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Here’s the Reason The FAA’s Drone Registration System Doesn’t Make Sense

A few years ago, Congress passed the Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, an immense 300-page tome that set directives to the FAA including how airports should be improved, what medical certificates apply to what type of pilot, and special rules for model aircraft.

The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft

In the Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, ‘model aircraft’ are defined as, ‘an unmanned aircraft capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere, flown within visual line of sight, and flown for hobby or recreational purposes.’ If these qualifications are met, the FAA may not make a rule regarding these aircraft, so long as they are not flown within 5 miles of an airport.

Geez, read about it here....

http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

This report claims it won't cost 9 dollar in the future. Those are only a bait to build a community, which later on becomes the product. The 9 dollar are a loss deal to boost sales.

http://hackaday.com/2010/09/30...

1) Make one of these: https://hackaday.com/2015/10/1...

2) Hand everything over. Warn the bad guys that if they try to use your USB stick, it'll fry their computer.

3) When they fry their computer, ask if they have learned their lesson about taking you on your word.

4) Be cooperative. You already won the battle of wits, be a gracious winner.

5) Your data was on your obscure self-hosted webserver elsewhere in the first place.

It isn't what you'd call god's gift to style; but there's a neat little idea floating around of the 'haptic compass' that provides the user with a tactile cue about where north is, with the idea that this subtle, but persistent, stimulus will be integrated into their overall navigational capability.

For your use case, you probably wouldn't want a system that points 'true north' all the time; but if you have an itinerary, you only need a real time clock and the user's current location to provide a haptic nudge in the correct direction. Are GPS or AGPS fixes within this facility OK, or is this system going to need to navigate the hard way?

http://hackaday.com/2015/10/10...

This is not a device for makers, this is a device for point of sale terminals and ATMs. Windows XP – the operating system that is still deployed on a frighting number of ATMs – is going away soon, and this is Microsoft’s attempt to save their share of that market.

" This is hack-a-day. A site for people who build things often because they need something now or put together items they have at home instead of buying something from the store.

Since you don't know the Hack-a-Day target audience at all, you should probably refrain from commenting about articles found there until you do some day. Today I'm hacking together an oscilloscope ... tomorrow I'm hacking together a Logic Analyzer! Just because you read about Rome in a day, doesn't mean it was built in one.

" This is hack-a-day. A site for people who build things often because they need something now or put together items they have at home instead of buying something from the store.

Since you don't know the Hack-a-Day target audience at all, you should probably refrain from commenting about articles found there until you do some day. Today I'm hacking together an oscilloscope ... tomorrow I'm hacking together a Logic Analyzer! Just because you read about Rome in a day, doesn't mean it was built in one.

You should be "making a clock for social good".

HaD is for SJWs, not nerds. Didn't you get the memo?

http://hackaday.com/2015/09/02...

Since there is no reason to post stories to slashdot anymore, here is another link, this one is about saving the wifi from the FCC.

Plus what I posed in the original summary that was not included, seems like it's matters:
The proposed rule only affects devices operating in the U-NII bands; the portion of the spectrum used for 5GHz WiFi, and the proposed rule only affects the radios inside these devices.

Ya, once again. fuck you slashdot editors.

Saw this posted

http://hackaday.com/2015/08/31...

It is for 5GHz but if they can get away with 5Ghz why not 2.4

So if that ever happens, I may become a criminal, flashing my own router to protect myself.

(Potentionally) Not for long...

Hackaday is pretty much spot on: http://hackaday.com/2015/07/14...

There's always posturing for PR before BlackHat and DEFCON. This was to get the researcher's name on people's radar.

Many a competent unix sysadmin could come up with something similar.

What's hilarious is that despite how easy it would be to make something like this, the "researcher" just bought a yagi antenna and posed for a picture. They didn't even bother to point the yagi antenna towards the ground, for that matter.

