A harpsichord automaton. Malcolm Messiter: "After hours of struggling with a soldering iron, suddenly it all became worth it when the system just worked flawlessly. The sheer joy and satisfaction of seeing and hearing it work for the first time was extraordinary. It played Soler’s Fandango, Brandenburg 5, the Goldberg Variations, and even the Flight of the Bumble Bee, late into that first night!" [
Project direct link (PDF, from p.27)].
posted by urbanwhaleshark
on Oct 20, 2012 -
11 comments
If I Fly a UAV Over My Neighbor's House, Is It Trespassing? "The wide availability of UAV technology (combined with HD video) scrambles my sense of what is right. Specifically, it points out how much of our sense of privacy is intimately connected up with our expectations of our property rights. Drones - as flying, seeing objects - scramble our 2D sense of property boundaries, and along the way, make privacy much more complicated."
[more inside]
posted by paleyellowwithorange
on Oct 12, 2012 -
67 comments
A Tragedy of Errors. On Feb. 21, 2010, a convoy of vehicles carrying civilians headed down a mountain in central Afghanistan and American eyes in the sky were watching. "The Americans were using some of the most
sophisticated tools in the history of war, technological marvels of surveillance and intelligence gathering that allowed them to see into once-inaccessible corners of the battlefield. But the high-tech wizardry would
fail in its most elemental purpose: to tell the difference between friend and foe."
FOIA-obtained
transcripts of US cockpit and radio conversations and
an interactive feature provide a more in-depth understanding of what happened.
posted by zarq
on Apr 10, 2011 -
59 comments
Lasers 4, UAVs 0. It's easier to hit things at the speed of light. Raytheon tests a naval anti-aircraft laser, and you can watch it go at the link.
posted by Ella Fynoe
on Jul 19, 2010 -
58 comments
Sub $1000 UAV. Wired editor, author and blogger Chris Anderson
[wiki] built a sub $1000 UAV from a model airplane and a Lego mindstorms robotics kit. The drone
flies itself, all you do is punch in a direction (and eventually, GPS coordinates). I don't know if it's technically Open Source, but you can definitely
download instructions and code.
posted by delmoi
on Jun 11, 2007 -
14 comments
US drone lost over Iraq - It seems it's only a matter of time before they shoot down a piloted plane (even if by accident). What are we still trying to accomplish over there and what would the reaction be if they succeed?
posted by revbrian
on Aug 27, 2001 -
15 comments
