Google launches music subscriptions
15 May 2013
Last updated at 20:32
US users are the first to be offered access to Google’s new music subscription service
Google has unveiled a streaming music subscription service.
Google Play Music All Access offers users the ability to listen to millions of tracks in addition to the ones they already own. The firm described it as “radio without rules”.
The facility is set to compete with Spotify, Xbox Music, Rdio, Pandora and other similar products.
However, unlike several of its rivals there is no free-to-use option beyond an initial 30-day trial period.
Instead users face a $9.99 (£5.60) monthly charge to access a library containing millions of songs via an Android device or web browser. Early adopters are being offered a discounted rate of $7.99-a-month.
Pricing and availability outside of the US have not yet been announced.
The news came at the firm’s I/O developers conference in San Francisco. Investors appeared to welcome the move sending Google’s shares above $900 for the first time.
Streaming music
Music All Access allows users to manually add songs to a playlist or allow a feature called Explore to offer them recommendations. Playlists can also include songs which the user owns which would otherwise not be available.
One industry watcher suggested Google was wise not to offer an advert-supported free-to-listen option.
“One of the things that has really slowed Spotify down is its freemium tier,” said Alice Enders, a music industry expert at consultancy Enders Analysis.
Music All Access can be used via an Android app or a PC’s web browser
“It helps familiarise people with a streaming music service, but it immediately means you are selling online advertising and that means in a fragmented market that you have to have local sales teams.
“Let’s face it, a freemium tier is a very expensive marketing device.”
However, another analyst said Music All Access’s success was not guaranteed. He noted Spotify has 24 million users but the service had only managed to convince 6 million of them to pay.
“This will be the fourth big music play that Google has launched over the years and every time they do it people get excited, because it is Google, but most of the products to date haven’t had the massive impact people thought they would,” said Chris Cooke from trade newsletter CMU Music Network.
“I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that this is a Spotify-killer or a total game changer.
“But what is interesting is that Google already owned the most successful music streaming service in terms of hits and revenue in YouTube – it’s just that it comes with videos and doesn’t integrate into Google Play”.
Voice searches
Rumours that Google would reveal details of an upgrade to its mobile operating system, taking Android to either 4.3 or 5.0, proved to be unfounded.
But announcements it did make included a new cross-platform messaging app called Google Hangouts.
It allows users to have video chats, send text messages and swap pictures between Android and iOS devices as well its Chrome web browser. Past conversations are stored on Google’s servers.
Google says it has rebuilt its web maps service “from scratch” to offer more personalised results
The facility poses competition to Skype, Whatsapp, BBM, Tango and others.
The firm is also adding a voice-powered search facility to the Chrome browser.
By saying “OK Google” followed by a search command, users can ask their PC to provide information, find pictures or carry out tasks such as making a reservation.
Voice-search was previously limited to its smartphone apps.
The tool can also anticipate follow-up questions. Google gave the example of asking where a theme park was based. The information was given and then followed with directions showing how to get there from a restaurant which had been booked earlier.
Google Maps gets a major refresh. The web browser version has been rewritten to personalise results, highlighting locations the firm believes the user will be most interested in. These are based on the person’s previous use of Google’s services and the reviews their friends have posted on its Google+ social network.
The firm’s Android and iOS Map apps are also to get more features including live details of reported road accidents alongside suggested changes to a motorist’s route.
Video games
Developers were told new video game features were being added to Android.
Google chief executive Larry Page spoke a day after revealing he had been diagnosed with vocal cord paralysis
They include the abilities to synchronise a player’s progress across different devices and to compare scores on leaderboards managed via its Google+ social network. The leaderboard feature will be offered to gamers playing on Apple’s iOS devices or using web-based titles.
Google also announced a service to make it easier to write multiplayer games, but a tech demonstration failed.
In hardware, Google revealed it is to sell a version of Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 handset running the basic Android system without the South Korean firm’s TouchWiz user interface installed on top.
One mobile phone reviewer thought the option could prove popular since it removed “clutter” from the device.
“Samsung has an overwhelming share of Android sales and both firms have been privately worried about their reliance on the other,” said Graeme Neill, deputy editor at Mobile Today.
“You could describe this as a Nexus version of the Galaxy S4, and it might be seen as a sign that the troubled relationship between the two companies, that was reported on earlier this year, is a little less tense. Even so, they will continue to watch one another warily.”
However, an up-front cost of $649 might discourage some consumers.
Android’s rise
Google also revealed new figures related to the growing popularity of Android.
It said that it had now recorded 900 million activations of the operating system. That more than doubles the figure given last year.
