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

[Fuzz]

Give The Gift Of A Gift That Looks Like Raw Meat

I buy all my gift wrapping supplies from Bunnings... cardboard box, #18 twine, duct tape, chicken wire, plaster of Paris, self-expanding foam....

12 Cool pools you wish you were swimming in right now:

You have to take the elevator all the way to the 57th floor of Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Hotel to get to the amazing rooftop pool. Apparently, it’s the highest infinity pool in the world.

Here’s what it looks like from the ground:

My bro is based in Sg and works for the Sands Casino Group. Will have to get him to get me staff rates for the Marina Bay Sands hotel when I'm there in Sept.

[MIKA27]

A snake Hunter who is allergic to Venom:

ZOLTAN TAKACS was fascinated with snakes as a boy in Hungary and still is. An expert in toxins, he’s traveled to more than a hundred countries and caught thousands of reptiles, collecting their venom for screening to see if it can be turned into a lifesaving drug. He himself is allergic to venom.

Do you have a death wish?

Listen, I like my life and I don’t want to die. I have a family, who I love very much. And I have to be careful, because three colleagues of mine passed away from snakebites. The last thing I want is one day not to return.

Have you ever been bitten by a snake?

Six times, all my fault. I got my first bite when I was 15. The most recent was in the Brazilian Amazon in 2008, by a not very toxic snake. But I had a terrifying allergic reaction in the middle of nowhere.

What makes the risk worth it to you?

My ultimate goal is to push a toxin into medical use. Toxins have yielded about a dozen medications, and some are lifesavers. If anybody faces a deadly heart attack, there are three drugs of choice, and two are reptile-venom derived. There are a hundred thousand different venomous animal species with 20 million different toxins. Imagine how many potential medications you could find.

Is there a typical day in the field?

There is no typical day. I go to the far corners of the Earth. I fly small planes. I scuba dive. I sleep in the middle of the rain forest or in the desert. Obstacles vary: from infections to crocodiles, from civil wars to landslides to pirates. I’ve been jailed, chased by elephants, sprayed with cobra venom.

Lab work must seem dull by comparison.

Hardly. The lab gives meaning to what I do. You’re the first person to see what nature’s been working on for hundreds of millions of years. We take this to the drawing board and perfect the toxins for medical applications.

But first you have to go get the toxins.

Right. There’s no way you can do this unless you put yourself on a plane, travel to a rain forest, turn on your flashlight, and start the night search for vipers.

[Fuzz]

Report: Microsoft Working On Translucent, Aluminium Smartwatch

Woah, woah, woah. Hold the phone there. Did I just read that? Translucent Aluminium? Or in other words transparent aluminium?!

Scotty! Dr Nichols has finally cracked the formula to make it commerically viable!! (in reality this was kinda done in 2009, but hey, who's gonna argue?)

[MIKA27]

Archeologists Suspect Vampire Burial;

An Undead PrimerDiscovery of a suspected vampire burial site is not a first for archaeologists.

Polish archaeologists believe this skeleton with the head between the legs was found in a 'vampire' grave.

When archaeologists opened an ancient grave at a highway construction site near Gliwice, Poland, they came across a scene from a horror movie: a suspected vampire burial.

Interred in the ground were skeletal remains of humans whose severed heads rested upon their legs—an ancient Slavic burial practice for disposing of suspected vampires, in hopes that decapitated individuals wouldn't be able to rise from their tombs.

But the recent Polish discovery isn't the first time that archaeologists have stumbled upon graves of those thought to be undead.

Here's what science has to tell us about a few of history's famous revenant suspects.

How to Bury the Undead

To date, researchers have reported suspected vampire burials in both the Old World and the New World.

In the 1990s, University of British Columbia archaeologist Hector Williams and his colleagues discovered an adult male skeleton whose body had been staked to the ground in a 19th-century cemetery on the Greek island of Lesbos. Whoever buried the man had driven several eight-inch-long iron spikes through his neck, pelvis, and ankle.

"He was also in a heavy but nearly completely decayed wooden coffin," says Williams, "while most of the other burials [in the cemetery] were simply in winding sheets in the earth." Clearly, someone did not want the man to escape the grave. But when physical anthropologists studied the skeleton, Williams adds, they "found nothing especially unusual about him."

More recently, an archaeological team led by University of Florence forensic anthropologist Matteo Borrini came across another suspected vampire burial on the Italian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo. In this case, the body proved to be that of an elderly woman, who was apparently interred with a moderate-sized brick in her mouth—a recorded form of exorcism once practiced on suspected vampires in Italy.

Then there's the New World. In the 1990s, archaeologists working in a small 18th- to 19th-century cemetery near Griswold, Connecticut, came across something highly unusual: the grave of a 50-something-year-old man whose head and upper leg bones had been laid out in a "skull and crossbone" pattern.

Upon examination, physical anthropologists determined that the man had died of what was then called "consumption"—and what is now known astuberculosis. Those who suffer from this infectious disease grow pale, lose weight, and appear to waste away—attributes commonly linked both to vampires and their victims.

