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

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TRAIL BOSS | PACKABLE MULTI-TOOL

The Trail Boss is a packable trail work tool that allows you to satisfy your need to ride, hike or run on trails. The versatile tool is lightweight, strong, features multiple heads, a rigid full-length handle, and fits in a typical trail-size pack or small day pack. Several packages are available with different tool heads, check out their website for more details.

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18 Strange Facts You Might Not Have Heard Before

Just what the hell is ‘Anatidaephobia’?

Which Disney character was banned in Finland? Just how much would you have to make in a day to become a billionaire in a year? And is it true that when you sneeze your heart stops?

Here’s 18 strange facts that you might not have heard before, designed to entertain, inform and give you a winning hand when it comes to trivia night.

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How We Go Looking For Life On Other Planets

There are, as best we can estimate, hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. (There may be more.) Average galaxies carry the weight of hundreds of billions of stars. If a habitable planet whirls around just one star in every million, the number of worlds which could harbour life would number in the quadrillions. (Roughly 10 to the 16, i.e. unfathomably many.)

Our most distant spacecraft, the Voyager I probe, has spent half of a lifetime travelling into the void, but it has only just left our solar system. It will take 74,000 years to reach the distance of the nearest star.

So, unless future physics reveals superluminal travel, the vast distances between stars and galaxies limit our chances of directly meeting aliens. Distant civilisations may launch a different type of traveller out into space to meet us, either intentionally or unintentionally: Electromagnetic waves. These waves live forever and can’t be cloaked from our eyes and ears.

In contrast to our space probes plodding along at 61,000km/h, the radio waves we’ve beamed into space for over a century have been travelling at the speed of light. A short calculation based on local stellar density of 0.006 stars per cubic light-year reveals that our radio broadcasts and television transmissions, from famous speeches to toothbrush advertisements, have now reached approximately 25,000 other stars.

We might then have better luck looking for electromagnetic wave signals from extraterrestrial life than actual (grey) flesh and (green) blooded aliens. What sort of waves are we looking for, and where do they come from?

Radio waves are the most obvious candidate.

While other civilisations could be beaming “HELLO” to us across the vacuum more likely we might capture transmissions not meant for us. If their atmosphere is similar to ours, they may be communicating on-planet in a way much like we do: AM radio broadcasts (waves roughly 500m to 160m long), FM broadcasts (3m waves), as well as VHF and UHF television (9m to 1m, and 10cm to 1m, respectively). All radio waves from roughly a fraction of a centimetre to many kilometres long can be used to transmit information through an atmosphere like ours, and they also penetrate through it and into space easily.

Even better, these signals can come in from space, penetrate our atmosphere and hit the earth’s surface. Enormous radio telescopes here on the ground, including the massive Arecibo telescope and the NRAO array are frequently used to listen for signals coming from space that don’t seem natural.

There is bad news, however: we’ve been doing this for years, but we’ve only seen one anomaly that never reoccurred. What else can we try?

When NASA wants to communicate with the moon, they use lasers. Not that anyone on the moon is talking back, but retroreflectors left on the moon’s surface by Apollo astronauts reflect the laser signals and return them. (This allows the distance of the moon to be found correctly to within two one-hundredths of an inch!) If there were a permanent human colony on another planet or moon, laser signals would be a great way to communicate.

We can look for laser communication between alien worlds as well. At just the right time, two communicating planets could be lined up with us just correctly for the laser light that misses the target planet to shoot straight through space and reach us. This light mostly penetrates our atmosphere and could be seen by ground-based optical telescopes. A precise planetary alignment and laser detection would require an incredible amount of luck, but SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) workers have been trying.

There is a more speculative approach still, bordering on science fiction.

Genius physicist Freeman Dyson first suggested the idea of a civilisation becoming so energy-hungry that it needs to yoke the entire power output of the star about which it originates. Building an enormous “Dyson sphere”, or a blanket of small orbiting patches surrounding a star that absorb nearly all of the star’s light would be the logical method for doing this. The sphere or blanket would absorb visible light, but likely leak lots of infrared electromagnetic waves. Astronomers are actually combing through telescope data looking for areas of galaxies which generate abnormally high amounts of infrared radiation, possibly indicating the presence of these spheres. The odds may be slim, but it’s still a lead.

Whether these searches amount to science — or just speculation — is up for debate. Nearly all funding for SETI work is privately financed via donation, so if nothing is discovered, little public money has been lost. Eventually one of these long-shots may pan out.

What an incredible discovery that would be.

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Great white sharks visit beaches more often than believed

Great white sharks make more visits to coastlines than was previously thought and may even have spots that they consider to be “home”, returning there year after year.

Satellite tracking of the ferocious predators is revealing an intriguing picture of their lives and the remarkable long distance journeys they make.

