STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

14 ‘Death Stars’ tracked heading towards our Solar Solar system

THERE’S a fleet of ‘Death Stars’ headed our way. This time destruction really could be rained down upon us all: But there’s still time to linger over a Star Wars sequel or three (hundred thousand).

The wayward orange dwarf star HIP-85605 is just one of several stars detected as being on an intercept course with our solar system. Odds are as high as 90 per cent it will crash into our Oort cloud — an enormous ‘bubble’ of comets that surrounds our Sun — sometime between 240,000 and 470,000 years from now.

And it’s not the only one: There are possibly more than a dozen such ‘Death Stars’ racing our way.

A paper to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics by astrophysicist Coryn Bailer-Jones of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astronomy reveals that there are 14 wandering stars that will pass within three light years of Earth.

HIP-85605 appears likely to become our closest encounter.

It is a cool K-class dwarf star currently 16 light years away, approaching from the direction of the Hercules constellation. It will likely skim past our Solar System at a mere 0.13 to 0.65 light years (roughly 8000 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun).

Another seems close behind. The star designated Gliese 710 has been calculated as having a 90 per cent chance of coming within our sphere of influence. Currently lurking some 64 light years away in the Serpens constellation, it’s expected to land in our neighbourhood sometime between 1.3 and 1.5 million years from now.

To put this in perspective: Our closest neighbouring star is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf some 4 light years away

Close encounters ... 14 wandering stars have been calculated as being on a ‘collision course’ with our Solar System’s Oort cloud.

DEATH STARS ADVANCE

When Bailer-Jones extended his study to include all 50,000 stars upon which we have accurate ‘fixes’ for — including their distances, directions and velocities — it revealed 14 stars on courses that would bring them into range of our Solar System in the next two million years.

We’ve already experienced a ‘near-miss’: The white dwarf Van Maanen’s star — fortuitously ‘burnt-out’ — came close to our Sun some 15,000 years ago. Exactly what impact its passing had is as yet unknown.

It may sound like an interstellar game of billiards. In many ways it is. But even when they arrive, Swinburn University astrophysicist Dr Alan Duffy say’s not to expect being swallowed by a star.

THE OTHER DEATH STAR: Can Eta Carinae destroy Earth?

The scale of things is simply too great.

Instead, the threat will be what happens to the masses of comets orbiting in our Solar System’s outskirts — out to as far as one light-year.

“Objects hardly ever meet in space — the distances are so huge — but the gravitational influence of a star is enormous, even something a light-year away can rattle the loosely held Oort Cloud objects,” Dr Duffy says. “(But) there’s no doubt that nearby stars in the past have nudged Oort objects into falling towards the inner solar system.“

CAN HIP-85605 REALLY KILL US ALL?

In the face of a fully armed an operational Death Star such as HIP-85605 or Gliese 710, Admiral Akbar would rightly say we “can’t repel firepower of that magnitude”.

Stars are impressive. They’re big. They’re fractious. They’re thermonuclear.

Even our own — a somewhat humble, small specimen — can cast worrisome clouds of superheated plasma our way.

So the real questions are: Are we really in the firing line, what is being fired at us — and what are the chances of a bullseye?

Expanded sphere ... the Oort cloud is a vast bubble of comets around our Solar System.

Interstellar push-and-pull:

We’re fairly safe down here. It’s taken millions of years, but Jupiter has managed to clean up most of the inner Solar System by pulling wayward comets and asteroids into its heavy embrace. But it is a fragile balance. Those distant, tumbling mountains of rock and ice can be sent wobbling towards us.

The fear is Earth — and all the inner planets — could be subjected to a bombardment not seen for millions of years: ‘Death Star’ Gamma Microscopii (HIP103738) appears to have already drifted to within a light-year of our Sun by 3,850,000 years ago. There are two impact craters on Earth that could possibly be attributed to this event.

Tumultuous times ... A NASA impression of a restless star.

Bake’n’shake:

If the ‘Death Star’ was a hot one, could its powerful UV radiation be added to the planet-killing arsenal it unleashes? Such radiation could tear apart the DNA of living all things once our thin line of defence — the ozone layer — is stripped away.

As Dr Duffy says, it’d have to get extremely close — impossibly close — for its radiation and gravity to have any direct effect.

Gamma Microscopii, the G-7 giant which whizzed past some four million years ago, is believed to have been about 2.5 times the size of our own Sun. Its radiation is not known to have had any effect on our world.

“None of the stars that will likely come close to us are particularly large or bright meaning that they won’t affect the Earth with their UV or heating directly,” he says. “A star 100 times more luminous than our Sun would have to get as close to the Earth as Jupiter for it to be brighter than the Sun in our sky. If it’s a smaller star then it would have to get even closer. Long before then the gravity of this intruder would already have likely flung the Earth out of our orbit. Thankfully no star is predicted to come that close!”

Interstellar scale ... An indication of the distances between our Solar System and its nearest neighbours.

Supernovas:

Each ‘Death Star’ will take about 30,000 years to pass through our Oort Cloud. We will remain in their ‘spheres’ of influence’ for tens of thousands of years more. There is a remote chance one of them may reach the end of its life cycle and explode during that time.

“We see radioactive isotopes on Earth which point to nearby supernovas over the past few million years,” said Dr Bailer-Jones.

But Dr Duffy says the odds of one of these stars exploding when close enough to have any impact (and that means within several light years) is infinitesimal.

“However the main reason this isn’t a worry is that none of the nearby stars that are drifting towards us from this study are big enough to explode as a supernova,” he says.

DO THEY HAVE EXHAUST PORTS?

No. But these stars have a typically Imperial problem: Accuracy.

And, by the time the first of these Death Stars arrive, our race will either already be dead — or so highly evolved as to simply not care.

“While a direct collision by a large comet would be a disaster for the Earth we’re actually a very small target,” Dr Duffy says. “A much bigger target is the gas giant Jupiter with an enormous gravitational pull that attracts the comets and ‘cleans’ up the Solar System. Yet even Jupiter is tiny on that scale so it’s much more likely that any comets that tumble in towards us will just pass harmlessly by.”

Even if these stars did tumble any Oort objects out of orbit, these could take up to two million years to drift into the inner planets.

Many of the stars set to cross our path are dwarf stars smaller than our own. This means the potential influence they may have on our Oort cloud will be limited.

Comet storm? Even a ‘hail’ of comets sent spiralling out of the Oort cloud would have little chance of hitting Earth.

WHAT NEXT?

We can get more Bothan-like data (without the casualties) right now: Instead of R2D2, the carrier of such secret plans would be the European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope. It is can help pinpoint the tracks of these deadly interstellar bodies to determine how many are on the way — and which ones may have done us damage in the past.

It’s currently cataloguing over a billion objects in our interstellar neighbourhood.

“The Gaia satellite is currently in space creating the best map yet of all the nearby stars allowing us to know to great accuracy just which of the billions of stars in our galaxy will likely ever get close enough to cause us problems,” Dr Duffy says.

The results are due to be in by 2016.

It’s just such data Dr Bailer-Jones is waiting for. He is now working on a study to figure out the probability of Earth being hit by one of these deflected comets.

“Even though the galaxy contains very many stars,” Bailer-Jones told Universe Today, “the spaces between them are huge. So even over the (long) life of our galaxy so far, the probability of any two stars have actually collided — as opposed to just coming close — is extremely small.”

As always, the devil is in the detail.

[MIKA27]

Fugitive Christodoulos Xiros caught after a year on the run

ONE of Europe’s most wanted fugitives has been captured by police while riding a bicycle in disguise after a year on the run.

Christodoulos Xiros, the fugitive ex-member of a notorious Greek radical leftist group was planning an armed attack on the country’s main prison when he was captured this weekend, police say.

Xiros, formerly of the defunct November 17 movement, was targeting the maximum-security Korydallos jail and had amassed a collection of eight Kalashnikov rifles, rocket propelled grenades, several kilos of explosives and bomb-making materials in preparation for the attack.

“Greek police prevented a major attack against the heart of the Greek prison system,” Public Safety Minister Vassilis Kikilias told reporters.

Xiros was given multiple life sentences for his role in deadly attacks with the November 17 group before he was released in January 2013 for a nine-day New Year’s leave, then went on the run.

Police recaptured the 56-year-old Saturday as he rode a bike, armed with a loaded pistol, in a southern suburb of Greece’s capital. He surrendered without a fight.

According to the head of Greek police, Dimitrios Tsaknakis, officers found “manuscripts describing plans to approach and escape, as well as alternative routes” at the house in which Xiros had been living several months. Police said they also discovered the weapons there.

Unrecognisable ... This photograph shows Xiros when he was originally arrested in March, 2003.

Before its breakup in 2002, November 17 was one of Greece’s most violent far-left organisations, claiming responsibility for 23 assassinations during its 27-year span, including the 1975 killing of the CIA’s Athens station chief, Richard Welch.

Shortly after he absconded last year, Xiros appeared in an online video berating Greece’s government over the austerity policies it enacted at the behest of international creditors and threatened to “fire the guerilla shotgun against those who stole our life and sold our dreams.” Several months later, authorities found DNA on a parcel bomb sent to a police station in the city of Itea that matched traces lifted from the car Xiros used to go into hiding.

Authorities suspect Xiros began working with a group calling itself “Conspiracy of Cells of Fire”, which claimed responsibility for the parcel bomb — which was made safe by police — and expressed solidarity with the fugitive.

Wanted man ... At the time he escaped, Xiros was serving multiple life sentences for his role in deadly attacks

[MIKA27]

Picture Of The Week: Vernazza Beach, Italia

[MIKA27]

Homeless Man Receives $100 How He Spends It Will Warm Your Heart

Being charitable is a good trait to have, but even the most generous giver is prone to feeling a little dubious about giving money to the homeless.

Will they spend it on a warm bed and a hot meal for the night or waste it on cheap alcohol to numb their mind and illegal drugs to dilute their senses? We’ve all been guilty of assuming the worst and at times its probably prevent you from giving a helping hand to someone truly in the need.

YouTuber Josh Paler Lindecided to test the theory by giving a homeless individual $100 and seeing how they would spend the money. He found Thomas, a hungry and homeless man on the side of the freeway in Los Angeles, down on his luck, with circumstances conspiring against him and desperately in need of help.

He was forced to quit his job for care for his sick parents, both of whom he tragically lost in the space of a few weeks, his step-dad to cancer and his mother to kidney failure. High medical costs forced him to sell everything he had which lead to him becoming homeless.

After handing over $100 and giving Thomas a few words of encouragement, Josh left the scene, but secretly started to film Thomas from a distance. It wasn't long before Thomas headed to the local liquor store armed with $100….

What he spent it on and what he did afterwards however, will truly warm your heart and even change the way you view the homeless from now on.

Find out how you can help Thomas, by becoming part of thecrowdfunding campaign to help him get back on his feet.

[MIKA27]

After Decades of Searching, the Causeway for the Great Pyramid of Egypt has been Found

Dozens of foreign missions carried out over three decades using the latest high-tech instruments failed to find the causeway of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Now, unexpectedly, the passage has finally been located by a local resident living near the Giza Plateau, who was illegally digging beneath his home when he discovered a tunnel leading to the Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the three pyramids in Giza.

Arabic news source Ahram.org reports that a resident in the village of El Haraneya in Giza, a prohibited area for drilling, began digging beneath his house to a depth of about 10 meters (33 feet), when he discovered a passage consisting of huge stone blocks. The Minister of Police for Tourism and Antiquities was alerted to the discovery and security forces immediately placed a cordon around the property. The Ministry of Antiquities was notified of the incredible finding, and archaeologist Kamal Wahid was placed in charge of a committee to investigate. In its report, the committee confirms the finding of the corridor leading to the Great Pyramid, the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in Giza.

