Pwdr is an open source powder-based rapid prototyping machine. Its goal is to promote experiments and innovations in powder-based rapid-prototyping. The machine is ready to use both the 3DP as the SLS process with minimal adaption, although the printer is currently prepped for 3DP.
Sintered powder printers have a ton more detail than deposition printers…this could be really interesting.
In this paper we will discuss the design and inner workings of the Onity HT lock system for hotels. Approximately ten million Onity HT locks are installed in hotels worldwide. This accounts for over half of all the installed hotel locks and can be found in approximately a third of all hotels.We hope to reveal unique insight into the way the Onity HT system works and detail various vulnerabilities therein.
Where by “reveal vulnerabilities” he really means “blow the doors off of hotel security”.
via I, Hacker.
I think I got something in my eye…*sniff*
Here’s one take on what omnipresent visual overlay with network connectivity might enable, although with a slight dystopian bent.
From: The Reason for the iPad Mini – Main – iamconcise.com.
Really great analysis about why, come October, we’re likely to see a smaller-form factor iPad from Apple. The current betting pool looks like it will be a 7.8 inch screen, and given this chart, you can be sure it’s going to fill in that lower-end range for Apple.
My guess? They will probably have an 8GB version that starts at $199, and extends to the $350 or so range at a range of storage sizes. I’m curious what that means for the iPod Touch, long-term…but for now, I think they will likely just maintain the line. If anything, it might put a bit of downward pressure on the Touch price. I can see Apple dropping the lowest spec Touch down to $99, and the going up from there.
Apple is very, very good at taking the oxygen out of a market.
“Morphologically, we’ve built a jellyfish. Functionally, we’ve built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat,” says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work.
Artificial jellyfish built from rat cells : Nature News & Comment.
The LibraryBox project is slowly getting noticed around the ‘net! In the last month or so, there has been two really great writeups of the project.
Hack Education (thanks to Audrey Watters!)
Griffey says the LibraryBox will “take the ‘pirate’ out of PirateBox.” That doesn’t mean exorcising the spirit of the larger PirateBox project, which its creator Darts says was “inspired by the free culture and pirate radio movements” and serves as a “playful remixing of the title of the world’s most resilient bittorrent site, The Pirate Bay.” Rather, replacing “pirate” with “library” makes it more apparent, in Griffey’s case, that this is about open access to information and to books. As he describes some of the inquiries he’s received about the LibraryBox, it’s clear that this device could have enormous potential for boosting literacy and education and for opening access to digital educational materials.
and
Open Book Lab (thanks to John Miedema!)
PirateBox alone is a great idea. LibraryBox, says Griffey, is customized to be friendly to library needs. At first I raised an eyebrow at that. What library needs merit a fork? Then I thought of several:
- A primary mission of libraries is to increase access to information. LibraryBox could provide access to information resources in conditions where political oppression is preventing it.
- Sometimes technology is used to block access to information, either through aggressive monitoring, IP blocking, or filtering. LibraryBox is technology that reverses this blocking.
- One of my current interests is the aggregation of distributed data fragments into a whole, especially as the web grows bigger and more complex. Like libraries, LibraryBox is designed to deliver data in highly localized contexts. It is an instant intranet, a domain of knowledge. Lots to think about here.
Go read both stories, and comment if you’re interested in the project.
In other LibraryBox news, I started a Google Groups listserv for the project, in hopes of getting people who are interested talking to one another about it, and generating ideas about use, as well as sharing implementation issues and challenges. Come help define where the project heads next!
NPR.org » New Projects Help 3-D Printing Materialize.
Until now, 3-D printers have been something of a novelty. The computer-controlled machines create three-dimensional objects from a variety of materials. Now, they are being discovered by everyday consumers. Jon Kalish reports.
3D printing replacement blood vessels!
Researchers at University of Pennsylvania say they may have found a way to create vasculatures using sugar and a 3-D printer. The design starts with sucrose and glucose and, with a custom RepRap 3-D printer, the scientists were able to turn the mixture into a free-standing, three dimensional vascular template.
via Scientists Build Vascular Network Using Sugar and a 3-D Printer – IEEE Spectrum.
Truly great essay about the mistake in believing that “real life” is somehow divorced from “online”, and that somehow AFK is a better, more true existence. I couldn’t agree more.
In great part, the reason is that we have been taught to mistakenly view online as meaning not offline. The notion of the offline as real and authentic is a recent invention, corresponding with the rise of the online. If we can fix this false separation and view the digital and physical as enmeshed, we will understand that what we do while connected is inseparable from what we do when disconnected. That is, disconnection from the smartphone and social media isn’t really disconnection at all: The logic of social media follows us long after we log out. There was and is no offline; it is a lusted-after fetish object that some claim special ability to attain, and it has always been a phantom.
….
But this idea that we are trading the offline for the online, though it dominates how we think of the digital and the physical, is myopic. It fails to capture the plain fact that our lived reality is the result of the constant interpenetration of the online and offline. That is,we live in an augmented realitythat exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies and technology, atoms and bits, the off and the online.
And my favorite quote from the whole thing:
The clear distinction between the on and offline, between human and technology, is queered beyond tenability.
Read the whole thing, it’s well worth the time.