Cool: Reporter calls up the NSA and asks to interview a member of their elite “Red Team” hacking squad. NSA agrees. That was easy.

[via fark]

Who would have thought that a blog on ‘Export Law’ would have as a blog article among some of the more geeky and (at least to me) interesting topics out there.

It’s got Isaac Asimov, robotics, military, mobile gadgets and Wall-E the trash robot.

The author, Clif, brings up a good point on what may be sort of a “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy by the robot manufacture wrt how their bots may be used. Could be in a military capacity or for rescue or contamination clean-up, I guess it depends on how it’s configured in the field?

I’ve been seeing a lot of versatile weapons being introduced lately, but the coolest one by far in my opinion is the Wasp Injector Knife made by Wasp Injection Systems, Inc.  Toted as the penultimate bladed weapon of choice for military and tactical use, this knife has a notch cut into the top of the blade connected to a tiny tube and a cartridge of compressed gas.  At the press of a button, the compressed gas is ejected from the notch in just under 2 seconds!

This weapon injects a frozen ball of compressed gas approximately the size of a basketball at 850psi nearly instantly. The effects of this injection will drop many of the world’s largest land predators. The effects of the compressed gas not only cause over-inflation during ascent when used underwater, but also freezes all tissues and organs surrounding the point of injection on land or at sea.

Wow.  How cool is that?  I’d definitely get one of these

Almost unbelievable, but still, here it is: <snip>

When Bob Ballard led a team that pinpointed the wreckage of the liner in 1985 he had already completed his main task of finding out what happened to USS Thresher and USS Scorpion.

Both of the United States Navy vessels sank during the 1960s, killing more than 200 men and giving rise to fears that at least one of them, Scorpion, had been sunk by the USSR.

Dr Ballard, an oceanographer, has admitted that he located and inspected the wrecks for the US Navy in top secret missions before he was allowed to search for the Titanic.

Times Online has the full story.

BTW, the pic above is the USS Scorpion, it was the sister ship to the first sub I served on. They were part of the Skipjack class of boats and they were pigs, but I say that with love and with fond memories.

SEATTLE – Boeing’s A160T Hummingbird unmanned rotorcraft flew for 18.7 hours on an overnight flight May 14-15, setting what the company believes is a world endurance record for a UAV in its weight class.

The flight, which was accomplished at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, was one of two key performance tests set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

[via DefenseTech]