In a surprise appearance on Friday, President Obama made an emotional speech about race in America following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, explaining how the death of Trayvon Martin felt personal to him. “Another way of saying that is, Trayvon Martin could’ve been me, 35 years ago,” Obama said. “There are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of being followed in a department store — that includes me.” Zimmerman fatally shot the 17-year-old Martin on the night of Feb. 26, 2012. Zimmerman, 29, was a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., a gated community where Martin was staying at the time. In the weeks following the incident, he was accused of second-degree murder and manslaughter. A jury found him not guilty of both charges on Saturday. Watch Obama’s full speech below. What do you think of Obama’s sentiments? Share your reactions in the comments below. Image: Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Read more: http://mashable.com/2013/07/19/obama-trayvon-martin/
Just a couple of weeks after Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed released the files for the world’s first 3D-printed handgun, imitators have already replicated and improved upon it. Two gunsmiths from Wisconsin successfully fired their own Liberator nine times, without the gun showing any damage. As first reported by Forbes, two engineers, Michael Guslick and a man who refers to himself as “Joe” — he didn’t want to reveal his name — printed their version of the Liberator on a relatively cheap and unsophisticated 3D printer. Unlike Wilson, who used a $8,000 Stratasys, the Wisconsin duo used a consumer-grade $1,725 Lulzbot AO-101. They printed all the pieces within 48 hours and spent a paltry $25 in materials. “People think this takes an $8,000 machine and that it blows up on the first shot. I want to dispel that,” Joe told Forbes. “This does work, and I want that to be known.” As the video shows, the Lulz Liberator is functional — but making it so was trickier than it may appear. When the Guslick and Joe tested the “Lulz Liberator” last week, using .380 caliber rounds, the barrel snapped on the first try. But that barrel was actually printed on a Stratasys 3D printer owned by Guslick. He explained that the initial failure was “due to a compressed load and resulting cartridge overpressure.” Then the Wisconsin engineers used a barrel printed with Joe’s Lulzbot. The gun fired nine times over the course of the test — with its components remaining intact. The gun might have sustained even more shots, but the men decided to stop the test because of poor light conditions. Guslick, who was one of the first gunsmiths to experiment with 3D printing, wrote in an email to Mashable that it wasn’t easy to fire the handgun successfully. “The Liberator is actually a very finicky gun at this point,” he wrote. “We had many more times that it went ‘click’ rather than ‘bang.’” Guslick explained that for various reasons, the gun failed to fire with both barrels and even failed between successful shots. The main problem was the shape of the firing pin, which “appears to be crucial for operation,” he wrote. In fact, sometimes the firing pin wouldn’t hit the primer “dead-center,” and it required “several strikes” to ignite, Guslick wrote. Since Joe and Guslick didn’t use the firing pin retainer, a part of the original Liberator design, they lost a lot of firing pins and had to add replacements after each successful shot. The body screws bent from the recoil, which made more replacements necessary. Regardless, this is another step toward making functioning plastic guns more accessible to anybody with an Internet connection and a 3D printer, even a relatively cheap one. And it’s a step toward making those guns more efficient; maybe even deadlier. UPDATE, May 21, 11:50 a.m.: The story has been updated to clarify the issues that Guslick and Joe had with the firing pin. Images and video courtesy of Michael Guslick Read […]
As the White House opens its gardens and grounds to the public for fall tours, some Instagram users will get an exclusive visit this weekend. Selected Instagrammers will have the chance on Sunday to tour the grounds and track their excursion on social media, the White House announced Monday. The tour is intended specifically for the White House’s Instagram followers. To apply for a spot in the meet-up, applicants must follow either @WhiteHouse or @MichelleObama on Instagram and fill out a short form on the White House’s website. Those chosen or put on the wait list will be emailed by Wednesday. In the meantime, applicants are encouraged to post their favorite nature and garden photos on Instagram with the hashtag #WHInstaMeet. The same hashtag will be used on the day of the tour, so all Instagram users can virtually follow along. So far, more than 400 photos have been tagged on Instagram with #WHInstaMeet. While the spots in Sunday’s White House Instagram tour are available through application only, the garden is free and open to the public during its fall tour season. Visitors must have tickets, which are distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Image: Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson Read more: http://mashable.com/2013/10/22/white-house-garden-instagram/
Any high school-aged coders with a love for space and NASA out there? Read on. Zero Robotics, a robotics programming competition set up through MIT, is entering its fourth year — and there’s still a day left to register. Here’s how it works: Students can sign up in teams for free on the website. Over the course of the semester, they compete head-to-head with other teams in writing programs — sort of situational, scenario-based challenges. Gradually, the challenges get more difficult. Then, after several phases, finalists are selected to compete in running code for the International Space Station (ISS) — which is broadcast live by an astronaut on board the ISS. Since 2009, the competition has allowed participants to compete in a series of coding challenges through an online platform. “There’s a whole ranking system that tells them how well they’re doing as they’re going through it,” said Jake Katz, co-founder of the competition and research assistant in the Space Stations laboratory at MIT. “And throughout the course of the season, the game gets slightly more complex. They start out in two dimensions and then they will soon, around Oct. 5, be going into 3-D competition — then we add some additional challenges towards the end.” The original kick off for this year’s competition was on Sept. 8. But, Katz said, there’s still a day left to register. “There have been people participating so far, and are already off and running with it, but it’s still possible to join in and make a submission for the first phase,” he said. “We have 75 teams so far, and that’s just from the U.S.” There are an additional 43 teams from 19 other countries, he said. The competition is sponsored by NASA, DARPA, TopCoder, Aurora Flight Sciences, CASIS and MIT. TopCoder, a programming company, designed the platform the games are played on. “In 2009, when we started, we had just two teams competing against each other,” Katz said. “Just two years later, we had about 100 teams from all over sign up.” Check out the promotional video below: What kind of code would you write to run on board the ISS? Let us know in the comments. Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/09/26/zero-robotics-mit/
