3D Printing The One-Of-A-Kind: New 3D-Printing "Teleporter" Destroys And Redeploys

It's kind of like teleportation...except a little more destructive.

According to rawstory.com, scientists have discovered a way to use "destructive scanning" and 3D printing to make objects rematerialize someplace else.  The process involves milling down (shaving away layers of) an inanimate object so that a 3D printer can make a scan of each layer.  Then, the printer sends the imagery from each scanned layer over an encrypted connection to another 3D printer.  The second printer then reconstitutes the item.

Slash it up, then beam it up, Scotty!
(Image courtesy 3Dprint.com.)

The device is powered by a regular 3D printer, 3-axis milling machine, camera, and encryption microcontroller, 3Dprint.com reports.  A Raspberry Pi provides the brains, while an Arduino works the milling.

The system, called "Scotty" in homage to Enterprise engineer from "Star Trek", is considered useful in its destructive protocol, due to the fact that it enables security by only allowing one copy of an object to exist at any given point.  This could be important for future online vendors who can assure that once purchased, only one copy of an item will be available to the client.

It'll make 3D-printed art forgery a pretty bad idea.
(Image courtesy independent.co.uk.)

The encryption elements being developed for Scotty will hopefully combat homemade mass-production, ensuring the scanned files are difficult or impossible to pirate.  Copying your newest set of 3D printed flatware won't be as easy as copying a CD.

While it'll still be some time before full-scale teleportation comes into public use, it's somewhat comforting to know that even if we can replicate complex items via 3D printing, they still can't always match the originals.

Some one-of-a-kind items should remain so, in their original form.
(Image courtesy replicatorinc.com.)

Avast! Modern Pirates May Be Thwarted By Small Submersible Robots

Even in modern times, sea pirates are still a threat.  But instead of having to combat them in tall ships with cannons blazing, we can now counteract would-be buccaneers thanks to small, submersible robots.  MIT has perfected just such a craft, that operates covertly and inexpensively to thwart would-be smugglers.

According to ship-technology.com, the oval-shaped robots created by the MIT team were originally designed to check for cracks in the water coolers of nuclear reactors, but have the capability to examine the undersides of ships of all sizes.  Each robot has a flat belly which is ideal for crawling along to suss out false hulls or hollow propeller shafts that could be used to hide contraband.

Onboard acceleromators and gyroscopes measure the robot's motion, which is propelled by water ejected through six pumps in the robot's body.  An onboard communications antenna relays intel.  The robot's lithium battery currently allows for 40 minutes of activity, moving at half a meter to a meter per second while attached to a surface, although an updated version is set to allow for 100 minutes with wireless recharging and expanded propulsion capability.

Best of all, they're small enough to be unobtrusive, and created easily enough to allow for fleets of them to be deployed with no financial worry.  Designer Sampriti Bhattacharyya explained, "It's very expensive for port security to use traditional robots for every small boat coming into the port. If this is cheap enough, if I can get this out for $600, say, why not just have 20 of them doing collaborative inspection? And if it breaks, it's not a big deal. It's very easy to make."

These barnacle-bots may be just the thing to help port security search for hidden "treasure."

Fortunately, traditional pirate justice is of no use against the robots, as they are specifically built for being keelhauled.

Pirate Bay to Go P2P

From Torrent Freak:

The Pirate Bay’s PirateBrowser just hit 2.5 million downloads but the notorious torrent site has much bigger plans in store for the new year. The team behind the site is developing a new tool that doesn’t rely on domain names or server farms. Instead, users will serve as the P2P hosts of the sites, with the system running its own alternative DNS. Today, the Pirate Bay team shares some more details on the technology.

Spain to Criminalize Linking

Coming off a recent proposal to tax sunlight, the government of Spain appears to be on a roll, and is poised to criminalize linking to allegedly infringing copyrighted content.  From ZDNet:

Spain is introducing tough new penalties for owners of websites that link to pirated versions of copyrighted material, after pressure from the US over its piracy record.

Under new legislation introduced as part of a wider reform of the country's penal code, owners of sites found to be making money from linking to pirated material will face prison sentences of up to six years and the closure of their site.

Irony Alert: Microsoft Asks Google to Remove Links to their Own Website

From Torrent Freak:

Earlier this week we reported that Google has already received takedown requests for more than 100 million URLs this year.  While most of the submitted URLs do indeed link to infringing content, not all requests received by Google are correct.

The automated systems used by many of the copyright holders often trigger notices that include links to perfectly legitimate content, and sometimes even their own work. The latter happened in a recent DMCA takedown request sent by LeakID on behalf of Microsoft. Instead of listing URLs of infringing material, Microsoft asked Google to remove links to their own websites . . .

US Entertainment Industry Continues Its Descent into Global Criminal Mafia

Security hysterics are among the greatest threats to our collective and individual security.  These are the types who say we have to sacrifice liberty for freedom, or safety for security.  Of course, they don't always put it quite so succinctly, but this, in effect, is what their position boils down to, whether it is the FBI, a corporate lobby or a group of "concerned citizens."  From Boing Boing:

The hilariously named "Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property" has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that's pretty bonkers. . . . The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware.