Nerd News and Other Stories

This is a bit of a follow to some ongoing posts about 3D printing… Pirate file-sharing goes 3D @ New Scientist:

Tony Rodriguez, who works for Oregon-based digital watermarking firm Digimarc says that valid 3D files could be marked by subtly altering the 3D design without changing the printed object. This would let a 3D printer distinguish between a manufacturer’s file, which contains the alteration, and one made by scanning an object, which does not.

Perhaps such techniques will not be relevant. Michael Weinberg, staff attorney for Washington-based intellectual property (IP) advocacy groupPublic Knowledge, says that while text, music and video are automatically copyrighted, “the vast majority of physical objects aren’t protected by any sort of IP right”. Copying inventions protected by patents is illegal, as is replicating a trademarked logo, but measuring a desk and building a replica is not.

Panicking companies may push for stronger IP laws if 3D printing becomes more widespread, but Weinberg says this would be a mistake. He suggests companies learn from the media industry’s mistakes and embrace the new opportunities it affords, perhaps by encouraging the legal downloading of object files. “If everyone has access to a 3D printer I can go online, pick an object that I want, customise it and print it out,” he says. “That’s an incredible opportunity for companies.”
They will not want to miss the boat again.

Read more…

Begun the Clone War has.

New submitter albinobee writes "The Kinect for Xbox 360 isn't only about gaming; it can also be used to help compensate for impaired vision, as a team of Indian engineers is working to prove. A device called viSparsh, still in its nascent stage, is a motion sensing belt that can help alert the blind to obstacles that lie in their path."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

crookedvulture writes "Intel continues to partner with third-party controller makers for high-end SSDs. Its new 520 Series drives pair the latest SandForce controller with Intel's own firmware and 25-nm NAND. HotHardware, Tech Report, and PC Perspective all have reviews of the drive, and the verdict is pretty consistent. While the Intel 520 Series offers slightly better performance than competing SandForce solutions, it also costs 30-40% more. That's a steep margin even considering the Intel SSD's five-year warranty."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You know what your life's been missing? "Meaning." Guess again. "Direction?" Both very true, but I was looking for something a little less depressing. "A Batman Mr. Potato Head?" DINGDINGDINGDING! You f***ing NEED one of these guys. Available for $18 preorder, the Dark Tuber is expected to arrive in June, just in time to...I dunno -- fight childhood obesity? Hide weapons in his ass? Man, I've had to hide weapons in my butt before. Drugs too. Get it? I was somebody's bitch. I have to laugh about now because if I don't OH GOD HERE COME THE TEARS. Product Site via Dark Knight Mr. Potato Head of the Day [geeks.thedailywh.at] Thanks to tamara and Mark, who're convinced Mr. Potato Head sets a bad role model for children because he's chubby. Interesting, but I don't remember anybody wanting to be Mr. Potato Head when they grew up.

Hugh Pickens writes "Anna Leach reports that Siri support has been a contentious issue for owners of earlier iPhones, but a recent filing from Audience shows that Siri won't run on the iPhone 4 because the phone's chip can't handle it. Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group cracked one of the secrets of the new iPhone's A5 chip after working out that it packs some serious audio cleaning power not available on the iPhone 4's A4 chip. Audience has developed technology that removes most or all of the background noise when someone places a cell-phone call from a restaurant, airport, or other noisy location. The iPhone 4S integrates Audience's 'EarSmart' technology directly into the A5 processor, improving its technology to handle 'far-field speech,' which means holding the device at arm's length rather than directly in front of the mouth. Apple has also licensed the Audience technology for a 'new generation of processor IP,' which may mean that the forthcoming A6 processor will appear in the iPad 3 and iPhone 5. 'Why Apple has not simply purchased Audience is unclear. An acquisition would prevent Audience's other major customer, Samsung, from using the technology to compete with Apple,' says Gwennap. 'The company may be hedging its bets, as it could switch to Qualcomm's Fluence noise-reduction technology in the future.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are definitely a handy way of tracking shipments. Instead of simply crossing their fingers and hoping for the best, importers and exporters can check the location and condition of shipped items in real time, by remotely accessing the data being transmitted by RFID tags attached to those items. Unfortunately, many such tags don't work on metal objects such as shipping containers or oil drums, as the metal interferes with the functioning of the tags' antennas. A new tag developed at North Dakota State University gets around that limitation, however - it uses the metal object as its antenna. .. Continue Reading Antenna-less RFID tags designed to work where others don't – on metal objects

