MikeChino writes: Yves Behar, ICON, and New Story just unveiled plans to build the world's first 3D-printed community this summer in Latin America. The project will provide over 50 homes for impoverished families who typically live on less than $200 per month. ICON has developed a portable printer that will print the walls of each home in just 24 hours with nearly zero waste. "Each site-specific house will feature an outdoor kitchen and an expanded outdoor area for raising chickens and crops," reports Dwell. "The open-plan interior living areas are optimized for natural ventilation and flexibility. The 3D printer will allow for built-in elements ranging from countertops in the kitchen and bathroom to seating and shelving."

ICON has made a video about the plans with mockups of what the homes will look like.

Why would someone build their own Beowulf cluster -- a high-performance parallel computing prototype -- using 12 Raspberry Pi boards? It's using the standard Beowulf cluster architecture found in about 88% of the world's largest parallel computing systems, with an MPI (Message Passing Interface) system that distributes the load over all the nodes.

Matt Trask, a long-time computer engineer now completing his undergraduate degree at Florida Atlantic University, explains how it grew out of his work on "virtual mainframes": In the world of parallel supercomputers (branded 'high-performance computing', or HPC), system manufacturers are motivated to sell their HPC products to industry, but industry has pushed back due to what they call the "Ninja Gap". MPI programming is hard. It is usually not learned until the programmer is in grad school at the earliest, and given that it takes a couple of years to achieve mastery of any particular discipline, most of the proficient MPI programmers are PhDs. And this, is the Ninja Gap -- industry understands that the academic system cannot and will not be able to generate enough 'ninjas' to meet the needs of industry if industry were to adopt HPC technology.

As part of my research into parallel computing systems, I have studied the process of learning to program with MPI and have found that almost all current practitioners are self-taught, coming from disciplines other than computer science. Actual undergraduate CS programs rarely offer MPI programming. Thus my motivation for building a low-cost cluster system with Raspberry Pis, in order to drive down the entry-level costs. This parallel computing system, with a cost of under $1000, could be deployed at any college or community college rather than just at elite research institutions, as is done [for parallel computing systems] today.

The system is entirely open source, using only standard Raspberry Pi 3B+ boards and Raspbian Linux. The version of MPI that is used is called MPICH, another open-source technology that is readily available.
But there's an added visual flourish, explains long-time Slashdot reader iamacat. "To visualize computing, each node is equipped with a servo motor to position itself according to its current load -- lying flat when fully idle, standing up 90 degrees when fully utilized."

Its data comes from the /proc filesystem, and the necessary hinges for this prototype were all generated with a 3D printer. "The first lesson is to use CNC'd aluminum for the motor housings instead of 3D-printed plastic," writes Trask. "We've seen some minor distortion of the printed plastic from the heat generated in the servos."

Researchers have 3D-printed a heart using a patient's cells, providing hope that the technique could be used to heal hearts or engineer new ones for transplants. "This is the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers," Professor Tal Dvir of Tel Aviv University's School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology said in a statement. Dvir is senior author of the research, published Monday in the journal Advanced Science. CNN reports: The process of printing the heart involved a biopsy of the fatty tissue that surrounds abdominal organs. Researchers separated the cells in the tissue from the rest of the contents, namely the extracellular matrix linking the cells. The cells were reprogrammed to become stem cells with the ability to differentiate into heart cells; the matrix was processed into a personalized hydrogel that served as the printing "ink."

The cells and hydrogel were first used to create heart patches with blood vessels and, from there, an entire heart. Next, the researchers plan to train the hearts to behave like hearts, Dvir explained. "The cells need to form a pumping ability; they can currently contract, but we need them to work together." If researchers are successful, they plan to transplant the 3D-printed heart in animal models and, after that, humans.

A Samsung Galaxy S10 user has managed to fool the in-display fingerprint reader on his smartphone using a 3D print of his fingerprint. The Verge reports: In a post on Imgur, user darkshark outlined his project: he took a picture of his fingerprint on a wineglass, processed it in Photoshop, and made a model using 3ds Max that allowed him to extrude the lines in the picture into a 3D version. After a 13-minute print (and three attempts with some tweaks), he was able to print out a version of his fingerprint that fooled the phone's sensor.

The Galaxy S10's fingerprint sensor doesn't rely on a capacitive fingerprint scanner that's been used in other versions of the phone, using instead an ultrasonic sensor that's apparently more difficult to spoof. darkshark points out that it didn't take much to spoof his own fingerprint. A concern, he notes, is that payment and banking apps are increasingly using the authentication from a fingerprint sensor to unlock, and all he needed to get into his phone was a photograph, some software, and access to a 3D printer. "I can do this entire process in less than 3 minutes and remotely start the 3d print so that it's done by the time I get to it," he writes.