Old HP GPIB-based XY plotter with laser diode in place of pen, does a nice job of cutting gaskets for steam engines.
Broken 8 track player in ginormous am/fm/turntable cabinet, replaced with beaglebone, so when I hit the next track button it plays a 'clunk' sound and then fires up a random streaming internet radio station. (That one made hackaday.)
A nearby company went out of business and sold all their stuff and I scored an electronic balance with an RS232 output. Some arduino code later, and I now have a fuel injector flow tester: force known-pressure fuel in for a known amount of time and measure how much actually comes out, tare, repeat. It's neat to be able to characterize just how narrow a PWM signal the injector can register and react to.
My current work project is even a hack: I'm repurposing an abandoned semiconductor automated test system into an evaluation board characterization system. The test guys don't want it because it's too slow and limited, but I'm all "whoah, 192 arbitrary waveform generators? Let me at it."

A project called Robot Turtles with no ROBOTS nor TURTLES involved?!!
Hell, he could have made that cool by having a option to integrate a physical turtle robot so kids could see how virtual code can make things move in the REAL world.
#YAY!KICKSTARTER!!

Here's a post from 10 years ago about a program that can turn your display into a radio transmitter. I think that the provided code plays a midi version of Beethoven's Fur Elise, but there are variations that play any mp3.

Just to be clear: this works by calculating the pixelclock then using high/low (white/black) swings to generate Electro-Magnetic signals at the corresponding frequencies. I remember running this on an old 300MHz PII Thinkpad. It transmitted through the VGA port and could easily be picked up on portable radio 5 feet away without any antenna

This was a bit of a reverse proof of concept for the NSA's Tempest project. Tempest listened to EM noise and tried to reconstruct what was on the screen (or in the chip / whatever). This demo crafted a display resolution/image such that tones were the EM byproduct

Aluminum Cans The guy actually opens some vintage pull-tab cans... for SCIENCE!

The Hackaday article that video was linked from

other people have figured out how to use just NAND gates to build their computers (theoretically)

Theoretically? Kevin Horton's NANDputer is made of discrete NAND gates.

So, let's boot up a Muslim AI.

Now, it's got to pray 5x a day. Does it get beheaded because its NTP server is out of sync? (And that looses it's terror slightly when you can simply attach it back again -- that is if it even has one.)
Is it apostasy if you swap out a ROM?
Does it get one shrink-wrapped virgin with 72 interchangeable parts, or 72 "no user serviceable parts inside"?
Is it a sin if you don't agree to their EULA?
What is this guy going to think about all of this?

And as long as I'm !PC here: "AIs running around with a reason to discriminate, hate, and kill folks that believe differently than they do." Sounds like ISIL absorbed some Apple/Microsoft/Google fanboys. Just think -- ACTUAL Flamewars! And just wait for the rabid liberal/conservative bots: we need to get this running first: XKCD virus aquarium vs an real-life one.


Yes, I know, it's nothing at all to joke about. But I'm an atheist living in the bible belt -- I've been scared for decades and these local people don't want to kill me, just convert me ... if they don't ignore me to start with. ISIL wants to kill us both -- tEofEimF. And if I don't make jokes about it, I'd be a blithering idiot (... hmph, maybe it's not helping much after all.)

Time to make a Faraday Cage wallet.

Time to permanently disable contactless payment on all your cards.

Apparently the banks and credit card companies in some countries will send you a new card without the RFID on request. But here in Canada at least one company simply refuses to do this. My bank DID disable contactless payment on my new debit card in their records, but of course the RFID is still physically intact so there's no guarantee that it won't suddenly start working as a result of some administrative fuckup. I'm going to call about my new credit card, but I'm pretty sure they'll tell my politely to piss off. At that time I plan to get out my drill, put a hole in the appropriate place, and test. If it disables Tap and Pay, then all of my cards will get the same treatment.