"The vampire's desire for 'food' forces it to feed off living relatives, who suffer a similar 'wasting away,'" the researchers noted in a paper in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. To play it safe, local inhabitants seem to have decapitated the body of the suspected vampire.

The Dead Truth

Most archaeologists now think that a belief in vampires arose from common misunderstandings about diseases such as tuberculosis, and from a lack of knowledge about the process of decomposition.

Although most 19th-century Americans and Europeans were familiar with changes in the human body immediately following death, they rarely observed what happened in the grave during the following weeks and months.

For one thing, rigor mortis eventually disappears, resulting in flexible limbs. For another, the gastrointestinal tract begins to decay, producing a dark fluid that could be easily mistaken for fresh blood during exhumation—creating the appearance of a postprandial vampire.

When and where the next one will appear is anyone's guess.

MIKA: In other words, these poor buggers were murdered for nothing..

[MIKA27]

Stupid Facebook 'Joke' Leads To Swift Ice Cream Justice

One way to cool down is with delicious ice cream. But after a recent Facebook joke, numerous people in Japan probably don’t feel like getting ice cream from this Japanese convenience store chain.

Originally from the United States, Lawson is now one of the largest franchise chains in Japan, where it’s now owned and operated.

Over the weekend, a Facebook user uploaded photos of a man encased in a Lawson’s ice cream refrigerator with the note “How much is this human?”

Apparently, this was supposed to be a joke — like, that the human was for sale at Lawson? It’s somewhat unclear and not very funny.

Online in Japan, many people were not amused to see the man sprawled all over ice cream. Later, someone noticed (see below) that the man appeared to be very excited about the whole thing.

The text asks if you’d like another helping.

“This is unsanitary,” wrote one 2ch. “Well, I’m not buying ice cream at Lawson,” wrote another. On 2ch, Japan’s largest web forum, net users began sleuthing to find this shop’s address and owner.

Online, there were reports that the man in the ice cream case was the son of this Lawson franchise’s owner. The name of the franchise’s owner supposedly appeared on the original Facebook post.

This is reportedly the ice cream case in question! As you can see, the ice cream treats are individually wrapped, sure, but laying on them can damage the inventory and even, due to body heat, cause them to melt. It’s not as bad as, say, some of the horrible antics American food service has seen, but the stunt was incredibly disrespectful.

And nobody wants ice cream boners. Nobody...

Lawson’s HQ was not amused and earlier today, it issued a press release stating that an employee at a Kochi City franchise climbed into the shop’s ice cream case and uploaded photos online.

Continuing, Lawson stated that this incident violated the franchise agreement and that it was cancelling its contract with this franchise, making staff terminations, and finally, closing this Lawson’s branch. Lawson also apologised for the incident.

[MIKA27]

UCO ARKA | CHARGER/LANTERN/FLASHLIGHT

The innovative UCO Arka is designed for the adventurous outdoor enthusiast.

The unique hybrid Arka functions as a Pack Lantern, a Flashlight, an Emergency Light and a Portable Charging station all-in-one. It allows you to charge USB devices such as mobile phones, GPS devices, mp3 players and cameras. The lantern can be dimmed to preserve the battery, it has 3 LED settings: Night Vision mode, Strobe mode, or Emergency S.O.S mode. It also features a flashlight mode. Handy details like a split ring and a extendable foot rest, allow for hanging and setting just about any place. Plus, it is impact and water resistant, capable of resisting harsh weather conditions.

[MIKA27]

Watch This German UAV Crash Into A Plane On An Afghan Runway

This is why we can’t have nice things. Recently declassified video footage from Northern Afghanistan shows that piloting a drone isn’t nearly as easy as it seems, even when it’s still on the ground.

During a night launch from Mazar-e-Sharif air base on March 17, 2010, an IAI Heron UAV got away from its pilot while taxiing for take-off and nearly ran down two handlers before slamming into the side of a C-160 Transport plane. Luckily, no one was hurt.

According to the newly declassified report, the pilot was just out of training, accidentally engaged the autostart program and could not turn it off in time. Nothing like losing a $US47 million piece of military hardware during your first week on the job, huh?

MIKA: Dies ist nicht ein Videospiel!

[MIKA27]

Wow, This Guy Made Insane Wolverine Claws That Destroy Everything

On the list of comic book hero abilities I dream about magically waking up with one day, Wolverine’s claws were probably squeezed right between Superman’s flying and Bruce Wayne’s women. One of those have practically become reality. These steel Wolverine claws are so fantastically perfect that you could fight Wolverine himself with it. And maybe even win.

Man At Arms’ Tony Swatton is a master swordsmith and propmaster who makes incredibly detailed (and functional!) weapons like swords and sais from Final Fantasy, Game of Thrones and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In fact, he’s made weapons for over 200 movies. These Wolverine claws made from tempered steel might be his best work yet. They’re 12 inches long on the front, four inches long on the backside and can slice anything you can imagine.

[MIKA27]

The Insane Cancer Machines That Used To Live In Shoe Stores Everywhere

Have you heard about these newfangled X-ray machines? We should put ‘em in everything! We should literally use them to X-ray people’s feet to fit them for shoes. It sounds like a retro-parody cartoon, but it’s not. It’s what actually happened in the 1940s.