In addition it said that more than 48 billion apps had been installed from its Google Play store and that on average users were spending two and a half times more on it than they were a year ago.
An attempt to show off a new multiplayer facility failed to work as planned
There was no repeat of a stunt on the scale of last year’s live video feed which showed skydivers jumping out of a plane while wearing the company’s upcoming Glass eyewear.
However, chief executive Larry Page did briefly talk about the project.
“Glass is a new category, quite different than existing computing devices and so I think it’s great that we’ve started on it and our main goal is to get happy users,” he said.
“Basic use cases we have around photography are amazing – I love taking pictures of my kids.”
But he declined to reveal how many copies Google planned to make in its initial production run or to disclose other details about the upcoming launch.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22542725#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Google’s Larry Page says Oracle among those holding back tech industry
The Google co-founder Larry Page spoke out on Wednesday about the “negativity” he believes is holding back the technology industry, a day after revealing that he has been suffering from a rare vocal-cord condition that has made it difficult for him to speak.
In a raspy voice, Page told the audience at the internet giant’s annual developers conference, Google I/O, that he believed a lack of cooperation between tech partners was holding back progress. “Today we are still just scratching the surface of what’s possible,” he told the conference in San Francisco.
Page blamed a “focus on negativity and zero-sum games” for the industry’s failure to achieve its full potential. He said: “I’ve been sad that the industry hasn’t been able to advance those things.”
Computers were slow, the web was not advancing as fast as it should be and big technology companies were not co-operating enough, he said. “I think it’s kind of sad we have all these computers out there that are connected to each other by a tiny, tiny, tiny pipe that’s super slow.”
Page named the tech giant Oracle as one of the roadblocks to faster progress. “Money is more important to them” than having any kind of cooperation, he said. The two companies have clashed repeatedly over patents.
Page said he was excited about Google’s developments in driverless cars, maps, music and Google Glass, the company’s controversial new headset device. He said people had said Google was “crazy” to diversify from its core search product, but he cited the success of Gmail and said: “Every time we tried to do something crazy we made progress. So we’ve become a bit emboldened by that.”
Last year, Page missed Google’s annual shareholders meeting in June and a conference call to discuss the company’s quarterly earnings in July. He did not appear at last year’s Google I/O. The absences had caused concern among investors, some of whom were concerned that Google was not giving them the full picture about his health, in the same way that the late Apple boss Steve Jobs had initially hidden his illness from the public.
On his Google+ profile Page, 40, said his left vocal cord has been paralysed for 14 years, after he had suffered a severe cold. The condition worsened last year, after another cold impaired his right vocal cord.
“While this condition never really affected me – other than having a slightly weaker voice than normal which some people think sounded a little funny – it naturally raised questions in my mind about my second vocal cord. But I was told that sequential paralysis of one vocal cord following another is extremely rare,” Page wrote. “Fast forward to last summer, when the same pattern repeated itself – a cold followed by a hoarse voice. Once again things didn’t fully improve, so I went in for a check-up and was told that my second vocal cord now had limited movement as well. Again, after a thorough examination, the doctors weren’t able to identify a cause.”
Concerns about Page’s condition eased last October, when he took questions during Google’s earnings call. Page has spoken in each of Google’s three earnings calls since the one he missed. He provided further reassurance in Tuesday’s post.
“Thankfully, after some initial recovery I’m fully able to do all I need to at home and at work, though my voice is softer than before,” he wrote.
Google’s stock rose as the conference got under way, by more than 2% to more than $980 a share on Wednesday afternoon. Google shares have risen by 50% since Page replaced Eric Schmidt as chief executive, in April 2011.
Page, who owns Google stock worth about $22bn, has made a donation to Boston’s Voice Health Institute. He did not disclose the size of the donation but said it was large enough to support a “significant” research program that will be led by Dr Steven Zeitels from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General hospital voice centre.
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/15/google-larry-page
Blackberry expands BBM to rivals
14 May 2013
Last updated at 17:23
Until now the BBM app had been limited to Blackberry’s own devices
The Blackberry Messenger (BBM) app is to be offered as a download to run on rival platforms.
Blackberry said it would initially offer texts, photo messages and group sharing functions on devices running Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems from “the summer”.
It added it planned to roll out screen sharing, voice and video calls – all without charge – later in the year.
The move could prove disruptive to Skype, Whatsapp and other rivals.
Blackberry chief executive Thorsten Heins revealed the surprise news at the end of his presentation at the firm’s annual developers conference in Orlando, Florida.
The company said that more than 60 million Blackberry owners already used BBM at least once a month.
