German Rail Network Fight Graffiti With Drones

Yes you guessed it the German rail network have deployed a fleet of miniature helicopter drones mounted with thermal imaging cameras in order to combat the graffiti spraying gangs who are operating on the German railway network.

Each of the remote drones will fly at an altitude of 150 yards over what is deemed graffiti hotspot or where graffiti is most strife. This will be in the big German cities of Berlin such as Leipzig Hamburg and Cologne a representative from Deutsche Bahn confirmed.

Deploying Drones in such a manner to combat street vandals is an early indicator of the civilian sector using unmanned Arial reconnaissance. It has been reported based on an EU report that over 400 new drone systems are in development by firms based in Europe.

The drones in question cost about 60.000 Euros each and are manufactured by the German firm Microdrones who also sells the machines for photography purposes and analysing traffic accidents to name but two. The Drones are a metre wide and in this case will be painted in Deutsche bahns Red livery.

The Drones however will not be used near the actual railway stations or other immediate areas where members of the public might get caught on film, due to privacy laws, they will be deployed at places such as depots which are very large and time consuming to patrol on foot. Privacy is a sensitive issue in Germany where Google Street view cameras sparked a lawsuit. Other places will include rail yards where trains such as Deutsche Bahns high speed class 411 ICE T are kept will be another are of drone deployment.

The idea is that the drones will work in partnership with security guards to identify and locate graffiti sprayers so they can be apprehended by security forces who will then hand them over to the police, this is due to the actual graffiti removal costing the capital of Berlin around 7.6 Million Euros a year.

Each Drone can travel at a speed of 33 mph and have an 80 minute fly time, interestingly the drones can fly autonomously or by remote control via a human operator, they also hardly emit any noise making them perfect for surveillance. Each drone as well as having infrared will also have GPS tracking systems to establish evidence for criminal prosecution.

Closer to home it was around 3 years ago when Police in Merseyside made their first arrest using a drone, which was able to track a suspected car thief who tried to hide in an undergrowth.

Mostly seen in the newspapers in military campaigns and usually in movies as unmanned killing machines able to deploy missile strikes it seems that drones are becoming more common place in society one has to say their possible application for use is very high. Will we be more likely to see a wider inclusion of drone related activity in the future, from this it's looking quite possible.

3D Made Handguns actually work!

It is now possible to print a working 3D made Hand Gun as proven by a recent video demonstrating such a weapon by a Texas based company, the gun fires just like a normal gun.

You are probably wondering what 3D printing actually means especially with regards to a firearm. 3D printing involves a laser sintering process which uses a high powered laser to fuse small particles of different periodic elements. These elements include plastic, metal and glass powders which are fused into a mass that has a desired three-dimensional shape.

The laser selectively fuses powdered materials by scanning cross-sections which are generated from a 3D digital description of a part on the surface of a powder bed. Once each cross-section has been scanned, the powder bed is lowered by one layer so that a new layer of material can be applied on top. This process is then repeated until the part is complete. Every part of the gun except for the springs are made with a direct metal laser sintering process, which create metal parts based on a 3D design by blasting powdered metal with a laser. The main body of the gun consists of 30 separate components made from stainless steel and an alloy called inconel in addition to carbon fibre and a nylon hand grip.

The 3D printed gun was created by a Texas based 3D-Printing services company Solid Concepts, they claim that the metal laser sintering process they used is by far one of the most accurate additive manufacturing processes available with the 3D printed parts having more detail.

There have been attempts to re-create a handgun using this method before but they have usually been dismissed due to the fact they aren't reliable to shoot and are potentially dangerous to attempt to fire. Quite worrying in a way then that Solid Concepts have not only re-created a 3D printed handgun but it actually works, during testing the gun Solid Concepts created managed to fire 50 rounds successfully.

The gun created by Solid Concepts is a re-production of the 1911 handgun, the successful production as well as the incredible functionality form such a re-production of the 1911 3D metal printed gun proves the viability of 3D Printing for commercial applications not just solely for things such as Hand guns.

You may be among the many who may find such a concept pretty scary being able to literally print guns, however as the firm states what they are doing is perfectly legal, not that you can rush out and start doing this yourself mind. It should also be noted at this point that Solid Concepts is a 3D Printing service provider and that it does have a Federal Firearms License.

As you can see from the following screenshots the 1911 is showed being fired first from a safe distance with the spent bullet being seen flying from the open chamber ion addition to the recoil of the gun.




The second image shows the gun being fired from the perspective of a human tester with the spent bullet seen to be whizzing towards the camera, with the bullet hitting its target as seen in the video demonstration.


