a river and stuck a micro bulb on top that we hoped would be powered by it… Long story short it didn’t work on demo day, but that’s technology demos for you. Hydrobee has clearly perfected the hydroelectric tech better than a bunch of schoolkids managed to. The prototype consists of a tiny hydropowered turbine sited in a can with rechargeable batteries and waterproofed electronics, and a USB 2.0 port – so you can juice up your phone or other USB-powered device. The internal batteries are 6 x 1.2V AA NiMH rechargeable cells of 2,500 mAh capacity, yielding a total of 15,000 mAh. It is still a prototype for now. And Hydrobee’s U.S.-based creator has put a call out for Kickstarter users to give him feedback on the sorts of things they’d like to be able to use the device for to help shape the final product. The campaign is looking to raise $48,000 in crowdfunding, with 17 days left to run. If it hits its funding target, Hydrobees will be shipped to backers next March. The Hydrobee turbine generator, which can be used to generate a charge from water from a running faucet or hose, is being offered to early Kickstarter backers for $24. Or it’s $78 for all the kit, including the floating Stream Body.

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Hydrobee Lets You Charge A Battery From A Fast-Flowing River To Juice Up USB Devices Off-Grid

Watch a volcano birth an entire new island

Off the coast of Japan, an exploding volcano has formed a new island about 650 meters in diameter. You can see it spewing and spouting off black volcanic ash all around as it fills itself out. Pretty cool. Read more…        

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Watch a volcano birth an entire new island