18513250
submission
vieux schnock writes:
The New Scientist has an article about a new laser developed by a company in Farnborough, UK, aiming at deterring modern high-seas pirates. Devised as a "warning shot" to "distract suspected pirates rather than harm them", the meter-wide bean can scan the pirates' 6-metre skiffs and make it difficult for them to aim their AK-47 or rocket-propelled grenades at the ship.
10564324
submission
vieux schnock writes:
A controversy has risen over a French television show reproducing Milgram's experiment in front of a live audience. Milgram's original experiment wanted to show "the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience". But this time, it seems that television can play that deadly "authority" figure with more devastating results: While Milgran got 65% of the participants to hit the maximum jolt button, "[in] the final tally, 81 percent of the contestants turned up the juice to the maximum".
534080
submission
vieux schnock writes:
It's strange that no one noticed the recent crackdown of computer hackers in Quebec.
From the article: "Police raided several homes across Quebec on Wednesday and arrested 16 people in their investigation, which they say uncovered the largest hacking scam in Canadian history. (...) The hackers collaborated online to attack and take control of as many as one million computers around the world that were not equipped with anti-virus software or firewalls (...)"