Research as part of the OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker Project, which has tagged around 100 sharks since 2009, has shown great whites can travel up to 3,000 miles in just three months.

Yet despite these huge distances, the fish appear to be able to navigate with great accuracy, often returning to the exact same spot they visited the year before at the seam time.

The sharks also approach the shorelines along the east coast of the United States and around South Africa far more often than scientists believed they did.

But rather than being something to be concerned about, scientists claim this suggests the predators have far less interest in humans than our fears make us believe.

Dr Gregory Skomal, a senior scientist on the project and head of Massachusetts Shark Research Program, said: "We are seeing they are much more dynamic than we had previously thought.

"We are talking about thousands of kilometres in just a couple of months for some of these sharks.

"What is fascinating is that they approach the shore regularly and have probably been doing this for thousands of years if not hundreds of thousands, but go completely undetected.

"So I don't think there is any reason to be alarmed. They are not going out of their way to eat us so their reputation is somewhat undeserved.

“The probability of an attack is so low they obviously have no interest in us.”

The tagging has been conducted as part of an ambitious project to monitor what great white sharks do when they are not at hunting grounds, where they have mainly been studied.

Using high tech tags that attach to the dorsal fin of the shark, they provide real time data on the location of the sharks whenever they near the surface.

They also record the temperature, salinity and depth of the water they have been swimming in while a GPS tracker also helps record their swimming speed.

Dr Skomal said: "Some of the results are showing that individuals return to the very same place each summer and in some cases are doing it within days of the previous year.

"One shark we tagged in 2011 has been returning to the same place around Cape Cod in very specific areas. She has area preferences and leaves around the same time in the fall.

"We have got fidelity to various sites and possibly even residency at these sites. That points at an incredible navigational capacity in these sharks.”

One of the largest great white sharks to be tagged by the team, a mature 14ft 6in female called Lydia, has been among the most mobile.

Since being tagged in March, she has travelled more than 4,800 miles, swimming nearly 2000 miles out into the centre of the Atlantic Ocean before then returning to coast off South Carolina.

Lydia the white shark.

Dr Skomal added: “Lydia, who we tagged in March, has moved thousands of kilometres. She traversed the Atlantic, stopped abruptly and then turned back.

"As to what is causing these broad movements, we have very little information, and that is frustrating.

"When I look at Lydia's track I wonder if she was just being complacent and riding the Gulf Stream and then woke up one day and realised she didn't want to go that way. It is very intriguing.

"We were completely unaware of these kinds of movements.”

Immature great white sharks that have been tagged tend to spend more of their time moving along the coastlines of the US and South Africa.

The sharks have also shown strange migratory behaviour – moving from the south to the north and vice versa at times of the year when scientists had not expected.

The sharks are tagged with the help of a specially designed boat that has been fitted with a large lift that can scoop the sharks out of the water.

The great whites are captured using bait before buoys are used to keep them at the surface and bring them alongside the ship.

They are swung over the submerged platform that then lifts them out of the water, allowing scientists to get access to tag and take samples from the sharks.

Chris Fischer, who is the founding chairman and leader of the expedition, which has been working off the coast of Cape Cod during the summer, said the work was essential to help conserve the sharks, which are under threat around the world.

As well as great whites, the scientists have also tagged Mako sharks, bull sharks, and ocean going blue sharks.

Mr Fischer said: "We don't know where the baby white sharks are and where the nurseries are.

“We don't know where the breeding site is, so we can't look after it.

“Scientists have never been able to get this close to great white sharks before and let them go alive. It is giving scientists access they have never had before.

“They can track them, get a blood sample from a live specimen, get bacteria off their teeth and gums so we can develop a bite antibiotic.”

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Dennis Rodman returns to North Korea

Flamboyant former basketball star Dennis Rodman will arrive in Pyongyang todayhas for a five-day visit to North Korea, his second this year, but has said he has no plans to negotiate the release of a jailed American missionary.

There had been speculation that Rodman, who met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in March, would secure the release of Kenneth Bae who was jailed for 15 years for trying to overthrow the North Korean government.

"I'm not going to North Korea to discuss freeing Kenneth Bae," Rodman told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I'm just going there on another basketball diplomacy tour."

Kim, the third of his line to rule North Korea is a basketball fan and appeared to get on well with Rodman on the earlier visit, with the two of them pictured laughing, eating and drinking together and watching an all-star basketball match.

"I've come out here to see my friend (Kim) - and I want to talk about basketball," he added, speaking from Beijing, the usual transit point for flights into Pyongyang.

North Korea cancelled a visit by Robert King, US special envoy on North Korean human rights issues, to Pyongyang last week on what the US State Department said was a "humanitarian mission" to negotiate the release of Bae.

King's trip was initially seen as a signal that relations between Washington and Pyongyang might start to improve. North Korea said it withdrew the invitation because of annual military drills last week by the United States and South Korea.

Rodman drew fire for his earlier trip to Pyongyang at a time when North Korea was threatening the United States, South Korea and Japan with missile strikes.

He called Kim, 30, who rules unchallenged in a country where there are an estimated 150,000-200,000 prisoners in work camps, "an awesome kid".

Mr Bae, a Korean American who had been working as a Christian missionary in China and North Korea, was arrested in the northeast port city of Rason late last year.

The North Korean supreme court said it sentenced him to 15 years of hard labour for plotting to overthrow the state. It said he had secretly brought "propaganda materials", including a National Geographic documentary on life in North Korea, into the isolated country.

Mr Bae, who had trained with missionary organisation Youth With a Mission, ran a tour group called Nation Tours in China that specialised in trips to North Korea. In a video of a 2009 sermon to a Korean-American church in St. Louis, Mr Bae said he planned to bring fellow Christians into Rason.

North Korea says it permits religious freedom, but religious expression is tightly controlled in a state that acknowledges total loyalty to the Kim dynasty that has ruled for three generations. North Korea lands at the bottom of most independent surveys of freedom.

Mr Bae's family has acknowledged his deeply held religious beliefs but have suggested that his sympathy for North Korean orphans may have been behind his arrest.

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T-600 Is Menacing Even When You Can See Puppeteers Moving It

Stan Winston Schools has released other behind-the-scenes footage of the T-600 puppet from Terminator Salvation, but this gives a clearer sense of how the animatronics evolved and how important the materials are in any puppet. If it’s not lightweight, but with the stability and feel of whatever it’s representing, it can’t be convincing.

It’s also cool in this footage to hear John Rosengrant, a co-founder of Legacy Effects and a longtime Stan Winston Studio supervisor, talk about the importance of choreography and how puppet footage is integrated into a final cut. He talks about how even the most perfectly timed scenes will only show a few frames at a time of the puppet, because its realism doesn’t hold up in the long term. Working on something like this would pretty much be the coolest job ever.

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Monster Machines: Russia's Beach-Mounting Hovercraft Is The World's Biggest

That hovercraft caught invading a popular Russian beach last week wasn’t just any old air-cushioned aquatic landing platform, it’s the single biggest such vehicle in the entire Russian arsenal — or in any other military’s, for that matter.

Simply put, the Zubr-class air-cushioned landing craft is the largest hovercraft on Earth. Originally designed during the waning days of the Cold War and built by Almaz Shipbuilding in St Petersburg, Zubr-class measure 57m long and 25m tall with just over a 1.5m ground clearance (draught). They’re capable of transporting up the three main battle tanks (at 136 tonnes apiece), 10 armoured vehicles and 140 troops, eight APCs, or as many as 500 troops, 500 tonnes of men and equipment altogether.

Designed specifically to sealift landing assault units on foreign shores, as well as lay mines in coastal waters, the Zubr-class employs high-temperature 100kW gas turbine engines to power a quartet of 5.5m diameter, four-bladed variable-pitch air propellers and drive the vehicle to speeds up to 60 knots.

The 400sqm cargo area is trisected by two longitudinal bulkheads with armoured vehicles travelling in the center compartment, the power plant occupying the rear, and troop quarters for the vessel’s 31-man (4 officers, 27 enlisted) contingent taking up the front section. To keep sailors from going made with the constant hum that the fans produce, the crew quarters are heavily insulated against sound and vibration. The crew quarters can also be sealed against potential NBC (nuke, bio, chem) attacks as well.

Interestingly, the Zubr is also immune to the mines that it lays. Alloy armour and an active magnetic system cancel out not only the hull’s magnetic field but also those generated by the mines stored on-board. Additionally, these hovercraft are equipped with electronic countermeasures and chaff decoy launchers. Offensively, the Zubr-class hovercraft are outfitted with a pair of stabilised rocket launchers, Strela-3 anti-aircraft missile launchers with heat-seeking supersonic (mach 1.5) rounds capable of homing in on a target 6km away, multiple SA-N-5 “Grail” quad-launchers (like the ones from Commando), a concealed 140 mm Ogon rocket launcher with 132 unguided fragmentation/thermal rockets, and two AK-630 30mm autocannons that spew 3000 rounds a minute at incoming enemy aircraft.

Unfortunately, the call for amphibious, D-Day style assaults on remote beach heads has waned significantly since the Zubr‘s initial deployment in 1988 and, as such, only nine vessels are currently active in the Russian, Ukranian and Greek navies.