Amazon's physical Dash buttons are no more. The e-commerce giant has stopped selling its tap-to-order Dash buttons as of February 28th. From a report: If you still proudly use a Dash button (or a few dozen), don't worry: Amazon plans to continue supporting new orders through existing Dash buttons so long as the public keeps using them. So what killed the Dash button's future? Well, by Amazon's telling, the device was a victim of its own success, since it helped nudge forward the concept of the connected home to what it is today. Daniel Rausch, an Amazon vice president who helped grow the Dash program from its start, said that back in early 2015, when the Dash button first came out, there were far fewer options for connected home gadgets. Amazon workers were trying to figure out a way "to make shopping disappear" for grocery list items like paper towels and printer ink and whatever else is pretty not-fun to go out and buy, Rausch said.

Frontier Communications reportedly charged a cancellation fee of $4,302.17 to the operator of a one-person business in Wisconsin, even though she switched to a different Internet provider because Frontier's service was frequently unusable. From the report: Candace Lestina runs the Pardeeville Area Shopper, a weekly newspaper and family business that she took over when her mother retired. Before retiring, her mother had entered a three-year contract with Frontier to provide Internet service to the one-room office on North Main Street in Pardeeville. Six months into the contract, Candace Lestina decided to switch to the newly available Charter offering "for better service and a cheaper bill," according to a story yesterday by News 3 Now in Wisconsin. The Frontier Internet service "was dropping all the time," Lestina told the news station. This was a big problem for Lestina, who runs the paper on her own in Pardeeville, a town of about 2,000 people. "I actually am everything. I make the paper, I distribute the paper," she said. Because of Frontier's bad service, "I would have times where I need to send my paper -- I have very strict deadlines with my printer -- and my Internet's out."

Lestina figured she'd have to pay a cancellation fee when she switched to Charter's faster cable Internet but nothing near the $4,300 that Frontier later sent her a bill for, the News 3 Now report said. Charter offered to pay $500 toward the early termination penalty, but the fee is still so large that it could "put her out of business," the news report said. [...] Lestina said the early termination fee wasn't fully spelled out in her contract. "Nothing is ever described of what those cancellation fees actually are, which is that you will pay your entire bill for the rest of the contract," she said. Lestina said she pleaded her case to Frontier representatives, without success, even though Frontier had failed to provide a consistent Internet connection. "They did not really care that I was having such severe problems with the service. That does not bother them," she said. Instead of waiving or reducing the cancellation fee, Frontier threatened to send the matter to a collections agency, Lestina said.

A research team from the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has created a printer -- nicknamed the "replicator" -- that shines light onto specific spots in a rotating resin that solidifies when exposed to a certain light level. What this does is forms the entire item all in one go, rather that forming items by laying down one layer of material at a time, like most 3D printers. MIT Technology Review reports: "We've carried out a range of prints taking from 30 seconds to a few minutes," says senior author Hayden Taylor. He reckons that printing the same objects in the traditional way could take more than an hour. While the machine competes on speed, it still cannot match the details and size that other printers can achieve. The biggest item it can print right now is just four inches (10 centimeters) in diameter. Other printers can make things measured in meters. The sophistication of the machine lies in the software that creates intricate light patterns to accurate solidify the material.

The printer itself is fairly straightforward. It uses an off-the-shelf video projector plugged into a laptop that projects images of what you want to create, while a motor turns the cylinder of resin. Taylor thinks that because it's so relatively uncomplicated, both commercial and at-home versions of the printer are feasible. "The barrier to creating a very simple version of this tool is not that high," he says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A periodic table chart discovered at the University of St Andrews is thought to be the oldest in the world. The chart of elements, dating from 1885, was discovered in the University's School of Chemistry in 2014 by Dr. Alan Aitken during a clear out. The storage area was full of chemicals, equipment and laboratory paraphernalia that had accumulated since the opening of the chemistry department at its current location in 1968. Following months of clearing and sorting the various materials a stash of rolled up teaching charts was discovered. Within the collection was a large, extremely fragile periodic table that flaked upon handling. Suggestions that the discovery may be the earliest surviving example of a classroom periodic table in the world meant the document required urgent attention to be authenticated, repaired and restored.

