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

[MrGTO]

JAGUAR D-TYPE

The D-Type Jaguar is an excellent example of what happens when you take an aeronautical engineer and have him design you a racing car. Post-WWII Britain was brimming with engineers used to the fast-paced design and engineering required during times of war, and this mindset helped launch the country to the forefront of both automobile and motorcycle design.

In the case of the D-Type, Jaguar hired a former Bristol Aeroplane Company engineer to design the monocoque – resulting in one of the most aerodynamic and beautiful cars of the 1950s. The engineer’s name was Malcolm Sawyer and he paid fastidious attention to the D-Type’s frontal area, going so far as to get the engine changed to a dry sump design and tilting it 8½°.

In order to minimise weight, aircraft grade aluminium alloy was used throughout, including an all-aluminium sub-frame attaching the engine to the bulkhead. Interestingly, the designers opted to carry fuel in a deformable Marston Aviation Division bag – common practice in aircraft applications but almost unheard of in automobiles.

Looking at the specifications of the car it’s not hard to see why it achieved so much success – it was powered by a 300bhp, 3781cc DOHC inline six-cylinder engine with triple Weber carburettors, a four-speed manual transmission, independent front suspension, a live rear axle with trailing links, a transverse torsion bar and competition spec four-wheel disc brakes.

With a kerb weight of just 864 kilograms (1905 lbs), the power to weight ratio offered by the D-Type is impressive even by today’s standards. Sadly, Jaguar chose to cut funding to its motor sport department at the end of the 1956 season, which meant that for 1957 onwards the only D-Types racing where entered by privateers.

The D-Type you see here was one such privateer car, it was ordered new by Curt Lincoln – a Finnish tennis player with a deep love of motor racing. In order to avoid as much import tax as possible he requested that Jaguar make the car look as second hand as possible, amazingly the factory agreed and wound the odometer forwards, scuffed up the pedals and carpets, and even added an old steering wheel.

The trickery worked and the Finnish customs agents didn’t tax it as a new vehicle, after some light modifications the car won first in class at the famous Elaintarhanajo – Finland’s version of Monaco which was run on the inner city streets of Helsinki. It would later be fitted with spiked tires and used for ice racing throughout Scandinavia, in 1959 it was sent back to Coventry for a full refurbishment ands shortly after it found its way into private ownership.

The story about what happened next to the car, including it essentially being two cars at one point, is fascinating and well worth the read. You can click here to read the whole tale, or to register with RM Auction to bid on it when it comes up for sale in March 2015.

Horrible looking car but what a beautiful engine!

[MIKA27]

I Could Spend Hours Watching This Guy Make His Handmade Kitchen Knives

Ben Edmonds is former graphic designer turned into an artisan. His kitchen knives are some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. He crafts them by hand in his small workshop in Derbyshire, England.

Watch him make one of his knives in this beautiful and utterly relaxing video.

Here are some of the knives he makes:

[MIKA27]

What If the Universe Has Always Existed?

The BICEP2 gravitational waves discovery is officially dead. Most scientists still believe the Big Bang happened, and the case in its favor is still pretty solid, but we shouldn’t dismiss the alternatives. So what are we really saying if we say that time and matterdidn’t originate with the Big Bang?

Egyptian scientist Ahmed Farag Ali and Canadian scientist Saurya Das have recently calculated one possible, mathematically sound answer: that the cosmic effects we attribute to the Big Bang may actually represent the steady state of a permanent universe that had no beginning. And even if their findings don’t hold up, it’s still entirely possible that the Big Bang represents a single event in the history of an infinitely old universe.

We haven’t reckoned with the implications of a finite or infinite universe; both seem to introduce problems we can’t resolve. If we say the universe exists because of the Big Bang and didn’t exist until the Big Bang happened, then we’re quite literally saying there was a point before time at which nothing became everything and exploded. I don’t think there are recreational drugs powerful enough to make that feel like a coherent idea.

But if we say the universe has always existed, that arguably makes even less sense. As University of Nottingham philosopher Mark Jago explains here, the idea of infinity is—perhaps by definition—marginally nonsensical, and certainly beyond our capacity to fully comprehend:

Imagine the cosmological timeline we’re accustomed to dealing with: 13.8 billion years, give or take. How much of an infinite universe’s timescale does that represent? An infinitely small portion. Compare a single hydrogen molecule with the scale of the universe; now, consider the fact that 13.8 billion years is literally infinitely smaller in relation to the age of the universe than that. Everything that has ever happened since the beginning of observable time would be infinitely recent in the grand scheme of things—shorter than a tenth of a second relative to 100 trillion years. Our lives and all timescales we can comprehend would be, quite literally, infinitely brief.

But at least most astrophysicists accept the idea that the universe began with the Big Bang, right? Sure. But an increasing number of them also think that our universe came from other universes. And how far back do these other universes stretch? Well, if they go infinitely far back, we face the same paradoxes we face in an infinitely old universe. And if they have a beginning, we’re back to saying that, at some point, nothing became everything and exploded. No matter what model of spacetime we accept, it probably won’t make any damn sense. Personally, I find that humbling—and a little bit liberating.

[Fuzz]

OAKLEY X METAL COLLECTION

Will definitely be getting a pair of Badman to go with my other X Metals.

[MIKA27]

First Ever Drone Footage Of The Soviet-Era Secret Lightning Machine

You have seen photos of the secret Soviet-era Tesla tower — capable of discharging as much energy as the entire USSR’s power grid in 100 milliseconds — but you have never seen this like this, from a drone. Russia Today got permission to take this video of one of the most fascinating science facilities in the planet.