Smallish wooden podiums housing radioactive material for casual-foot X-rays, shoe-fitting fluoroscopes started showing up in shoe stores around the 1920s. At first the X-ray wielding boxes were seen largely as gimmicks, but eventually they came to be respected as valuable shoe-fitting tools, instead of feared as the leaky cancer boxes they actually were. Into the 1950s, the retrospectively horrifying nature of the things was mostly being brushed off, even in scientific studies:

“The shoe-fitting fluoroscope is not an instrument with obviously hazardous potentialities. It has long been used and no direct clinical evidence of harm has yet been established.”

At the oblivious peak of popularity in the early 1950s, there were at least 10,000 of the machines in the United States and kids loved ‘em. What kids wouldn’t, right?

But as time crept on, it became clear that these devices were not only leaking radiation all over the place, but were also a pretty dumb way of fitting shoes. By the 1970s, shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were almost universally banned, but damage had already been done; foot cancer began to rear its ugly head in many older patients, and there was little question of what was to blame.

It shouldn’t be surprising that there’s a history of X-ray abuse just a few decades in the past, but it’s positively terrifying to look back at it knowing what we know now. It makes you think twice about carrying that phone so close to your baby-makin’ parts. But, hey, we’ve all gotta die sometime. Let’s just hope we can still reproduce before we do.

[Fuzz]

Wow, This Guy Made Insane Wolverine Claws That Destroy Everything

While totally hella-cool, there's no way you'd beat Wolvie with these.

"Tempered steel? Meet Adamantium..." SNIKT! 'nuff said!!

[MIKA27]

20 Gorgeous Posters From A Time When Travel Was Glamorous

Travel was once the epitome of luxury. People dressed in their finest clothes to go to the airport. Ships and planes were things of glamour. In that era, the posters that advertised luxe journeys were just as lovely as the journeys themselves.

The Boston Public Library’s Print Department has an extensive collection of these travel posters. Here’s what the library’s archivists have to say about them:

Railways opened up America and Europe, luxe ocean liners introduced elegance into overseas voyages, and drivers took to the road in record numbers in their new automobiles. By the mid-1940s, new airlines crisscrossed the globe, winging adventure-seekers to far-flung destinations.

Travel agents and ticket offices during this period were festooned with vivid, eye-catching posters, all designed to capture the beauty, excitement and adventure of travel and to promote a world of enticing destinations and new modes of transportation. Individual artists gained fame for their distinctive graphic styles and iconic imagery, and many posters from this era still remain important works of art long after their original advertising purposes have faded.

Fast forward to 2013, and travel is expensive, crowded and invasive. But forget for a minute where things are now and remember what things once were, through the lens of these beautiful, artful travel posters of yore.

Cruises in the early 1900s were the epitome of luxury.

This 1935 print made Palestine look utterly divine.

Artist Robert Falcucci created this 1932 ad for a French holiday. It looks like a piece of pop art

This early 1900s poster is a reminder that France has an unfair advantage in the beauty, culture and scenery department.

This poster depicts jet travel as a heavenly experience — with none of the crappy peanuts and bad service that await you today.

Yes, this poster would have enticed us to go to the 1936 Olympics. If only the whole Nazi thing hadn’t been a factor.

This Japanese Public Railways ad still works today.

This captures exactly what you’d imagine the French Riviera to be like in person.

We don’t need much more convincing on the winter in Austria idea.

You can go fast as hell on the Autobahn — as illustrated in this tourism poster by German artist Ludwig Hohlwein.

Artist Dorothy Waugh touts what Ken Burns famously called “America’s best idea.”

Artist Edward Vincent Brewer’s rendering of Yellowstone.

Edward Eggleston captures the glamour of Atlantic City.

[MIKA27]

Galaxy Tab 3 Range Is Absurdly Affordable In Australia

Samsung debuted the Galaxy Tab 3 range in Australia this morning, and good-Lord are they affordable.

Previously, the Tab range had been pitched at a premium-price point in the Australian market, but Samsung is now trying to get in to the market with a low-cost, high-quality set of products.

There are three Galaxy Tab 3′s in the new range: all at differing sizes and price points.

The Galaxy Tab 3 7-inch is the smallest and most affordable in the range, with a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and either 8GB or 16GB of storage, all powered by a 4000mAh battery. The 7-inch model comes in at $249.

The 8-inch model is the middle of the range at $349 and packs a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 1.5GB of RAM, either 16GB or 32GB of storage, all powered by a 4450mAh battery.

The largest model in the Tab 3 range comes in at $399, saddled with a new dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor 1GB of RAM, either 16GB or 32GB of storage and a massive 6800mAh battery.

Every new tablet in the Tab 3 range comes with expandable storage up to 64GB via microSD card. Each of the new Tabs also comes with a 2-year Samsung warranty.

The new Tab 3 range goes on sale from late-July.