Mendeleev made his famous disclosure on periodicity in 1869, the newly unearthed table was rather similar, but not identical to Mendeleev's second table of 1871. However, the St Andrews table was clearly an early specimen. The table is annotated in German, and an inscription at the bottom left -- "Verlag v. Lenoir & Forster, Wien" -- identifies a scientific printer who operated in Vienna between 1875 and 1888. Another inscription -- "Lith. von Ant. Hartinger & Sohn, Wien" -- identifies the chart's lithographer, who died in 1890. Working with the University's Special Collections team, the University sought advice from a series of international experts. Following further investigations, no earlier lecture chart of the table appears to exist. Professor Eric Scerri, an expert on the history of the periodic table based at the University of California, Los Angeles, dated the table to between 1879 and 1886 based on the represented elements. For example, both gallium and scandium, discovered in 1875 and 1879 respectively, are present, while germanium, discovered in 1886, is not.

In a video for the BBC, technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones uses Procter and Gamble's new device to maker him look younger. Called Opte, the device scans the skin and precisely applies tiny amounts of make-up to remove age spots, burst blood vessels and other blemishes. Opte has a camera in it that captures 200 frames per second and processes that data by looking at the difference of the color of your skin. It then sends it to a microprocessor and 120 thermal inkjet printers print the product directly on your skin. The company says it works with all skin colors via three different cartridges: light, medium, and dark. Procter and Gamble is planning to release the device in late 2019 or 2020.

Buyers return a huge number of packages they buy from Amazon and other e-commerce sites, so much so that retailers are sometimes left with little choice but to get rid of large swaths of inventory at a cost. Last year, customers in the U.S. returned about $351 billion worth of items that they had purchased from brick-and-mortar retailers and online stores, according to estimates by National Retail Federation. CNBC: There's a good chance that the $100 printer, the $300 wide-screen monitor, or the $170 router you recently bought from Amazon weren't supplied to the e-commerce giant by their original manufacturers. In fact, the order may have been fulfilled by someone like Casey Parris, who resells items that customers previously returned to retailers. Based in Florida, Parris spends about five hours each day visiting thrift stores and scanning auction and liquidation websites for interesting items, he told CNBC. Sometimes he finds auto parts, other times it's a pair of sneakers, and occasionally he purchases printer cartridges -- all with the goal of reselling them.

Walter Blake, who lives in Michigan, does the same. For years, he's been selling electronic items on Amazon that he acquires from a network of places. Blake and Parris are part of a growing cottage industry where dealers acquire discarded items at very low prices, only to resell some of them back on Amazon and eBay at a premium.

An anonymous reader writes: A Twitter user using the pseudonym of @TheHackerGiraffe has hacked over 50,000 printers to print out flyers telling people to subscribe to PewDiePie's YouTube channel. The message the printers received was a simple one. It urged people to subscribe to PewDiePie's YouTube channel in order for PewDiePie -- a famous YouTuber from Sweden, real name Felix Kjellberg -- to keep the crown of most subscribed to YouTube channel.

If this sounds ...odd... it's because over the past month, an Indian record label called T-Series has caught up andsurpassed PewDiePie, once considered untouchable in terms of YouTube followers. The Swedish Youtube star made a comeback after his fans banded together in various social media campaigns, but T-Series is catching up with PewDiePie again.

Like fingerprints, no 3D printer is exactly the same. That's the takeaway from a new University at Buffalo-led study that describes what's believed to be the first accurate method for tracing a 3D-printed object to the machine it came from. From the study: The advancement, which the research team calls "PrinTracker," could ultimately help law enforcement and intelligence agencies track the origin of 3D-printed guns, counterfeit products and other goods. "3D printing has many wonderful uses, but it's also a counterfeiter's dream. Even more concerning, it has the potential to make firearms more readily available to people who are not allowed to possess them," says the study's lead author Wenyao Xu, PhD, associate professor of computer science and engineering in UB's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