The Great Pyramid of Giza

The Khufu pyramid complex consisted of a Valley Temple near the Nile River, which was once connected to a long causeway that led to the Temple of Khufu (also known by the Hellenized name, Cheops). This temple was connected to the pyramid. The discovery of basalt paving and limestone walls suggests the Valley Temple is buried beneath the village of Nazlet el-Samman

Artist's reconstruction of the pyramids of Giza, showing the long causeways attached to each complex.

Despite decades of research and excavations, only a few remnants of the causeway (a covered, raised road, like an above ground tunnel), which linked the pyramid with the Valley Temple have been found, until now.

Ancient Greek Historian Herodotus, who visited the Great Pyramid in the 5th century BC, described the causeway as being about a kilometre (0.6 miles) long, though this account is contested by modern Egyptologists. Former Minister of State for Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass, estimated the total length of the causeway as being about 825 meters. In his second book of ‘Histories’, Herodotus described the causeway as being totally enclosed and decorated in fine reliefs. He wrote:

"there passed ten years while the causeway was made by which they drew the stones, which causeway they built, and it is a work not much less, as it appears to me, than the pyramid; for the length of it is five furlongs and the breadth ten fathoms and the height, where it is highest, eight fathoms, and it is made of stone smoothed and with figures carved upon it. For this, they said, the ten years were spent, and for the underground chambers on the hill upon which the pyramids stand

- Herodotus: Second book of the Histories.

Drawing of the remnants of a causeway leading to the Great Pyramid, 1979

The causeway of the second pyramid of Giza, Khafra’s pyramid, survived to some degree, however, it is in Saqqara, at the causeway of Unas’ pyramid, where one is able to get a better perspective for what they once looked like. The Unas’ causeway, which even has a small section of the roof remaining, is the best surviving causeway.

“It consisted of a covered passageway, 720m long, its interior surfaces decorated with high quality reliefs depicting a range of colourful scenes,” writes the Egyptian sites blog. “The walls were lit by a slit in the roof of the causeway which ran along the whole of its length. The theme of decoration on the causeway walls progresses from the living world in the east to the land of the dead in the west.”

Causeway of the Pyramid of Unas

For now, very little information has been released regarding the discovery of the passageway leading to the Great Pyramid in Giza. However, it is hoped that as investigations by the Ministry of Antiquities progress, we may have a much richer understanding of the great pyramid complex at Giza.

[MIKA27]

This Ancient Giant Armadillo Is Responsible For Giving Us The Avocado

But not just this giant armadillo. Giant sloths, four-tusked elephants, and a whole bunch of other ancient mammals that roamed the earth over 10,000 years ago also all played a role.

Over at National Geographic's The Plate, they're looking at the history of how the modern avocado evolved. The history of humans and avocados stretches back quite far — people started farming them in Mexico all the way back in 5,000 BCE. But, long, long before we started taking a hand in their development, the giant mammals of the Cenozoic Era were the first animals that helped the avocado to evolve:

The avocado as we know it developed to tempt the megafauna of the Cenozoic Era—massive mammals capable of gulping down an avocado whole and later, just as competently, eliminating its sizable central seed. This arrangement suited everybody: avocado eaters got a healthy, fat-filled meal and the avocado's seeds were dispersed far and wide in piles of seed-supporting dung. Among the avocado eaters were such behemoths as Megatherium, the giant ground sloth, which weighed four tons and stood as tall as a giraffe; the rhinoceros-like Toxodon; Glyptodon, an armadillo the size of a Volkswagen Beetle; and the gomphotheres, proto-elephants with four sets of tusks, the lower pair shaped like enormous spatulas.

About 13,000 years ago, however, in the course of the Pleistocene extinction, the bulk of the world's megafauna vanished from the earth. The disaster—whatever it was—struck every continent. South America, hit the worst, lost 83 percent of its large mammals; North America lost 68 percent. Mammoths and mastodons, saber-tooth cats, dire wolves, woolly rhinos, and all the aforementioned avocado eaters died.

Fortunately, even though the animals that helped its spread went extinct, the avocado was able to hang around long enough for other species, like us, to figure out what Glyptodon already knew: That underneath its green spiky skin, the avocado was delicious.

You can read the whole thing right here.

[MIKA27]

The Dark and Twisted History of the Children's Friend Society

The Children's Friend Society is among the most misleadingly-named charities in history. Supported by wealthy Londoners in the 1800s, the group promised to "do something" about the appalling abundance of vagrant children in England. And they did do something: the children disappeared. What came next was horrifying.

The Vagrant Child Problem

In 1830, Captain Edward Pelham Brenton founded The Children's Friend Society, a group that he believed would help relieve the terrible suffering of the vagrant children of England. He was right that children needed help. Homelessness and hunger were rampant. Something needed to be done, and in his travels, he had seen the opportunities that life in the colonies could bring to young people. Across the oceans were decent jobs and cheap lodgings. But in England, labor was worth nearly nothing and the life of laborers not worth much more. Abandoned or orphaned children begged and stole.

Brenton's wrote a book, The Bible and the Spade, which outlined the moral influences that he thought needed to be brought into these children's lives. It became the guiding principle of his Children's Friend Society.

The society was popular among the London elite and in do-gooder circles.Two years into its tenure, The Children's Friend Society had taken in a large group of vagrant children. The children were loaded onto boats, never to see their homes again.

One boat was sent to the Swan River Colony in Australia. The colony had been founded in 1829, only a year before the society itself. By 1830, word came back that nearly all the ships that attempted to make the passage were damaged, if not wrecked, the colony was in shambles, the colonists were starving, and the land was impossible to cultivate. By 1832, when the children were sent, things had improved. The colonists weren't starving, but they were exhausted because making the land suitable for agriculture required back-breaking labor. That was what the children were for.

The other boatload of children went to Cape Town, in Africa. There, the children were able to work while pushing out the Dutch - who had previously had control of the colony - and engaging in border wars with the Xhosa tribe, who were also being pushed out by settlers. The voyages were considered so successful that, the next year, two more boatloads of children went out to Canada.