[MIKA27]

Behold A Once-Lost Plan For A Central Park That Might Have Been

When the Board of Commissioners of Central Park decided it was time to build Central Park in 1857, they announced a design contest with a prize to the tune of $US2000 (around $US50,000 today). Obviously, it was Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s design won. But there were 33 other failed entries, only five of which still exist.

One of those is from engineer John Rink. It’s currently on display at the New-York Historical Society, though it was believed to be lost until 2008, when it as discovered in an attic.

The design features a series of highly planned park areas that look like biological illustrations of sea creatures, a la Ernst Haeckel. From above, it looks like one giant garden maze, intricately dotted with tons of topiaries, drawing heavily on Victorian garden design.

Another failed plan on display comes from George E. Waring Jr, who proposed sticking to the natural topography of the park, unlike Rink. It was less of a park, and more of an uninterrupted landscape — but it did include a cricket field. But ultimately it was the egalitarian, open design of Rink and Olmsted that became the Central Park you know and love today.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: Quadpole Super Magnets Will Increase The LHC's Power Tenfold

Just because Cern researchers discovered the Higgs Boson particle last year doesn’t mean it’s time to close up shop on the biggest scientific instrument humanity ever created. Instead, the scientific community has plans to upgrade and retrofit the Large Hadron Collider with bigger, better, and more powerful systems over the next decade — like the US LHC Accelerator Program’s (LARP) new interaction region quadrupole magnets (IRQM) that will help tease every last one of the Higgs-Boson’s secrets.

Particles come together in one of four Interaction Regions (IR) within the Large Hadron Collider. The number of iterations generated from each collision (of which you want as many as possible) is known as the integrated luminosity. Cern hopes to increase the collider’s integrated luminosity by 10x over the next decade (known as the High Luminosity LHC project), but the process is technically challenging to say the least. Much of the the equipment currently installed on the LHC is definitely powerful enough for the current level of experiments conducted there, but just won’t cut it for higher-energy experiments in the future. Take the IRQMs, for instance.

On either immediate side of the interaction region is a quadrupole magnet (quadrupole as in “four poles”). These devices help focus the particle beams towards each other by generating a massive electromagnetic field. The current generation of IRQMs are built from niobium titanium, the Methuselah of superconducting materials, and that from which almost all superconducting material technologies are built. Problem is, niobium titanium isn’t strong enough to endure the massive temperatures and radiation produced by the higher energy experiments necessary for deciphering the Higgs-Boson. And any tiny failure within the structure of the magnet itself will nix its superconducting ability and the torrent of protons flowing through the material will stop instantly (this is called a “quench” and is roughly equivalent to crossing the streams).

But the new IRQMs from LARP are different. Dubbed the HQ02a (which stands for something even more complicated), they’re built from niobium tin. This next-gen superconducting material is designed, as all magnets at the LHC, to run in a helium superfluid cooled to near absolute zero. But unlike the earlier models, the HQ02a not only operates at a much higher magnetic field, it also features a larger aperture (120mm vs 70mm), a much wider operating temperature margin, and can better withstand the IR’s intense radiation levels, which is only going to increase as the systems integrated luminosity jumps as well. In all, the HQ02a’s superconducting coils can pump out 12 tesla, that’s a 50 per cent increase.

The only problem with niobium tin is that it’s so brittle. The material has a tendency to crack under the intense strain of its electromagnetic field. To counteract this fault, engineers at LARP developed a thick, aluminium shell structure to help support the magnet while under load.

“This is a major step forward in reaching our ultimate goals,” said Bruce Strauss, LARP program manager, in a press statement. “It should not be regarded as a single accomplishment but rather the realisation of a significant number of individual goals in the design, construction and testing of Nb3Sn beam-line magnets.”

There’s no word on when this specific part will be implemented, but 10 years to unlock one puny secret of the universe seems an interminable wait.

[MIKA27]

The High Price Of Copper

Lithium may store the power that drives out modern mobile world, but it’s copper that delivers it. This malleable metal is a vital component in modern homes, electronics and agriculture. But our reliance on copper comes at a steep price, both economically and environmentally.

Copper is quite the miracle metal. It readily conducts electricity (second in ability only to silver), strongly resists corrosion, and can easily take on a variety of shapes and tasks — everything from your home’s plumbing and the circuitry of your car’s stereo to utility-scale power transmission lines and industrial fertilisers and pesticides. In fact, nearly half (45 per cent) of all copper consumed goes into home buildings with less than a quarter being used in electronics. This is due in no small part to the economy’s shift from production to service industries.

“If you think about electric cars and wind turbines,” Rohan McGowan-Jackson, vice president of innovation and resource development at the Rio Tinto mining company, told Pacific Standard. “They’re all part of this demand for copper. I mean, I drive a Prius. It’s full of copper! The more you move toward a lower-footprint future, the more demand there is for our product.”

Satiating the world’s appetite for copper is a massive worldwide industry. Copper mining got its start in the mid 19th century. Last year, the US alone produced 1.15 million tonnes of the ore ($US9 billion worth, 65 per cent of which is consumed domestically in the US) from just 28 mines — and that total only makes us the fourth largest producer behind Chile, China and Peru. The US has an estimated reserve of another 39 million tonnes of ore stashed under Arizona (which discovered one of the largest reserves in the world 7000 feet underground in 1996), Utah, New Mexico, Nevada and Montana. Only Chile, Australia and Peru have larger reserves.