The facility is still operational in a forest near Moscow, where it can generate 150m artificial lightning bolts, making it “one of the world’s most powerful lightning machines.” Its latest job, according to RT: “lightning protection tests for Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet aircraft.”

Now, the Tesla towers are abandoned,

[MIKA27]

The US Is Starting To Sell Armed Drones To Allies

The unmanned strike aircraft of the US are much sought after by other nations — which means there’s a massive export opportunity. Now, the country has decided is to permit the widespread sale of armed drones to allied countries.

The new policy was announced yesterday, after no shortage of internal debate an review. TheWashington Post suggests that “allied nations from Italy to Turkey to the Persian Gulf region clamour for the aircraft.” In the past, the US has only sold its drones to the UK.

It’s a difficult balancing act. On one hand, drones are expensive to design, test and then run — as the Air Force has found out. The Pentagon recently scolded the organisation for wasting $US9 billion of tax-payer cash on Reaper drones. Exporting home-grown military technology is a lucrative business, and will go at least some way to recouping the heft military spending on unmanned vehicles.

Some, however, will wonder if equipping other countries with armed drones is a good idea. Allied nations aren’t necessarily as trustworthy as the UK, with many of them demonstrating chequered pasts when it comes to human rights and political freedoms.

For whatever it’s worth, the new policy describes principles that foreign governments must adhere to if they’re to be able to purchase the aircraft, though. The countries will have to agree that the drones will only be used for national defence or situations where force is permitted by international law. And even then, requests to purchase drones will apparently be examined on a case-by-case basis.

Regardless of how the sale are negotiated, though, the news will certainly mean one thing: the world’s skies will increasingly be filled with US drones.

[MIKA27]

Just Follow The Path, It Will Get You Somewhere

David Ruiz Luna is not a professional photographer, just a guy who likes to travel around the world and take photos of his trips. He just happens to end in some amazing landscapes — sometimes breathtaking, sometimes alien-looking, always a reminder that I should get off this sofa right now.

Above: Going up Island Peak, Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal

Lobelia telekii, a weird plant in Mount Kenya, second largest peak in Africa after Kilamanjaro

Simien Mountains, Ethiopia

Alien world landscape in Laguna Negra, Sierra Nevada National Park, Mérida, Venezuela

Sunrise at Lenana Peak (4.895m), Kenya

Cime di Lavaredo, the Dolomites, Italy

The lighthouse at the end of the world, Ushuaia

David Ruiz Luna is a surgeon from Sabadell, Spain. His passion is to travel around the world in search of amazing places to experience and photograph.

You can follow him in Flickr and 500px.

[MIKA27]

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night (For This Anti-Piracy Dolphin)

In this spectacular and dramatic long-exposure night shot you can see a Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin helicopter — Dolphin, to its friends — being towed into its hangar aboard Ventôse, a light monitoring frigate of the French Marine Nationale.

The frigate was deployed in the Caribbean Sea on a mission to fight against drug trafficking between January 14 and February 13 of this year. It was certainly atmospheric enough for such a serious operation.

[MIKA27]

São Paulo Is Running So Low On Water People Might Be 'Warned To Flee'

São Paulo is Brazil’s largest and wealthiest city, a bustling megametropolis of 11 million people. Now imagine the city going for days without water for drinking, bathing or cleaning — it’s a dystopian scenario not far from São Paulo’s reality thanks to a water crisis made worse by drought.

As the New York Times reports, taps are already running dry for days at a time, and officials are mulling a ration that turns water on only two day per week. A leaked conversation had one senior official from São Paulo’s water utility saying the water situation could become so bad residents might have to be warned to flee. The Times reports on what the situation is already like:

“Imagine going three days without any water and trying to run a business in a basic sanitary way,” said Maria da Fátima Ribeiro, 51, who owns a bar in Parque Alexandra, a gritty neighbourhood on the edge of São Paulo’s metropolitan area. “This is Brazil, where human beings are treated worse than dogs by our own politicians.”

Some residents have begun drilling their own wells around homes and apartment buildings, or hoarding water in buckets to wash clothes or flush toilets. Public schools are prohibiting studentsfrom using water to brush their teeth, and changing their lunch menus to serve sandwiches instead of meals on plates that need to be washed.

The terrible irony is that Brazil is actually rich in freshwater, with the Amazon and other rivers adding up to one-eight of the world’s freshwater. But nearby pollution, deforestation and a recent drought are putting strain on São Paulo’s notoriously leaky municipal water system. Now the consequences are piling up, and the megacity is running out of water.

[MIKA27]

A LAST LOOK AT THE LAND ROVER DEFENDER PRODUCTION LINE

The news that the Land Rover Defender would not be continued for the 2016 model year has left many marque enthusiasts in a state of nervous trepidation about what will follow.

The worst case scenario is a soft-roader with no low range and a subsequently limited amount of off road ability, while the best case scenario would be something that looks a lot like the current Defender, but uses monocoque construction, modern crash protection and independent suspension on all four corners – allowing the differentials to be lifted up out of harm’s way.

This series of images shows the Defender production line in its last few months of operation, it’s interesting to note the amount of hand work that goes into building the model when you consider the level of robotic automation used on most production lines.

If you’d like to see more of the Defender or get your order in, you can click here.

[MIKA27]

The Mad Max Gunmaker Fighting ISIS

Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers are scooping up Bakhtiar Sadradin Aziz’s Franken-guns—bits and pieces of old weapons welded together and filed down for a more stylish (and deadly) weapon.

While Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government presses the West for more and newer weapons to advance its war against the so-called Islamic State, one Kurdish craftsman is taking matters into his own hands.

Bakhtiar Sadradin Aziz’s weapons are cobbled together from bits and pieces of old rifles and pistols into Franken-guns that look like something out of Mad Max. But they have proved a hit for Peshmerga soldiers unsatisfied with their standard-issue Kalashnikovs and aging American surplus M16s. Many of the customers who venture into the 36-year-old gunsmith’s basement shop beneath Erbil’s 6,000-year-old citadel and bazaar are just looking for something more stylish. Others want better ammo, accuracy, and killing power.

Photos: The Mad Max Gunmaker Fighting ISIS

“It’s my shop now, but this was my father’s shop, and my grandfather’s before that,” Bakhtiar says via a translator as he shoves an M16 barrel into a vise clamp. Before he can continue, the gunsmith is interrupted by a customer handing over a chrome-plated Beretta M9 with gold accents and engraved calligraphy. The pistol looks like it could be a weapon of choice for a Bond villain, but Bakhtiar nonchalantly throws it in his desk and says it’s just a repair job.

Some of Bakhtiar’s neighbors whisper that his clients include members of Iraqi Kurdistan’s Asayish secret police, but if that’s true, Bakhtiar isn’t saying. “Most of my clients are Peshmerga and government types, and people with permission from the government to carry guns,” he says. “I mostly just work here, but sometimes I go out into the field with the Peshmerga and fix their weapons there.”

Shortening the M16 barrel and swapping out its standard full-bodied butt stock to give the gun an M4 carbine’s aesthetic is one of Bakhtiar’s most popular services right now. Though it has less range, the real M4 is increasingly the standard-issue weapon of American ground forces, and the rifle has been popularized in movies and video games. However, as all American arms shipments to the Kurds must be distributed by Baghdad, the Vietnam- and Desert Storm-era M16s are the closest thing to a real M4 a young Peshmerga can get.

“The M16 is quite long, but we make it smaller to make it more efficient,” the mustachioed Bakhtiar says. “It’s a $2,500 rifle in Kurdistan, so they bring it in here and I charge $500 for it, or resell it for $3,000, whereas a normal M4 would sell for $9,000, so it’s a good deal for many people.”

Bakhtiar was never a Peshmerga himself, but today he unflinchingly supports them in their fight against ISIS, as he did previously in their conflicts against the Iraqi central government. He says he hopes the United States and other Western powers start supplying the Kurds with weapons directly, and he doesn’t fear the impact on his business new weapons might have.

“That won’t be a problem,” he says. “Those break down, too. I know how to fix them. I learned that from my father and my grandfather. I know how to fix everything.”

On the dusty, whitewashed walls of his tiny shop hang reminders that war, and the weapons behind it, are a generational affair for the Kurds. Rows of guns and gun parts—some straight from the box and others the shop’s own hybrids—fill every nook and cranny. The collection includes everything from modern Turkish shotguns and AKs to two World War I-era bolt-action rifles that Bakhtiar says were used to fight British colonial forces. Between those two rifles sits something even older: an aged wood-stock muzzle-loader designed to fire a musket ball.

“I don’t know who made it, but I think it’s at least 200 years old,” he says. “People come in a lot and ask to buy them, but those are from my grandfather, and they’re not for sale.”

Sadradin, Bakhtiar’s father, did weapons repairs for the Peshmerga, which made him a public enemy to the Baathists. He spent 14 years behind bars before being freed during the 2003 American invasion. When he returned home, Bakhtiar had grown up and was already running the gun shop, so Sadradin retired.

Despite this tragic family history—or perhaps because of it—Bakhtiar has begun training his 17-year-old son, Abdel Hakim, to take over the business. The oldest of five, Abdel Hakim handles customers and assists his father by passing him tools. A striking image of Bakhtiar sans mustache, the teenager says little but agrees with his father that one day the shop should be his.

“Yes, I want to do it,” he says. “My father did it and my grandfather did it, and I want to inherit this skill and take it even further.”

Though much of Bakhtiar’s focus is on combat weapons, many of his customers also come in to get repairs done on their hunting and air rifles. One such client is Peshmerga Capt. Amir Mohamed, 42, who says he knows Bakhtiar from the battlefield but for now is just coming in to pick up an air rifle for shooting small game.

Mohamed says he trusts Bakhtiar for repairs but doesn’t want one of his hybrids. “No way would I use them,” he says. “Some of the younger guys want them, and maybe they’d be good in a city, but they’re not good for long range, and I wouldn’t take them to the front.”

Mohamed says this while gesturing toward another of Bakhtiar’s creations: an AK-47 that’s been shaved down to pistol length and fitted to fire 7.62x25 pistol ammo instead of its normal 7.62x39 rifle cartridge. Bakhtiar laughs off Mohamed’s criticism and swears this new AK is totally safe; he says it should sell, too. “I make everything for money,” he insists. “You can’t make money in Iraq by just being creative, you have to sell everything.”

And at least for now, sales are good, with a steady stream of customers and window shoppers. Some stay for tea and cigarettes, while others just come and go. Many are fighters headed to the front to battle ISIS, and given Kurdistan’s history, it’s not hard to imagine today’s scenes playing out in the shop of Bakhtiar’s grandfather in decades past. Warriors always need weapons, and when they need something special, they come to Bakhtiar. The gunsmith acknowledges that conflict is crucial for his work but adds he longs for the day when he can sell only bird guns.

“The fighting does affect our business, but I don’t endorse any war,” Bakhtiar says, glancing at his son. “If I end up in a situation where there is peace, I have no problem with that.”

[MIKA27]

Robin Williams’s Suicide to Be Recreated By A Porn Star in Tasteless TV Documentary

A shameful British TV show will recreate Robin Williams’s suicide using, of all things, a porn actor. We’re absolutely outraged…and probably going to watch.

A British TV channel is producing a docuseries that will recreate Robin Williams’s suicide using an impersonator who has also starred in porn films.

For f**k’s sake.

Pardon the language, but the pathetic lunacy of this is just too much. According to British newspapers, Channel 5 will reconstruct Williams’s final days, including a depiction of the actor taking his own life, for a series about the shocking deaths of celebrities.

These deaths will be recreated I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant-style (hinting at the taste level we’re working with) using actors. The actor portraying Williams is named Alain Poudensan. He’s a professional Robin Williams look-alike. Poudensan is actually quite convincing as a doppelganger. He’s also appeared in porn.

The series is called Autopsy, which has recently explored the deaths of Elvis Presley, Karen Carpenter, and Anna Nicole Smith. Perhaps this is a case of “too soon” that has gotten us all up in arms over a TV show that has been in existence for years in the same format it plans to treat Williams’s death.

A spokesperson for the network, when reached for comment, would only say, “Yes, we are filming the program but have no further comment to make.” A source close to the show apparently told theMirror, however, that producers have already decided to tone down the death scene for TV.

About that porn star thing, however—it’s not as scandalous as it sounds. Oh, it’s still plenty scandalous. But not quite as bad as you’ve imagined. When impersonating Williams, Poudensan, who is French, goes by the name Alain Robin. A photo taken from the Alain Robinwebsite even shows Williams himself with his arm around Poudensan, hinting that the star endorsed his look-alike.

When he is performing in porn, which he’s done in films with titles including Sexterror, Deep Anal, and Anal Magic, Poudensan has gone by the name Alain L’Yle. We recommend you don’t Google that name.

The Mirror quotes a friend of the Williams family who discussed their reaction to the series. “With each passing day the pain for Robin’s family eases just a fraction but something as disturbing as this just takes them backwards,” the friend said. “Why anyone would want to make such a program is beyond comprehension. His wife and family will be utterly dismayed that someone is seeking to profit from Robin’s death in such a grotesque way.”

And then the kicker: “The producers should be ashamed of themselves. I hope people refuse to watch.”

That’s the thing. Obviously this friend hopes people refuse to watch. I hope that people refuse to watch. After you read this, you’ll be disgusted at the very idea of this and pledge not to watch, too. And then, when all is said and done, you know we’re all going to watch.

We’re a culture of hypocrites. We hand-wring and clutch pearls at the first hint of exploitation, crassness, or questionable taste. But we also take pleasure, of both the perverse and guilty kind, in defying our initial scoffs and imbibing in the very pieces of entertainment we had derided.

Could you believe how quickly Lifetime wanted to make a movie about Whitney Houston, capitalizing on the attention around her death? It was shameful! We also counted the days until it aired and were even disappointed that it wasn’t more salacious. We wag our fingers and tsk-tsk at the recent spate of headline-baiting TV biopics on celebrities who met tragic ends, but we’ve also turned them into such a bona fide phenomenon that Lifetime is now a veritable factory for them. Autopsy, really, is just Channel 5’s version of that very thing.

Hell, “ripped from the headlines” plots have sustained Law & Order, CSI, and their coterie of spin-offs and rip-offs for decades now, bastardizing and exploiting real-life tragedy for our own entertainment to Nielsen-approved success.

Even now, we’re focusing on the moral ambiguity of producing a docuseries that will restage Williams’s tragic suicide. But, to be honest, if the episode is juicy enough we may even do another piece in which we embed video of the scene and dissect it. It’s a win/lose situation: everybody wins and we all lose our dignity.

And we’re not sure that being self-aware about it helps the matter much, either.

[MIKA27]

HAND GROUND COFFEE GRINDER

If you’re a true coffee connoisseur, you know the grinding of the beans is one of the crucial steps on the path to supreme flavor. This is the cause that Hand Ground, a new precision coffee grinder, is dedicated to.

Hand Ground offers 20 preset coarseness levels at 125 micron intervals, making it fit for any method of brewing, whether it’s for espresso, cold brew, or anything in between. It features a locking top, so bean particles don’t fly out while you grind, triple-mounted stainless steel axle to eliminate burr wobble and produce a consistent grind, a Borosilicate glass catcher to prevent static and sticky grounds, 38mm conical burrs made from densely sintered Alumina ceramic, a 100g capacity hopper able to contain enough coffee beans for five cups, and an ergonomic side-mounted handle. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

MERCEDES-BENZ SL SPECIAL EDITION MILLE MIGLIA 417

To celebrate a rather shocking win by a 300 SL in the Mille Miglia endurance race 60 years ago, Mercedes-Benz is tipping its cap with a very special edition of its SL Roadster.

Boasting upgraded performance as well as new styling touches and creature comforts, the SL Special Edition Mille Miglia 417 will be available as SL 400 and SL 500 models. The SL 400 is driven by a six-cylinder engine that turns out 333 horsepower, while the SL 500 is powered by a V8 that creates 455 hp. Both models come with an adaptive adjustable damping system and ESP Curve Dynamic Assist, which applies brief braking on the inside wheels to improve cornering at high speeds. The magnetite black metallic paint is standard, as are leather headrests and a leather-wrapped steering wheel. Place your orders April 7.

