Hasta La Gadget!

The folks at Home Security, vendor of security systems to the
jittery and paranoid, sent us a link to their fantastic list of bad
booby traps, entitled The 5 Dumbest & Deranged Home Booby Traps. So good is it that we decided to dig in and find out a little more about the bamboozling array of home-made tricks and traps.

Shotgun Shenanigans

Back in 1990, Colorado warehouse owner Philip Connaghan got sick of
break-ins in his area and decided to take a few extra precautions. He
rigged a couple of shotguns to a tripwire and loaded them up. The
problem came when he was burglarized yet again, by the same gang
that had visited twice already. One of the three teenage thieves was hit in the
chest and killed. Connaghan turned himself in and plead guilty.

Trial Set in Booby Trap Death [NYT]

House of Pain

Belgium, 2002. A 79 year old man booby trapped his entire house in order to kill his family, who wanted nothing more to do with him (not surprisingly). According to his entry in the Darwin Awards

 

traps included numerous concealed shotguns triggered by threads, and an exploding crate of beer set to detonate once a certain number of bottles were removed.

The Darwin Awards link may have tipped you off to the ending. While rigging a wooden chest with yet another gun, it fired and shot him in the head. Police assumed suicide until the investigating officer almost caught a bullet from the same place.

Booby Traps Trap Boob [Darwin Awards]

Photo: 5rar.ASN

Crutch of Doom

Killing a Verizon technician might be a secret dream of many of our readers, but Eric Stetz of Bay Shore, New York went a little further than most.

His trap? A crutch with a nasty-looking kitchen knife taped to the handle. The entire contraption was hung above and behind the door using elastic and rigged to swing down when the door was opened.

Luckily, his landlord was a paranoid sort, or simply knew that Stetz was an oddball. He accompanied the Verizon technician and spotted the killer kit above the door. If the technician had entered alone, however, things might have got a lot more Dungeons and Dragons.

Doin’ it like MacGyver: Guy sets booby traps in NY home [It’s Truly Random]

Warehouse Woes

Burnley, England, 2006. Another warehouse owner, this time in sunny England, paid a friend to build him an alarm after a gang of kids kept breaking in to his mill. Instead of using the traditional klaxon or bell, though, his buddy decided the best noisemaker would be built from a shotgun.

Delivered and set up, the death-machine was triggered after just one hour. The proud owner, Jack Clarkson, reset the “alarm”, only this time with a live round. You can guess what happened next — a 12 year old broke in and, typical of street urchins of the UK, attempted to make of with the device. It blew up in his hand and although it didn’t kill him, he needed an operation to fix things.

Home-made booby trap ‘was alarm’ [BBC]

Photo: Tyrkinn/Flickr

Stun Gun Fun

Finally, a story we covered here at the Gadget Lab last year. Luke Iseman rigged his ride to shock thieves. The bike is equipped with a stun gun, a cellphone and a battery. Once stolen, the bike can be tracked down via GPS and then, when the perp is away from traffic, the gun is put into action. The gun is hooked up to the phone’s vibrator and it fries the rider with 50,000 volts at every buzz. You can keep the thing running until the battery goes dead.

There’s a happy ending, though. First, the bike has not yet been stolen and, best of all, Iseman is the only one of our hackers who has not been either arrested or killed.

How-To: End Bike Thefts With a DIY Stun Gun and Get Yourself in Trouble [Gadget Lab]

The 5 Dumbest & Deranged Home Booby Traps [Home Security]

You know, when armchair futurists (and jive talkin’ bloggists) make note of some of the scary new tech making the rounds in defense circles these days it’s one thing, but when the Doomsday Scenarios come from official channels, that’s when we start to get nervous. According to a report published by the California State Polytechnic University (with data made available by the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research) the sheer scope of the military’s various AI projects is so vast that it is impossible for anyone to fully understand exactly what’s going on. “With hundreds of programmers working on millions of lines of code for a single war robot,” says Patrick Lin, the chief compiler of the report, “no one has a clear understanding of what’s going on, at a small scale, across the entire code base.” And what we don’t understand can eventually hunt us down and kill us. This isn’t idle talk, either — a software malfunction just last year caused US. Army robots to aim at friendly targets (fortunately, no shots were fired). The solution, Dr. Lin continues, is to teach robots “battlefield ethics… a warrior code.” Of course, the government has had absolutely no problems with ethics over the years — so programming its killer robots with some rudimentary values should prove relatively simple.

Filed under: Robots

Navy report warns of robot uprising, suggests a strong moral compass originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IPod Touch as deadly sniper accessory? Awesome. This is the Knight’s Armaments M110 iPod Touch mount, a clip-on case designed to hold your iPod Touch in easy reach while you draw a bead on the enemy.

Alone, this isn’t much — you could watch ‘Nam movies while taking target practice, we guess. What makes this a useful accessory is the companion software from the same company, called BulletFlight. Simply dial in the shooting conditions: wind speed, distance, type of gun and bullet, and the app will tell you just how much to tweak your shot to hit the bullseye.

The app is $12 on the App Store. The mount and case themselves don’t seem to be up on the Knight’s Armaments site just yet.

Product page [Knight’s Armaments via TUAW via The Firearm Blog]

Product page [iTunes]

See Also:

• Sniper-Busting Lasers Catch Shooters Before They Fire
• Failed Inventions: The Nuclear Rifle
• Katana Sword Takes on 9mm Bullet: Sword Wins
• IPod vs AK-47: IPod takes a Bullet and wins

The inauguration of Barack Obama will not only bring about a wholesale turnover in the political leadership of the country but it will also unveil the newest in a long line of Presidential limos.

According to Presidential vehicle experts, the new limo is a beast-like General Motors truck-based Cadillac that is so tough it’s like a ‘rolling tank with windows.’

Among the vehicle’s main features are windows that are 5 inches thick, 19.5-inch
Goodyear RHS tires (same as super tough trucks), and possibly even a lock safety mechanism that seals off the car like a bank vault in case of an emergency.

Because the Secret Service keeps details of the limo understandably private, even the most knowledgeable security experts don’t really know how much gadgety tech is being installed in the new ride. But it’s not stopping them making a few informed guesses.

In an interview with CNN, security expert Ken Lucci says rubber gaskets likely protect the car against chemical weapons and that the body will be made out of a tougher material than before. The most recent limo used by President Bush used some combination of a dual hardness steel, aluminum, titanium and even ceramics to break up possible projectiles. And there are usually steel overlaps that cover any gaps a door might leave.

Despite the immense secrecy, reports have leaked that the limo also comes with a 10-CD changer, which will inevitably end up playing Obama favorites like Steve Wonder and Bob Dylan. We’re surprised there’s no Blu-ray or Wii in there, but we’re pretty sure of one thing: The limo will be a Zune-free zone, especially considering the most recent reports.

Photos: Brend Priddy & Co/DetNews.com