But Mr Heins played down the idea that offering the feature to rival devices would harm sales of the Canadian company’s own handsets.
“You might ask the question why is Blackberry doing this now,” said Mr Heins.
Continue reading the main story
What does BBM offer?
Blackberry Messenger began life as a simple instant messaging tool offering owners of the firm’s handsets a free alternative to SMS texts.
Over the years the company has added functions including sending pictures, audio messages and other files as well as making voice and video calls, all over the internet.
In addition it offers a Groups facility which allows users to share photos, lists and calendar appointments with trusted contacts.
The latest addition is Channels – a feature allowing brands and celebrities to send news and status updates to users who want to follow them through the app.
Blackberry has a chance to leapfrog existing cross-platform rivals by bringing all these facilities to Android and iOS users.
However, with reports that Whatsapp could shortly add voice calls and that Google has been working on its own unified messaging service, Blackberry may find competition in the market is about to intensify.
“It’s a statement of confidence. The Blackberry 10 platform is so strong and the response has been so good that we are confident the time is right for Blackberry Messenger to become an independent multiplatform messaging solution.”
He added that for the app to work iPhone users would need at least iOS 6 and Android users the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google’s software. There was no mention of Windows Phone.
Wider impact
One analyst said it was too soon to know if the move would force competitors to change their own strategies.
“BBM has been a significant traffic driver for Blackberry – particularly the consumer audience,” said Chris Green, principal technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group Europe.
“Expanding it to be multiplatform not only widens the consumer appeal but also may help woo back corporate customers it lost due to earlier technical problems.
“However, other players like Whatsapp will only drop their fees if they see BBM making major inroads into other platforms.”
Blackberry’s boss said he was excited to be able to invite more people to join the BBM service
Ben Wood from telecoms consultancy CCS Insight added that Blackberry might have felt forced into the move because of the growing popularity of cross-platform alternatives which also includes Facebook Messenger.
“It will increase feature competition among mobile messaging platforms,” he said.
“It dramatically increases BBM’s long-term relevance – but it is unclear how Blackberry will ensure the move benefits its own hardware sales.”
Cheaper phone
Blackberry also announced a new smartphone powered by its BB10 system – the first to be targeted at emerging markets.
The Q5 features a physical Qwerty keyboard and a 3.1in (7.9cm) touchscreen.
The Blackberry 10 device will be released in parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America in July.
It should be cheaper than the Z10 and Q10 which were unveiled in January.
However, the firm has yet to confirm pricing.
“We understand the importance of having devices to suit all markets and needs,” said Mr Heins. “It’s a sleek, slim high-performance device.”
One company watcher said it was important for Blackberry to have a device running BB10 on sale in parts of the world where its handsets were still bestsellers.
“The Q5 could be a very significant device for the company because there is a significant opportunity for high-quality low-cost smartphones,” said Adam Leach, devices analyst at telecoms consultancy Ovum.
The Q5 is being offered in red and pink colours as well as black and white options
“If Blackberry can replicate the success of the Blackberry Curve in emerging markets then it will certainly help establish the Blackberry 10 platform.
“However, Blackberry has significant competition in this area with low-cost Android devices and with Nokia’s Asha 501 which sells for just under $100 [£65]. It will be crucial to see if Blackberry can match or undercut that.”
Ovum predicts that emerging markets will account for 40% of smartphone shipments by 2017.
According to data from IDC – another tech consultancy – Blackberry devices accounted for just over 19% of global smartphone shipments at the start of 2010. But the firm suggests that figure had dropped to less than 4% by the end of last year.
Blackberry has yet to release sales figures for its first BB10 devices.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22529074#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Nokia unveils slimmer top-end phone
14 May 2013
Last updated at 10:31
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Rory Cellan-Jones talks to Nokia’s chief product designer Stefan Pannenbecker about the Lumia 925
Nokia has announced a revamped version of its flagship smartphone, ditching built-in support for wireless charging.
The Lumia 925 – unveiled in London – is lighter as a result, addressing a common complaint about the Lumia 920.
The firm has also upgraded the device’s camera, saying this is the first time such a complex technology has been put in a handset.
The launch comes a week after several investors criticised Nokia’s strategy at its annual general meeting.
Some suggested the decision to offer the Windows Phone operating system only on its top-end phones had put it at a disadvantage against rivals whose bestselling models are powered by Android.
However, chief executive Stephen Elop said the decision to focus on Microsoft’s software gave his firm the best opportunity to “compete with competitors like Samsung”.
The firm said the new model would initially go on sale in Europe and China in June, followed by the US and other markets.
