Category: To be used for Evil

Thinking About the Bomb, 24/7

gun-type fission weapon - WikipediaThis is quite the facinating story about a man named John Coster-Mullen that while driving his semi truck attempts to plumb the inner workings of America’s first atomic bomb named ‘Little Boy’. Sounds like a strange hobby to some but to me it represents a pure ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge’ motivation that is lacking in today’s world. Call me morbid but being able to get down to the nuts and bolts of one of the most destructive devices mankind has ever constructed is an amazing achievement.

[via Boingboing]
The New Yorker – Atomic John ( by David Samuels )

Have you hurled today?

Catapult Nothing but fun family time here. Everyone loves to build tiny replicas of Medieval siege machines! Let’s not forget that it’s also a great way to expand your mind…

A catapult project gives students a chance to see that science and engineering really can be fun, and it’s a lot more than just numbers on paper. The real payoff for an engineer is in the field, where she can see and enjoy the results of her ingenuity. And it may seem counterintuitive, but engineering projects not only help kids learn math and science, they are also great at getting kids back outdoors, away from the massive over-exposure to video games, TV and the Internet.

CatapultKits.com

Tape + Vacuum = X-rays?

Simply cool, who would have thought you could get x-rays out of tape? Chalk one up for triboluminescence!

It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.

X-rays emitted from ordinary Scotch tape

Sneaky Uses For Everyday Things

Sneaky uses for everyday things

Now, if your like me you no matter what something does you think that it might be able to do just a bit more. Well, it looks like I’m not alone.

    Milk can be turned into plastic; with the twist of a screw any FM radio can eavesdrop on aircraft broadcasts; a radio can be made from a penny, you can reveal counterfeit currency, learn how to make alternative energy science projects, make a boomerang with a bookmark, how to turn a TV tray into a 6-foot robot, how boats are made with milk cartons, how POWs made an airplane out of sleeping bags and more. “Things” will never seem the same again.

If you want to feel extra inspired go have a peek at what’s inside with these YouTube videos.
Sneaky Uses For Everyday Things

Pick the book up at Amazon, help fund TeamDroid

How to Hack Humans, Epilepsy Sufferers Targeted

Not that I think that doing this with the intent to harm people is very nice at all, I have to admit that figuring out what in essence causes a ‘BSoD‘ in humans is impressive. Reminds me of ICE in the William Gibson books.

This incident is quite possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims: hackers uploaded a flashing computer animation to an epilepsy support forum to trigger epileptic attacks!

RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors.

Fultz says she "locked up."

"I don’t fall over and convulse, but it hurts," says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d’Alene, Ohio. "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak."

After about 10 seconds, Fultz’s 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says.

Neatorama » Blog Archive » Hackers “Seize-rolled” Epilepsy Sufferers in a Support Forum

$25 Head-Mounted Display

This is a bit old news but if you act soon you can snatch one of these up before they are gone. This is a cool little hack to repurpose the head mounted display from a remote controlled car for better purposes. The procedure is simple, get a power supply (some batteries) pop the back off the display and move a shunt from one pad to another (switch form PAL to NTSC video standards) and you are set.
[via hackaday]
$25 Head-Mounted Display « Jake of All Trades