[NJP]

The US Is Starting To Sell Armed Drones To Allies

The unmanned strike aircraft of the US are much sought after by other nations — which means there’s a massive export opportunity. Now, the country has decided is to permit the widespread sale of armed drones to allied countries.

The new policy was announced yesterday, after no shortage of internal debate an review. TheWashington Post suggests that “allied nations from Italy to Turkey to the Persian Gulf region clamour for the aircraft.” In the past, the US has only sold its drones to the UK.

It’s a difficult balancing act. On one hand, drones are expensive to design, test and then run — as the Air Force has found out. The Pentagon recently scolded the organisation for wasting $US9 billion of tax-payer cash on Reaper drones. Exporting home-grown military technology is a lucrative business, and will go at least some way to recouping the heft military spending on unmanned vehicles.

Some, however, will wonder if equipping other countries with armed drones is a good idea. Allied nations aren’t necessarily as trustworthy as the UK, with many of them demonstrating chequered pasts when it comes to human rights and political freedoms.

For whatever it’s worth, the new policy describes principles that foreign governments must adhere to if they’re to be able to purchase the aircraft, though. The countries will have to agree that the drones will only be used for national defence or situations where force is permitted by international law. And even then, requests to purchase drones will apparently be examined on a case-by-case basis.

Regardless of how the sale are negotiated, though, the news will certainly mean one thing: the world’s skies will increasingly be filled with US drones.

Oh Yeah, history tells us only good things can come from this.

[MrGTO]

Oh Yeah, history tells us only good things can come from this.

I think Terminator says it louder!

[MIKA27]

Meet The 'Real-Life Q' Who Built Secret Spy Gadgets For A Living

I grew up watching James Bond films. My favourite part was always the same: the part where “Q” would outfit our hero with the latest in spy technology. Ralph Osterhout also grew up loving Bond movies too — but he took it to the next level. He spent his life building real spy gadgets, for secret agents in the field.

As a boy, Osterhout was so enamoured with Ian Fleming’s Bond novels that he decided to become a spy himself. He trained himself to shoot, drive, fight, even build his own weapons and gadgets. He studied the Bond films and, at the age of 22, built his own miniature submarine like the ones in the Bond classicThunderball. He started a company building high-tech dive gear, and traveled around Europe to visit the exotic Bond locales he’d read about. “I stayed at the same hotels, went to the same restaurants and villages, smoked John Player No. 10 cigarettes,” he once told Wired.

PVS-7 night vision goggles.

That’s roughly when the US government came calling. They needed Bond-grade gear for their elite Navy SEAL divers. Soon, Osterhout was a military contractor who trained with SEALs in his spare time. He built closed-circuit rebreathers and thermal protection systems, which could let divers target Soviet nuclear submarines — in freezing waters, no less — without being spotted. Later, he designed the standard-issue PVS-7 night vision goggles used in Desert Storm, and later Afghanistan and Iraq. And yes, his dive vehicles eventually featured in two Bond films: Never Say Never Again, and The Spy Who Loved Me.

Osterhout’s love of gadgets extends beyond the theatre of war. He invented some of the most popular toys of the ’90s, including the Yak Bak, the TalkBoy F/X+ and the gadget-filled Power Penz. But after the dot-com crash he went back to building more secretive tech again.

When I catch up with Osterhout at his Osterhout Design Group in San Francisco, he tells me frankly that he won’t be able to talk about all of the spy gadgets he’s invented. “The most exciting and intriguing ones, frankly, would make me a target,” he says. But as I ask him about how he found himself building spy gear, and how the counterintelligence business has changed over the years, he lets a few things slip.

How did you get started?

RH: I think I read all the Ian Fleming novels when I was probably 12 or 13 years old. I thought “I’d like to do that.” Just imagine if you had those kind of skills. So I set about making myself an expert in a multiplicity of weapons, martial arts, driving skills, you name it. From racing cars to motorcycles to making weapons to becoming an accomplished gunsmith.

But how?

If you want to know to become an expert in something, you go find someone who’s the best of the best. It’s not illegal or immoral to be friendly. If you’re honest and open and say “Look, I think what you do is fascinating, but I’m dumb as a post and I’d love to know more about it,” most people who are highly accomplished in more sensitive things will basically shoo you away — until they realise that you’re friendly and relentless and deeply interested in becoming skilled. The Achilles’ heel of most highly skilled people is that, as they get older, they like to find a younger reflection of themselves.

I knew that and identified it early on, and associated myself with world-class gunsmiths and martial artists and people who were highly skilled in shooting and all those things, and became virtually accomplished in all those things without anybody knowing. It wasn’t for anybody else and it wasn’t for show.

How did you get noticed?

In the diving industry, when I was very young, I got recognised for having an inventive skill and capability that was very different from anybody else. I built underwater vehicles, anti-shark weaponry, digital instrumentation, miniature underwater breathing systems. Could I take a big regulator that looks like a hubcap in front of your mouth and miniaturise it, let you breathe easier too?

People used to blow sharks apart with shotgun shells and all this kind of stuff underwater, and they would kill a shark — no question about it. But high-amplitude, low-frequency concussions underwater — it’s like ringing the dinner bell for more sharks. You kill a shark, but you get more. And then things don’t go so well. So I designed shark darts.

You use a CO2 cartridge or fill a weapon with your scuba tank, you stick a shark, and it depresses a valve that ruptures the CO2 cartridge, injects high pressure from the cartridge inside the shark, which ruptures the heart and internal organs of the shark and causes them to die internally. The sudden expansion of gas also makes them unstable so they can’t attack you, but there’s no sound, and there’s no blood in the water. It was very effective.