‘More comfortable’
Nokia describes the Lumia 925 as a “new interpretation” of its predecessor, which remains on sale.
It weighs 139g (0.31lb), making it 46g lighter than the Lumia 920 – and at 8.5mm (0.33in) thick is 2.2mm thinner than the earlier model.
Its Snapdragon S4 processor and 2,000 mAh battery remain the same but the 925 has half the amount of internal storage at 16 gigabytes. A 32GB version is, however, planned as an “exclusive” for Vodafone.
“[The earlier 920] was really about building the most innovative smartphone and putting a lot of features and functionality into it,” explained product design chief Stefan Pannenbecker.
“Here we left small things out in order to create a smaller product – for example wireless charging, which you can still have by adding on a cover.
The Lumia 925 (left) does not come in the same range of bright colours offered with the earlier Lumia 920 (right)
“We have created a product that is a little bit more compact and a little bit more comfortable in the hand.”
The size of the Lumia 925′s screen is unchanged at 4.5in (11.4cm), however the new AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) display is slightly higher resolution than the Lumia 920′s IPS-based (in-plane switching technology) equivalent.
A more obvious cosmetic change is the addition of a metal frame and the limited choice of white, grey or black designs rather than the brightly coloured unibody plastic options offered for the older device.
“It’s a little more sober and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think Nokia’s going after more of a corporate audience,” said Carolina Milanesi, consumer devices analyst at tech consultancy Gartner.
Imaging software
While the Lumia 925′s main camera offers the same 8.7 megapixel resolution and “floating lens” image-stabilising technology as before, there is one change.
The optical system features a six-element lens – six layers of plastic through which the light passes before reaching the image sensor, each helping to correct image distortion.
Until now, high-end smartphone cameras have at most featured four or five such parts.
“Each element bends the light in a slightly different manner,” Juha Alakarhu, Nokia’s head of imaging technology told the BBC.
“The direct consumer benefit is that you get sharper images.”
He added that a software update – which will also be provided to other Lumia Windows Phone 8 handsets – provided other benefits.
Motion Focus creates an effect usually achieved by panning the camera in time with the subject’s movement
“The maximum ISO goes from 800 to 3,200 which means we can offer brighter images in low light conditions while controlling the noise,” he said. “We have also significantly improved our colour and exposure algorithms.”
The revisions may address criticisms by some reviewers that the Lumia 920′s images could look “washed out” and “very soft” when compared with those taken on the HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5.
A new app, named Nokia Smart Cam, also adds more gimmicky shooting modes including Motion Focus which blurs the background while keeping the foreground subject sharp, conveying a sense of action.
However, the Lumia 925 lacks one feature which was added to a near-identical model – the Lumia 928 – unveiled in the US last week: a Xenon flash.
Instead it uses less powerful LED technology to help freeze motion.
Windows Phone promise
According to market research firm IDC, shipments of Nokia smartphones fell from 11.9 million devices in the first three months of 2012 to 6.4 million units during the January-to-March period in 2013 – a 46% drop.
The data indicates that Nokia’s market share dropped to 3% as a result while Samsung, LG, Huawei and ZTE all saw theirs grow.
Such data has put pressure on the Finnish firm’s leadership.
Nokia has indicated that the Lumia 925 and other launches should help the product line improve sales
“Please switch to another road,” urged one investor at last week’s annual general meeting in Helsinki.
Despite Microsoft’s efforts, demand for the Windows Phone lags far behind that for Google’s Android and some analysts have suggested Nokia jump ship. However, IDC suggests that would be premature.
“Nokia is starting to see the first positive results,” said Francisco Jeronimo, the IDC’s research director for European mobile devices.
“They recently forecast about 30% growth for their Lumia [Windows Phone] handsets for the second quarter – if they keep growing at the same rate they will be progressing well.
“At this point it’s too early to invest in Android and start again from scratch, but in six months’ time if shipments aren’t growing they may need to rethink the strategy.”
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22507935#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Facebook Home limps past 1m downloads
Facebook Home, the app intended to turn Android phones into a sort of “Facebook phone”, is struggling. Having taken almost a month to hit a million downloads from Google’s Play store, more than half of the 16,000-odd reviews on the store give it just one star – the lowest grade possible – against 17% offering a 5-star review.
Separately, ATT is reported to be preparing to abandon the Android-based HTC First – also known as the “Facebook Phone” – after having last week cut its price from $99 to just 99 cents on the phone which was introduced only at the beginning of April.
Internally, Facebook is understood to be debating how to respond to the poor reception that Home – which was intended to be its foray into the smartphone market without actually having to produce its own phone.