The Child Labor Tradition

Brenton's boats were far from the first to export child labor. In fact, his society was part of a two-hundred-year tradition. Jamestown was founded in Virginia in 1608. In 1615, when labor was short, Britain sent convicts to make up for the shortage. Then, in 1619, 1620, and 1622, vagrant children were shipped off instead of convicts. The year-long pause in the shipping in 1621 came because of public outcry, and a massacre of 350 Jamestown colonists.

By 1645, "spiriting" away poor children - some street kids, some not - had become a tradition. As had the tradition of giving syrupy names to the groups behind it. The Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England sent 200 kids from Bristol to the Americas as cheap labor.

But not everyone was won over by nice names. The mass kidnappings had finally prompted an outcry from English citizens, and so, in 1645, Parliament passed a law against forced emigration of children.

While the practice was no longer legal, it continued, despite efforts to register emigrants leaving on the ships. Reports of hundreds of children being kidnapped and shipped over to the Americas surfaced sporadically in the next few centuries. Scottish children seemed particularly targeted. In Aberdeen, in the mid-1700s, multiple public officials and business people were caught up in a forced emigration scandal, though it only led to a civil trial. American independence and a US population that had begun to expand stopped the flow of children to the Americas, but other colonies still needed labor. Again, societies started by exporting convicts, and moved to exporting children.

The End of the Orphan Trains

The 1800s made the forcible emigration of children popular. Most organizations that engaged in the practice were a strange mix of benevolent and malevolent. Ragged Schools - famous for providing free education to the poor and starting the concept of public education - received grants to send children to Australia. Poor Law Guardians, meant to see to the needs of those in debt or out of work, were legally allowed to send children to the West Indies. Orphan trains crossed the United States, essentially giving orphan children to whoever wanted them.

And then there were the Home Children. Annie Macpherson was a Quaker who could not abide the poverty she saw in the East End of London. She opened up a Home of Industry - a refitted cholera hospital - for 200 young street children. But there were always more children. Macpherson came to believe that emigration was the only option.

She personally accompanied parties of children to specially-built institutions in South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The institutions sometimes did their best to find the children loving, safe homes. And sometimes they did not. Children were often used as cheap, expendable farm labor. They were told their parents were dead, and that they had nothing to go back to. The child migration program continued well into the 1940s. During its course, it transported over 100,000 children.

Captain Brenton, of the Children's Friend Society, died in disgrace. His methods were reckless enough to bring down society's ire within his lifetime. But 100 of his "children" attended his funeral, and that was an image that endured. These societies managed to maintain themselves because they mixed some good in with a great social wrong. As long as no one was willing to build the children homes, and no one wanted to see them on the street, nobody cared too much about where they went.

[MIKA27]

2,400 MS-DOS Games Are Now Free Online (Some of Them Are Porn)

The Internet Archive just dumped nearly 2,400 old MS-DOS video games into an easy-to-navigate repository. Every single one of the games is free to play in your browser. Some of the games are classics. Some of them are hilariously obscure. And some of them are porn—which is something you probably didn't realize existed on MS-DOS.

The first thing you'll notice when you dive into the new MS-DOS game library is just how impossibly large it seems. It's got everything! Street Fighter II? Yup. Sim City? Uh huh. Duke Nukem 3D? Of course! The new additions build on previous Internet Archive projects that brought hundreds of arcade games and loads of free software to the web.

For the sake of your busy schedule, we've selected some of our favorites from the new archive—which also pulls from existing archives like Moby Games. Again, all of them are free to play in your browser.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

No idea how fun this one is, but Harrison Ford's face is staring at you for the majority of the game. [Play here]

Street Fighter II

It hasn't changed a bit since it came out in 1992. [Play here]

Back to the Future Part III

It's a bummer that Part II's not available but this will do. [Play here]

Oregon Trail

They couldn't not have Oregon Trail, am I right? [Play here]

Aladdin

Deciding between playing Aladdin and The Lion King is tough, but at the MS-DOS game archive, it is a decision you have to make. [Play here]

Sim City

This one is also just as classic now as it was when you were in school. [Play here]

[MIKA27]

Here's What Happens When A Fireworks Factory Explodes

That is one hell of a boom, which makes sense since it’s an explosion of a factory of things that go boom. The explosion occurred in Colombia and injured two people. The initial blast knocked the cameraman over and the ensuing fireworks kept shooting out for a solid minute after that. It’s pretty nuts.

[MIKA27]

First Photo Of The Fully Operative Chinese Rivals To The US Navy F-18

The Shenyang J-15 Flying Shark — the first Chinese carrier-based fighter that is designed to match and even surpass the American F/A-18E/F Super Hornet — is no longer a test prototype. This photo shows fully operative serial units on the deck of the Liaoning, People’s Liberation Army Navy’s aircraft carrier.

According to the US Naval Institute, “these aircraft are very likely based at the newly constructed base near Huludao, Liaoning Province. Purpose-built as a carrier training facility, the base boasts of 24 shelters for a regiment of fighter-sized aircraft, maintenance hangars, as well as ski-jumps and flight-deck markings that replicate those found on the Liaoning.”

Together with the Liaoning — a refurbished Soviet Kuznetsov-class carrier — these J-15s complete China’s very first step towards the creation of a naval force that can serve their global strategic interests and, eventually, be capable of facing the US Navy in combat. At this point, however, they are still very far away from matching the unparalleled power of the US Navy — both in numbers of ships and aircraft as well as technological superiority. Even if the United States stopped to build new vessels and aircraft right now, it will take the Chinese at least a decade or two to get anywhere near the level of the American naval forces. Still, having the ability to put an air base anywhere in the world is something that can’t be ignored.

The Liaoning aircraft carrier in action

[MIKA27]

New Samuel L. Jackson Film Looks Ridiculous, And I Can't Wait To See It

Take a look at the trailer for Big Game, the new movie starring Samuel L. Jackson, directed by Jalmari Helander. It’s like a ridiculous mix of Home Alone, Die Hard, and Escape from New York set on the mountains and forests of Finland. I can’t wait to see this one.

[MIKA27]

US Homeland Security's Drones Really Suck At Border Patrol

For nearly a decade now, 10 Predator B drones have been zipping around US borders at $US12,000 an hour under the pretence of securing the country’s borders. Except that, according to a scathing report released earlier today by Homeland Security, not only do these drones cost five times as much as advertised, but they’re doing an all around shitty job, to boot.

Part of the problem, though, is the fact that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) simply doesn’t have the manpower necessary to actually put all the drones to use. While each drone was supposed to be on patrol around 16 hours a day, it actually ended up averaging out to less than a quarter of that. The Washington Post cites lack of personnel, spare parts, and bad weather as part of the reason the drones stayed grounded for so long.

Either way, the drones are wildly ineffective for how much money Americans are spending on them. In Arizona, less than two precent of all border-crossing apprehensions could be attributed to the drones. In Texas, that number is less than one per cent. And all the while, these things are bleeding money. According to the report:

We estimate that, in fiscal year 2013, it cost at least $US62.5 million to operate the program, or about $US12,255 per [flight] hour.

These new revelations are coming out amidst a recent push for a $US443 million plan to buy even more of the “dubious achievers”, as the report penned by Department of Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth refers to them. But now that plan, which would more than double the total number of drones to an obscene 24, may very well end up shelved. According to the report:

In addition, Congress and the public may be unaware of all the resources committed to the program. As a result, CBP has invested significant funds in a program that has not achieved the expected results, and it cannot demonstrate how much the program has improved border security. The $US443 million CBP plans to spend on program expansion could be put to better use by investing in alternatives.

What’s more, despite the fact that DHS had supposedly claimed to have “expanded unmanned aircraft system coverage to the entire Southwest Border”, the drones are actually only patrolling about 160km of the Arizona border and 113km of the Texas border.

You can (and should) read the report in full down below — it’s bad. Hopefully this will pave the way for at least starting a discussion about putting that money into something more worthwhile. Of course, with the way Congress works these days, that’s wishful thinking. [Free Beacon]

[MIKA27]

The New Mercedes Self-Driving Car Concept Is Packed Full Of Future

The Mercedes Luxury in Motion is not a car that you’ll be able to find on a lot any time soon. It’s not bound for any highways or driveways in the near future. It is, though, a glimpse at the future of automotive transportation. And a damn good looking one at that.

One key to how the F 015 (the less poetic name) operates? Outsized LEDs, on the front and rear, that communicate whether the car is in autonomous mode or under the driver’s control. If you don’t trust the machines (you shouldn’t), change lanes when you see blue. If you’re driving behind the F 015 the LEDs may also tell you to STOP or SLOW, which seems a little presumptuous, but what is any discussion of the future if not presumption?

While the interior of the car has autonomous touches as well, including seats that swivel so that the front and back rows can face each other, play backgammon, get a clear line for a hearty slap, etc. The also swing towards the door when it opens, to so that you can gently tumble your way out of its embrace instead of the strenuous act of turning your own body and standing up. The doors are “saloon doors”. They open as might the doors of an Old West saloon.

It’s similar to a concept a company called Regus introduced last spring, but I prefer this similar vision, from the 1950s, dug up by Paleofuture (and invoked by Mercedes in its presentation):

Not the new Mercedes car.

Want more future? There’s more future! There is nothing but future in the Mercedes F 105. Display screens grace not just the front panel but the side panels as well, and are controlled not just by the tap-tap-tappings of a caveman but by gestures and eye-tracking. It will know your movements more intimately than might your spouse.

It seems a little odd to talk materials in a car that won’t exist any time soon, but the F 015 incorporates carbon fibre-reinforced plastic, steel, and aluminium to the end of making it nearly half the weight of the cars rolling off today’s assembly lines.

The F 015 is not just svelte. The car of the future is smart, as well. It has “Extended Sense,” which knows its location down to the millimetre and can identify its owner from her smartphone. It has a heads-up display that can show street numbers, which restaurants have tables available, how many tickets are left for that night’s show at a theatre you’re driving past.

The swivel chairs of the future, seen through the lens of a weird Mercedes robot assistant.

And what is the future without THE CLOUD? The F 015 knows the cloud well, it is intimate with the cloud, it speaks fluent cloud to you. Want to control navigation? Do it from your PC before you leave. Want to set the temperature before you get in? Do it from your phone. This may be my favourite bit of connectivity though:

A specially developed app offers further control options even when away from the vehicle, using a mobile device. The F 015 can therefore be sent off to search for its own parking space, or perhaps to a specific location to collect the user or other occupants.

To reiterate: The Mercedes F 015 can literally go park itself. Or could, if it were ever going to be a real car, which again it is not! But let that not stop us. Let us move forward.

The Mercedes F 015 can go 1100km on a single charge, which is 683 miles, which is slightly longer than the drive from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta. It does this (or would do this were it to exist) thanks to an F-Cell plug-in hybrid system that Mercedes first debuted in 2011.

It’s easy to be cynical about visions of the future this far-reaching, and probably healthy to a degree. But it’s also important to remember that not all of this is fluff; much of the F 015 will show up in some version, some day, in some car. We may never play gin rummy with our backseat passenger, but fuel cell concepts like the one Mercedes has here will help us drive farther and more efficiently. We may never have a car that drives off and park itself, but we’re already seeing cars that park on our behalf when we need them to.

So here’s to the F 015. If we live up to even half of its promise, we’ll be in a much better vehicular place than we could even have dreamed up just a few years ago.

[MIKA27]

From Space, The Nile Looks Like A Cosmic King Cobra Made Of Light

Stunning image of the Nile River and the cities all along its path captured by astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore while flying over North Africa onboard the International Space Station. It looks like King Cobra made of light, with the heading Cairo. Somewhere in another dimension, the pharaohs are smiling.

[MIKA27]

Toyota Made Over 5600 Of Its Fuel Cell Patents Available Royalty-Free

In an effort to help spread the adoption and further the development of the hydrogen fuel cell technology the company developed for its FCV concept vehicle — now known as the Mirai — Toyota has announced that it’s making approximately 5680 fuel cell patents available for royalty-free use.