[Fuzz]

How We Go Looking For Life On Other Planets

Genius physicist Freeman Dyson first suggested the idea of a civilisation becoming so energy-hungry that it needs to yoke the entire power output of the star about which it originates. Building an enormous “Dyson sphere”, or a blanket of small orbiting patches surrounding a star that absorb nearly all of the star’s light would be the logical method for doing this. The sphere or blanket would absorb visible light, but likely leak lots of infrared electromagnetic waves. Astronomers are actually combing through telescope data looking for areas of galaxies which generate abnormally high amounts of infrared radiation, possibly indicating the presence of these spheres. The odds may be slim, but it’s still a lead.

Whether these searches amount to science — or just speculation — is up for debate. Nearly all funding for SETI work is privately financed via donation, so if nothing is discovered, little public money has been lost. Eventually one of these long-shots may pan out.

What an incredible discovery that would be.

If the crew of the starship Enterprise D couldn't detect a Dyson sphere until they were right in front of the damn thing, how the heck are we gonna find it with radio telescopes?

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If the crew of the starship Enterprise D couldn't detect a Dyson sphere until they were right in front of the damn thing, how the heck are we gonna find it with radio telescopes?

Maybe the subroutines have been intentionally disabled with the phase inducers being connected to the emitter array and that the pattern buffers have been locked in a diagnostic cycle. Nah!! Give it another 75 years or so Mr La Forge.

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Next Android Version Is Called... Kit Kat

Well, that’s different. The next major iteration of Android will be called KitKat, it seems. We know this because Android boss Sundar Pichai just tweeted a photo of a gigantic Android robot made of KitKats.

Apparently that’s going to come along with a promo campaign in KitKats to win a free Nexus 7 or Google Play credit, which is a strange and probably unnecessary bit of advertising, but fine. Your operating system is a supermarket aisle ad now is all.

For the uninitiated, major releases of Android get dessert names, and they’ve been progressing in alphabetical order. So Ice Cream Sandwich was succeeded by Jelly Bean, and now KitKat. Our dumb but prescient guess in 2010 was Krispy Kreme.

Beyond the goofy name, this does have actual bearing on Android. The new name implies a major refresh to the operating system. Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) was released back in 2011 with a major redesign, and since then we’ve had three versions of Jelly Bean (now on 4.3).

Kit Kat will be version 4.4, so we probably won’t need to wait too long for it, but the advancement to a new name should mean we get some substantial updates. Or it could be the groundskeeper at Google got bored. Anyone’s guess, really.

We’ll update you with further news once we have something beyond a giant chocolate bar outside of Google.

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Should Germany Spend Millions Preserving Nazi Rally Grounds?

At the height of his career as the architect of the Third Reich, Albert Speer was already imagining what his buildings would look like as ruins. In fact, by the mid-1930s, Speer was designing based on “ruin law,” his term for what a building would look like once it decayed. Today, Nuremberg city officials are grappling with whether his works should ever get the chance.

In Nuremberg, city officials are facing a tough decision: What to do about the increasingly dangerous ruins of Speer’s rally grounds, built in 1933. The sprawling, four-square-mile park once hosted party events and meetings, and was preserved on film in Leni Riefenstahl’s famous propaganda vehicle Triumph of the Will. After the war, the grounds were turned into a memorial and protected by German law, though they were never renovated or otherwise improved.

But now, as Speer’s buildings are crumbling into true ruins, city officials say the site is in desperate need of a facelift — mainly, for safety reasons. “Demolishing the buildings would provoke international outrage — so we are going to renovate the complex, but this does not mean that we are sprucing it up,” said Nuremberg mayor Ulrich Maly to the Sued Deutsche Zeitung, quoted on Dezeen.

“This is not about beautification. We will not be looking for original-style sandstone.”

Why not just let it crumble? According to the paper, that would mean fencing off the ruins to prevent members of the curious public from being injured in collapses. But according to critics, shielding the ruins from the public could have unforeseen side-effects: Specifically, the “re-mystification” of the Third Reich. So instead, the city will spend 70 million euros (around 100 million dollars) making the rally grounds safe for human feet.

This is just the latest in a long line of international debates over how to preserve (or destroy) Nazi monuments. The arguments for and against have evolved dramatically since the end of World War II. In the beginning — in 1945, that is — the Allies ordered all Nazi architecture to be demolished. But as they worked to gain control over the ruined city, they broke their own rules when necessary — for example, in preserving Tempelhof Airport, which was necessary for the Berlin Airlift. Likewise, other Nazi structures were preserved, albeit scraped of all remnants of the Third Reich. After all, functional buildings were valuable in a war-torn city.

Later, as Germany grappled with its identity in the 1960s and 70s, the perception of Nazi architecture began to change. Many politicians still argued that it was necessary to demolish existing buildings completely (leading to the partial destruction of the Nuremberg rally grounds in 1966) but others wondered whether that would only enforce a kind of architectural martyrdom — whether by destroying the past, they’d actually be memorialising it. What followed was an era of historic preservation, with many government agencies restoring Nazi buildings to their former architectural glory, minus the swastikas and flags.

