Hasta La Gadget!

Next year, buyers of the Lexus LFA sports car will be even safer, thanks to a new kind of seatbelt designed by Takata Corp. The belt looks like any other, but contains an airbag that will inflate in case of a crash.

The belt is called the AirBelt, and will find its way into Toyota’s car under the much more boring name of “SRS Seat Belt Airbag”. The belt contains a bag inside its webbing, which is fired on impact by a gas-canister down by the buckle. The resulting bag protects the head and shoulder from side-on crashes, and also gets between the head and shoulder to stop sideways whiplash injuries.

Although this is not the first time airbag seatbelts have been in passenger cars (the first was the 2011 Ford Explorer), it’s a useful innovation and adds one more life-saving feature to these rolling death-boxes.

But as someone who is justifiably terrified of car travel, I think cars should be made more scary, not less. If these tin-cans let in the road noise and did away with all distractions (cup-holders, stereos, and anything else with a button), then people might actually realize just how dangerous their cars are and maybe pay some attention to the road ahead.

Takata First to Commercialize Safety “Airbelt” for Passenger Cars (PDF) [Takata]

See Also:

• Seatbelt Cutter and Window Smasher for Paranoid Drivers
• Buckle Up! Seat-Belt Camera Straps
• Cellphone Seatbelt Holster Promises Safety, Delivers Dorkiness …

Researchers from security firm SecTheory have described a handful of flaws in webOS, saying that the platform — by its very nature — is more prone to these sorts of things than its major competitors because Palm puts web technologies like JavaScript closer to webOS’ core where system functions are readily accessible. At least one of the flaws, involving a data field in the Contacts app that can be exploited to run arbitrary code, has already been fixed in webOS 2.0 — but the others are apparently still open, including a cross-site scripting problem, some sort of floating-point overflow issue, and a denial-of-service vector. We imagine Palm will get these all patched up sooner or later, but as SecTheory’s guys point out, how long is it until mobile malware becomes a PC-sized problem?

Security experts unearth unpleasant flaws in webOS originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Nov 2010 01:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Did you know that today is National Opt Out Day? No? You’re not alone. The day that was organized to create a sense of havoc amongst Thanksgiving travelers hasn’t really materialized–at least not according to the TSA.

Angry travelers recently declared the day before Thanksgiving National Opt Out Day, asking people to elect to have a security pat down, rather than walking through the newly instated full body scanners.

According to the theory, if enough people required pat downs, the security lines would become tied up, creating a general sense of chaos for the already over stretched travel industry. Other protesters, meanwhile, promised to wear “Don’t Touch My Junk” t-shirts and other articles of jokey protest clothing.

According to TSA administrator John Pistole, however, airport security isn’t seeing much effect from the announced protests. He told ABC that the organization is prepared for such issues. “The bottom line is that if a number of people protest at a particular checkpoint it will definitely slow things down,” he told Good Morning America. “I just feel bad for the rest of the traveling public that’s trying to get home for the holidays to be with their loved ones.”

As the everlasting debate rages on, and brains continue to / not to melt with every passing phone call, Casemate’s taking no chances whatsoever. By collaborating with Pong — a company that makes its ends by “protecting users of cellular telephones from the potentially harmful effects of radiation exposure” — the Bounce was born. For all intents and purposes, it’s a simplistic form-fitting iPhone 4 case (BlackBerry models are en route), available in a foursome of hues and tested to reduce normal cellphone radiation (SAR) by at least 60 percent. Purportedly, the case can redirect your phone’s electromagnetic energy away from your head… right into the brain of some lucky chap sitting next to you on the subway. But hey, at least it serves another purpose: solving that blasted iPhone 4 reception issue. Two birds, one $49.99 dent in your credit card. Propaganda vid is just past the break.

Continue reading Casemate’s iPhone 4 Bounce case protects your noodle from inevitable radiation baking

Casemate’s iPhone 4 Bounce case protects your noodle from inevitable radiation baking originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 22:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey check it out–lots of naked people on the Internet. Now
there’s something you don’t see every day. But here’s the rub: these are quite
possibly the least sexy naked shots you’ve ever seen on the Internet. And there
are 100 of them.

They were pulled from Brijot Imaging Systems’ Gen 2
millimeter wave scanner in an Orlando, Florida
courthouse. The images were reportedly gathered via a Freedom of Information
request. It turns out that the images were being improperly stored on the
device–once scanned, the images on the machine are supposed to be deleted.

So, why should you care about a bunch of unflattering naked
images of people in a Florida
courthouse? Well, this is a similar imaging technology being implemented in
airports across the country. And it’s proof that such images can, in fact, be
stored and latter disseminated.

The images presented here are particularly low-res, but
again, they do present a important problem with this technology–nothing here is
quite so ethereal as we were lead to believe…