Farallon Industries was Osterhout’s first company. He was known as Ralph Shamlian at the time. Farallon was known for these diver propulsion vehicles (DPV) and shark darts. His later aquatics company, Tekna, was famous for its dive knife.

Tell me about the first time the US government got in touch. What was that like?

A… secure group in the Pentagon got a hold of me through a friend and asked if I’d like to come talk about doing military work. I had no interest. I said I wasn’t a defence contractor and didn’t have the patience for tons of paperwork and bureaucracy. They said, “Why don’t you just come and see us and if you don’t find what we have to say appealing, we’ll pay for your trip.”

So I went to the Pentagon. I walked into a room with two people, one of them an older guy who was very bright and extraordinarily influential with all branches of DOD. He asked me what I thought of the SEAL teams’ equipment at the time. I said it was old, heavy, inefficient and I kind of went on a little personal rant.

He said, “Well, how would you like to do something about it?” I said, “Look, you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not a defence contractor, I don’t know contracts, don’t have the patience for them, I hate bureaucracy.” He said “What if you just came up with the solutions and we assigned people to handle all the contracts, and you just write a page or two? You just give me a page or two, and if we find something we want to do, we’ll pay you.” I told myself I’ll believe it when I see it.

I got a call a couple days later asking for my first ideas. I rattled off some ideas, and they went for it. I got my first black contract for about seven million dollars. Oh boy. I was off to the races.

What was most profound for me was being able to train with the operators. I was very physically fit at the time, and I ended up having basically unlimited access to training on any of the most difficult things they do. Live fire exercises, killhouses, anything.

I remember the first time they took me into an armoury and asked me if I could shoot. I said, “A little.” They asked me which guns, and I said I liked pretty much anything. They picked a number of pieces out, and took me into a room — a killhouse — with paper that comes down from the ceiling in big rolls. They project video against it of simulated terrorists holding people hostage, babies. They said, “Let’s see how you do.” They handed me a pistol with a suppressor on it — a P9S — and, still looking at them, I completely field-stripped the piece by feel. I put it all back together, jacked the slide, stuck a magazine in, and fired. It was a good day.

Heckler & Koch P9S with large 1970s suppressor.

They put me in another room and asked “How do you feel about live fire all around you?” They gave me earplugs and tossed some flash grenades in — about 240db, blind you for about 40 seconds — and then they came bursting in with live fire, hitting remote control targets behind me. They dumped 30-round magazines of live 9mm all around me. I sat there chuckling away the whole time.

I ended up getting a pass and was able to train with them all over, and in so doing ended up making, lifelong friends with SEAL team commanders and master chiefs and senior enlisted guys that eventually moved up through the ranks and became admirals, and I became a resource for them. I ended up becoming a tech advisor to the intelligence community. They’d say “We have a problem,” and ask me to fix it, or tell them what they should do.

How many of the solutions you came up with are public knowledge?

No so many. The most exciting and intriguing ones, frankly, would make me a target. The most interesting things you don’t know, and I can’t say anything about it nor who I did it for. It’s understood that when you work for that community, you don’t tell all.

Give me a hint?

How about a miniature transmitter, disguised in bird droppings. It splats against someone’s window. You know how birds come along and **** on your window, it’s sort of a whiteish, blackish, greyish mess and you see a little drip at the bottom? Imagine that drip is actually highly conductive silver paint. That long drip is actually the antenna, and in that gob is a very tiny transmitter with a tiny battery. A birdshit transducer was one of my favourites.

One of your favourite… gadgets you created?

That’s one of my favourites. We’ll leave it at that.

Imagine a pen that attaches to a lighter. It’s a real pen, but also a suppressed weapon. You fire it, and [he claps his hands together quietly] it sounds just like that, you hardly hear it. You could drop somebody across the table and no one would hear it. It fires a round that’s designed to be completely silent and nobody would know.

You know what a Cohiba cigar is? Imagine you could take the top off a Cohiba and inside is a tiny miniature cylindrical VTOL helicopter that’s got counter-rotating blades and miniature cameras for day/night vision. It’s absolutely silent and you can fly it through a room. You can launch it from the street, fly 500 feet high, for half a mile or more, and nobody can hear it or see it. It’s about the physical volume of half a hummingbird, and it’s absolutely real.

Or here, imagine a pen that looks just like a regular pen. I can write on my hand, I can write on my wrist, or I can even just write a message in the air, and very-high precision accelerometers, gyros, magnetometers are measuring my hand movements, creating the message and encrypting it with 256-bit AES encryption, and I press a button and I can send that wirelessly quite some distance away.

Say you’re in a very sensitive area and worried about being compromised, and they take you down and strip off your clothing, and now you’re just down to your underwear. Imagine I might have built something into the band of underwear that you can’t detect — you don’t feel any lumps or anything — that sends off a signal depending on what you do with your underwear, either “I’m ok” or “I’m not ok and need an extraction.” That signal travels fairly good distance.

How is real-life spying different than in the Bond films?

You don’t get good information from being at the country club and polo teams and hanging out and having a few splashes down at the yacht harbour. How do you get information from people? There are only five ways that I know of.

One is financial desperation. You find someone that’s in trouble financially. You can run credit checks on them, find out that somebody’s living above their means. You can compromise them financially because their wife or significant other is putting enormous pressure on ‘em, or their children can’t go to good schools or whatever it may be.