Reports suggest that sales of the HTC First have been comparatively small: BGR.com says that sources at ATT, the US’s largest carrier, indicate that fewer than 15,000 of the phones had been sold by the end of its first month.
By comparison, in the first three months of the year ATT sold 6m smartphones, of which about 1m were Android phones – an average of more than 300,000 per month.
BGR says that the price cut will be used to try to shift stock, and that any surplus inventory will then be returned to HTC – creating a problem for the Taiwanese company, which in its first quarter barely made a profit but which had promised strong sequential growth in revenues for the April-June period.
The HTC First is the company’s second attempt to create a “Facebook phone” after the HTC Chacha in spring 2011, an Android phone with a dedicated button to let people update their Facebook status.
“With that one slash of the knife, ATT has confirmed what everyone had already gathered; the Facebook phone is proving very unpopular,” commented Richard Windsor of the RadioFreeMobile consultancy. .”If this was an isolated incident, then one could put it down to poor hardware, but installations and reviews of the software on other devices have also been poor.”
Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s product management director, told Mercury News in April said that “This is just the start”.
Facebook Home is an app launcher for Android phones which in effect takes over the phone, pushing normal apps to the background; the home screen shows photos from the user’s Facebook feed, comments from the user’s News Feed, and “Chat Heads” of friends with notifications.
Facebook’s challenge is to create a mobile app that is compelling for users: data suggests that it is the most-used application on smartphones, taking up 18% of all usage in its own right.
But in trying to expand its influence beyond social networking so that it can mine the user’s entire experience on the phone, Facebook seems to have stumbled.
Facebook Home was initially available only on a limited range of phones – the HTC One X, HTC First, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Those are reckoned to be a small proportion of the total Android installed base in the US, which is one of Facebook’s largest markets.
Windsor said: “Facebook Home looked to me like the right idea but its execution and design appears to be somewhat clumsy and the users simply do not like it. The failure of Home is not a disaster; it just means that Facebook needs to try another way to engage users outside of social networking. Something less invasive, more intuitive and above all, more fun seems to be the order of the day.”
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/14/facebook-home-app-htc-problems
Pilotless flight success over UK
13 May 2013
Last updated at 13:15
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Peter Marshall speaks to Astraea director Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal
A Jetstream aircraft became the first to fly “unmanned” across UK shared airspace last month.
An on-board pilot handled the take-off, from Warton, near Preston in Lancashire, and landing, in Inverness.
But during the 500-mile journey, the specially adapted plane was controlled by a pilot on the ground, instructed by the National Air Traffic Services.
There were no passengers, but the 16-seater aircraft flew in airspace shared with passenger carriers.
Known as “the Flying Testbed”, it contains on-board sensors and robotics to identify and avoid hazards.
National Air Traffic Services unmanned air vehicle (UAV) expert Andrew Chapman said: “Nats ensured that this test flight was held without any impact on the safety of other users of airspace at the time.
Regulatory framework
“Although there is still work to be done it would seem that, on the basis of the success of this flight, a UAV could operate in different classes of airspace.”
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Astraea has made significant achievements, placing the UK industry in a good position globally on unmanned aircraft and the development of regulations for their civil use”
End Quote
Michael Fallon
Business and Energy Minister
It is the latest in a series of test flights carried out by Astraea (Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation and Assessment), which has received £62m funding, from commercial companies and the UK government, to research how civilian unmanned aircraft could fit in to shared airspace.
A representative of BAE Systems, one of the companies to have invested in Astraea, said: “The flights were part of a series of tests helping flight regulators and Nats to understand how these flights work, and what they need to do were they to go ahead and put a regulatory framework in place for the unmanned flights in manned airspace.
“It’s still very early days in terms of that regulation taking place.”
Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon described the latest flight as “pioneering”.
Social impact
The specially adapted 16-seater Jetstream had no passengers.
“Astraea has made significant achievements, placing the UK industry in a good position globally on unmanned aircraft and the development of regulations for their civil use,” he said.
The project has the support of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
At a media conference last year, Astraea project director Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal said getting unmanned aircraft (UA) into shared airspace was more than a technical challenge.
“It’s not just the technology, we’re trying to think about the social impact of this and the ethical and legal things associated with it,” he said.
“You’ve got to solve all this lot if you’re going to make it happen, enable it to happen affordably.”
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22511395#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
US orders removal of 3D-gun designs
10 May 2013
Last updated at 10:18
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The BBC’s Rebecca Morelle saw the 3D-printed gun’s first test in Austin, Texas
The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline.