If you want to control a few motors and lights with network connectivity, get some ESP8266 modules - those are WiFi modules with a user-programmable 80MHz 32-bit CPU that you can buy for $5. Throw in a Cortex-M0 as a slave device to control your I/O (which can be as cheap as $1 in single quantities - yes, you can get a 32-bit CPU for $1 these days). That is what 2015 state-of-the-art silicon gets you to fit the task. A Raspberry Pi with a WiFi dongle is an order of magnitude more expensive and overpowered (and yet underpowered relative to what it claims to be, which is a Linux platform).

They just tried too late, and made such a tepid entry, it only served to get people exposed locally, and ultimately hooked up with SparkFun and Adafruit (or eBay for knock-offs which RS could damn well produce in Fort Worth, TX.)

First, RadioShack acknowledged there was a need, so they teamed up with Make and began carrying Arduinos.

Then they made a very public appeal to the community for feedback on how to be awesome again. http://hackaday.com/2011/05/27...

Next, the stores received a Bright White remodel that did nothing but highlight how few people there were in the store, and there was that Super Bowl commercial that may serve as Tandy/Radio Shack Corp's epitaph.

You may notice the rather complete shelf of branded electronics tools and racks of organized component drawers, largely missing from most of the stores you've been in lately.

They could be *owning* the SDR and Quadcopter market with DIY and R2R set-ups, workshops. The 3-D printing and DIY screen repair stations are cool but unused and expensive.

Bottom line; RadioShack's used to *BUZZ* with activity. There were computers humming, disk drives loading, an ungodly cacophony of "Made in Taiwan" beeps and squawks, CB's that needed squelch, and customers enjoying and producing that buzz.

It's gone, and no number of Cell Phones will bring it back.

Domestic Hi-Fi for the blue collar audiophile could, so could an in-house engineering department that hires grads and rewards them with equity. Take the damned thing private for a while, narrow the focus.

Hell, I'd even advocate for a merger with MicroCenter or buyout from Adafruit or SparkFun. (10MM could have bought more than greenfield construction)

3D printing with wood? Oh, a bit like Laywood then.

The other composites are something I'm less familiar with, but I know that shapeways already has alumide as a printable medium.

Try asking on http://www.hackaday.com./ Lots of people there doing exactly that kind of stuff.

There's one near our building (I suspect the nearby Marriott, but can't prove anything), and it seemingly uses de-auth packets:
http://hackaday.com/2011/10/04...

It loops through each channel, sending deauth packets to every device on our network. For whatever reason, these are usually about 5-10 minutes apart, making the wifi annoying to use rather than impossible.

Like this

http://www.cnet.com/news/googl... seems similar. They claim 99.9% effective utilization through their per-server battery backup system, compared against 95% for a centralize lead-acid UPS based system.

http://hackaday.com/2014/11/11... might also have some nuggets. a lead acid battery is going to be heavily de-rated at the energy rates required. lead-acid will likely not have the same charging efficiencies.

holding the batteries around 70% is no big loss for this use case, given that the alternative is shortening the battery life.

Many tasks,
http://hackaday.com/tag/raspbe...
http://makezine.com/category/e...
Seems to me like thousands of people are finding interesting things to do. Of course it is not fast enough for everything, but nor is my i7 laptop, or the 48core server box I use at work.

Small. Ok, that's relative. Its been fine for my uses, smaller than the beagleboard and mini-itx boards I used before. The A+ is even smaller. Interested to know what project you are doing where the pi is too big and too slow, what do you use instead?

Cheap. sorry if $25/$35 is too expensive. Its a quarter the price of the beaglebaord that I used before. Maybe you can find something cheaper for your specific task.

Widely available. In the UK there are several high street shops with it in stock, and lots of online retailers.

Documentation. Personally GPU docs don't interest me (though they are now released, so its the most open arm SoC). When I have wanted to use the pi in a project I have found lots of documentation and tutorials to help me.

Well supported. 2.5 years after release they are still doing regular software updates, including big things like wayland support. Compared to lots of hardware that is released with some old distro image that never gets any updates.

