Month: December 2015

(credit: Metro)

In an effort to enforce no-fly-zones across the city, Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department is launching a drone squad. According to Japan Today (via Popular Science), the squad will patrol no-fly-zones and "will search for the operators and order them to ground the drones."

If an operator fails to comply, police will scramble large drones up to 10 feet long armed with cameras and nets to take down the unwanted machines. There's no word yet on whether said tactics will be accompanied by a perfectly-timed blast of The A-Team theme tune, though—we can but dream.

Despite the humorous name, the drone squad will take on some serious issues in Toyko. "Terrorist attacks using drones carrying explosives are a possibility," a senior member of the police department's security bureau told the Asahi Shimbun website. "We hope to defend the nation's functions with the worst-case scenario in mind."

(credit: Valentina Palladino)

Just a few months after the new Microsoft Band came out, the company is adding functionality with a small software update. The two biggest features of this update—music controls and inactivity alerts—contribute to the band's identity as part smartwatch and part fitness tracker.

According to Microsoft's blog, you'll be able to control music playback on your smartphone from the Microsoft Band. The touchscreen will display the song's title and icons to play, pause, and skip tracks, as well as adjust volume levels. Microsoft calls out Spotify in its blog post, but you'll be able to control playback from any music app that connects with your smartphone's Bluetooth features. While some higher-end fitness trackers have music controls, it's a feature more often found on smartwatches.

To get up to speed with even the most basic activity trackers, Microsoft added customizable inactivity alerts to the band as well. We can only assume these will come in the form of band vibrations and display flashes when you've been inactive for too long. Microsoft does explain that you'll be able to set days and times for when you want the inactivity alerts to jolt you,so the band shouldn't rudely wake you from sleep.

(credit: Oxford University)

Designer Carbon Materials, an Oxford-based scientific startup, has recently sold its first 200 micrograms of nitrogen atom-based endohedral fullerenes for £22,000—or about £110 million per gram.

This valuation likely makes the material the second most valuable on Earth, preceded only by antimatter, which is estimated by NASA to cost some £41 trillion per gram.

The material, which essentially is a cage of carbon atoms with a nitrogen atom inside, could be used for very small and very accurate atomic clocks, which are currently of the size of a room.

A black-and-white bandanna printed with a blocky, digital pattern reminiscent of the common Arabic keffiyeh is one item in the Backslash kit, a package of devices that help protesters stay safe and connected during demonstrations. The bandanna's pattern can store messages that can be revealed with the Backslash app.

When riot police descended on protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, last year sporting assault rifles and armored vehicles, the images sparked an awareness of the military technologies and tactics authorities have adopted over the past decade. Many of these tools have quietly become regular components of day-to-day policing. And just as with social networks and cell phone cameras during the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, they've dramatically—and often invisibly—altered the dynamics of contemporary protest.

Examples are everywhere, from the controversial Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) sound weapons used to disperse crowds to secretive mass surveillance devices, commonly known as stingrays originally developed for the US Navy, which police use to track cell phones, often without a warrant. Earlier this year, police in India began equipping aerial drones with pepper spray cannons to use on crowds of protesters. In August, North Dakota became the first US state to allow the same; a new law drafted by a drone lobbyist permits North Dakota cops to arm drones with pepper spray, tasers, and other “less-than-lethal” weapons.

The FBI has admitted that it flew surveillance planes equipped with high-resolution cameras over the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson and Baltimore, Maryland—part of a secret program that has monitored over 30 major cities from the skies using aircraft registered to fake companies. And in New York City, the NYPD has outfitted unmarked white vans with advanced X-ray equipment capable of seeing through walls and even people's clothes.