Section: Electronics

Tags: North Dakota State University, RFID, Shipping, Tracking

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Trailrunner7 writes "Adobe, which has spent the last few years trying to dig out of a deep hole of vulnerabilities and buggy code, is making a major change to Flash, adding a sandbox to the version of the player that runs in Firefox. The sandbox is designed to prevent many common exploit techniques against Flash. The move by Adobe comes roughly a year after the company added a sandbox to Flash for Google Chrome. Flash, which is perhaps the most widely deployed piece of software on the Internet, has been a common attack vector for several years now, and the attacks in some cases have been used to get around exploit mitigations added by the browser vendors. The sandbox is designed to prevent many of these attacks by not allowing exploits against Flash to break out into the browser itself."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the Universities of Southampton and Penn State have found a way to embed electronic components into optical fibers, in a breakthrough that could lead to the creation of super high-speed telecommunications networks. Rather than trying to merge flat chips with round optical fibers, the team of scientists used high-pressure chemistry techniques to deposit semiconducting materials layer by layer directly into tiny holes in optical fibers. This bypasses the need to integrate fiber-optics onto a chip, and means that the data signal never has to leave the fiber."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Outdoor chefs that are looking for a little extra searing power may want to consider the Cook-Air grill, which calls itself the world's most powerful portable BBQ. The Cook-Air gives you more than 1,000ºF and the equivalent of 65,000 BTUs of wood-fire power. Its small, portable design lets you take it nearly anywhere - from the backyard to the campground to the weekend tailgate. .. Continue Reading Cook-Air delivers 1,100 degrees of meat-searing, wood-smoking grill top

Section: Outdoors

Tags: Camping, Cooking, Food, grill, outdoor, Portable

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I don't know about other people, but when I was a child, I was inventing things such as a musical instrument made out of a folded piece of cardboard and some rubber bands. Ten year-old Clara Lazen, however, has done something a little more noteworthy. The fifth-grader from Kansas City, Missouri, built a model of a molecule that is new to science. If the molecule itself were to actually be created, it could possibly be used for energy storage, or in explosives... Continue Reading Child creates molecule that could be used for energy storage or explosives

Section: Good Thinking

Tags: Education, Energy, Explosives, Molecules, Storage

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This is a commercial for the History Channel's new series 'Full Metal Jousting', featuring the real-life jousting competition between 16 lunatics vying for a princess's hand in marriage. Kidding, there is no princess -- just 16 dudes and more than enough testosterone to turn a renaissance festival into a penis-swinging bloodbath. Truly a feast for the eyes! *clubs court jester with boar leg, pours mulled wine down chest* Hit the jump for the potential for on-air deaths.

You probably all remember Printrbot, the quick-build, low-cost 3D printer design from Brook Drumm that took Kickstarter by storm, last year. Brook’s stated funding goal for the project was $25,000, and it ended up netting more than $830,000.

Since that time, unsurprisingly, Brook has been a very busy man. Saturday we got the interesting news that he has officially published the first set of printable Printrbot parts on Thingiverse. There are eight of them. So far, the only instructions about how to put them together, however, seem to be in this Flickr set. You can follow Printrbot’s progress at Brook’s official blog.

More:

• DIY Manufacturing Spotlighted at Kickstarter
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• Prototype Quick-Build, Low-Cost 3D Printer

New submitter Hector's House writes "'Nothing is certain. Nothing is secure,' reflects one of the characters in Paolo Bacigalupi's novel The Windup Girl. In 23rd century Bangkok, life for many hangs by a thread. Oil has run out; rising seas threatens to engulf the city; genetically engineered diseases hover on Thailand's borders; and the threat of violence smolders as government ministries vie for power. Environmental destruction, climate change and novel plagues have wiped out many of the crop species that humanity depends on: the profits to be made from creating — or stealing — new species are potentially enormous. After a century of collapse and contraction, Western business sees hope for a new wave of globalization; Thailand's fiercely guarded seed banks may provide just the springboard needed." Keep reading for the rest of Aidan's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pentax Ricoh and acclaimed designer Marc Newson have joined forces to create a new 16 megapixel mirrorless camera and a new pancake lens that's claimed to be the world's thinnest interchangeable lens. The Pentax K-01 interchangeable lens camera (pronounced "kay zero one") is also said to be compatible with over 25 million previously-produced Pentax K-mount lenses... Continue Reading Pentax Ricoh and Marc Newson create new K-01 camera with world's thinnest interchangeable lens