John McAfee, the founder of anti-virus security firm McAfee who is currently detained as a murder suspect, is now blogging from a jail cell in Guatemala. McAfee was arrested on Wednesday night after illegally entering Guatemala from Belize. He has been on the run since last month to evade police in Belize who consider him a person of interest in relation to the murder of his neighbor. He recently started a blog called The Hinterland, which details his experience hiding from police, and is currently blogging from a computer given to him by police. “I am in jail in Guatemala. Vastly superior to Belize jails,” McAfee wrote. “I asked for a computer and one magically appeared. The coffee is also excellent.” He has been responding to reader comments and calls the people he has met at the jail “nice” and “sympathetic.” “I am using the computer of one of the wardens, or whatever title is used here,” he wrote in another post titled “Can’t Sleep.” “He is a sweet man and a gentleman. The world is heavilly populated with gentle people. He makes me coffee and tells tender stories about his life. He is a good companion. I believe I could spend weeks in the desert with him as a sole companion without once becoming irritated.” McAfee said his future is unknown as of now: “Only time will tell what will happen. No one has a crystal ball. However, I would be truly shocked if I did not conduct the press conference tomorrow as I had originally planned.” McAfee has hardly been out of the public eye while dodging police. In addition to blogging, he has been featured in video clips posted by Vice. In fact, the magazine has uploaded a video of McAfee getting detailed in Guatemala to YouTube. McAfee tells readers to “stay tuned” and “blogging from a jail cell might be a groundbreaking activity.” He also asked: “Anybody have friends in the State Department?” McAfee founded the anti-virus software company by the same name in the late 1980s. He retired in 1994. Photo via Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/12/06/mcafee-blog-jail-guatemala/
In an increasingly divisive U.S. political climate, there’s at least one cause that has found support on both sides of the aisle — computer science education. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor both stressed the importance of learning to to code, or write computer programs, in videos uploaded Sunday to YouTube by Code.org, a non-profit advocacy group. The joint call to action comes at the start of Computer Science Education Week, which began Monday. “If we want America to stay on the cutting edge, we need young Americans like you to master the tools and technology that will change how we do just about everything,” Obama says in a short video. “Don’t just buy a new video game, make one. Don’t just download the latest app, help design it. Don’t just play on your phone, program it.” Cantor, who often plays the role of political adversary to Obama, backed the President’s sentiment. “America is the land of opportunity. We have so much before us — so many challenges to overcome and problems to solve,” Cantor says. “Coding is the necessary tool of this century to best do that.” Cantor goes on to say that learning to code is as important as learning language and math: “It is the only way for you to prepare for the future.” Additionally, 2012 Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appears in a Code.org video promoting the Hour of Code campaign as “a great, free, voluntary opportunity” to “make sure that every American understands a lot more about computing.” In October, Code.org announced its “Hour of Code” campaign, which aimed to “demystify computer science” for 10 million grade school students by exposing them to introductory concepts for at least an hour during Computer Science Education Week. Hadi Partovi, co-founder and CEO of Code.org, told Mashable in an email that some 35,000 teachers and 5 million students from around the world signed up to participate. “Today is when 5 million students begin learning to code, with support from athletes, celebrities, politicians, world leaders and all the top websites of the world,” Partovi wrote. In addition to the political attention, Code.org has garnered support from celebrities and tech industry leaders. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Miami Heat player Chris Bosh, actor Ashton Kutcher and pop singers Shakira and Will.I.Am are among the prominent figures who have appeared in Code.org videos endorsing computer science education. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan explains the significance of Computer Science Education Week in another video uploaded to Code.org’s YouTube page on Sunday. The initiative is timed to correspond with the birthdate of computing pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (subject of Monday’s Google Doodle), who was born on Dec. 9, 1906, and died in 1992. Image: U.S. Navy Hopper earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yale University and served in the U.S. Navy, helping to develop the earliest computers and design programming languages. After joining the Naval Reserves in […]