Two is discovery of some criminal or immoral act. That’s a big one.

Bitterness in somebody because they have been passed over in an organisation, when they were the most qualified, but lacked the charm, the sophistication, the political savvy, or maybe their appearance or mannerisms were quirky. If they’re bitter about it, one can play upon that bitterness in a very gentle way — you don’t get it in 20 seconds, you need to build a relationship with people.

Loneliness. Some people are just lonely as hell and for some reason they don’t know how to make friends, and so you little by little make a friendship with them. And it can’t be a bullshit friendship, you have to end up communicating to them that you found something likeable about them, and in time they help you.

The last one is revenge against someone who did you wrong, who screwed you over, who said something in the organisation that was completely unfair, untrue, and you suffered by it.

You don’t go to a bar and someone drops a dime on you and you’ve got it all. I’ve done it: I’ve been places where someone made a careless error, got up, went to the bathroom and let me see something they shouldn’t have let me see on the corner of a desk… but those are unusual.

How has it changed over the years?

It used to be for example that you’d say, “How do you penetrate a facility?” And all the kind of things you did — you’d use water-cooled silent drills, drill holes from one wall to another, and you’d put a tiny pin transmitter and pickup through — all of that has changed. It’s not that it doesn’t happen anymore, but everyone’s conscious about eavesdropping. What’s really important now is how you find stuff in plain sight, and what does it mean. Who am I looking at? What am I seeing that most people may not recognise as being significant?

Don’t think of spies like in the old day where you have little bugs and transmitters, that shit’s as easy as can be. The really tough stuff is how do you do things in plain sight.

Obviously you can recognise someone’s face: facial recognition is a no-brainer. Gait recognition is another one: some people pitch forward slightly when they walk, one leg is not as strong as the other and there’s a certain pattern to your walk most people don’t think about. Iris recognition: I either have to get really close or have optics that let me get close enough to actively illuminate your iris, and grab what’s called a salient frame, a picture that can characterise the unique shape of the muscles of your iris.

Where do the gadgets come in?

Headworn devices are going to sweep over our lives like a tidal wave. Nobody can stop it. Every day on the internet you’re watching people get shot. Do you remember The Matrix, when the bullet’s going slowly through the air and the guy just moves his head? What happens when somebody shoots and police or security can see the path of the bullet in the air? Imagine you see a red streak literally from where the bullet came from. That will change everything.

Is there enough time to react to something like that?

You can’t react to get out of the way of the bullet, that’s impossible, but you can know where it came from. You understand where the threat is. You’ll have people like those two brothers [in the Boston Marathon bombing] who were handling explosives. What happens when the authorities can detect the presence of explosives without touching anybody? You can literally see residue on someone if your glasses emit a dozen different wavelengths of microlasers that illuminate clothing in real time and give off a signature of what was absorbed or reflected. In microseconds it can look them up in a microtable and tell you if it’s gunpower or ammonium nitrate or Semtex or whatever.

Imagine you have a pair of glasses, and you can just look at a building 50 feet away, 100 feet away, and look right through the building and see someone moving around. You can’t see who it is, but you can see their heart contracting, their chest heaving. What you see is a representation, a signature of a person’s lungs and heart expanding and contracting. Now you can see where people are. You’re not invading privacy because you don’t know who they are. But when someone’s engaged in a standoff with authorities, you can say “I know where you are, I can see exactly where you are, and if you don’t stop we’re going to take you out.”

Isn’t it better for the guy to know his options are to have a bullet put through him, or give up peacefully now?

And you’re developing technologies like this?

I’m telling you about different kinds of things that are under development. We’ll leave it at that.

Why’d you stop making toys?

When you’re an independent toy developer, the best of the best, you come up with maybe 200 ideas a year. You show the best of those, maybe ten of them, to toy companies, and if you get one or two of them placed a year, you’re in heaven. When I was on a run and things were going grand, my hit ratio was insane. It was crazy, I’d go in and show 10 ideas, they’d take 8 of them, and I’d get advances and royalties. It was fabulous. But the second half of 2000 hit like a sledgehammer when the dot-com era collapsed overnight. The easiest way to cut costs was to cut out the independent toy developers, to just take what they had and buff it up. By the end of 2000, I couldn’t get a deal done.

Fortunately for me, people I knew in the military stepped forward with a problem and said, “Could you take a look at this?” And I won a contact that generated 700 million in revenue over a number of years. That got me back into the military game. I sold my company to a large defence contractor, came back to San Francisco, and made a decision that I was going to push hard at something I really wanted to do, and that was take headworn devices to the next level.

The next level?

Everybody thinks the modern soldier is like in Enemy of the State: people can see what you’re doing on the ground, and with transmitters the size of a walnut in your pocket you can communicate with space. Bullshit. The fact of the matter is if you go out in the field, a commanding officer tells his platoon leaders what to do, platoon leaders tell the team leaders what to do, who tell the individual shooters “we’re going to go over there, we’re going to shoot those arseholes if they do this or try to bomb us or do whatever.”

The fact is the average soldier doesn’t know where the **** he is, he doesn’t really know who the threat is. He’s told to go here, be prepared, watch out, and if we take fire, return it — but don’t fire unless you’re authorised. That’s changing.

The ODG Smart Glasses, an augmented reality device. Osterhout is already shipping thousands of prototypes to government agencies.

