One freakin’ goddamn huge explosion at some open-pit mine or a road construction or who knows what. Don’t know, don’t care: It’s a freakin’ huge explosion. That’s all, people. Enjoy.
Photographer Olivier Grunewald first learned about the Kawah Ijen volcano in 2008. A sulfur mine by day, this infernal Indonesian mountain turns into a surreal alien landscape when the night comes. His pictures—taken in very dangerous conditions—are stunning:
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Google is big on sharing all things virtual, but it hasn’t done a lot to spread the wealth in the physical world. That could change soon: Google Operating System claims to have spotted an in-development Google Mine service that can simplify lending tangible goods. Users can list what they’re sharing, offer items to their Google+ circles and keep track of who has what. The web version can reportedly show a collection in 3D through a WebGL viewer named Katamari, and there’s also an Android app in tow.
The feature set sounds ideal for generous Google+ users; the real question is whether we’ll get to use any of it. Mine is supposedly limited to internal testing for now, and only some of Google’s initiatives ever leave its campus. Google hasn’t confirmed the effort, but the company tells us that it’s “always experimenting” with features and doesn’t have anything to share “at this time.” Connected borrowers will just have to be patient, then — assuming the service launches at all.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Google Operating System
Landmines are a terrible remnant of war, and there are literally millions still left around the world that injure and kill people on a regular basis. This unusual looking contraption is a cheap way to get rid of a lot of landmines, which could allow local populations to get rid of many of them easily without risking more lives.
Mine Kafon was designed by Afghan product designer Massoud Hassani, who grew up in war-torn Kabul. As a child, with his brother, he developed some wind-powered toys that raced across the relatively flat terrain of the desert. He used this as an inspiration to develop Mine Kafon. The device is basically a sphere with long bamboo plungers with plastic caps at their ends. As the wind rolls it along, it exerts enough pressure to detonate landmines.
It usually costs $1,200 to get rid of one mine. The Mine Kafon can take out 2-3 on each pass, at a cost of just about $50 (USD). Embedded GPS chips will transmit cleared location, creating maps of safe zones.
The campaign to produce Mine Kafon was launched as a Kickstarter project. It has amassed about 65% of its goal of £100,000 (~$163,500 USD) with 18 days of funding left, and you can pledge as little as £1 (~$1.64 USD) to help support the project to eliminate landmines in developing nations.
[via designboom]
While I haven’t been around naval mines much, I have to say that this does look like a naval weapon of some kind. Thankfully, it’s not. It’s actually an intelligently-designed task light.
The Striker Magnetic LED Light Mine Professional is about the size of a baseball, and has 11 neodymium magnets on the spikes. Each of these will let you attach the light to a variety of surfaces. In the middle are 12 Lumen Tech LEDs that provide plenty of light, using one of four different modes. There’s a low-power spotlight, high-power floodlight, a red light for nighttime visibility and a high-visibility signal beacon.
It sounds like it’s something quite useful to have in your Bug-out bag, in case of the upcoming zombie apocalypse. The Striker Light Mine Professional sell for about $18(USD) each over on Amazon.
[via Uncrate]
It costs $1,200 to clear a single landmine. But Afghan designer Massoud Hassani has created a device that costs just €40 (roughly $51 U.S.), needs only wind power to operate, and can clear two or three mines in a single trip. In the video above, you can see how his elegant design for the Mine Kafon was inspired by a childhood spent navigating minefields in Afghanistan, and how a simple child’s toy acted as the catalyst for an invention that could change the world.
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
If, like us, you struggle to read the front of the Corn Flakes box of a morning, you likely gave up any hope of cracking ancient codes long ago. If you didn’t, however, then your time might be now — as one of the oldest scripts know to man is still up for grabs. Prefer just to observe? No problem, as we’ve got super-Earth-searching satellites, military mice and vertical farms, all for your viewing reading pleasure. If you hadn’t guessed already, this is alt-week
Continue reading Alt-week 27.10.12: ancient texts, super-Earths and special-ops mice
Alt-week 27.10.12: ancient texts, super-Earths and special-ops mice originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Oct 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Red Lotus Technologies is now refining and pitching its PETALS technology for real-world use around the world. Short for Pattern Enhancement Tool for Assisting Landmine Sensing, the system connects acoustic sensors to smartphones, outputting a silhouette of what lies below onto the phone’s screen. The company has expanded from an initial research project that paired mine-detecting sensors with the processing clout (and availability of) smartphones. It’s now developed some tablet-based training equipment for de-miners and, working alongside the Landmine Relief Fund, aims to field-test the devices in Cambodia before launching them next year.
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Software, Mobile
Smartphone-powered mine detectors readied for field-testing in Cambodia (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Sep 2012 03:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Tasked with mine detection and eradication in the Persian Gulf, the US Navy has sent a fleet of unmanned submarines to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open in Iran. Dubbed the SeaFox, each vehicle houses an underwater TV camera, sonar and a dose of explosives. Tipping the scales at less than 100 pounds, the subs are about four feet in length and are controlled via fiber optic cable that sends the live feed back to the captain of each ship. SeaFoxes can dive to depths of 300 meters and boasts a top speed of six knots. The units are thrust into action from helicopters, small rubber boats and off the rear of minesweepers and are capable of disposing of the aforementioned weapons of both the floating and drifting sort. There is one small catch: the $100,000 submarine destroys itself in the process, making each successful trek a suicide mission of sorts.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots
US Navy deploys SeaFox submarines to Persian Gulf for universal mine control originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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