So yes the raspberrypi is awesome. It lets lots of people do interesting things at a good price. Sure for certain things an atmega, beaglebaord, banana pi, gumstix, galileo, an old pc or something else might be better.

For my own use, I was thinking of turning mine into an airplay-compatible receiver (I found that there is software for for that) and built it together with (wifi dongle and a little amp) into a very old radio cabinet. Nice to put in the kitchen.

If your radio is still in semi-working condition, it might be possible to inject the audio signal from the Pi into the radio's existing amplifier. I almost certainly broke all kinds of audio design rules, but in my instance it sounds brilliant. I (briefly) got it working as an Airplay receiver, but for nearly two years it's been doing sterling stuff as a time-delayed BBC Radio 4 device.

(I would definitely recommend against blindly doing this with stuff that's directly mains-powered - I know that a lot of old radios, especially in the USA, did scary things with mains voltages. For a battery-powered transistor radio? Certainly worth a try.)

Fixing the worst video game ever: E.T. for Atari 2600

It's not competitor, it's counterfeiter. These are chips stamped with FTDI's logo that aren't made by FTDI. http://hackaday.com/2014/02/19...

The chips are counterfeits using the logo of FTDI stamped on the the chip. http://hackaday.com/2014/02/19...

Lots of Ambilight clone projects on Hackaday.

Build your own, ignore un-original startups, fuck Timmy, take back Slashdot.

Is that anything like this stabbing machine?

Wasn't Doom released in the era of the 25MHz 486 with 1-4 megs of RAM and 640x480 VGA with no acceleration? It probably helps if the screen is only 320x240 QVGA. It depends on which CPU is in use, but something designed to print a full page at 150-ish DPI should have more than enough RAM and CPU. The front panel alone has 2 megabytes of RAM, and a 45MHz LVDS interface for display data, as per its recent hackaday appearance:

http://hackaday.com/2014/09/11...

There's a wealth of useful equipment on eBay and other places, big expensive equipment is not out of the reach of the dedicated researcher. Ben Krasnow has three (I think) electron microscopes. I personally own a UV/VIS spectrophotometer. a microgram scale, and a Weston cell.

The idea that "research can only be done at the behest of government" or "is only associated with university" is a modern fiction. Government would *like* you to believe that everything depends on their whim and largesse, but it's not the only, nor even the best way.

Build a lab and start tinkering, or join a hackerspace. Lots of people do it. Lots of good science is done this way.

Electron microscopes are pricey. UV/VIS specs, mmg balances, and weston cells, not so much. High field NMR spectrometers and x-ray crystallography setups? You're dreaming. Thanks for playing!

The obvious solution is to return to traditional methods: establish an independent income, then take up scientific research as a hobby.

Historically, our most notable scientists were working at day jobs or otherwise independently wealthy, and did amazing research on their own as a hobby. Some devoted entire wings of their house towards scientific research, amassing a collection of equipment (or specimens) over decades.

Henry Cavendish, of the Cavendish experiment, is one such example. The experiment was so delicate that air currents would affect the measurements, so Cavendish set up the experiment in a shed on his property and measured the results from a distance, using a telescope.

There used to be a term "Gentleman Scientist" for this, but it might more accurately be called "self-funded research".

Consider Paul Stamets as a modern example. With only an honorary doctorate, he is co-author on many papers and has proposed several medications, including treatments for cancer.

I could also nominate Robert Murray Smith to the position. His YouTube Videos are as good as many published Chemistry papers.

The benefits are obvious: You get to work on whatever you think is interesting (or fruitful), you can set your own pace, and you can draw your own line between supporting your dreams and your lifestyle: If you have a family emergency, you can pause your research and spend more money on personal welfare. It also forces you to come up with more efficient (read: less expensive) ways to work.

There's a wealth of useful equipment on eBay and other places, big expensive equipment is not out of the reach of the dedicated researcher. Ben Krasnow has three (I think) electron microscopes. I personally own a UV/VIS spectrophotometer. a microgram scale, and a Weston cell.