But that didn’t sit right with many critics, who felt that re-occupying a piece of Nazi history sent a convoluted message to new generations of Germans. That’s where Nuremberg comes back into the picture: It’s one of many sites that have sought a “third way” between demolishment and re-use. Speer’s rally grounds are meant to serve as a decaying reminder of the past, without glorifying or banalising its role. Over 200,000 people visit it each year, according to Sued Deutsche Zeitung — many of them young students.

The question facing Nuremberg, then, is a sticky one, touching on a dilemma that bridges history, national identity, and architectural preservation: Does spending millions of Euros to preserve the rally grounds upset the delicate balance between memorialising and glorification of the past?

Hermann Göring in front of the Reich Aviation Ministry in Berlin, in 1937.

Today, the 2100-office building serves as the headquarters for the Ministry of Finance.

The Reichsstadium, seen here hosting the 1936 Olympic Stadium, was eventually renovated and renamed “Olympiastadion”.

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The New iPhones Are Officially Coming September 10

The Apple invitations are officially out. The new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C are coming September 10, as expected. And at least one of them is going to be the rainbow bounty we’d been hoping for.

As is often the case, Apple has infused its invite with a not so subtle clue about what we can expect. The colourful dots are likely the palette that the iPhone 5C will come in, and they should “brighten everyone’s day” because they are, er, colourful. Or it’s a reference to the glittering gold champagne iPhone 5S that’s coming down the pike. Or there’s some sort of iFlashlight that’s going to revolutionise the… flashlight… industry?

The event will be held at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters instead of its usual Yerba Buena Center fête; that’s not entirely out of the blue, though, as Apple last played a home game for the similarly iterative iPhone 4S.

Otherwise, the details of what we’re expecting haven’t changed much since AllThingsD first reported that September 10 would be the day of the big reveal.

The only thing that’s certain? There won’t be many surprises.

[Fuzz]

Maybe the subroutines have been intentionally disabled with the phase inducers being connected to the emitter array and that the pattern buffers have been locked in a diagnostic cycle. Nah!! Give it another 75 years or so Mr La Forge.

What a load of claptrap. Phase inducers and pattern buffers are a part of the transporter system. We all know the problem lies with the gravimetric & visual sensors not being able to locate the source of the high gravity field of the star. Where the hell did you go to engineering school?

[Fuzz]

The New iPhones Are Officially Coming September 10

5C? What is that? A compact version of the iPhone 5S?

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A Gift Shop Devoted Entirely To Privacy-Protecting Stealth Gear

From typefaces that confuse robots to systems that can (allegedly) detect drones near your home, products that claim to protect you from the prying eyes of Big Brother are all the rage right now. Even art museums are getting in on the action — like the New Museum, which just opened its own Privacy Gift Shop.

The shop is populated with objects designed by Johanna Bloomfield and Adam Harvey, the artist known for selling a Stealth Hoodie which claims to block the wearer from the view of heat-seeking drones. At the New Museum, you can buy all sorts of Harvey’s drone-proof clothing, which is made with a metallic fabric that blocks thermal cameras (the type of which are often used by military UAVs).

According to Harvey, the whole project was inspired by an unsettling run-in with an intelligence agency, which contacted him earlier this year to request permission to publish some of his artwork as part of a classified report. “I obliged, but was frustrated by the odd request,” Harvey says in a statement. “Was I a suspect or an inspiration? Beguiled, I imagined a way to make my work as accessible and unclassifiable as possible.” The result was a line of clothing and accessories, each offering its own particular method of avoiding surveillance.

For example, you can pick up an Anti-Drone Scarf, or an OFF Pocket phone case that blocks all wireless signals. Or Harvey’s Metal Dollar Bill — a small copper wallet insert that shields credit cards from being RFID skimmed by identity thieves. Finally, there’s a neat (albeit fairly useless) t-shirt that read “I Love NY,” written in a typeface designed to evade Optical Character Recognition — the process by which the NSA and other agencies scan handwritten notes.

And yes: These are all very conceptual, despite the fact that you can buy them. But while they might not provide tangible privacy protection, they do provide proof that while you might not give a **** about PRISM (or any other surveillance program), there’s a booming market for those who do. The Gift Shop will be open until September 28th. Check it out online here.

The OFF Pocket phone case, $US100.

The Metal Dollar Bill, $US25.

An “I Heart NY” shirt, written in OCR-blocking font, $US40.

The Stealth Scarf, $US450.

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What a load of claptrap. Phase inducers and pattern buffers are a part of the transporter system. We all know the problem lies with the gravimetric & visual sensors not being able to locate the source of the high gravity field of the star. Where the hell did you go to engineering school?

.....Who said I was an Engineer!!