How Copper is Mined and Refined

173 years after industrial copper mining got its start in the US, we’re still using many of the same techniques — specifically the open-pit method. Since copper ore often occur near the surface and doesn’t form veins in hard rock like gold, silver and salt do, tunnelling into the Earth isn’t necessary. Instead open pit mining simply removes the valueless soil and minerals above the copper (known as overburden) to access the ore directly.

Once the copper-containing rock is excavated, it’s trucked out of the mine for processing. Since copper doesn’t form neat little nuggets like gold does, but rather is widely dispersed throughout the unwanted rock (also known as gangue mineral) much like lithium is, the gangue must first be ground to powder. It is then separated from the gangue.

This occurs either through hydrometallurgical liberation, wherein the copper is leached out and concentrated using a menagerie of toxic chemicals, if it is locked up in an oxide ore. Otherwise, if the copper is stuck in a sulfide ore, froth flotation method is employed.

Froth flotation, once called “”the single most important operation used for the recovery and upgrading of sulfide ores,” uses a number of surfactants and wetting agents to exploit the natural differences in hydrophobic reactions between copper ore and gangue to separate the two.

The Copper Problem

Copper production is a dirty, expensive business. Especially for the surrounding environment. Just getting the unrefined ore out of the ground is a massive effort. Open pit mines demand massive resources, both for energy (they’re often powered by coal-burning plants) and for water. What’s more, mining operations become less efficient over time. It’s easy to pull copper out of a new mine, it’s all still near the surface. But eventually you’ll have to dig deeper and deeper into the Earth, removing more and more overburden, and travel further up the winding walls of the pit to get to the rim (which requires increasing amounts of time and fuel). Eventually, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, wherein the production costs exceed what you can sell the ore for, and the mine either closes or fallows.

Take the Bingham Canyon Mine in the Oquirrh Mountains, a half our outside of Salt Lake City, Utah for example. It’s been open since 1906 and has rapidly expanded over the course of 107 years of operation to 965m deep, 4km wide, and covering 1900 acres including the associated smelter, refinery and water pumping/recycling centre to supply the necessary fluids consumed in the refinement process. These facilities are powered by an onsite 175-megawatt coal-fired power plant, which itself consumes more than 37,000 litres per minute. Every day, crews pull 150,000 tonnes of ore from the ground and process it down to just 820 tonnes of copper — barely 1/500th of the total.

In short, Bingham is quickly reaching its productive limits. The latest round of expansion in 2012 required blowing out a wall of overburden — worthless rock — a 1.6km wide, 300m thick, and 1000m tall. Sure, doing so will expose more of the valuable ore, but it’s going to take seven years and $US660 million worth of digging to get to it. “Literally and figuratively, we’ve got a whole mountain to move,” Barry Gass, former project director of underground development at Bingham told Pacific Standard. “At some point, the dollars and cents of that don’t make sense.”

And then there’s the tailings. These are the leftovers of the copper extraction process, a toxic slurry of chemicals — sulfuric acid, arsenic, lead and cadmium to name a few — and powered gangue particles the size of a grain of sand down to a few micrometres.

This stuff is nearly as bad a nuclear waste, remaining deadly for thousands of years. What’s more, it’s not like you can just switch to a different extraction method to eliminate it. This stuff is not a byproduct, it’s present in the ore itself and you can’t get the copper without making it. In Bingham, the other 149,000 tonnes of rock pulled out every day that aren’t copper are, you guessed it, tailings.

What’s more, the liberation of copper from the gangue also tends to free sulfides. These ores were formed deep within the Earth but, under aerobic surface conditions, rapidly oxidize to produce sulfate and acids. These then mix with atmospheric moisture to form Metalliferous Drainage — not unlike acid rain runoff — which cannot be readily reabsorbed by the local environment. While mining operations in the developed world have strict limitations on where and how these tailings are dealt with in an environmentally responsible way, the same cannot be said for many such operations in developing nations. But at the current going rate of $US3 per pound (up from less than a dollar at the start of the decade) the threat of ecological destruction seems a small price to pay.

The price of copper had been stagnant since the early 1980s when the US and Europe began moving away from the industries that Asia was killing them in — automotive production for instance — and more towards a service-based economy. This was before China really awoke as a modern industrial powerhouse and demand for the ore, therefore, remained stable for years. In 2000, you could buy a pound of copper for just 78 cents. As Tim Heffernan of the Pacific Standard explains,

Closure of the [bingham] pit was slated for 2013. It would be the end of an era.

That end did not come. If you visit Bingham Canyon today, you’ll find a fleet of house-size dump trucks descending into the pit, loading up on rock, and climbing back up and out, around the clock. The pit is being widened and deepened to expose new ore, even as current mining operations continue.

Rio Tinto is planning to build a second mine on — or rather, under — the site. The aboveground operation will now be shut down around 2029. But Bingham Canyon is likely to go on. According to the current plan, the giant pit will give way to a giant underground mine, already in the early stages of construction, 2,000 feet beneath the pit’s floor.