The order to remove the blueprints for the plastic gun comes after they were downloaded more than 100,000 times.
The US State Department wrote to the gun’s designer, Defense Distributed, suggesting publishing them online may breach arms-control regulations.
Although the files have been removed from the company’s Defcad site, it is not clear whether this will stop people accessing the blueprints.
They were being hosted by the Mega online service and may still reside on its servers.
Also, many links to copies of the blueprints have been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, making them widely available. The Pirate Bay has also publicised its links to the files via social news site Reddit suggesting many more people will get hold of the blueprints.
Cody Wilson, who founded Defense Distributed, told the BBC that the genie was out of the bottle.
“Once people heard what happened, Pirate Bay has exploded. I’m sat here watching it now, seeing the downloads go up and up.”
Continue reading the main story
Analysis: 3D printing’s Wild West
Earlier this week, I saw Cody Wilson fire his gun for the first time.
Small, white and made from plastic, the firearm looked like a toy. But as the shot rang, you could feel the force of this weapon.
Hours later, and the blueprints had been placed online.
Mr Wilson describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, and his belief is that everyone has a right to a gun.
Through this project he aimed to export this idea to the rest of the world – whether the rest of the world wanted it or not.
However a week is a long time in the Wild West of 3D printing, and now Mr Wilson has been ordered to remove the plans.
But with more than 100,000 downloads already, the designs have already been widely circulated, and there is now little that can be done to halt their spread.
The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance emailed Mr Wilson a document demanding the designs be “removed from public access” until he could prove he had not broken laws governing shipping weapons overseas by putting the files online and letting people outside the US download them.
Explosive force
Mr Wilson said that Defense Distributed had complied with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) rules. He said the rules were pretty convoluted, but he believed his project was exempt as Defense Distributed had been set up specifically to meet requirements that exempted it from ITAR.
“Our gun operations were registered with ITAR.”
He said the letter was unclear in that the Office was conducting a “review” yet at the same time he had to remove the files.
“They are stalling, they are going to make this review last as long as they can,” he said. “They are getting a lot of political pressure.” He added that he had taken legal advice about what to do next.
“We’ve also had offers of help from lawyers from all around the country,” he said.
He welcomed the US government’s intervention, saying it would highlight the issue of whether it was possible to stop the spread of 3D-printed weapons.
Unlike conventional weapons, the printed gun – called the Liberator by its creators – is made out of plastic on a printer. Many engineering firms and manufacturers use these machines to test prototypes before starting large-scale production.
While desktop 3D printers are becoming more popular, Defense Distributed used an industrial 3D printer that cost more than £5,000 to produce its gun. This was able to use high-density plastic that could withstand and channel the explosive force involved in firing a bullet.
Before making the Liberator, Mr Wilson got a licence to manufacture and sell the weapon from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The Bureau told the BBC that any American could make a gun for their own use, even on a 3D printer, but selling it required a licence.
Mr Wilson, who describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, said the project to create a printed gun and make it widely available was all “about liberty”.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22478310#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Health and safety, eh? Eh? Health and safety! Health! And! Safety! Eh? | Charlie Brooker
I haven’t actually seen The Wright Way, Ben Elton’s latest sitcom, but I’ve sensed the waves of negative feedback it’s generated, in much the same way Obi Wan Kenobi felt a great disturbance in the Force when the Death Star destroyed the planet Alderaan, except rather than sensing a million voices crying out in terror, I’ve merely seen it trend on Twitter accompanied by a swarm of Anti-LOLs.
Despite not having seen it, I can safely say it can’t possibly be as harrowing as everyone’s making out, unless it consists of nothing but live footage of a kitten autopsy performed by a blindfolded drunk. Having co-written The Young Ones, Filthy Rich and Catflap, and Blackadder, Ben Elton has been responsible for more deep, gut-level guffaws than the vast majority of people on the planet, an achievement that will prove ultimately snark-proof when they finally come to write his obituary.
One of the major criticisms of The Wright Way, apart from the title and scripting and performances and set design and soundtrack and ambience and positioning of each individual pixel making up the overall image, is the main character’s chosen career: he’s a bungling council health and safety officer. Satirising health and safety is like moaning about the weather: as British as it is boring. And it’s something I’ve never quite grasped, because in my view, health and safety legislation doesn’t go far enough. Everything is a threat. Existence is hostile. To be alive on Planet Earth is to be pinned by an unseen gravitational force beyond your control to the surface of an almighty bauble of death cluttered with sharp objects, death traps, diseases, disasters and killers concocting new and exotic means of inflicting agony upon your person, all of it revolving silently in an infinite and eternal vacuum, the sheer insensate vastness of which is simply too ghastly for the human mind to contemplate. Printing “CAUTION: CONTENTS HOT” on the side of a disposable coffee cup doesn’t come close to mitigating the horror. But it’s a start.