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5C? What is that? A compact version of the iPhone 5S?

Yep, a very cheap plastic version for those who can't afford the premium or normal version.

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The McLaren 12C Supercar Gets a Slick Android Infotainment System

When McLaren launched the MP4-12C in 2011, it promised a comprehensive infotainment system called IRIS. Unfortunately for McLaren — and the 12C’s buyers — the company supplying IRIS went belly up a month before it launched. So McLaren needed something new. Quickly. Enter Android.

McLaren has tapped Parrot — of AR Drone fame — to supply its Android-based Asteroid head unit for the 12C and the forthcoming P1 hybrid hyper car, and it looks positively slick.

The skin running atop the Asteroid system was created by the design-focused folks in Woking, with a minimalist, black and silver UI that matches the purposeful aesthetic of the interior. Streaming music comes courtesy of TuneIn, while local jams can be accessed over a Bluetooth tethered smartphone or thumb drive. Voice controls allow drivers to input destinations into the iGo navigation software or dial up a fellow speed freak, and the system includes a browser, although it’s disabled while the McLaren is in motion.

The system also ties into the car’s CAN bus, so drivers can tweak aspects of the car through the capacitive touchscreen, and given Parrot’s push to get developers to create apps for its platform, McLaren drivers should have access to a bevy of music and location-based services as the Asteroid ecosystem gets built out.

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Caught Giant Alligators Break records:

The hunting party of Dustin Bockman of Vicksburg, Miss., caught this record-breaking alligator in the Big Black River near the Mississippi in Claiborne County. It was 13 feet and 6.5 inches (4.13 meters) long and weighed 727 pounds (330 kilograms). This alligator is now the current weight record for an alligator taken by a hunter in a Mississippi alligator hunting season. Photograph by Ricky Flynt/Mississippi Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks Dept.

Two record-setting heavyweight alligators were killed by hunters in Mississippi this weekend, just three days into the start of the official gator hunting season.

One animal, a male, was 13-feet and 6.5-inches (4.13 meters) long and weighed 727 pounds (330 kilograms).

“When we finally got an arrow in him, it took us another two hours to get him up close to the boat,” Dustin Bockman, one of the hunters, told the Associated Press.

“He broke all the lines we could get in him. Finally we got a snare on him and pulled him up high enough and got a shot on him. All in all, it probably took us four-and-a-half hours to actually catch him from the first time we saw him.”

The other gator, caught by hunter Beth Trammell, was also a male and measured 13-feet and 5.5-inches (4.1-meters) long and weighed 723.5 pounds (328 kilograms).

Both alligators broke the previous weight record of 697.5 pounds (316 kilograms).

Once considered an endangered species, the American alligator population has bounced back in recent decades and was delisted in 1987.

We spoke to Greg Robbins, a senior animal keeper at the Los Angeles Zoo, to find out more about the species and whether it is normal for them to grow so large.

What did you think of the record-setting alligators caught in Mississippi this weekend?

It’s unusual to find alligators that big now. In the old days, it was fairly common. You’d read books from back in the day, especially when they first started settling Florida, and some people described alligators as being bigger.

Our largest gator was a male that passed away several years ago. He was under 500 pounds (227 kilograms), and he was a big gator. But this thing was nearly 300 pounds (136 kilograms) heavier than ours. It looked like a good-sized alligator.

The hunting party of Beth Trammell of Madison, Miss., caught an alligator on Sept 1, 2013 in Issaquena County in the Yazoo Diversion Canal north of Redwood. It was 13 feet 5.5 inches (14.1 meters) long and weighed 723.5 pounds (328 kilograms). Photograph by Ricky Flynt/Mississippi Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks Dept.

How big can American alligators get?

They can continue growing their entire lives. When they’re older, the growth is very minimal. But generally for alligators and crocodiles, they’ll grow a foot a year for the first five or six years. And then they continue growing, but it’s usually at a slower rate.

In captivity, people can make that happen faster through diet and feeding them more often.

Are males always bigger than females?

In crocodilians [which includes alligators and their crocodile cousins] males are always bigger than females.

Is it legal to hunt alligators in the U.S.?

American alligators were taken off the endangered species list a few years ago. It kind of shows the success of the wildlife management that the alligators have come back.

In most of the southern states now, there’s legal hunting and they have tags, kind of like deer hunting season. They usually have a certain number of tags a year that people apply for and then they can hunt [the alligators].

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KATA 3N1-25 PRO-LIGHT BACKPACK

Winner of the redDot design award, the 3N1-25 PL is KATA´s most protective and professional sling backpack. The versatile multipurpose bag allows for 4 comfortable carry options and ultra-quick camera draw. It is capable of carrying a Pro DSLR with battery pack and mid-range zoom lens attached, plus 3-4 lenses and flash. You can also fit a small laptop or tablet plus personal gear. The bag quickly morphs from backpack to sling position providing quick-draw access to your camera and lenses via two external pockets. Also included is a handy rain cover.