The plan calls for five blocks of ore, each more than half a mile square and a third of a mile tall, to be carved out of the solid rock underneath the pit. In theory, the void created could swallow midtown Manhattan from 33rd Street to 57th Street; 500 feet of empty air would hang above the spire of the Empire State Building. The project would completely transform the mine’s operations. Ore from an open pit is dug from above, like sugar spooned from a bowl. Ore from an underground mine is dug from below, like sugar spooned out from the bottom of a pile, except that the sugar is a city-size slab of solid rock.

Why would a mining operation on the edge of insolvency, facing eve-increasing production costs even bother expanding? Because China. In the early 2000s, China’s economy exploded, a middle class emerged and with it, all the desires for a well-appointed household with modern conveniences. Conveniences that demand copper. China’s demand for copper tripled nearly overnight and the country now consumes 7.9 billion tonnes of it annually, the most in the world. The price of copper jumped nearly 200 per cent in less than a decade thanks to that explosive demand growth, from 78 cents in 2002 to a peak of $US5 in 2007 just before the Great Recession *****-slapped the world economy and pushed the price of copper down to its current level floating around $US3.

Industry analysts expect the price to stay around that level for the next two decades so don’t expect meth heads to stop stealing every piece of copper that’s not nailed down any time soon.

[MIKA27]

Inside Aston Martin's Dream Factory Workshop

There are very few car brands that carry the prestige of the Aston Martin brand. Beauty, style, poise and incredible speed, all under the one quintessentially British badge. So how does Aston Martin treat its customers once they have bought into the legacy?

Welcome to Aston Martin Works: the dream factory for British supercars, where anything the owners want can be melded, changed and re-invented.

The workshop is nestled in the old Aston Martin HQ in Newport Pagnell, England, and has been retrofit to be the premier home of Aston Martin service and support in the world. Cars are flown from all continents to be serviced by the skilled workers inside the hallowed workshop, and even more incredibly, these mechanics fly out to locations all over the world to fix cars that aren’t fit to travel.

The ethos of the facility is to do anything to the Aston Martin that the customer wants done. If it’s legal and safe, Aston Martin Works makes it happen to any generation or model of car.

Right now there are cars in the factory getting all manner of upgrades.

Pre-war Aston Martins are being restored, right hand drive cars are being changed to to left hand drives, and some Vantages are coming in for an automatic to manual gearbox conversion. One car from Australia is in the workshop right now going through that very process.

Full restorations can take over a year, mostly because of the level of detail they go into at Aston Martin Works. Restoration cars get stripped down if it’s found to be unsalvagable due to rust or age, panels and parts will be replaced. They’re so good that the waiting list sprawls into mid-next year.

As an example, one mechanic rebuilt the iconic DB5, while another is retrofitting a DB2 to be fit for purpose as a daily-driver in the Middle-East. It’s had air-conditioning, power steering and a new alternator installed so that the car is more modern and easier to live with.

Some cars come in for just a colour and upholstry change, but Aston Martin Works caters to the big and small jobs.

Aston Martin Works is a dream factory. Mechanics fuse creativity, design and intelligence to become master craftsmen, fit to travel anywhere in the world to keep the Aston Martin legacy alive for the lucky owners of these cars.

[MIKA27]

Snowden’s Contingency: ‘Dead Man’s Switch’ Borrows From Cold War, WikiLeaks

The strategy employed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to discourage a CIA hit job has been likened to a tactic employed by the U.S. and Russian governments during the Cold War.

Snowden, a former systems administrator for the National Security Agency in Hawaii, took thousands of documents from the agency’s networks before fleeing to Hong Kong in late May, where he passed them to Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras. The journalists have handled them with great caution. A story in the German publication Der Spiegal, co-bylined by Poitras, claims the documents include information “that could endanger the lives of NSA workers,” and an Associated Press interview with Greenwald this last weekend asserts that they include blueprints for the NSA’s surveillance systems that “would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it.”

But Snowden also reportedly passed encrypted copies of his cache to a number of third parties who have a non-journalistic mission: If Snowden should suffer a mysterious, fatal accident, these parties will find themselves in possession of the decryption key, and they can publish the documents to the world.

“The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden,” Greenwald said in a recent interview with the Argentinean paper La Nacion, that was highlighted in amuch-circulated Reuters story, “because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.”

It’s not clear if Snowden passed all of the documents to these third parties or just some of them, since Greenwald says Snowden made it clear that he doesn’t want the NSA blueprints published.

Either way, Snowden’s strategy has been described jocularly in the press as a “dead man’s switch” — a tactic popularized in movies and thrillers whereby a bomber or criminal mastermind has a detonator wired to a bomb and the only thing keeping it from exploding is his finger on the detonator button. If police shoot him, he releases the button and the bomb goes off.

But Snowden’s case is actually a kind of reverse dead man’s switch, says John Prados, senior research fellow for the National Security Archive and author of several books on secret wars of the CIA.

