ColdWar
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Auctioning a Russian spy camera disguised as... a camera
Spycraft in the Cold War was a lot different than it is now. Rather than hacking computers or trying to fix elections on social media, spooks dug up secrets using cool gadgets. Aston's Auctioneers in the UK just sold off a very interesting batch of 25 rare USSR-era cameras. The most interesting of those may be a miniature spy camera designed to look like a much less conspicuous Soviet-made KMZ Zenit-E SLR.
Stop nuclear devastation at the heart of a never-ending Cold War
One of the most famous works of graffiti on the Berlin Wall is a depiction of former Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev kissing the ex-leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, full on the mouth. In the painting, called "My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love," Brezhnev's profile commands a majority of the frame, as if he's sucking the life out of Honecker. It's based on a 1979 photo of the two statesmen locked in a fraternal kiss, a common form of greeting among socialist leaders at the time. Fast-forward to 2016, and artist Rafal Fedro of inbetweengames has updated this iconic painting to feature US president Barack Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin sharing their own fraternal kiss. In the studio's latest project, a spy tactics game called All Walls Must Fall, the new painting represents a wide range of scenarios: heightened tensions between the two countries that were at the heart of the Cold War, fraying international relationships, or the subconscious desire to love our enemies, to name a few interpretations.
Russia wants permission to fly a spy plane over the US
Russia requested permission on Monday to fly a surveillance plane equipped with an advanced electro-optical imaging sensor over the US, despite objections from American officials. Both the US and Russia are signatories on the Open Skies Treaty, an international agreement that allows for unarmed observation flights over the entirety of the 34 member nations. The treaty was originally designed to increase the military transparency of member nations. However the US is arguing that Russia is exploiting the spirit of the treaty by using such advanced technology.
'Asteroids' travels to the Cold War and beyond in 'VEC9'
Asteroids is the quintessential vector arcade game, featuring a stark black background and simple, geometric images representing spaceships, bullets and floating bits of space rock. Now, that visual genre gets a modern upgrade in VEC9, a 3D vector arcade game about a cryogenically frozen USSR pilot who awakens 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and assumes the American military violently overthrew his country's reign. The pilot's mission is to attack major American cities in a spaceship outfitted with a giant laser and a chain gun, as Motherboard describes. VEC9 creators and tech tinkerers Andrew Reitano, Michael Dooley and Todd Bailey created a big, blinking cabinet for VEC9, complete with a massive controller that Motherboard says was originally designed for an M1 Abrams tank. The whole VEC9 shebang -- including retro-styled full-motion video cutscenes -- will be on display at Chicago's Logan Arcade starting November 7th.
CIA documents tip Area 51 as Cold War surveillance site, definitely not an alien cover up
span.redacted { color: black; background-color: black;} The truth, as a great man once said, is out there. It's just not 125 miles northwest of Vegas. And while no one's denying the seemingly great potential for extraterrestrial life on the outskirts of Sin City, newly declassified documents have shed further light on the long mysterious nature of Area 51. The good news: yes, the CIA acknowledges that Area 51 is , indeed, a thing. And it has the map to prove it. The bad news: there's nary a mention of aliens on stretchers or a besuited Will Smith. Nope, there's no one wearing cool sunglasses so far as we can tell -- heck, even the references to the U-2 program are largely Bono-free. Nope, the area was reportedly the site of Cold War surveillance -- programs that like Oxcart, which have been previously acknowledged. All in all, a perfectly normal base, as far as the government is concerned. Likely story, CIA.
Help for the lost: a fabric antenna to keep you from being a castaway
Doesn't look like much, does it? But the next time you're lost at sea, you just might be thankful you've got it. That little square of fabric is actually a flexible antenna designed for the Cospas-Sarsat distress signal network, a Cold War-era system built to help pinpoint missing ships, planes and people. Designed to be sewn into a life vest, the antenna broadcasts an emergency beacon at a low frequency for greater range; in field tests, that helped rescuers find it within minutes. It's also tear- and water-resistant, which you'll be grateful for when you're being tossed around like a ragdoll in a sea of whitecaps. The technology was developed by the European Space Agency in partnership with a Finnish company. Next on their agenda? A round, floating companion for the marooned, codenamed Wilson.