You can get it in Europe here

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******** munching fish now found in River Seine in Paris

A South American fish known as the "ball-cutter" due to its taste for human testicles has been caught in Paris' Seine river.

The French capital is reeling from the news that a Parisian fisherman found the ********-munching fish with eerily human teeth at the end of his line late last week.

River police soon confirmed it was none other than the pacu, a cousin of the piranha.

The Amazonian fish sparked a panic among Swedish bathers last month when a eight inch specimen was caught in a sound off the country's southern coast.

A Paris police photo shows the pace caught last week measured just over 1 foot.

The freshwater fish, which can grow up to 35 inches and weigh up to 55lb, has been nicknamed the "ball cutter" for its attacks on the male genitalia.

In areas where packs proliferate, fishermen have reportedly bled to death after losing their testicles to the fish's crushing jaws.

Found in most rivers in the Amazon and Orinoco basins in South America, they have also been spotted in Papua New Guinea, where it is believed they have been introduced to boost fish stocks.

After the catch in Sweden, Henrik Carl, a fish expert at the Danish National History Museum, said: "The pace is not normally dangerous to people but it has quite a serious bite. There have been incidents in other countries, such as Papua New Guinea where some men have had their testicles bitten off."

"They bite because they're hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth," he explained.

"And its mouth is not so big, so of course it normally eats nuts, fruit, and small fish, but human testicles are just a natural target," he added.

Paris river police regularly find unusual species in the Seine. Last year they pulled out a headless nine foot long royal python.

"It's usually new pets that have grown too big and thoughtless owners abandon in the Seine when they can no longer control them," said the Paris police in its weekly newsletter.

[MIKA27]

The BoomBass Is HTC's New Bluetooth Speaker

This dinky little cube is HTC’s answer to the slew of Bluetooth speakers saturating the market — but unlike the rest, this thing only boosts bass, leaving your phone to handle the treble.

Measuring just 64mm along each edge, the cube is designed to complement the — actually quite good — stereo speakers found on HTC’s latest handsets. That means that the Bluetooth unit will just pump out bass, after you’ve paired your handset using the NFC connection the device also packs.

Inside, there’s a 1200mAh battery, which should keep the thing running for nine whole hours until you need to recharge it via micro USB. Available from mid-October, there’s currently no word on pricing.

[MIKA27]

Simon Pegg's Star Trek Into Darkness Prank Is The Best Thing You'll See All Day

Simon Pegg is an evil, evil genius, and Benedict Cumberbatch should watch what he signs.

http://youtu.be/VlMbFkKczOM

[MIKA27]

Sony QX100: Fancy Camera Lens Attaches To 'Almost Any Smartphone'

Sony has been doing wonderful things with imaging in recent years, but despite redefining what we can expect from a compact point-and-shoot camera, the company has yet to make a definitive statement in the mobile imaging you do with your smartphone. The QX100 appears to be that statement — and boy is it weird looking.

So here’s the QX100′s formula: Take the impressive guts of last year’s RX100 and plug them into a small package that can be carried around like external camera but will also work as seamlessly as possible with your smartphone when you want it to. Forget Nokia’s strategy of building a powerful, one-inch sensor camera directly into a smartphone — Sony wants you to carry around one-inch sensor separately so that you can bust it out and Wi-Fi sync it to your phone. On first glance, it sounds a bit complicated.

The QX100 is remarkable for its design. When the camera is turned off, it’s a 2.25-inch tall, 2.5-inch diameter cylinder. For reference, that’s a bit smaller that a baseball. And though it’s being marketed as a smartphone accessory, it’s actually possible to use the QX100 on its own: It has a power button, a shutter release, a little zoom lever and slot that supports up to a 64GB microSD card.

If you’re using the camera entirely on its own though, you’re going to have a very hard time telling what you’re pointing it at, and that’s where the QX100′s mounting bracket and wireless connectivity come in. The camera pairs with any phone running Sony’s PlayMemories software over Wi-Fi, which connects easily with an NFC bump, or with slightly more effort if you’re using a phone that doesn’t have NFC. The app allows you to see what the camera’s looking at, take photos and video, as well as to remotely control a limited number of shooting settings directly from your phone. You can also use the app to review and transfer your photos and video to your smart device. PlayMemories is available for both iOS and Android.

Using the QX100 isn’t entirely intuitive when you first grab it in your palm, and that’s why the mounting the giant eye to your smartphone makes sense. Yeah, it feels weird and clumsy at first, and it will look weird and clumsy no matter what, but it’s the only way simultaneously take photos and monitor what you’re shooting. The external camera does come with a built-in tripod mount so it’s perfectly designed for remote control, but the reality is that for a bulk of applications, mounting the QX100 to your phone will be the best bet. We had the opportunity to briefly play with a pre-production unit, the NFC pairing and Wi-Fi camera monitoring and controls definitely worked — if with a bit of hesitation.