The reality, ultimately, is that every soldier will end up with a headworn device on them that will know where he is, where he’s looking, anywhere in the world, with a circular error of probability of less than a meter. He’s going to know in twice the thickness of his own body where he is. He’s going to know where he’s looking, anywhere in the world, within half a degree. And if his glasses can look through sunglasses, look through clothing and see that a guy’s carrying a bomber belt before he gets within explosive distance… those sorts of things save lives.

It’s not about invasion of privacy. It’s really not about that, it’s about being safe. Just like everybody had to compromise in London, and in New York where there are now cameras everywhere. It’s not like Person of Interest. I love to watch it but it’s not true. They don’t care if you’re masturbating uncontrollably under a New York Times at a bus stop, the government’s not interested. You couldn’t even process all the data. It’s not about compromising privacy, it’s really about how the hell do we protect perfectly innocent people from people who are sociopaths, who know what’s right and wrong but don’t happen to care, and who have an illusion that they’re going to be fine if they just blow people up.

[MIKA27]

SOUNDHAWK | SMART LISTENING SYSTEM

At first glance Soundhawk looks like a typical Bluetooth headset, but this little device offers a whole different set of capabilities, boosting your ears to superhuman levels! The smart listening system is equipped with a scoop, that you can comfortably place in your ear, a wireless microphone, that you can direct towards the sounds you want to filter or enhance, and a charging case. It has an app that´s connected to a smartphone or a tablet device that lets you personalize the kind of sound treatment you want to have. You can choose to filter unwanted noises, so you can easily talk in a noisy restaurant, or you can elevate the sound you capture in a conference room, you can even use it with Siri or Google plus. Quite the device to get if you run into some communications issues in loud environments of if you´re an audiophile.

[MIKA27]

CRAFT COFFEE

Craft Coffee is a coffee subscription service that is the thing to have if you enjoy the oldest energy drink. You can, yourself, choose the type of coffee you´d like to order and enjoy, or leave it up to the coffee experts at Craft Coffee to surprise you, or, you can discover, through some quick questions, the type of blend that matches your preferences. The coffee blends are provided by the best American independent roasters, they are freshly made and hand delivered to your home whenever and how often you decide. With this subscription you will be helping small American businesses. This service is sure to take you on a journey of real coffee discovery, you can get the same blend every time, or change it regularly, just tune up your subscription and Craft Coffee will make sure you´ll get sleep deprived.

[MIKA27]

ASTON MARTIN VANTAGE GT3 SPECIAL EDITION

When you’re looking to tear up the tracks, not just any Aston Martin will do. For that, you need something built for time attacks. You need the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Special Edition.

The Geneva Auto Show is just a few short weeks away, and car makers are flooding the web with new models for us to drool over. Aston Martin is the latest brand to give us a sample, unveiling the most menacing Vantage to date. The exterior is decked out with an aerodynamics package designed to help this thing fly around the track, but it’s what’s under the hood that’s got us smiling. The racetrack inspired coupe is powered by a new version of Aston’s monstrous 6.0-liter V12 engine, a setup that’s good for 600 horsepower. The vehicle was both designed and engineered at Aston Martin’s Gaydon Headquarters in Warwickshire, England, and will be limited to just 100 examples throughout the globe. Expect more details at Geneva on March 3.

[MIKA27]

BROOKLYN BRINE SPICY MAPLE BOURBON PICKLES

Some pickles are for sandwiches. Some are for eating alone. Brooklyn Brine Spicy Maple Bourbon Pickles are both. Made using Kirby cucumbers, maple syrup, bourbon, apple cider vinegar, and spices, these organic treats are produced in small batches , hand-packed in Brooklyn, and are just as tasty on a burger as they are all by themselves.

[MIKA27]

KINGS COUNTY RYE WHISKEY

The real reason there just isn't as much rye whiskey on the market as bourbon is fairly simple — it's much harder to make. Just ask Kings County Distillery in Brooklyn, who struggled to get this great Rye Whiskey exactly how they wanted it. Of course, their trial and error is your ultimate gain because the finished product is nothing short of exceptional. All of the rye spice you crave along with some subtle sweetness and mint to round things out. It's bottled at 122 proof — barrel strength — and limited to only 128 200ml bottles.

[MIKA27]

Spin Master Gives A Sneak Peek Of Its Upcoming Interactive Yoda

The new Star Wars movie is still months and months away, and Disney did a fantastic job of keeping tie-in toys and other merchandise hidden away at Toy Fair this past weekend. There was the occasional glimpse of what will be hitting toy stores later this year though, and Spin Master has just posted a short teaser showing brief shots of its upcoming Legendary Yoda interactive robotic toy in action.

There’s unfortunately not much other info on the toy than what’s revealed in this video. But, nevertheless, excited you should be.

MIKA: I am so getting one for me, I mean.. my son

[MIKA27]

Oil Refinery Explodes In California, Blade Runner Flashbacks Ensue

It’s raining down ash in Southern California, after an Exxon Mobil oil refinery exploded. The blast nearly leveled a processing unit and left four contractors with minor injuries. The local Torrance Fire Department says gasoline is to blame. Meanwhile, the aftermath looks like a scene from Blade Runner.

The scene does not look peaceful, but it could have been much worse. Local news reports that the blast triggered “earthquake-like shaking” as well as a massive smoke stack flare. (That’s the Blade Runner-inspired image you see above.) It’s a miracle more people weren’t hurt.

[MIKA27]

This Cyberpunk Landscape Is Actually The Skyline Of Las Vegas

This futuristic night view of Las Vegas was captured from a Royal Australian Air Force C-130J Super Hercules when it was landing after a training mission, during Red Flag 15-1 at Nellis Air Force Base, on February 9th 2015.