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Submission + - Minnesota Man 3D Prints Life Size Concrete Castle (3dprint.com)

Submitted by Bob768
Bob768 writes: A man named Andrey Rudenko has begun 3D printing a life size castle in his back yard in Minnesota out of concrete. He developed the 3D printer himself and has ultimate plans of constructing a normal house to live in.

“While other teams are also working on respectable projects in 3D printing construction technology, I have developed a product that is ready for actual-size construction rather than miniature prototypes,” Rudenko told 3DPrint.com.

Images of the castle can be found here.

Submission + - New Raspberry Pi Model B+ Leaked by Mistake (hackaday.com)

Submitted by speps
speps writes: Hack A Day got news of Element14 of a new model of Raspberry Pi named "B+". This new model is rumored to have 2 additional USB ports, MicroSD, A/V combined into jack port and maybe a new chipset (mentioned in the comments and we can see a Samsung chip in the pictures).

Comments on the official forums seem to have been removed without any explanation. Also the specsheet has leaked from some manufacturers but it might not reflect the exact specs.

Submission + - Microsoft takes down No-IP.com domains (technet.com) 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For some reason that escapes me, a Judge has granted Microsoft permission to hijack NoIP's dns. This is necessary according to Microsoft to thwart a 'global cybercrime epidemic' being perpetrated by infected Microsoft machines.

Submission + - Google to Ban Ads for Legal Gun Accessories & "Dangerous" Knives: Threatens (needtosharenews.com) 1

Submitted by Mark Sauter
Mark Sauter writes: This morning we received an email from Google with the following title: "Google AdWords Policy Update — Weapons policy restriction."

The email, from the "Google AdWords Team," announces a new policy starting in September for those who advertise on Google Adwords, a service used to attract traffic to Web sites. It bans Adwords advertising for products such as knives "that can be used to injure an opponent in sport, self-defense, or combat" plus "Any part or component that's necessary to the function of a gun or intended for attachment to a gun
Examples: Gun scopes, ammunition, ammunition clips or belts" [and even bb guns!]
We certainly have no problem with Google prohibiting ads involving weapons such as nail bombs and grenades, as it does. But we see a big difference in banning ads for legal products used by many millions of Americans. The ban specifically includes sport and recreational guns and their components.

And it's not just ads that are being threatened. The email (see excepts below) includes the following: "When we make this change, any ads or sites that are identified as violating our revised policy won't be able to run."

In other words, Google is not just threatening to shut down advertising accounts, but also to disable Web sites with content about legal products (or topics?) that it finds politically incorrect. The email did not provide additional detail on the issue of the Web sites. Presumably, Google would shut down sites running on Google's Blogger service, but one could certainly worry the company might use its dominant search engine to make offending sites "disappear" from search results.

Submission + - Watch celestial mechanics in (almost) real time! (io9.com)

Submitted by wisebabo
wisebabo writes: If Sir Isaac Newton weren't already dead and in Heaven, I'm sure this would make him die and go there.

Here (scroll down to the GIF, please) is a time-lapse sequence taken by Cassini at Saturn of a small (okay tiny) moon "Prometheus" pulling out streamers of dust from the nearby ring over and over again. For eternity. (Or at least tens of millions of years). While the sequence only shows one such event, a quick glance at a larger scale (scroll to the top, please) shows that it is doing so repeatedly. L i k e c l o c k w o r k.

Despite all the troubles in the world (although the number of deaths due to war DO seem to be decreasing which is a minor problem in itself http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06...) these kind of things make me realize that I am living in an incredible age.

Submission + - Kansas City Science Store Resurrects AC Gilbert Chemistry Set, the best-ever toy (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The A. C. Gilbert Company (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...) was once one of the largest toy companies in the world. It manufacturered Erector Sets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erector_Set), American Flyer toy trains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Flyer), and chemistry sets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry_set).

Chemist John Farrell Kuhns (https://www.kickstarter.com/profiles/1742632993/bio) received an AC Gilbert Chemistry set for Christmas 1959, while he was still in grade school. By the time Kuhns was twelve years old he had a home lab set up in my family's basement. Now, more than 50 years later, he still has a home lab.

As an adult, Mr. Kuhns wanted to share these experiences with his daughter, nephews and nieces, and their friends. But he soon discovered that real chemistry sets were no longer available. He wondered how, without real chemistry sets and opportunities for students to learn and explore, where would our future chemists come from?

In 2004, Kuhns and his wife opened their science store, H.M.S. Beagle (http://www.hms-beagle.com/) and last year used Kickstarter to launch a new Heirloom Chemistry set. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1742632993/heirloom-chemistry-set). Kuhns uses a CNC router to cut out his wood cases, which are then hand assembled and finished with the shiny brass hardware and exotic wood inlays. Kuhns also synthesizes, purifies and/or formulates and packages all of the chemicals.

Gary Hanington, professor of physical science at Great Basin College, was another child who was lucky enough to own a Gilbert chemistry set. Hanington wrote about his set in this article (http://elkodaily.com/lifestyles/speaking-of-science-a-c-gilbert-chemistry-sets/article_30dc31c8-c258-11e1-9dfd-001a4bcf887a.html).

Sadly, not everyone sees the educational value of real chemistry sets. The AC Gilbert chemistry sets are #3 on Cracked's "The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Toys" (http://www.cracked.com/article_19481_the-8-most-wildly-irresponsible-vintage-toys_p2.html) and #8 on Complex.com's "The 25 Worst Must-Have Christmas Toys Ever (http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/12/25-worst-must-have-christmas-toys-ever/gilbert-chemistry-set)

Submission + - Swype Android keyboard makes almost 4000 location requests every day

Submitted by postglock
postglock writes: Swype is a popular third-party keyboard for Android phones (and also available for Windows phones and other platforms). It's currently the second-most-popular paid keyboard in Google Play (behind SwiftKey), and the 17th highest of all paid apps.

Recently, users have discovered that it's been accessing location data extremely frequently, making almost 4000 requests per day, or 2.5 requests per minute. The developers claim that this is to facilitate implementation of "regional dialects", but cannot explain why such frequent polling is required, or why this still occurs if the regional function is disabled.

Some custom ROMs such as Cyanogenmod can block this tracking, but most users would be unaware that such tracking is even occurring.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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