The long list of patents includes around 1970 related to the actual in-vehicle fuel cells, 290 covering technologies behind the high-pressure hydrogen tanks the Mirai and other cars will use to safely transport the fuel, and 70 pertaining to the production of hydrogen itself. The patents will specifically be made available to other automakers, parts suppliers and companies interesting in building fueling stations. And while the patents relating to fuel cell vehicles will only be royalty-free until 2020, the ones relating to hydrogen production will remain royalty-free indefinitely.

The announcement might sound like an altruistic move on Toyota’s part to help the world move away from fossil fuels (it’s certainly a nice gesture) but it will also help further the adoption of fuel cell vehicles, which will in turn make it easier for consumers to purchase and drive the company’s own Mirai once it’s officially available.

Like with electric cars, one of the roadblocks preventing the widespread adoption of fuel cell vehicles across the country is a lack of refuelling stations. And there’s a lack of refuelling stations because there’s just not enough fuel cell vehicles on the road to make them profitable. It’s a vicious circle that Toyota is hoping to stop by making it easier, and cheaper, for other companies to develop fuel cell vehicles, filling stations, and produce the hydrogen fuel. These patents will serve as important stepping stones for the further development of the technology, and while the move will certainly benefit Toyota, in the long run it should be just as beneficial to consumers too.

[MIKA27]

NFL Player Allegedly Tore Woman’s Ear

The New Orleans Saints’ Junior Galette was arrested after allegedly tearing a woman’s earlobe Monday, according to TMZ. Sources say police were called to the linebacker’s home in Kenner, Louisiana, where a woman was found to have injuries, including scrapes and the injured ear. (She was taken a local hospital.) Galette was charged with simple battery involving domestic violence, according to police. His cousin also was booked on a misdemeanor simple battery charge. The alleged victim told police she defended herself with a knife at one point. She said she used to live with Galette and still cooks and cleans for him sometimes.

[MIKA27]

An Informant, a Missing American, and Juarez’s House of Death: Inside the 12-Year Cold Case of David Castro

David Castro disappeared 12 years ago after running afoul of a Mexican cartel—but the U.S. doesn't count him as dead and his case is riddled with bloody mysteries.

David Castro is a statistic. He has been disappeared, like some 30,000 other victims of the drug war in Mexico whose fates are unknown—some because they were involved in the narco business, some for far more innocent reasons—as the targets of extortion, or political oppression, or casualties of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In Castro’s case, it’s pretty clear he got in too deep. He was a truck driver and U.S. citizen living in El Paso, Texas, who found himself sideways on a valuable drug load—just one of the thousands of such cargos moved each year from Juarez, Mexico, into the United States. As a result, Castro owed money to the wrong people. It finally caught up with him.

According to those familiar with the case, including federal agents, family, and a U.S. government informant, Castro was abducted in Juarez in late September 2002. He was then apparently murdered, after the money he owed a player working for a cell of a major Juarez drug organization was not delivered in time. His body has not been found.

Between October 2002 and June 2014, at least 827 U.S. citizens were the victims of homicides in Mexico, including drug-related murders and executions, according to a report prepared by the U.S. Department of State.

Castro’s case, however, is not counted among those murders, because the figures reflect only deaths actually reported to the State Department. Absent a body, no one can say with absolute certainty whether Castro is dead, even if all signs point in that direction.

But even though he has been disappeared, Castro is not forgotten. His estranged wife and his girlfriend, pregnant with Castro’s child when he was kidnapped, are now raising hard questions about the U.S. government’s role in Castro’s cold case and seeking closure to a more than 12-year-old mystery that has wreaked havoc on their lives.

“My son cries and wants to know his dad,” said Yvonne Lozoya, who was living with Castro at the time of his abduction and is raising their now 12-year-old son. “There’s no closure or grave to visit.”

One former federal agent who spoke with The Daily Beast on background said Castro’s case does deserve more attention, but added a harsh assessment: “I doubt anyone will care,” given his alleged involvement in the drug business.

Grace Castro, David’s wife of a dozen years before they separated in 2000, said after she and her husband parted ways, she believes he did get sucked into the drug business and eventually found himself in over his head.

“Once he knew he was in that far,” she said, sobbing, “he stopped talking to us and seeing our [three] kids. … We still don’t have answers on what really happened. What am I supposed to tell our kids? They deserve to know.”

One thing is clear about Castro’s case, though. At the center of his disappearance in Mexico is a U.S. government informant named Guillermo Ramirez Peyro—a former Mexican highway cop who, in 2002 at the time of Castro’s kidnapping in Juarez, was working for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while also serving as a key lieutenant in a ruthless cell connected to the Juarez cartel (also known at the time as the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization).

In a statement Ramirez Peyro, also known by the nickname Lalo, provided to the Mexican government in 2004 (and during subsequent interviews conducted with him for this report), he reveals his insight into Castro’s fate on the Mexican side of the border—a fate closely linked to Lalo’s role as an ICE informant. Yvonne Lozoya, Castro’s former girlfriend, has filled in the pieces on the U.S. side of the border as she experienced them. Castro’s story, as they each tell it, is a cautionary tale of the harsh realities of the drug war that have plagued the border for more than a decade.

Lozoya says she dropped off Castro, then 36, at a used-car lot in El Paso, Texas, the day he made his fateful trip across the border to Juarez. Castro hooked up at the car lot with Lalo. Together, they crossed over the International Bridges on foot into Juarez to conduct some business. Lozoya says the story she got from her boyfriend that day was that he was going to pick up a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in Juarez and drive it back across the bridge to El Paso that same day.

Lalo, though, concedes there was more to the trip. He also was working to recruit Castro as a driver for a drug load. Part of Lalo’s job for the Juarez cartel cell was to coordinate marijuana shipments into the United States, and for that he needed drivers, Lalo said in an interview.

A former federal agent familiar with Lalo’s informant work explained that the drivers he recruited served as “buffers” that would allow law enforcers to make arrests without compromising the informant.