The idea that "research can only be done at the behest of government" or "is only associated with university" is a modern fiction. Government would *like* you to believe that everything depends on their whim and largesse, but it's not the only, nor even the best way.

Build a lab and start tinkering, or join a hackerspace. Lots of people do it. Lots of good science is done this way.

The hum that helps to fight crime (ENF) Electrical Network Frequency analysis

"For the last seven years, at the Metropolitan Police forensic lab in south London, audio specialists have been continuously recording the sound of mains electricity.

It is an all pervasive hum that we normally cannot hear. But boost it a little, and a metallic and not very pleasant buzz fills the air. ...

"The power is sent out over the national grid to factories, shops and of course our homes. Normally this frequency, known as the mains frequency, is about 50Hz," explains Dr Alan Cooper, a senior digital forensic practitioner at the Met Police.

Any digital recording made anywhere near an electrical power source, be it plug socket, light or pylon, will pick up this noise and it will be embedded throughout the audio.

This buzz is an annoyance for sound engineers trying to make the highest quality recordings. But for forensic experts, it has turned out to be an invaluable tool in the fight against crime.

While the frequency of the electricity supplied by the national grid is about 50Hz, if you look at it over time, you can see minute fluctuations. ...

Comparing the unique pattern of the frequencies on an audio recording with a database that has been logging these changes for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year provides a digital watermark: a date and time stamp on the recording.

Philip Harrison, from JP French Associates, another forensic audio laboratory that has been logging the hum for several years, says: "Even if [the hum] is picked up at a very low level that you cannot hear, we can extract this information."

It is a technique known as Electric Network Frequency (ENF) analysis, and it is helping forensic scientists to separate genuine, unedited recordings from those that have been tampered with."

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scie...
- http://cryptogon.com/?p=32789

#

Met lab claims 'biggest breakthrough since Watergate'
Power lines act as police informers

- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

#

Noisy, muffled, incoherent recordings are an audio engineerâ(TM)s worst nightmare, but all too often they contain vital evidence in criminal trials. Itâ(TM)s the job of the forensic audio specialist to extract that evidence.

- http://www.soundonsound.com/so...

#

(discussion forum) Electrical network frequency analysis, Mains frequency variations detectable in digital audio recordings?

- http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/f...

#

Met Police use electrical 'hum' to solve crimes

The Metropolitan Police is using the "hum" of background noise produced by mains electricity to help solve crimes, it has been disclosed.

- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

#

Related Research
- http://www.ece.umd.edu/~ravig/...

#

Engineers Use Electrical Hum To Fight Crime

- http://science.slashdot.org/st...

#

Howâ(TM)s the 60Hz coming from your wall?

- http://hackaday.com/2012/07/24...

#

Detecting Edited Audio

- https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

#

Dating Recordings by Power Line Fluctuations

-

parts are usually bought in reels or on trays so you don't have to prepare them you just buy them in the appropriate packaging

I appears to use reels they are the black smaller ones on the left side of the print bed in this picture:

http://static.projects.hackada...

it also appears to hold about 12 different reels

I think what the poster you quoted wanted to say is that often to make major contributions you have to do something that has never been done before, and not just follow up on previous research. Pushing on current trends is not difficult, at all, and is basically guaranteed to get you a publication in a decent journal. A lab head can do several dozens of these papers a year if he has a few handfuls of people in his group and decides to have his focus on this. Now doing this more than guarantees a comfortable living as an academic. Quite often this research can even be wrong: It's middling at best, and nobody really cares, so nobody will notice (and yes, the STAP scandal with Obokata et al. is really a special case and not what usually happens; their claims were "too" interesting to the general public and in any case outright fraudulent). Many fields are saturated by this type of managers (rather than scientists), and they have been rewarded for their noninnovative research for so long I doubt they would even recognize a basic flaw in a paper when they saw one.