Shannon Maureen Conley, the teenager who plead guilty to aiding the Islamic State, is pictured on the far left. Video: YouTube, TomoNews US A woman from Colorado pleaded guilty on Wednesday to providing material support to the Islamic State — months after she told the FBI she wanted to be a terrorist. Shannon Maureen Conley, who is 19 and a certified nurse’s aid, was accused of providing material support to at least one person who is allegedly a member of the Islamic State. Now the teenager from Arvada faces up to five years in prison and a potential $250,000 fine, though she won’t be sentenced until Jan. 23. In the meantime, The Denver Post reports Conley has agreed to provide information about her conspirators. U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore has ordered her to undergo a personality and psychological exam. Conley had planned to move to Syria and marry a 32-year-old Islamic State fighter from Tunisia who told her that he was battling with the Islamic State and that the extremist group needed nurses. But the FBI had kept close tabs on her ever since Conley started to spend time wandering around a local church, taking notes on everything but the sermons. The pastor notified the FBI, who told Conley her intentions were illegal. Conley was displeased with the church interrupting her plotting; she told the FBI that “if they think I’m a terrorist, I’ll give them something to think I am.” The FBI kept tabs on Conley, who had converted to Islam, and arrested her in April before she could get on a flight to Germany en route to Turkey’s Syrian border. Upon searching her home, agents found video lectures given by Islamist radicals as well as bullets and targets that showed she had spent time improving her accuracy with a gun. Here are the full details of Conley’s plea agreement: Shannon Conley Plea Agreement Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/09/10/american-teen-guilty-aiding-islamic-state/
Image: Mashable composite. NASA Meteorologists at the National Weather Service (NWS) gained a new, sharper weapon in their arsenal of computer models on Tuesday, which could result in better weather forecasts. The agency put its newly updated High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR, which is pronounced like the word “her,” except with many more Rs), into operational use after several years of experimental simulations. The model will help meteorologists pinpoint the development of damaging weather conditions that are too small-scale and short-term to be detected by other models, such as derecho events like the one that shut off the lights to hundreds of thousands of people from Ohio to Virginia on June 29, 2012. According to the NWS, the newly supercharged HRRR model, which had been in use before Tuesday but at a far coarser resolution, will allow forecasters to make better warnings of flash flooding, heavy snowfall, and the likelihood of severe thunderstorms. It could also make aviation forecasts more reliable, helping pilots steer clear of turbulence. The key to the HRRR’s upgrade is a major narrowing of its spatial resolution, which is akin from going from taking a wide shot photograph to using a zoom lens. The spatial resolution of the improved model is four times finer than what was used before, allowing it to capture smaller-scale details, such as individual thunderstorms, that it might otherwise have missed. According to a press release, the improvements made each pixel in the model go from the size of an entire city, at eight miles wide, to the size of a neighborhood within that city, at two miles wide. The new HRRR model was five years in the making from a team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. The model is now run on supercomputers in Virginia and Florida on an hourly basis, and it takes advantage of real-time radar data to produce more accurate projections of how weather systems will move and develop. Its forecasts extend out to 15 hours in advance, compared to other weather models that project up to 10 to 14 days. “This is the first in a new generation of weather prediction models designed to better represent the atmosphere and mechanics that drive high-impact weather events,” said William Lapenta, Ph.D., director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, part of the National Weather Service, in a press release. “The HRRR is a tool delivering forecasters a more accurate depiction of hazardous weather to help improve our public warnings and save lives.” How the model works The new model takes about 1,200 computer cores to run, and keeps them busy for each hour, NOAA research meteorologist Stan Benjamin told Mashable. He said the new model takes up about 12 to 15% of the operational computing capacity that NOAA has at the environmental prediction center, which is located in College Park, Maryland. According to NOAA, the computer model starts out with a three-dimensional picture of the atmosphere one hour before the […]
Have you ever heard a politician make a claim you just couldn’t believe, so you turned to Google or Wikipedia for the truth? You’re far from alone — 64% of “persuadable voters” use the Internet to fact-check political candidates, according to a recent study. The study also found that a majority of persuadable voters in several battleground states — 58% — are using the Internet to look up candidates’ voting records or stances on the important issues of the day. 49% are getting their regular fill of election news online, and 53% said the Internet provides them “with the information they need.” “The Internet is an increasingly important resource when it comes to getting information about this year’s campaigns and elections,” wrote Global Strategy Group and Public Opinion Strategies in a memo on the survey of 500 “persuadable voters.” But is the information found online trustworthy? Yes, according to most voters — 62% of “persuadable voters” trust the information they find online. That’s on par with television news (67%) and print (62%). Why the confidence? 41% of those surveyed reported it’s “generally easy” to tell the difference between truthful and inaccurate news on the Internet, more so than it is on television. And why the heavy use of the Internet to get political news and fact-check candidates? 63% of respondents said it’s important to be able to access information on their own time, and 73% said the Internet helps them do that. In aggregate, these numbers mean that persuadable voters are online — making candidates’ social media and online advertising strategies all the more necessary and important. “Persuadable voters are online. They are engaged and ready to listen. And they are looking for answers to the questions that will help them make up their minds come November 6,” reads the study, which is embedded below. Do you use the Internet to fact-check politicians? What are you favorite tools to do so? Share them in the comments. Google Voters Research Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/10/10/voters-fact-check-online/
