How to make metal miniatures with 3D printed pewter casting molds Ever wanted to turn your digital sculpture into a figurine made out of metal? As much as we love resin 3D prints, metal has a unique weight and cold, smooth surface that is hard to match. With recent developments in temperature resistant 3D printing materials (like High Temp Resin for the Formlabs Form 2), it's possible to 3D print molds for direct casting. Form Labs
East Africa is leading the world in drone delivery A second East African nation announced Thursday it will launch a fully automated drone delivery program. The drones will fly themselves, far from the view of humans – a move that's not yet legal in the U.S. While plenty of countries have dabbled in drone delivery, no program has matched the scale and impact of what's unfolding in Rwanda and now, Tanzania. CNN (also, Shark-detecting drones to patrol Australian beaches)
Dumping data from deep-insert skimmers I recently heard from a police detective who was seeking help identifying some strange devices found on two Romanian men caught maxing out stolen credit cards at local retailers. Further inspection revealed the devices to be semi-flexible data transfer wands that thieves can use to extract stolen ATM card data from "deep-insert skimmers," wafer-thin fraud devices made to be hidden inside of the card acceptance slot on a cash machine. Krebs on Security
The asterisk on Madden's annual release legacy Madden '96 for PlayStation never shipped, yet it changed the history of football video games --- and sports games in general --- for decades in its wake. The story starts back in 1992, when EA Canada (formerly Distinctive Software) began working on Super Nintendo versions of the NFL series. Over its first two entries --- John Madden Football and John Madden Football '93 --- the studio struggled to match the quality of Blue Sky Productions' Sega Genesis work. Polygon
Threading the celestial needle: Catching the Great American Eclipse at 35,000 feet There's nothing Alaska Airlines pilots like more than a challenge. As a company that started out flying between remote airfields deep in the Alaskan "bush," safely navigating where other airlines can't is in Alaska's blood. So, for Alaska, putting a flight in the path of the Great American Eclipse wasn't really a question of if, but how. Alaska Air
Bitcoin energy consumption index Ever since its inception Bitcoin's trust-minimizing consensus has been enabled by its proof-of-work algorithm. The machines performing the "work" are consuming huge amounts of energy while doing so. The Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index was created to provide insight into this amount, and raise awareness on the unsustainability of the proof-of-work algorithm. Digiconomist (also, Don't Mine Bitcoin. Mine Altcoins fool!)
JavaScript is eating the world In case you haven't heard the news, JavaScript and NodeJS are single handedly eating the world of software. NodeJS is an Open Source server-side JavaScript environment based on the V8 JS engine found in Google Chrome. Once only thought of as "hipster" technology, NodeJS is quickly becoming one of the most commonly used environments for building web applications and is beginning to find its way into the Enterprise. Dev.to (also, How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017)
Hitman: The accidental Agatha Christie game It was while I was hurling yet another pipe wrench at the back of a security guard's unsuspecting skull that I had the thought, "Why aren't there any good detective games?" IO Interactive's Hitman (2016) isn't a detective game, but playing it now reminds me of the classic mystery stories I read years ago. I devoured Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's genre-defining Sherlock Holmes tales, but Agatha Christie's fussy little Belgian super-detective Hercule Poirot would quickly become my favorite. Paste
Elon Musk's Neuralink Gets $27 Million to Build Brain Computers Neuralink Corp., the startup co-founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has taken steps to sell as much as $100 million in stock to fund the development of technology that connects human brains with computers. The San Francisco-based company has already gotten $27 million in funding, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk said via Twitter on Friday that Neuralink isn't seeking outside investors. Bloomberg