“As an information strategy, what Snowden is doing is similar to that, but it doesn’t have the same kind of implication,” Prados says. “We’re not setting off a bomb or having some other kind of weapon-of-mass-destruction go off.”

In the popular scenarios, the person has control over the event, and the weapon or deadly force is liberated or detonated only if that person is neutralized in some way and control is taken away from him. But the element of control is much different in Snowden’s case.

“In the dead man switch, my positive control is necessary in order to prevent the eventuality [of an explosion],” Prados said. “In Snowden’s information strategy, he distributed sets of the information in such a fashion that if he is taken, then other people will move to release information. In other words, his positive control of the system is not required to make the eventuality happen. In fact, it’s his negative control that applies.

“The operation of the system is reversed. He’s not calling up someone every 25 hours saying I’m still free, don’t let the stuff out. The stuff is out, and if he isn’t free, then they let it out. The dynamic is reversed from the traditional concept of the dead man switch.”

Greenwald told the Associated Press that media descriptions of Snowden’s tactic have been over-simplified.

“It’s not just a matter of, if he dies, things get released, it’s more nuanced than that,” he said. “It’s really just a way to protect himself against extremely rogue behavior on the part of the United States, by which I mean violent actions toward him, designed to end his life, and it’s just a way to ensure that nobody feels incentivized to do that.”

The classic application of a dead man’s switch in the real world involves nuclear warfare in which one nation tries to deter adversaries from attacking by indicating that if the government command authority is taken out, nuclear forces would launch automatically.

It has long been believed that Russia established such a system for its nuclear forces in the mid-60s. Prados says that under the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. also pre-delegated authority to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the Far East command and the Missile Defense Command to use nuclear weapons if the national command authority were taken out, though the process was not automatic. These authorities would have permission to deploy the weapons, but would have to make critical decisions about whether that was the best strategy at the time.

Snowden’s case is not the first time this scenario has been used for information distribution instead of weapons. In 2010, Wikileaks published an encrypted “insurance file” on its web site in the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning the group’s publication of 77,000 Afghan War documents that had been leaked to it by former Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning.

The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, was 1.4 GB and was encrypted with AES256. The file was also posted on torrent download sites.

It’s not known what the file contains but it was presumed to contain the balance of documents and data that Manning had leaked to the group before he was arrested in 2010 and that still had not been published at the time. This included a different war log cache that contained 500,000 events from the Iraq War between 2004 and 2009, a video showing a deadly 2009 U.S. firefight near the Garani village in Afghanistan that local authorities said killed 100 civilians, most of them children, as well as 260,000 U.S. State Department cables.

WikiLeaks has never disclosed the contents of the insurance file, though most of the outstanding documents from Manning have since been published by the group.

MIKA: I'm not so sure a "Dead Mans switch" is a great idea.

Whilst I completely understand Snowden is hoping this keeps him alive by the US not assassinating him, what's not to say that another Superpower who may want the information, won't kill Snowden themselves so that in turn, the information is thus leaked and that nation (And sure the rest of the world) will uncover these 'Secrets" and information that is so highly classified?

[MIKA27]

Government to spend £60m on revolutionary Sabre rocket engine that will be used on spaceplane Skylon

Skylon will be capable of reaching Earth's stratosphere in just 15 minutes

The Government will spend £60 million on a revolutionary new rocket engine that can send astronauts into orbit and accelerate aircraft to five times the speed of sound, a minister confirmed.

David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, said the investment in Sabre, a British-designed engine, would provide support at a “crucial stage” to allow a full-scale prototype to be built.

Reaction Engines, the company behind the Sabre project, will seek to use the technology on a unique “spaceplane” called Skylon, which will be capable of taking people to Earth's stratosphere in just 15 minutes.

“We're investing £60 million in this and we expect them to go out and find private support as well,” Mr Willetts told Radio Five Live.

“But we're backing this because it's technology that has been tested in the lab, it's been assessed by outside experts as right in principle, but now it needs to be built on a full-scale prototype before it can get commercial.

“We think it's right to support it through that crucial stage. That's where too many great British ideas in the past have failed.”

Mr Willetts will speak at the UK Space Conference in Glasgow, which runs until Wednesday, where he is expected to release more details about the investment.

Reaction Engines are now hoping to run flights carrying 15 tonnes of cargo to space stations by 2022.

Spaceplanes can operate as aircrafts within Earth's atmosphere, as well as functioning as a space craft when in space. Only rocket powered aircrafts have so far managed to reach space.

Skylon could be potentially viewed as a competitor to Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic business, in which people can experience six minutes of weightlessness during a sub-orbital spaceflights.

Test flights for the spaceplane are initially being scheduled for 2019. The unpiloted vehicle will be able to reach speeds of more than 19,000 miles an hour, cutting the journey time from London to Australia to approximately four hours.

[MIKA27]

Who Wants a Concrete iPhone Skin?

You can get all manner of weird and wonderful iPhone cases, but if you want something more industrial, maybe you’d like one made out of concrete. Wait, what?

Designed by Korean creative collective Posh Craft, this replacement iPhone 5 back is made entirely out of concrete. The designers claim each one is unique, skittered with one-of-a-kind crater-like voids and imperfections.