[...] To understand the method, it's helpful to know how 3D printers work. Like a common inkjet printer, 3D printers move back-and-forth while "printing" an object. Instead of ink, a nozzle discharges a filament, such as plastic, in layers until a three-dimensional object forms. Each layer of a 3D-printed object contains tiny wrinkles -- usually measured in submillimeters -- called in-fill patterns. These patterns are supposed to be uniform. However, the printer's model type, filament, nozzle size and other factors cause slight imperfections in the patterns. The result is an object that does not match its design plan.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: [N]ew research published in ACS Applied Energy Materials shows that it's possible to 3D-print lithium-ion batteries into whatever shape you need. The problem that has stood in the way of 3D-printed lithium-ion batteries (at least, until now) is that the polymers traditionally used in this kind of printing aren't ionic conductors. The goal was to find a way to print custom-sized lithium-ion batteries in a cost-effective way using a regular, widely available 3D printer. In order to make the batteries conductive, the team led by Christopher Reyes and Benjamin Wiley infused the polylactic acid (PLA) usually used in 3D printing with an electrolyte solution. The researchers also incorporated graphene and carbon nanotubes into the design of the case to help increase conductivity. After these design modifications, the team was able to 3D print an LED bracelet, complete with a custom-sized lithium-ion battery. The battery was only able to power the bracelet for about 60 seconds, but the researchers have ideas for how to improve the capacity. For those interested, Engadget has a short video on the subject.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Printer maker Epson is under fire this month from activist groups after a software update prevented customers from using cheaper, third party ink cartridges. It's just the latest salvo in a decades-long effort by printer manufacturers to block consumer choice, often by disguising printer downgrades as essential product improvements. For several decades now printer manufacturers have lured consumers into an arguably-terrible deal: shell out a modest sum for a mediocre printer, then pay an arm and a leg for replacement printer cartridges that cost relatively-little to actually produce.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation now says that Epson has been engaged in the same behavior. The group says it recently learned that in late 2016 or early 2017, Epson issued a "poison pill" software update that effectively downgraded user printers to block third party cartridges, but disguised the software update as a meaningful improvement. The EFF has subsequently sent a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguing that Epson's lack of transparency can easily be seen as "misleading and deceptive" under Texas consumer protection laws. "When restricted to Epson's own cartridges, customers must pay Epson's higher prices, while losing the added convenience of third party alternatives, such as refillable cartridges and continuous ink supply systems," the complaint notes. "This artificial restriction of third party ink options also suppresses a competitive ink market and has reportedly caused some manufacturers of refillable cartridges and continuous ink supply systems to exit the market."

Ross Goodwin, a former ghostwriter for the Obama administration, uses neural networks to generate poetry, screenplays, and, now, literary travel fiction. The Atlantic tells the story of how Goodwin used a custom machine to write a "novel" narrating its own cross-country road trip. Slashdot reader merbs shares an excerpt from the report: On March 25, 2017, a black Cadillac with a white-domed surveillance camera attached to its trunk departed Brooklyn for New Orleans. An old GPS unit was fastened atop the roof. Inside, a microphone dangled from the ceiling. Wires from all three devices fed into Ross Goodwin's Razer Blade laptop, itself hooked up to a humble receipt printer. This, Goodwin hoped, was the apparatus that was going to produce the next American road-trip novel. The aim was to use the road as a conduit for narrative experimentation, in the tradition of Kerouac, Wolfe, and Kesey, but with the vehicle itself as the artist. He chose the New York-to-NOLA route as a nod to the famous leg of Jack Kerouac's expedition in On the Road. Underneath the base of the Axis M3007 camera, Goodwin scrawled "Further."

Along the way, the four sensors would feed data into a system of neural networks Goodwin had trained on hundreds of books and Foursquare location data, and the printer would spit out the results one letter at a time. By the end of the four-day trip, receipts emblazoned with artificially intelligent prose would cover the floor of the car. They're collected in 1 the Road, a book Goodwin's publisher, Jean Boite Editions, is marketing as "the first novel written by a machine." (Though, for the record, Goodwin says he disagrees it should bear that distinction -- "That might be The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed by a program from the '80s," he tells me.) Regardless, it is a hallucinatory, oddly illuminating account of a bot's life on the interstate; the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test meets Google Street View, narrated by Siri.

Cody Wilson, maker of the first 3D-printed plastic gun, has been arrested in Taiwan. Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike quotes Reason: Earlier this week, Texas police issued a warrant for his arrest. Wilson, they claimed, found a woman on sugardaddymeet.com, a website that requires all users to assert they are 18 or over, then met her and paid for sex with her. Police say the woman was actually 16, which made that act a violation of Texas penal code 22.011 (A)(2)(a), regarding sex with a minor, which is legally considered sexual assault regardless of consent or payment.