This is in contrast to the previous 3D handguns that have been printed in plastic in its entirety except for a nail which acts as a firing pin, as well as a six-ounce piece of steel which allows the weapon to be detected by metal detectors. Yet one wonders where this is all going how hard would it be to field strip this weapon remove the metal pieces and safely pass through detectors, now that is frightening. The German police were also creating 3-D printed guns in order to detect their effectiveness to establish if they are a real threat, this was done before the success of the 1911 by Solid Concepts.

What s worse with the plastic models titled the liberator it can be instantly downloaded and anonymously printed by anyone who has access to 3-D printing technology. One of the drawbacks to this is that you would first need an expensive high end 3-D printer, which according to Solid Concepts costs more than a private college tuition, so at least your low entry criminals won't be able to mass produce this at least.

The 3-D printed 1911 has been said to be successful by its creators because the guns barrel is capable of seeing chamber pressures higher than 20,000 psi every time it is fired, quoting from Solid Concepts "it's a common misconception that 3-D printing isn't accurate or strong enough, and we're working to change people's perspectives" Well with this little revelation they certainly have our attention now.

360TB disc that holds data for more than 1 million years

As the title states it is in fact true that a team from University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre are making a breakthrough in terms of storage capacity. Namely a 360TB (TeraByte Disc) which can theoretically hold data contents for more than a million years. I have to admit that even I think I'm at the point where I'm no longer reporting on technical marvels but instead writing up a science fiction blog. Incredibly this is actually possible so it seems.

The disc will be a glass storage medium that could potentially outlive mankind, this new type of memory also touts incredible specifications such as the 360Tb per disc capacity and get this the ability to withstand extreme temperatures of up to 1,832 Fahrenheit. All of this is achieved by harnessing the power of a speedy femtosecond laser, during tests researchers successfully wrote 300kb of data to an everlasting medium which consist of self-assembled nano-structures within fused quartz.

The femtosecond laser emits short but powerful pulses of light which then encode data to three separate layers of Nano-structured dots within the glass only 5 micro-metres apart. According to the researchers the laser writes in five dimensions this is based on orientation, size and three-dimensional position of the Nano-structures. This type of storage medium will more likely use W-O-R-M data format (Write Once Read Many).

The team at the University was led by Jingyu Zhang, with his team now seek to bring this technology to the commercial level. If you're really interested you can read the more scientific "5D Data Storage by Ultra-fast Laser Nano-structuring In Glass" white paper, which was submitted to the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in San Jose California.

Netflix follows the Pirates.

Netflix the ever popular on line movie streaming service have been noted as saying that they are helping to limit the amount of illegal downloading by offering the same content that is popular with pirates. I am of course referring to pirates in the illegal download sense and not the buccaneer version of pirates.

While trying to entice users away from free downloading video content Netflix apparently acquires valuable information about what content it should be giving to its customer base, a sort of analytical breakdown of what shows are current and getting the most downloads.

Netflix have not long released their service to the Netherlands and Kelly Merryman the company's vice president of content acquisition in Europe stated that piracy sites found on the Internet help with the company's decision making.  Quoting "with the purchase of series, we look at what does well on Piracy sites" Merryman also went on to say that such sites had contributed to its decision to release "Prison Break" onto its service as that is very popular on piracy sites.

Watching on multiple platforms as well as picking up where you left off, you can enjoy Netflix on the go.

This seems like a very interesting way of combating a problem that has dogged the authorities for some time now, sure it may not stamp out the problem but it will help Netflix build its customer base and may sway some people from visiting piracy sites. Netflix has the advantages of being fairly low proceed and affordable with no hidden charges to incur, it also streams content quickly and seamlessly in HD. This is in contest to piracy sites where you have to find a good quality genuine copy of such content then download that content.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings revealed that the company is attempting to be an alternative to piracy sites which he went on to say actually create demand for his company's paying service. Hastings believes that ease of use, speed of actually streaming content on demand will help convert some illegal down-loaders. After all with Netflix  you don't have to deal with files, there is no need to download them and move them about, or rename them or convert them to a playable standard there is none of that, "you just click and watch".

New movies and TV shows are updated very month, your bound to find something to watch.

Hastings also claims in an interview that during May the use of a popular file sharing client "Bit-Torrent" was declining in use through Canada since the streaming service launched there in that country three years ago.

So could the recent influx of movie streaming services combined with the analytical tactics actuality bring down illegal downloading? I think it will help, it won't choke the life out of illegal downloading but it certainty a great incentive and practical way of combating the problem.

Netflix.co.uk Watch what you want, as much as you want, when you want on multiple devices and with integrated social functions, only £5.99 a month, no hidden fees and no set subscription period.