This startlingly orange gun isn’t something from a sci-fi film set. Instead, it’s a new firearm, from UK-based Selectamark, that fires non-lethal pellets—and marks its targets with DNA for later identification. More »
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This DNA Gun Will Tag Felons for Weeks
netbuzz writes “Losing a single laptop containing sensitive personal information about 441 patients will cost a non-profit Idaho hospice center $50,000, marking the first such HIPAA-related penalty involving fewer than 500 data-breach victims. Yes, the data was not encrypted. ‘This action sends a strong message to the health care industry that, regardless of size, covered entities must take action and will be held accountable for safeguarding their patients’ health information,’ says the Department of Health and Human Services.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Loss of a Single Laptop Leads to $50k Fine Against Idaho Hospice
By now, we all know that Mars was once home to water and may have even supported life . But what would the planet have looked like when it was lush and verdant? More »
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How Mars May Have Looked if It Was Covered in Water
The amount of people in the whole world is pretty wildly unfathomable. For that matter, even a subset like just the 300,000,000 or so that live in the United States can be hard to wrap your head around. This interactive map by Brandon M-Anderson helps by showing one dot for each of them . It’s pretty wild. More »
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This Crazy Map Has One Dot for Every Person in the United States
If you don’t recognize it, that’s Daft Punk’s Around the World playing off a plastic LP created with a high-resolution 3D printer . It sounds awful, even worse than AM radio ever did, but that’s not what’s really important here. The fact that it exists at all is what’s neat, and it’s another example of how we’re just barely beginning to wrap our heads around the potential of 3D printers. More »
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Yep, 3D Printed Records Sound Awful, But They’re Still Pretty Awesome
The pace of High Energy Laser (HEL) technology has become a sprint with nations and defense firms alike racing to develop more and more powerful systems. Nowhere is this breakneck pace clearer than at Rheinmetall’s Ochsenboden Proving Ground, especially during a recent test of the company’s shiny, new, 500-percent improved HEL anti-artillery platform. More »
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This Laser Weapon Got Five Times More Powerful in Just One Year
The US Military makes its fair share of mistakes when it comes to technology —but over the weekend, the New York Times revealed that even upgrading a single software system can go horribly wrong for it. More »
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How the US Air Force Wasted $1 Billion on a Failed Software Plan
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
Besides greater capacities, faster transfer speeds, and novel designs, there hasn’t been much recent innovation with USB flash drives. Which is why the Paketta from King Jim is such a welcome break. With built-in Wi-Fi B, G, N hardware it can wirelessly broadcast its contents to PCs and mobile devices. More »
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This Tiny Flash Drive Broadcasts Its Contents Over Wi-Fi
garymortimer writes “Earlier this month, Iran’s news agency provided visual evidence that its government had figured out to make a fancy new drone that could take off and land vertically. What they didn’t tell us is that they used Photoshop to make it stop taking off from the roof of Japan’s Chiba University, which built the aircraft and never had anything to do with Iran’s alleged version of it.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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The Secret To Iranian Drone Technology? Just Add Photoshop