“Once a load is turned over to a driver, we could take the driver down [make an arrest] on the U.S. side of the border,” the agent explained.

It was very early in the recruiting process, though, and what happened next assured Castro would never wind up as a U.S. arrest statistic, though such an outcome at that time may well have saved his life.

Lalo, in his statement to the Mexican government, said that after he and Castro crossed over the bridge from El Paso into Juarez, they went to “a big park where a lot of people are” and that’s when they ran into an individual known as Chito—who also worked for the Juarez cartel, though with a different cell than the one Lalo had penetrated for ICE. Lalo insisted during a recent interview that they encountered Chito “and his people by accident.”

“When we crossed, we met with Chito...” Lalo said in the statement he provided to the Mexican Attorney General’s Office some two years after Castro’s disappearance. “Chito asked him [Castro] if he remembered that he owed him money from a drug load. … Chito was with six other guys, and he told me, ‘Go to hell! This is none of your business.’”

Lalo, who while an ICE informant used the cover name Jesus Contreras, said Castro left with Chito and his men. Lalo said he reported the kidnapping to his ICE handlers, which was confirmed by a former federal agent familiar with the case.

When Castro did not return home that evening or the next day, Lozoya said she called the El Paso Police Department to report him missing. The El Paso police brought in the FBI, a decision that likely sealed Castro’s fate at the hands of his abductors, Lalo said in an interview.

Lozoya added that she had met Chito previously, on the U.S. side of the border, at a bar in El Paso that she and Castro frequented. “I thought we were just there having drinks,” Lozoya said. “But they [Castro and Chito] must have been talking business.”

Lalo said after the FBI was brought into the case, he spoke with their agents to brief them on what he knew about Castro’s abduction. But he also said during an interview for this story that he was concerned their involvement in the case would not turn out well for Castro.

Lozoya said Castro did call her a couple of times while he was being held hostage in Juarez, indicating that his captors were demanding an $80,000 ransom. She said the FBI was listening in on the calls.

“I remember he said, ‘Bring over the money,’” Lozoya said. “But there was no money.”

She claims the FBI tried to enlist her as a cooperating source in their investigation. The plan, Lozoya alleges, was to use her as bait to set a trap for Chito by “luring” him into the United States, where he could be arrested. She also said Chito had contacted her as well in the weeks following Castro’s abduction and threatened her life. Those threats prompted Lozoya to move her family to California for a time until things cooled down, she said in an interview.

“I told them [the FBI] no,” Lozoya said. “I was pregnant and scared and I couldn’t do that [become an informant].”

Some three weeks after Castro’s abduction, Lalo’s concern about the FBI’s involvement in the case appears to have been well founded.

“After the incident [Castro’s kidnapping], I went to the El 16 Bar [in Juarez] to meet with Chito, who explained to me that [since] he could not cross over into the United States, and [because] David Castro had not wanted to pay the debt… that was why he had kidnapped him,” Lalo said in his statement to the Mexican government. “Several days later, I found out that the FBI had went to visit the wife and children of Chito in El Paso, and they alerted Chito, and that is why he decided to kill David.”

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment on Castro’s case.

Grace Castro said she was pretty much in the dark about her husband’s kidnapping until “his divorce attorney filed a motion in court withdrawing from the case because … he [David] had been reported kidnapped in Mexico.”

“I thought it was BS,” she added. “I called the FBI, and they told me they did have a report of him missing, but they couldn’t investigate because it happened in Mexico. And two years later [in 2004], they finally told me they think David was killed in Mexico.”

But there is a big twist in this story that has left both Grace Castro and Lozoya frustrated and grasping for more answers. Castro’s body, according to the informant Lalo, was buried in the backyard of a house in Juarez that would eventually become a tomb for at least a dozen bodies—victims who crossed the Juarez cartel in one way or another.

Lalo, while working as an ICE informant, oversaw the burial of those bodies and the use of the house as a murder chamber, according to his statement to the Mexican government. In fact, Lalo said he participated in one of those murders—that of a Mexican lawyer tortured and killed at the house in August 2003, about a year after Castro disappeared—and Lalo said in an interview he was present for at least two additional murders at the house. The slayings, Lalo said, were carried out by Mexican police on the payroll of the Juarez cartel cell that Lalo helped to oversee while working as an ICE informant.

“I tell ICE that he [Castro] was buried at this house [at 3633 Parsioneros in Juarez], but they did not know where the house was, or nothing else, and they didn’t ask questions about it,” Lalo said in an interview for this article. “Well, it worked like this: Sometimes they would bring a body to the house already dead, and yes, sometimes they bring the people alive and they killed them there.”

The bloody deeds at this House of Death came to an abrupt end in early 2004, after the Juarez cartel cell that employed Lalo threatened the life of a DEA agent and his family in Juarez. That event forced ICE to pull the plug on their operation targeting the cell and, with Lalo’s help, the leader of the cartel cell (and Lalo’s boss at the time), Heriberto Santillan Tabares, was lured to El Paso and arrested. He later accepted a plea deal that put him behind bars for 25 years. A number of the Mexican cops who allegedly carried out the murders, though, remain at large.

But when the corpses were finally dug up at the House of Death in Juarez in early 2004, after Santillan’s arrest, Castro’s body was not among the dead, according toreports in the Mexican media and interviews with law enforcement. It’s not clear why his body remains missing.

Maybe Lalo got it wrong, and Castro was buried elsewhere. This house on Parsioneros, after all, was only one of many such narco-tombs in Juarez, known as narcofosas.

Or maybe Castro’s body was there, but simply not identified by Mexican authorities because of the state of decomposition—or possibly even to avoid the embarrassment for both U.S. and Mexican authorities in having to explain the presence of a U.S. citizen among the carnage enabled by an ICE informant. Lozoya suspects either of those scenarios is realistic.

But we simply can’t see the full truth through the fog of the drug war as of now, and so David Castro remains disappeared. That is a reality that still eats at Grace Castro and Yvonne Lozoya.

From Lozoya’s point of view, had David Castro not gotten entangled with the informant Lalo, he would not have been abducted in Juarez that day in late September 2002, and then vanished from the face of the earth.