My mind prints warnings on everything. Shove any object into my eyeline and my mind immediately paints a vivid triptych detailing all the ways it could possibly hurt me. I can’t walk past, say, a loaded knife block without the words “CAUTION: DEATH” hovering over it, like an annotation in Google Glass, and I automatically imagine myself tripping up and skewering my eye on the knives, the blade piercing the socket and stabbing my brain right in the pain-processing lab, even though the knives are safely stored handle-side-out, the cutting edges shielded by an inch of wood.
Being a parent just makes it worse, because suddenly there’s a miniature offshoot version of you that’s simply too stupid to be terrified of everything yet, crawling towards power sockets and choking hazards with cartoon delight on its face. And those are just the obvious risks. There’s a whole universe of neurotic horror if you go looking for it. Did you know it’s risky to feed honey to babies? Nor did I, till I stumbled across that rib-tickling fact online. Something to do with infant guts and botulism. Honey. Killer honey. It shook me, and I briefly lost sight of the fact that my offspring was human. Instead he was a mysterious, precious machine the world wanted to destroy by any means necessary. I ran Google queries like “is bread deadly for one-year-olds?” and “will sleet blind my child?” I want health and safety advice etched into every object in the universe, thanks.
And not just objects that currently exist, but also things to come. For these we have to turn to the news: part early-warning-system, part Argos catalogue of exciting new threats. I’m a fear hobbyist. An early adopter of perils. Obviously I’m busily keeping one eye on the latest bird flu outbreaks in China, but my fear antennae recently started twitching over reports about the world’s first 3D printable gun, the CAD files for which have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times since being placed on open release last week. A future filled with plastic firearms-on-demand doesn’t sound too rosy to me, although on the plus side I guess the next generation will be shit-hot at ducking. Not to mention wreath design. So it won’t be all bad. And besides, eventually all the 3D printers will be so busy churning out coffins, the print queue will stretch into decades, thereby preventing the creation of more bullets. Incidentally, if I had a 3D printer, I’d mess with its mind by commanding it to print out nothing but a series of precise replicas of a single sheet of paper. That’d show it.
I’d like to think this paranoid fretting serves some evolutionary purpose. I’d like to think we easily alarmed types are historically better at survival. But I suspect that’s not true. There’s no rhyme nor reason. It’s random. When a volcano goes off, it incinerates the carefree and cautious alike.
Don’t know about you, but I hate the carefree for that. It’s downright arrogant of them to die in disasters without worrying first. Almost a waste. Almost.
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/12/health-and-safety-eh
US orders removal of 3D-gun designs
10 May 2013
Last updated at 10:18
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The BBC’s Rebecca Morelle saw the 3D-printed gun’s first test in Austin, Texas
The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline.
The order to remove the blueprints for the plastic gun comes after they were downloaded more than 100,000 times.
The US State Department wrote to the gun’s designer, Defense Distributed, suggesting publishing them online may breach arms-control regulations.
Although the files have been removed from the company’s Defcad site, it is not clear whether this will stop people accessing the blueprints.
They were being hosted by the Mega online service and may still reside on its servers.
Also, many links to copies of the blueprints have been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, making them widely available. The Pirate Bay has also publicised its links to the files via social news site Reddit suggesting many more people will get hold of the blueprints.
Cody Wilson, who founded Defense Distributed, told the BBC that the genie was out of the bottle.
“Once people heard what happened, Pirate Bay has exploded. I’m sat here watching it now, seeing the downloads go up and up.”
Continue reading the main story
Analysis: 3D printing’s Wild West
Earlier this week, I saw Cody Wilson fire his gun for the first time.
Small, white and made from plastic, the firearm looked like a toy. But as the shot rang, you could feel the force of this weapon.
Hours later, and the blueprints had been placed online.
Mr Wilson describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, and his belief is that everyone has a right to a gun.
Through this project he aimed to export this idea to the rest of the world – whether the rest of the world wanted it or not.
However a week is a long time in the Wild West of 3D printing, and now Mr Wilson has been ordered to remove the plans.
But with more than 100,000 downloads already, the designs have already been widely circulated, and there is now little that can be done to halt their spread.
The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance emailed Mr Wilson a document demanding the designs be “removed from public access” until he could prove he had not broken laws governing shipping weapons overseas by putting the files online and letting people outside the US download them.
