Star Wars Droid Translating Helmets

February 20, 2016 by James Hobson 15 Comments

Now how’s this for an expo costume? [AEInnovations] put together a set of Droid helmets that talk to each other in droid speak!

Before you get too excited, we have to let you know, they aren’t actually translating anything. One, there’s no such thing as a complete droid speak language from Star Wars, and two, it’d be ridiculous. No, what he’s created is a bit simpler, but nonetheless awesome and very clever.

The helmets have walkie talkies built in, so two people wearing the helmets can simply talk to each other, in plain old English — well, or maybe Klingon. But when you speak, a sensor in the helmet notices you speaking, and starts broadcasting a randomized droid speech for everyone else to hear.

Continue reading “Star Wars Droid Translating Helmets” →

Waiting For China To Re-Open, From Huaqiangbei

February 20, 2016 by Brandon Dunson 24 Comments

The Chinese New Year is something we keep in mind at least half of the year, and probably still don’t plan for properly. In case you’re new to the situation: The Chinese New Year celebration empties out Shenzhen of its more than 12 million residents for the better part of a month. It’s the one time of year that manufacturing sector workers (and everyone that supports that ecosystem) travels home to visit family.

For those involved in manufacturing goods in Shenzhen, this part of the year leaves us cut off from one of our vices and we count the days until our tracking numbers and order confirmations start to show signs of life. It’s an inconvenience of an entirely different nature if you are one of the lonely few that stays in the city during the holiday. [Ian] over at Dangerous Prototypes wrote a blog post from his office in Huaqiangbei which is a sub-district of Shenzhen, China to share the experience with us.

Shenzhen is uniquely a migrant-worker city, and when emptied of the factory employees there are not enough people to patronize local services like markets and restaurants so they also shut down. But an empty city offers its own interesting entertainment like wicked fireworks sessions. As always, [Ian] does a great job of sharing this peculiar part of Shenzhen culture. He also kindly points out some of the offensive offers that come through the inter-webs from desperate customers who have poorly planned around the holiday.

$3 Smartphone From India

February 18, 2016 by Bob Baddeley 49 Comments

The release of the Ringing Bells Freedom 251 means exciting things for India, and if it goes well possibly the hacker community, too. This $3 device comes with all the things you’d expect from your standard smartphone. Considering any of the individual components alone (4″ IPS screen, cell modem, 1450 mAh battery, 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, 3.2 MP front and 0.3 MP rear cameras) could cost more than the whole thing put together, some skepticism is warranted.

There is speculation about how this is possible given Ringing Bells’ claims of no government subsidies. Considering the prototype presented to the media was from Chinese company Adcom, this may be a big scam in the making. The BBC does an examination of the many ways this seems sketchy, including the lack of appropriate government approvals (like the Indian equivalent of the FCC), and the experience of the company selling it (established in 2015).

Still, consider us curious and hopeful that we may have a new tool as useful and cheap as the ESP8266 has been. That said, it will be interesting to see if the company can maintain stock and limit hardware sales to their intended market or will a curious world electronics ecosystem make them a scarce stock item.

[via BBC]

The Contrarian Response To Apple’s Need For Encryption

February 18, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 277 Comments

On December 2, 2015, [Syed Rizwan Farook] and [Tashfeen Malik] opened fire at a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event, killing 14 and injuring 22. This was the third deadliest mass shooting in the United States in recent memory, and began a large investigation by local, state, and federal agencies. One piece of evidence recovered by the FBI was an iPhone 5C belonging to one of the shooters. In the days and months after the shooting, the FBI turned to Apple to extract data from this phone.

A few days ago in an open letter to customers, [Tim Cook], CEO of Apple, stated they will not comply with FBI’s request to build a backdoor for the iPhone. While the issue at hand is extracting data from an iPhone recovered from the San Bernardino shooting, [Cook] says building a new version of iOS to extract this data would allow the FBI to unlock any iPhone. Needless to say, there are obvious security implications of this request.

Apple does not publish open letters to its customers often. Having one of the largest companies on the planet come out in support of privacy and encryption is nearly unprecedented. There is well-founded speculation this open letter to the public will be exhibit A in a supreme court case. Needless to say, the Internet has gone a little crazy after this letter was published, and rightly so: just imagine how better off we would be if AT&T said no to the NSA in 2002 – [Snowden] might just be another IT geek working for a government contractor.

There is a peculiar aspect of public discourse that doesn’t make any sense. In the absence of being able to say anything interesting, some people have just decided to add a contrary viewpoint. Being right, having a valid argument, or even having evidence to support assertions doesn’t matter; being contrary is far more interesting. Look at any comment thread on the Internet, and you’ll find the longest comment chain is the one refuting the parent article. Look up the ratings for a cable news channel. You’ll find the highest rated show is the one with the most bickering. When is the last time you saw something from the New York Times, Washington Post, or LA Times on Facebook or your favorite news aggregator? Chances are, it wasn’t news. It was an op-ed, most likely one that was espousing a view contrary to either public opinion or public policy.

As with any headline event on the Internet, the contrarians have come out of the woodwork. These contrarians are technically correct and exceedingly myopic.

Continue reading “The Contrarian Response To Apple’s Need For Encryption” →

5D Glass Disc Can Store 360TB!

February 18, 2016 by James Hobson 154 Comments

There’s a small subset of hackers out there concerned with the end of the world. What if our entire existence vanished? How would an alien race learn not to do what we did, what resulted in our demise? We’ve all heard of laser etching metal disks with the Bible, accounts of history, and even just names — pretty sure we’ve sent quite a few into space. But researchers at the University of Southampton’s Optical Research Center have come up with an even superior storage method. They call it the 5D Disc.

According to the researchers, each disc could hold a theoretical 360TB. They can withstand temperatures of up to 1000C, and it’s believe that they could last up to 13.8 billion years at room temperature without degrading — if that’s true, our sun would be long dead before the disc degraded! Continue reading “5D Glass Disc Can Store 360TB!” →

About Those Gravitational Waves

February 17, 2016 by Will Sweatman 306 Comments

It was the year of 1687 when Isaac Newton published “The Principia“, which revealed the first mathematical description of gravity. Newton’s laws of motion along with his description of gravity laid before the world a revolutionary concept that could be used to describe everything from the motions of heavenly bodies to a falling apple. Newton would remain the unequivocal king of gravity for the next several hundred years. But that would all change at the dawn of the 20th century when a young man working at a Swiss patent office began to ask some profound questions. Einstein had come to the conclusion that Newtonian physics was not adequate to describe the findings of the emerging electromagnetic field theories. In 1905, he published a paper entitled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” which corrects Newton’s laws so they work when describing the motions of objects near the speed of light. This new description became known as Special Relativity.

It was ‘Special’ because it didn’t deal with gravity or acceleration. It would take Einstein another 10 years to work these two concepts into his relativity theory. He called it General Relativity – an understanding of which is necessary to fully grasp the significance of gravitational waves.

Continue reading “About Those Gravitational Waves” →

Microchip Unveils Online MPLAB IDE And $10 Board

February 15, 2016 by Mike Szczys 104 Comments

Today, Microchip released a few interesting tools for embedded development. The first is a free online IDE called MPLAB Xpress, the second is a $10 dev board with a built-in programmer. This pair is aimed at getting people up and running quickly with PIC development. They gave us an account before release, and sent over a sample board. Let’s take a look!

Continue reading “Microchip Unveils Online MPLAB IDE And $10 Board” →