As we mentioned before, the QX100′s key image sensor and optics are identical to what we saw on last year’s RX100: 20.2-megapixel, one-inch Exmor R sensor on a 3.6x zoom, 28-100mm f/1.8-4.9 Carl Zeiss lens. That means shooting performance should be virtually identical too. The camera shoots at a standard ISO of 100-3200 for stills. The main exception and key drawback is the camera’s movie recording mode, which only shoots 1440×1080 at 30fps. Worse, it also only records in MP4 instead of in Sony’s higher-quality AVCHD codec.

If the QX100 has advanced point-and-shoot guts, the QX10 is the beginner point-and-shoot version. It’s a bit smaller than the QX100, and features a much smaller 18.2-megapixel, 1/2.3-inch Exmor R image sensor. The camera features a 10x zoom, 25-250mm (35mm equivalent) f/3.3-5.9 lens. It costs $US250, while the QX100 costs $US500. Both will be available later this month.

So what’s the takeaway? The little QX cameras are a new thing, so their real-world utility won’t reveal itself without dragging one out and putting it through the paces. What seems certain is that even if they prove themselves worthy of future iterations, what we’re looking at is a proof of concept for now.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: This Silent Eagle Could Soon Be Patrolling The Korean Peninsula

The new fifth-generation Silent Eagle has finally cleared export restrictions meaning it may soon be the new face of South Korea’s aerial fleet. That’s good news for an unsteady place.

The original F-15 Eagle entered service in 1976 and has become one of the most successful air combat platforms in the modern era. McDonnell Douglas designed the twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter for a single purpose: blowing other aircraft out of the sky. This jet is all air superiority fighter, notching more than 100 aerial combat victories and zero losses in more than 30 years of service. The F-15 is so successful that the DoD expects to continue their service until at least 2025. The F-15 line has also become a top export model with sales to Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and other ally nations.

The newest F-15 model, the fifth-gen F-15SE Silent Eagle, only builds upon the line’s success. Not to be confused with the F-15E Strike Eagle, which has been in service since 1989, the F-15SE measures 20m long, 6m tall with a 13m wingspan. Its twin Pratt & Whitney F 100-PW-229 turbo engines produce a combined 39,000Nm, enough to enable a top speed of mach 2.5, a combat radius of 800nmi, and can climb to its 18,000m service ceiling in just over a minute. That’s a rate of climb of 15,000 vertical metres per minute –equivalent to travelling straight up at 870km/h.

This incredible performance capability is thanks to a number of design and avionics innovations that have reduced the aircraft’s weight, improved its fuel efficiency, and greatly increased its combat radius over previous iterations. For example, the F-15SE’s vertical tail fins are canted at 15-degree angles to produce lift and increase the plane’s range by 100nmi. State of the art fly-by-wire controls also improve the F-15SE’s handling and performance.

What’s more, the conformal fuel tanks (CFT) — these are tanks that run along the belly of the jet, just under the wing mounts and hold fuel reserves — have been replaced with conformal weapons bays (CWB). By sacrificing a bit of its fuel reserves (a cost lessened by its improved fuel efficiency) the F-15SE can use the conformal section for internal weapons storage. This not only greatly reduces the jet’s radar cross section, it increases the armament it can carry by four missiles (typically AIM-120 and AIM-9) as well.

In addition, the Silent Eagle is coated with radar-absorbing paint to further reduce its radar signature. Interestingly, the F-15SE’s stealth ability is designed in a way so that the plane disappears from radar when its headed right at you. Head on, it has the same radar signature as an F-35 Lightning II. And, given its dog fighting role, the Silent Eagle is optimised for electronic warfare against X-band radar (the frequency most used in air to air combat) form BAE systems and its own active-scan AESA radar. And to further improve the pilot’s combat capability, the new Silent Eagles will include the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System, an American version of the Eurofighter Typhoon’s X-ray helmet. Combined with an advanced autonomous target tracking pod and IR capabilities, the F-15SE is nearly unstopable in any weather or lighting conditions.

Boeing first unveiled the F-15 Silent Eagle for international sale in 2009. At just $US100 million per plane, the F-15SE offers top flight performance at significant cost savings over other jets like the F-35. However, the Silent Eagle requires an export licence similar to that of the Lightning II and that was not easy to obtain. It took Boeing nearly a year to acquire the needed paperwork just to ship the radar cross-section treatments and electronic warfare suite to South Korea. And as of this month, the Republic of South Korea has announced that it is seriously considering dropping 8.3 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) on 60 of these aircraft.