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Technology is a lovely thing, but sometimes it scares the bejeezus out of us. This working 3D-printed gun is one such case. Gun enthusiast "HaveBlue" has documented in a blog post (via the AR15 forums) the process of what appears to be the first test firing of a firearm made with a 3D printer.

The last time we ran into Ben Heck, the tinkerer extraordinaire was waxing poetic at Maker Faire about the Raspberry Pi and cheese curds. One more thing he also talked about, however, was his latest 3D printer project, which he now explains in greater detail in the latest episode of the Ben Heck Show. Improvements made to the device include use of a Birdstruder for easier access to the filament and the ability to print off an SD card if you don't have a computer handy. The 3D printer also sports an expanded 200-square-millimeter print area with a solid copper cover for added sturdiness and accuracy. As usual, size matters for Mr. Heckendorn so the device got a boost in portability, now neatly folding James Bond-like into a briefcase that measures 18 x 14 x 4.2 inches. Interested in a briefcase printer of your own? Well, Heckendorn mentioned during the Maker Faire interview that he's already working on an improved version and thinking about putting it up on Kickstarter so hope springs eternal. In the meantime, you can glean more details about the device by checking out the video after the break.

Star Trek: The Next Generation may be coming to your living rooms soon courtesy of some hot new Blu-ray pressing, but one of the most compelling pieces of the technology shown on that series still remains elusive: the holodeck. Don't get down, sunshine, because we might soon be making our first, tentative steps into a virtual courtesy of Project Holodeck. It's underway at USC's School of Cinematic Arts as well as the Viterbi School of Engineering and starts out with a pair of Project Oculus glasses. These glasses, which were shown off at E3 by none other than John Carmack, cram a 1,280 x 800 display into a pair of glasses that present a wide, truly immersive field of view. Pair that with a PlayStation Move for head tracking and a Razer Hydra controller and you have the beginnings of a proper virtual reality environment.

Remember how Google's Project Glass wowed basically everyone who attended the recently concluded Google I/O? Well, someone was inspired by Project Glass and decided to do something about it using his own hands. Will Powell decided to cobble together an application which is capable of delivering translated subtitles in real time, and in the YouTube video that you see above, it allowed Will to carry out a conversation with his sister, Elizabeth, with the former speaking in English while the latter's tongue wagging to the nuances of the Spanish language.

Store, Share and Test your System Configurations

Have you checked all the power strips in your home or office to make sure they're not spying on you? Pwnie Express have an upcoming product called the Power Pwn that could sit unnoticed in a home or work environment and yet be spying on an entire network

We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies.

Professor Lee Cronin is a likably impatient presence, a one-man catalyst. "I just want to get stuff done fast," he says. And: "I am a control freak in rehab." Cronin, 39, is the leader of a world-class team of 45 researchers at Glasgow University, primarily making complex molecules. But that is not the extent of his ambition. A couple of years ago, at a TED conference, he described one goal as the creation of "inorganic life", and went on to detail his efforts to generate "evolutionary algorithms" in inert matter. He still hopes to "create life" in the next year or two.

It has taken more than a decade, but PayPal - the coaster of the Internet that has had a downhill ride with the wind at its back pretty much since acquisition - is finally under serious threat. It may not be showing up in PayPal's numbers yet. Indeed, by the time you start to see these things on the balance sheet, the damage is irreversible. The question is whether it can still be reversed now. I'm arguing no for three big reasons. The first is the decreasing relevance of eBay. PayPal was never founded to be merely the payment arm of eBay, but eBay was so dominant in ecommerce at the time and the need for digital payments on the platform was so great that that became the bulk of the business.

Some probably see Sweden as a country where proper due process of law prevails, or at least exists. Others would very much like to see Sweden as such a country. One thing that this country has shown is, that when the interests of its establishment are threatened, all the branches of government fuse into one and cut any corners needed to neutralize the threat to its establishment, rules and rights be damned.

(Brian- I was as part of the WBI alumni network informed of and asked to submit to the call for papers for this conference. Please review -I think your work would fit in here - let me know what you think- kdv)    Annually organized by Wuhan University of Technology (China), Yamaguchi University (Japan), the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo ( Brazil ) and the Brabant Center of Entrepreneurship (BCE),  the International Conference on Innovation and Management has proven to be a high-profile event for leading international scholars in the area of management and innovation. 

US experts have developed what they say are the most biologically-accurate robotic legs yet. Writing in the Journal of Neural Engineering, they said the work could help understanding of how babies learn to walk - and spinal-injury treatment. They created a version of the message system that generates the rhythmic muscle signals that control walking. A UK expert said the work was exciting because the robot mimics control and not just movement.

The land in West Oakland where Eric Maundu is trying to farm is covered with freeways, roads, light rail and parking lots so there's not much arable land and the soil is contaminated. So Maundu doesn't use soil. Instead he's growing plants using fish and circulating water.

AN FRANCISCO -- The first Project Glass products -- Google's network-enabled, computerized glasses -- are set to ship to a select group of enthusiasts early next year, co-founder Sergey Brin said today. "This is not a consumer device," Brin told thousands in an enthusiastically cheering audience at the company's Google I/O show today here. "You have to want to be on the bleeding edge. That's what this is designed for." The glasses will be available only to Google I/O attendees who are in the United States. The geographic restriction is for regulatory reasons, Brin said. (Different countries have different requirements for radio-frequency emissions.)

Memories can be reactivated during sleep and strengthened in the process,  Northwestern University research suggests. In the Northwestern study, research participants learned how to play two artificially generated musical tunes with well-timed key presses. Then while the participants took a 90-minute nap, the researchers presented one of the tunes that had been practiced, but not the other

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the "Age of America" will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China And it's a lot closer than you may think.

The kinds of drones making the headlines daily are the heavily armed CIA and U.S. Army vehicles which routinely strike targets in Pakistan - killing terrorists and innocents alike. But the real high-tech story of surveillance drones is going on at a much smaller level, as tiny remote controlled vehicles based on insects are already likely being deployed. Over recent years a range of miniature drones, or micro air vehicles (MAVs), based on the same physics used by flying insects, have been presented to the public. The fear kicked off in 2007 when reports of bizarre flying objects hovering above anti-war protests sparked accusations that the U.S. government was accused of secretly developing robotic insect spies.

As a child, I always looked up at the stars and wondered how I could make it into space. Hopefully, I will live to see that day, but for now, a homemade satellite will have to do. The Nanosatisfi team has made it their mission "to provide affordable space exploration for everyone!," and with ArduSat, they move one step closer to reality. ArduSat is a Arduino-controlled miniature 10cm cubic satellite, weighing 1 kg, which is roughly equivalent to half a store bought loaf of bread. Its size might not be impressive, but it packs over 25 sensors including: Myspectral's open source spectrometer, inertial measurement unit, magnetometer, along the standard set, and many others. This impressive little machine boasts a camera to take photographs, it could send messages back to earth, or it can run your space experiments. With the ability to upload code directly to the ArduSat while in space, the possibilities are virtually limitless.