Russia's RadioAstron telescope finally set to launch, blanket space with its radio eye
Considering all the space nostalgia we've been swimming in recently, it's somewhat appropriate that a Cold War-era telescope is gearing up to make its maiden voyage, after more than three decades of development (and delays). The Russian mission, known as RadioAstron, will finally become a reality on Monday, when a radio telescope launches from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome before soaring into orbit some 350,000 kilometers away from the Earth. At just ten meters in width, the craft's antenna is small in comparison to other radio 'scopes, but its reach can be dramatically expanded when combined with signals from those on the ground. This technique, called interferometry, will effectively create the largest telescope ever built, covering an area nearly 30 times the Earth's diameter and allowing RadioAstron to capture interstellar images in 10,000 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. There remains, however, one major hurdle -- because the spacecraft collects data at about 144 megabits per second, it must constantly transfer information to antennas on the ground. Problem is, there's only one antenna capable of receiving RadioAstron's signals and, unless others are constructed soon, a healthy chunk of its observations could be lost. How do you say "buzz-kill" in Russian?
Book review: How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop
How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop by Dave Tompkins (Stop Smiling Books; $35) World War II increased the rate of human innovation to a pace unseen in any other period of history. New technology from the era includes everything from synthetic rubber to the atomic bomb to magnetic audio tape, which the Germans successfully kept secret until the war's end. After the Nazis fell, Lt. Jack Mullin of the US Army Signal Corps shot footage outside of Hitler's home, grabbed one of the Fuhrer's piano strings for a souvenir, and brought two AEG Magnetophons (along with fifty reels of Farben recording tape) back with him to the states. He then sold a recorder to Bing Crosby, revolutionizing broadcasting and music-making in the process. Another device that made its debut in World War II only to be later adopted by the entertainment industry is the Vocoder. Speech synthesis was the brainchild of a Bell Labs employee named Homer Dudley. Dudley surmised that human speech consisted of two things: the carrier (the noise that your vocal cords makes) and the formant (the sound formed from the carrier by your mouth, throat, and sinuses). Dudley went on to develop something called the Voder (Voice Operator DEmonstratoR), which used a carrier tone generated by a radio valve and a formant created by hissing air to create artificial speech. Hear a demonstration (and learn about how the Vocoder was used to defeat the Axis powers) after the break.
Man builds master-slave control suit for robot; master plays tennis, slave makes funny faces
The robot in the video below doesn't swallow humans or look particularly daemonic; as a matter of fact it looks perfectly subservient. User rodmanLT over at the RoboSavvy forums has created this master-slave suit consisting of a dozen "big fat" potentiometers, apparent leftovers from the Soviet Cold War military might. The armbands and associated tethers allow the operator to control the upper-torso of a Kondo KHR-1HV, even engaging in some tennis and a quick game of Catch the Tigger. See for yourself after the break, then hit the read link for some earlier testing vids. Surely a robotic interpretation of Twentieth-Century Vole's iconic The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights can't be far away.
Indicator-6 Nixie clock is handsome, functional, Khruschev-approved
Hoping to relive the days of the Cold War -- you know, without the air raid drills? The handiwork of someone called Fred Niell (a character from a John le Carre' spy novel if we ever met one -- and we have), the Индикатор-6 ("indicator-6") uses gas-filled Nixie tubes to display the time. This timepiece is definitely more sane and sober in appearance than most of the clocks we see 'round here, and would look great in your study next to your cigar box and framed, autographed picture of Winston Churchill. What better way to keep track of the passing hours as you spend your twilight years writing your memoirs detailing your time in MI5? This hand-crafted chronometer sells for $275. Either hit the read link to order, or go to the safe house tonight at the stroke of midnight. You should already have the pass phrase. Video after the break.
EVE Evolved: The making of EVE Online, part 2
With all tech 2 modules now released into the game and their blueprints handed out to players, the tech 2 blueprint lottery officially shut down during this expansion period and was replaced by the Invention mechanic. Invention allows players to create their own inefficient limited-run tech 2 blueprint copies, putting the supply of tech 2 ships and modules into the hands of the general EVE populace rather than those lucky enough to have won the original tech 2 blueprints. This patch also brought in the entirely new contracts system, which replaced the escrow system that was starting to show its age and was becoming a lot less useful for finding what you wanted.
Air Force pushing for ground-based, satellite-killing lasers
In a proposal that would surely bring a tear to the late Ronald Reagan's eye, Air Force officials are attempting to co-opt $5.7 million from the 2007 budget for developing high-energy lasers that could be used to destroy enemy satellites (because, you know, al Qaeda is launching birds left and right). So far a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee has "shot down" the program, which would build on a 1997 Pentagon study of a two-million-watt laser, although the full committee could reinstate the provision following analysis of the entire bill. While certain military interests have pushed for anti-satellite weapons since the Cold War, concern over the space junk that destroyed sats would create has kept the international community from serious pursuit of any "Star Wars"-like programs. Although we're always keen on new military tech (hey, it gives us something to write about), we're gonna have to side with the Doubting Thomases on this one, because the impending "ROBO-ONE in the Space" satellite is simply too important to risk even a single stray laser strike.
