Flashing Lights Archive

  • Magic wand bomb detector deemed fraudulent, inventor imprisoned

    Magic wand bomb detector deemed fraudulent, inventor imprisoned

    Posted on January 23, 2010 | No Comments
    Remember back a few months when news broke about a little device that claimed to detect different sorts of bombs? The ones that the Iraqi government spent $85 million on over the last few years even though American military commanders and the FBI stated that they simply don't work. Well, as we all assumed, the ADE-651 is a sham. It's just a dirty racket. Good thing that the British government finally caught on, banned the device and threw the inventor in jail. (He's out on bond as of writing) It seems that the heart of the device is ID badge-sized cards that are supposed to be used for detected different items. There are different cards for everything from TNT, plastique, to even money and elephants. However, as the Cambridge Computer Laboratory found out, these cards contain nothing more than a dumb RFID tag. Seriously, watch the BBC investigation video after the jump.

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  • The most ridiculous cars of CES [gallery]

    The most ridiculous cars of CES [gallery]

    Posted on January 9, 2010 | No Comments
    I decided to take a gander through the car audio section of the show and was met with quite possibly some of the most grandiose automobiles I have ever been within 5 feet of. Despite the purpose of these vehicles being to showcase the audio systems these companies can create, flashing lights and bright colors seemed to be the attention getting method of choice. Although, more often than not, I heard Soulja Boy being passed as music. Gross. Anyway, the image descriptions will tell you exactly why these constructs made the most ridiculous list.

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  • Gallery of The Meanest and Lamest Supercomputers

    Gallery of The Meanest and Lamest Supercomputers

    Posted on June 12, 2009 | No Comments
    Going on Royal Pingdom’s latest gallery, there are two schools of supercomputer design. First, we have the kick-ass, retro-future Death Star category, which includes the The Connection Machine 5 (above), a machine so cool-looking that it actually had a minor role in the movie Jurassic Park. It wasn’t just flashing lights, though. The CM-5 had [...]

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  • App Turns iPhone into Star Trek Communicator

    App Turns iPhone into Star Trek Communicator

    Posted on June 11, 2009 | No Comments
    The Star Trek communicator was arguably the original cellphone, and clearly the model for Motorola’s Startac (even the name was a thinly disguised homage). The iPhone, in turn, is obviously the closest thing us 21st century humans have to the technology of the future. It fits, then, that there should be an application which turns [...]

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