A bit like it was taken from the surface of the Moon. Or, if you were cynical, a bit like it was just made out of crappy concrete. It goes on sale soon — but who the hell is going to buy one?

[Fuzz]

Snowden’s Contingency: ‘Dead Man’s Switch’ Borrows From Cold War, WikiLeaks

MIKA: I'm not so sure a "Dead Mans switch" is a great idea.

Whilst I completely understand Snowden is hoping this keeps him alive by the US not assassinating him, what's not to say that another Superpower who may want the information, won't kill Snowden themselves so that in turn, the information is thus leaked and that nation (And sure the rest of the world) will uncover these 'Secrets" and information that is so highly classified?

Ah, but who's to say that the NSA documents don't hold info on another superpower's dirty little secrets that they may not want published?

[Fuzz]

Who Wants a Concrete iPhone Skin?

Concrete that thin would be very brittle. Hit it with a small pointy object and there goes the back cover, much like the glass backs on older iPhones.

[Philski]

Snowden’s Contingency: ‘Dead Man’s Switch’ Borrows From Cold War, WikiLeaks

MIKA: I'm not so sure a "Dead Mans switch" is a great idea.

Whilst I completely understand Snowden is hoping this keeps him alive by the US not assassinating him, what's not to say that another Superpower who may want the information, won't kill Snowden themselves so that in turn, the information is thus leaked and that nation (And sure the rest of the world) will uncover these 'Secrets" and information that is so highly classified?

He will have thought of that, I'm sure (or been advised by WikiLeaks, etc.). I reckon the ultimate aim is to motivate the US to protect him, perhaps hoist the white flag, bring him home and keep him safe. After all, his only enemy in all this is the US - everyone else is turning their backs on him to avoid pissing off the Americans (although some of the more recent revelations might have made some countries rather more sympathetic to the man).

[OZCUBAN]

Government to spend £60m on revolutionary Sabre rocket engine that will be used on spaceplane Skylon

Skylon will be capable of reaching Earth's stratosphere in just 15 minutes

The Government will spend £60 million on a revolutionary new rocket engine that can send astronauts into orbit and accelerate aircraft to five times the speed of sound, a minister confirmed.

David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, said the investment in Sabre, a British-designed engine, would provide support at a “crucial stage” to allow a full-scale prototype to be built.

Reaction Engines, the company behind the Sabre project, will seek to use the technology on a unique “spaceplane” called Skylon, which will be capable of taking people to Earth's stratosphere in just 15 minutes.

“We're investing £60 million in this and we expect them to go out and find private support as well,” Mr Willetts told Radio Five Live.

“But we're backing this because it's technology that has been tested in the lab, it's been assessed by outside experts as right in principle, but now it needs to be built on a full-scale prototype before it can get commercial.

“We think it's right to support it through that crucial stage. That's where too many great British ideas in the past have failed.”

Mr Willetts will speak at the UK Space Conference in Glasgow, which runs until Wednesday, where he is expected to release more details about the investment.

Reaction Engines are now hoping to run flights carrying 15 tonnes of cargo to space stations by 2022.

Spaceplanes can operate as aircrafts within Earth's atmosphere, as well as functioning as a space craft when in space. Only rocket powered aircrafts have so far managed to reach space.

Skylon could be potentially viewed as a competitor to Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic business, in which people can experience six minutes of weightlessness during a sub-orbital spaceflights.

Test flights for the spaceplane are initially being scheduled for 2019. The unpiloted vehicle will be able to reach speeds of more than 19,000 miles an hour, cutting the journey time from London to Australia to approximately four hours.

I think they might have got their inspiration from some where else

[MIKA27]

This Typhoon Jet Fighter Nearly Took Someone's Head Off As It Landed

Imagine a massive Typhoon jet coming in to land so close that it nearly takes your head off. That’s how low this fighter drops down en route to the runway that it nearly did.

bobsurgranny took this video and was lucky enough to survive with his head — and eardrums — in tact. Crazy!

[MIKA27]

Apple May Delay The New iPhone Because Of A Change In Screen Size

Bloomberg is reporting, citing Taiwanese newspaper Commercial Times, that Apple may delay the next iPhone — after it allegedly decided to tweak its design to feature a bigger 4.3-inch retina display screen.

We’d usually expect a new iPhone to appear around September. But this report, fuelled by comments from “unidentified people in the semiconductor industry”, suggests that Cook and co may have to push the release back to the end of the year.

The current iPhone features a 4-inch screen, so if this rumor’s to be believed — and it’s worth saying it should be taken with a large pinch of salt — then Apple’s phone is getting even larger. The delay would be a blow for Apple — but hardly serious if it could sneak it into the shops ahead of the holiday buying season.

Elsewhere, the report reiterates rumors that a cheaper version of the iPhone is expected to arrive in the third quarter of this year, with suppliers claiming that chips for the new devices began shipping in June. All in, there’s a lot of speculation here which may or may not turn out to be accurate — but it will certainly be interesting to see just how big that screen does end up.