This means that peer review has become useless (when your peers are managers rather than scientists) and in fact every month I spot papers from my field in some of the top journals that have zero scientific contribution: their methods are only borderline correct, and the conclusions known for decades. But they have nice pictures and peer reviewers are probably their manager-friends or manager-somebodyelses who did not have a clue what was done and well-known 50 years ago (and indeed, why care, if by ignoring old research you can accidentally redo them and get more papers!). Try publishing a paper showing that their experiment must be wrong as it violates the second law of thermodynamics and you will be shot down and now they know your name. Good luck with grants and peer reviews.

I got a bit derailed above, but no, I am not bitter nor is the above a completely accurate presentation of my personal experience. This said, it is obvious that many scientists are afraid of speaking their mind and criticizing others even when others are wrong, and that this is corrupting the entire system where one is supposed to be able to trust one's peers.

Back to the topic: Coming up with a totally new idea, trying it, and failing at it will never get written up. You say that this is the right thing to do, if you don't publish, you ought to perish. Now is failed research "wrong"? Should you have known beforehand that your idea is stupid and not even test it? Not being able to publish this failed idea and only regarding publications as a measure of your success would certainly imply this.

Hack a Day publishes fails of the week. They are not meant as articles where we laugh at someone's stupidity or bad luck, but are informative writeups about new ideas where something in the implementation went wrong, or serve as examples of how even experienced people can fail to consider some basic (or advanced) principles. Related to this, perhaps my favourite TED talk is that by Eddie Obeng. He talks about business, not research. And I remind you that the only reason university research exists is that otherwise fundamental or high risk projects would not get funded as you might not have a direct way to make money off of them, or you might lose a lot, which makes them unattractive for business. Surely Obeng will then tell you that as a business manager, do the safe projects, punish those whose ideas don't work. Well this is what he says: "You're doing something new that nobody's done before, you get it completely wrong. How should you be treated? Well, free pizzas! You should be treated better than the people who succeed. It's called smart failure. Why? Because you can't put it on your CV." Companies can treat their employees with pizzas when they fail at something new, but academia is not a structured system where you could get different kinds of rewards: it is only about publish or perish. This is why it is a horrible system.

Hackaday had a similar discussion just over a month ago. The consensus there seems to be likewise that it is probably a scam. (Or *extremely* optimistic kid who has seen a few of the technologies involved work on paper. But more likely a scam.)

Oh, but you can. Well it's not exactly the same thing. Have you heard of a femtocell doodad? When I first heard of stingray, I thought back to an interview from a guy at blackhat or defcon, I can't remember which. Anyway, here's a few links. I remember hearing them say that the traffic from the devices communicated w/o encryption to the servers. Supposedly that was fixed, but may very well still have more vulnerabilities like this one.
http://hackaday.com/2012/04/12...
so 1) they already do sell things with retarded capability to consumers
2) the argument "we don't want the criminal element to know we have this kind of capability because they'll know how we find them" is invalid.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/1...

http://www.digitaltrends.com/m...

Hack A Day has a few options for DIY and sourcing used scopes. http://hackaday.com/?s=oscillo...

Hey all, theres been a bunch of low cost 3D printers poping up at Hack-A-Day lately:

$300 Pick and Place / 3D printer - http://hackaday.io/project/963...
Prototype of a Servo based Printer (much cheap elecytronic) - http://hackaday.com/2014/05/26...

If he were to wire billions of circuits by randomly wiring together components, then he might end up with a few that were useful.

There are people who did exactly that with simulators and FPGAs. Some of these circuits have peculiar properties like being very sensitive to the substrate they're working on, and I got the overall impression that they're sort of messy and "un-designed-like", just like living organisms, as opposed to engineered machines.

These little guys appear to be running Linux, and some are even hackable (I'm not affiliated with any of these companies/blogs): http://www.monoprice.com/Produ...

http://haxit.blogspot.com/2013...
http://hackaday.com/2013/08/12...