Category Archives: Technology

News in the wide world of technology

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US Senator Calls For Regulation of 3D Printers

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By Drew Wilson

The Liberator may have given gun enthusiasts a huge boost in confidence, but the 3D printable gun may also be attracting unwanted attention for 3D printing enthusiasts as well. Right now, a US Senator is calling for regulating 3D printers.

Last Thursday, we reported on the US government censoring content on DEFCAD.org, a website that contains certain kinds of object files for 3D printing. The move was sparked when someone successfully 3D printed a fully functional handgun called the “Liberator”.

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US Government Censors DEFCAD Website

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By Drew Wilson

3D printing has been around for a while, but with the possibility of printing a gun, there’s been a very contentious debate surrounding the technology. Now, the US government has stepped in and taken down content.

The technology can print many interesting things such as human body parts, plastic figurines and even an entire building. Some, such as myself, have already seen the technology and wondered if we’ll witness the same kinds of debates we’ve seen with music and file-sharing all over again.

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Mega Defends its Cryptographic System

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By Drew Wilson

Mega was able to open with a bang as an untold number of users rushed to create accounts on opening day – so much so that the traffic ultimately brought down the website for about 48 hours for some users. Now that the website is up and running, some are criticizing the websites security. With these criticisms circulating on some outlets, Mega has opted to post some clarifications.

It seems that the opening few weeks for Mega hasn’t been entirely smooth. Of course, with just about any start-up, that isn’t really much of a surprise especially when the start-up deals with something complex like modern security measures. Still, with so much attention directed to the new site, it might not be a surprise that it would be under such heavy scrutiny in the first place. Let’s dig into some of the latest on this front of the website.

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New Mega Website Experiences Mega Traffic Surge

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By Drew Wilson

It was a much anticipated launch – Kim Dotcom’s new website “Mega” opened its doors today to much fanfare. While the website was greeted with positive reviews amongst outlets that were able to get an early sneak peak, the grand opening to the public caused such a surge in traffic, the load more or less brought the website down to its knees.

It’s probably one of the best problems a website administrator could ever hope for. On opening, the website gets inundated with so much traffic, it brings the website down to its knees. Our attempts to access Mega proved fruitless as we were greeted with server timeouts from the excess load. Of course, such a problem tends to be a temporary problem as either administrators work the servers to better handle such a load or the traffic dies down after a while.

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