Explosive force
Mr Wilson said that Defense Distributed had complied with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) rules. He said the rules were pretty convoluted, but he believed his project was exempt as Defense Distributed had been set up specifically to meet requirements that exempted it from ITAR.
“Our gun operations were registered with ITAR.”
He said the letter was unclear in that the Office was conducting a “review” yet at the same time he had to remove the files.
“They are stalling, they are going to make this review last as long as they can,” he said. “They are getting a lot of political pressure.” He added that he had taken legal advice about what to do next.
“We’ve also had offers of help from lawyers from all around the country,” he said.
He welcomed the US government’s intervention, saying it would highlight the issue of whether it was possible to stop the spread of 3D-printed weapons.
Unlike conventional weapons, the printed gun – called the Liberator by its creators – is made out of plastic on a printer. Many engineering firms and manufacturers use these machines to test prototypes before starting large-scale production.
While desktop 3D printers are becoming more popular, Defense Distributed used an industrial 3D printer that cost more than £5,000 to produce its gun. This was able to use high-density plastic that could withstand and channel the explosive force involved in firing a bullet.
Before making the Liberator, Mr Wilson got a licence to manufacture and sell the weapon from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The Bureau told the BBC that any American could make a gun for their own use, even on a 3D printer, but selling it required a licence.
Mr Wilson, who describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, said the project to create a printed gun and make it widely available was all “about liberty”.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22478310#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
US orders removal of 3D-gun designs
10 May 2013
Last updated at 10:18
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
The BBC’s Rebecca Morelle saw the 3D-printed gun’s first test in Austin, Texas
The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline.
The order to remove the blueprints for the plastic gun comes after they were downloaded more than 100,000 times.
The US State Department wrote to the gun’s designer, Defense Distributed, suggesting publishing them online may breach arms-control regulations.
Although the files have been removed from the company’s Defcad site, it is not clear whether this will stop people accessing the blueprints.
They were being hosted by the Mega online service and may still reside on its servers.
Also, many links to copies of the blueprints have been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, making them widely available. The Pirate Bay has also publicised its links to the files via social news site Reddit suggesting many more people will get hold of the blueprints.
Cody Wilson, who founded Defense Distributed, told the BBC that the genie was out of the bottle.
“Once people heard what happened, Pirate Bay has exploded. I’m sat here watching it now, seeing the downloads go up and up.”
Continue reading the main story
Analysis: 3D printing’s Wild West
Earlier this week, I saw Cody Wilson fire his gun for the first time.
Small, white and made from plastic, the firearm looked like a toy. But as the shot rang, you could feel the force of this weapon.
Hours later, and the blueprints had been placed online.
Mr Wilson describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, and his belief is that everyone has a right to a gun.
Through this project he aimed to export this idea to the rest of the world – whether the rest of the world wanted it or not.
However a week is a long time in the Wild West of 3D printing, and now Mr Wilson has been ordered to remove the plans.
But with more than 100,000 downloads already, the designs have already been widely circulated, and there is now little that can be done to halt their spread.
The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance emailed Mr Wilson a document demanding the designs be “removed from public access” until he could prove he had not broken laws governing shipping weapons overseas by putting the files online and letting people outside the US download them.
Explosive force
Mr Wilson said that Defense Distributed had complied with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) rules. He said the rules were pretty convoluted, but he believed his project was exempt as Defense Distributed had been set up specifically to meet requirements that exempted it from ITAR.
“Our gun operations were registered with ITAR.”
He said the letter was unclear in that the Office was conducting a “review” yet at the same time he had to remove the files.
“They are stalling, they are going to make this review last as long as they can,” he said. “They are getting a lot of political pressure.” He added that he had taken legal advice about what to do next.
“We’ve also had offers of help from lawyers from all around the country,” he said.
He welcomed the US government’s intervention, saying it would highlight the issue of whether it was possible to stop the spread of 3D-printed weapons.
Unlike conventional weapons, the printed gun – called the Liberator by its creators – is made out of plastic on a printer. Many engineering firms and manufacturers use these machines to test prototypes before starting large-scale production.
While desktop 3D printers are becoming more popular, Defense Distributed used an industrial 3D printer that cost more than £5,000 to produce its gun. This was able to use high-density plastic that could withstand and channel the explosive force involved in firing a bullet.
Before making the Liberator, Mr Wilson got a licence to manufacture and sell the weapon from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The Bureau told the BBC that any American could make a gun for their own use, even on a 3D printer, but selling it required a licence.
Mr Wilson, who describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, said the project to create a printed gun and make it widely available was all “about liberty”.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22478310#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