Section: Digital Cameras

Tags: Interchangeable lens, Lenses, Mirrorless, PENTAX, Pentax Ricoh, Ricoh

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judgecorp writes "A research team at Manchester has taken a big step toward building transistors with graphene. So far graphene's marvelous conductivity has actually proved a drawback, but the team has sandwiched a layer of molybdenum disulfide between layers of graphene to provide a high on/off ratio. Also, the British Government is finding £50 million to fund Manchester as a center for graphene study and development, led by two professors there, Sir Kostya Novoselov and Sir Andre Geim, who shared the 2010 Nobel prize for Physics for their work on graphene."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a video of a guy eating Funyuns and watching a car engine explode during an oil change, all set to Jon Bon Jovi's 'Blaze of Glory'. I read the Youtube comments looking for an explanation, and the consensus is that the explosion wasn't caused by the oil change, but something else. What the hell do I know? I don't know shit about cars except I'm not allowed to legally operate them in the state of California anymore. Hit the jump for the GOT-DAMN DO I LOVE ME SOME EXPLOSIONS. "Did you hear that?" Hear what? "Your name getting added to a government watch list." SONOFA.

By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics

Here is a simple way to make the small stellated dodecahedron on a large scale. Jim Watters suggests weaving together thirty dowels, so you can make it fairly large if you want.

The connectors are made from short lengths of rubber tubing that have been sewn together at the tip. This makes it easy to assemble, disassemble, transport, store, and reassemble

What other star polyhedra can you make with this technique?

More:
See all of George Hart’s Math Monday columns

astroengine writes "It's a strange irony that to afford the expense of space exploration, international collaboration is often sought after — spreading the cost across several international partners means the biggest space missions may be accomplished. And yet in times of austerity, national budgets balk at the prospect of investing in international projects like ExoMars. Sadly, that's exactly what could be facing the ambitious ESA-led Mars rover/satellite mission if NASA's Science Mission Directorate budget is slashed in the next financial year. NASA may pull out of the project, leaving ExoMars with no rockets or a means to actually land on Mars. Could Russia help out? Possibly, but it will still lead to ESA taking on more cost than it has budgeted for."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Airbags for motorcyclists, whether built into the vehicle (a la Honda) or the rider's apparel (like the D-Air, Spidi and Hit-Air), are not a new idea. But Canadian inventor Rejean Neron's Safety Sphere concept has to be the most, well, all-encompassing of those we've seen. Described as an "inflatable crash garment for non-enclosed vehicle riders", Safety Sphere isn't so much built into the rider's suit as it is the rider's suit. In the event of an accident, the intended results are nothing if not dramatic, as the CG video promo ably illustrates... Continue Reading Dramatic "Safety Sphere" concept provides all-round protection for motorcyclists

Section: Motorcycles

Tags: Airbags, Concept, Motorcycles, Safety

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Lake Vostok, the pristine lake hidden under two and a half miles of Antarctic glacier for almost 20-million years, has finally been reached by the drill of Russian scientists. They hope to develop a better understanding of the earth 20-million years ago, but will probably only develop a strange disease from whatever the hell's down there and then we'll have to nuke the continent to save humanity. What? I'm a glass half-empty kinda guy! 'If it goes well, a breakthrough opens up a whole new chapter in our understanding of our planet and possibly moons in our solar system and planets far beyond. 'If it doesn't go well, it casts a pall over the whole effort to explore this wet underside of Antarctica.' AHAHAHAHHAHA, "and if it doesn't go well we wasted a lot of time and effort and didn't get anything from it". Or did they? Are you thinking what I'm thinking? "Pump the water up, bottle it, and sell it to rich people?" Even better! SAY we did all that, but then just sell them my dirty bath water. "My God, you're a genius!" Thanks, I've been wearing my thinking cap overtime lately. "Those are women's underwear." THEY WORK WONDERS. Breakthrough! Russian scientists drill into Antarctic lake buried under the ice for 20 million years [dailymail] Thanks to Si, who wants to be the first to drink from the sacred lake to see if he gains superpowers. If he does, he plans on ruling over the lake like his own personal Lazarus Pit. I like your style!