Hasta La Gadget!

We reported on a story where a hacker claimed to have created an Android application that would be able to completely take over an aircraft. Hugo Teso, who is a security consultant and ex-commercial pilot, says his application would be able to make an aircraft “dance to his tune,” but the FAA has dismissed Teso’s claims today.

The FAA responded to Teso’s claims by saying the systems that are certified to be used on the flight decks are immune to the exploits that exist in a PC-based ACARS training software, which is what Teso tested his Android application on and not against systems inside of an actual aircraft. The FAA released a statement saying, The FAA has determined that the hacking technique described during a recent computer security conference does not pose a flight safety concern because it does not work on certified flight hardware.” (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Hacker Claims To Have Developed Android App That Can Hack Into Aircrafts, Mississippi Man Caught Double-Texting With 3-Year-Old, Drugs In His Vehicle,

Sure, Facebook had a weird ad with Blink-182 for the HTC Status, but its sneak peek at its newest TV spot for the First and Home is on another level. Posted today on its Facebook profile, the campy piece literally brings one traveler’s feed to life inside the cabin of his flight during boarding. We won’t spoil the goods for you, but it’s interesting to see Facebook’s first thrust at marketing this skin and smartphone combo out to the masses. Catch the full clip after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Software, Mobile, HTC, Facebook

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Source: Facebook

We’ve been tracking the sun-powered plane known as Solar Impulse for years as it roved hither and yon. Today, Solar Impulse’s pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, came to NASA’s Ames research center to announce their plan to fly across America. The cross-country tour will begin in the Bay Area and end in New York, with stops in Phoenix, Dallas and Washington DC in between. Solar Impulse will also land in either Atlanta, Nashville or St. Louis, with the plane and its pilots set to stay in each locale for about a week to ten days to talk about the project before moving on. For the next month, Piccard and Borschberg will perform test flights around the Bay Area in preparation, and the plan is for the journey to start on May 1st, with an estimated arrival in Gotham sometime in early July.

The point of this new flight is to inspire and educate the public in general of the benefits of renewable energy and efficiency, and to encourage school children and university students in particular to “think off the grid” and innovate and invent on their own. To that end, the pilots will be broadcasting live transmissions and allowing the public to speak with them as they fly, in addition to providing access to flight planning information on the Solar Impulse website. Read on to learn a bit more about the Solar Impulse project and it’s future plans.

Filed under: Transportation

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I’ve seen some cool playground slides in my day, but this one has got to be the neatest. It is attached to a jetliner. How much fun would that be to use? In fact this would be a cool way to exit a plane at any time. I dont know about you, but I would spend all day playing on this thing.

This twisty slide is mounted to a Tupolev Tu-124 located in the Ukraine, where all of the kids grow up awesome and not fearing heights at all. Cool as this thing is though, I don’t know if I would trust those supports to hold the airplane up. They don’t look all that sturdy. Then again, it makes it more of a fun danger game. Slide, then run.

Every time you make it out safely you win… Until you don’t.

[via Neatorama]

Amidst the ongoing brouhaha over rival Boeing‘s Dreamliner-grounding battery troubles, Airbus has decided not to use lithium-ion batteries in its newest aircraft, the A350, according to industry officials cited by the Wall Street Journal. The European plane maker is said to be making the change in an effort to stick to its plan of pressing the jet into commercial service by the middle of next year. While the craft’s early test flights this summer will still make use of four lithium-ion batteries for on-ground electrical power and as backup in the air as originally intended, it will be delivered to airlines with conventional nickel-cadmium batteries instead. Safety considerations are undoubtedly part of the picture, but since the A350 is already behind schedule by a couple of years, its manufacturer can’t afford any further delays — anticipated in case regulators find fault with the use of lithium-ion packs in flights. As Boeing struggles to find a fix and get the 787 back into the air, it seems Airbus has taken the easy way out.

[Image credit: Airbus S.A.S / H. Goussé]

Filed under: Transportation

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Source: Wall Street Journal