“The government just wanted to catch the big fish [in the Juarez cartel] and they ignored everything in between,” Lozoya said. “David’s killer is still out there.”

Grace Castro adds: “No one deserves to die like that, and we’re left behind to put the pieces together.”

The informant Lalo is in jail and awaiting trial in Missouri on what he claims are bogus kidnapping charges unrelated to his informant work. He has a different take on the House of Death murder victims in Juarez, one that is a bit more chilling: “ICE monitored my phone calls and knew hours ahead that murders were going to happen [resulting in bodies being buried at the house on Parsioneros]. They don’t really do nothing. It wasn’t happening on U.S. soil, and so there was nothing we can do, so they just listen to it but didn’t show no interest in that.”

[MIKA27]

DONKERVOORT D8 GTO BILSTER BERG EDITION

Breaking the lap record at Blister Berg circuit (for street-legal production cars) was quite an impressive feat, one that Donkervoort is quite proud of. That’s exactly why the the Dutch car manufacturer is building the Donkervoort D8 GTO Bilster Berg Edition.

Based on the original D8 GTO (which of course gains its inspiration from the classic Lotus 7), this thing keeps much of the original D8 components in tact, but there are some nice updates. The carbon fiber build and five-cylinder Audi TFSI engine pumping out 380 horsepower are still there, but an improved suspension system and lightened flywheel gives the car better response and handling. The car is about 22 pounds lighter, has been outfitted with an extra roll cage and anti-roll bar along with a menacing black carbon grill out front. The special edition D8 GTO will be limited to just 14 units, and will set you back about 194,000 Euros.

[MIKA27]

PORTABLE BEER | BY PATS BACKCOUNTRY BEVERAGES

This has to be the best thing to ever happen to backpacking, an awesome little addition to your gear list, packable beer! When on distant adventures packing light is essential, and transporting beer is inconvenient, heavy and cumbersome, Pat´s Backcountry Beverages have developed a beer concentrate that can fit into a pocket, simply place it in the easy-to-use carbonation system and add water to deliver a complex, yet well-balanced, craft brew.

You´ll have to make an initial investment for the carbonator bottle, and the beer extract is $10 for enough to make 16 oz(a growler).

[MIKA27]

THE LED LIGHT BULB THAT WILL EXTEND YOUR WI-FI

It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on your wireless router or access point, you’re going to end up with a few dead zones. Unless you have a really tiny home, office or apartment, you’re probably going to need more than just one device to make sure you have access to the Internet whenever and wherever you have some “down time.” You could throw up a bunch more access points, range extenders or wireless networks, or you could just screw in the new Boost LED light bulb from Sengled. On the illumination side of things, you get 470 lumens of warm white LED light. On the Wi-Fi side of things, you get two network modes (client and access point), two antennas for maximum 300Mbps rate and the 802.11b/g/n standard at 2.4GHz. Then, there’s the app. The Sengled app lets you add new bulbs, customize your connections and control any of the bulbs.

[MIKA27]

Captain America Finally Makes It To Call Of Duty

One of my favourite things about Japan is watching Hollywood celebrities line-up to sell their souls in big budget ads that were never played or seen in the west. This Call of Duty Online Ad, made in China featuring Chris Evans of Captain America fame, falls squarely into that bucket.

Call of Duty Online is a China-exclusive free-to-play online shooter that’s been in beta since last year. The full game gets released on January 11 and this trailer is designed to build the hype for that big release.

I actually think the trailer is sorta cool. It has the same tone and feel as some of the western Call of Duty trailers we’ve seen in the past, but is far less obnoxious in its desire to get us all to ‘bro-down’. There’s actually a woman in this trailer, which might be a first for Call of Duty marketing!

Also — the bit where the guy gets interrupted by a phone call from his mother is gold.

[MIKA27]

Mad Catz Reveals Transforming Alien Mobile Gaming Thing

Mad Catz’ engineers have gone insane. I can’t blame them. I’d go insane too if everything I designed was labelled with some bizarre acronym, like the R.A.T. mice, F.R.E.Q.TE gaming headset or this, the L.Y.N.X.9 Mobile Hybrid Controller.

The Lynx (without dots and caps to preserve my sanity) is an Android and PC gaming controller in three parts — the left wing, right wing and the central controller brain. Here it is in its natural resting state.

Open it up and you’ve got a game controller with all the standard bells and whistles, as well as some non-standard bells and whistles like a mouse sensor pad and a built-in microphone for voice search. It’s just in a really odd form. Yannick LeJaq said it looks like a Michael Bay Transformer, but he thinks everything looks like a Michael Bay Transformer.

Slap on the included QWERTY keyboard attatchment and you’ve got a handy input device for your Android microconsole or PC game chat.

Connect the phone clip and you’ve got an alien robot with a phone for a head.

Then things start getting weird. You can break the Lynx apart, attach it to the included tablet stand and turn an up to seven inch Android tablet into this freaky-looking thing.

All of this, plus the Lynx comes standard with an HDMI cable so you can take the controller off of the tablet stand and hook the device to your television for big-screen gaming.

All of this alien technology can be yours for the price of a couple hundred cups of coffee when it ships in March, because Mad Catz isn’t afraid to produce frightening technology for a niche market and charge $US300 for it.

[Fuzz]

2,400 MS-DOS Games Are Now Free Online (Some of Them Are Porn)

Woohoo! I can play, "Samantha Fox Strip Poker" again! Ahh, childhood memories...

[MIKA27]

Woohoo! I can play, "Samantha Fox Strip Poker" again! Ahh, childhood memories...

Why am I NOT Surprised!!!

[MIKA27]

Here's The First Full-Sized Teaser Trailer For Marvel's Ant-Man

Marvel, which is in the middle of its do whatever the hell it wants phase, has a new superhero movie coming out: Ant-Man. And this is the first teaser trailer. I’ll watch it even though I don’t know much about the comic book because Paul Rudd is fun and because well, it’s a Marvel movie. I'm undecided on this really...