While Taiwan has no formal extradition treaty with the U.S., and Wilson was not said to have been doing anything directly criminal in Taiwan, the press there reports that he was arrested without incident because the U.S. had revoked his passport, making his mere presence in Taiwan illegal. (The U.S. government has the power to revoke the passports of people facing felony arrest warrants.) Wilson was then, according to The New York Times, "delivered...to the National Immigration Agency" in Taiwan. It is expected to deport him to the U.S. to face those charges, which carry a potential 2 to 20 years in prison and $10,000 fine.
A reporter for Ars Technica visited Wilson's home weapons printing company, and was told that "A management restructuring is coming." But they also contacted Adam Bhala Lough, who directed and wrote a documentary film about Wilson. Prior to Wilson's arrest, Lough argued that "Without Cody, it can't last. It's like Tesla and Elon Musk, you can't separate the two.

"If he comes home and faces the music, there is a chance Defense Distributed will survive because it is a totally independent company without a board or any regulatory body. And the buyers of these products -- not to generalize, but at least the ones I met while doing the documentary -- they won't care about buying a product from an [accused] pedophile. In fact they may be even more emboldened by the idea that Cody was 'set-up' or that it is a 'deep-state conspiracy' against him, even if (or when) he admits to it."

A federal judge on Monday issued a preliminary injunction continuing a prohibition on the Trump administration proposal to make available blueprints for so-called ghost guns, untraceable weapons that can be manufactured on a 3-D printer, California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said. From a report: California was one of 20 states led by Washington that won the decision from U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik in Seattle. The injunction extends a ruling last month that barred the Trump administration from taking steps that would allow the firm Defense Distributed to disseminate 3-D gun blueprints. "When the Trump Administration inexplicably gave the green light to distribute on the internet blueprints of 3D-printed, untraceable ghost guns, it needlessly endangered our children, our loved ones and our men and women in law enforcement," Becerra said in a statement. "The Trump Administration's actions were dangerous and incompetent."

Booby-trapped image data sent by fax can let malicious hackers sneak into corporate networks, security researchers have found. From a report: Since many companies use fax machines that are also printers and photocopiers, they often have a connection to the internal network. The malicious images exploit protocols established in the 1980s that define the format of fax messages. The research was presented at the Def Con hacker conference in Las Vegas. The two researchers said millions of companies could be at risk because they currently did little to secure fax lines. "Fax has no security measures built in -- absolutely nothing," security researcher Yaniv Balmas, from Check Point software, told the BBC. Mr Balmas uncovered the security holes in the fax protocols with the help of colleague Eyal Itkin and said they were "surprised" by the extent to which fax was still used.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, NASA is scheduled to launch the Parker Solar Probe for a seven-year mission to study the sun and its atmosphere. The spacecraft will take off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, traveling up to 430,000 miles per hour towards the star -- that will make it the fastest spacecraft ever. Assuming you're reading this story around the time it's published, you still have time to watch the launch via NASA's livestream. The launch window for the Parker Solar Probe opens at 3:33 a.m. ET Saturday, but the exact launch time is unknown.

The New York Times has published a story about Eugene N. Parker, the professor that the spacecraft was named after. It is the first time that NASA has named a mission for a living person. Here's an excerpt from the report: In a foundational paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, Dr. Parker described how charged particles streamed continuously from the sun, like the flow of water spreading outward from a circular fountain. Almost no one believed him. [...] Four years later, Dr. Parker was vindicated when Mariner 2, a NASA spacecraft en route to Venus, measured energetic particles streaming through interplanetary space -- exactly what Dr. Parker had predicted. Scientists now call that stream of particles the solar wind. UPDATE: After several delays, the Sun-chasing probe successfully launched on August 12th at 3:31AM.

Yesterday, Facebook said it's banning websites that host and share blueprints of 3D-printed guns. "Sharing instructions on how to print firearms using 3D printers is not allowed under our Community Standards," said a spokesperson in an email statement. "In line with our policies, we are removing this content from Facebook." BuzzFeed was first to report the news: The move comes amid a rush by states to block these instructions from being posted. A July settlement between the State Department and Defense Distributed, an open-source organization that created the first completely 3D-printed gun, cleared the way for the group to publish the gun code. However, that was stalled when a federal judge on July 31 granted a temporary nationwide injunction that prevented Defense Distributed from uploading the plans. The injunction prevents Defense Distributed from publishing the plans. But the instructions are widely available online, on sites such as CodeIsFreeSpeech.com -- which hosts plans for parts of an AR-15, a Beretta, and Defense Distributed's Liberator. Attempts to post the site on a user's News Feed, through Facebook's Messenger app, or on Instagram (which Facebook owns) produce a variety of error messages. Other sites that host the files can still be posted through Facebook. Specifically, Facebook says that 3D-printed guns violate the regulated goods section of the social giant's community standards, which limits gun sales and exchanges to licensed dealers.