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Teardown of cheap USB charger

One day I bough a very cheap quite nice looking (if you like Apple style) very cheap (2 USD) USB charger from dx.com. I was curious to see if anything useful could be built this cheaply. The product USB Power Charger Adapter – White (EU Plug / 100~240V) carried SKU 176662 code, but there does

The Evolution of ATM Skimmers

Taking a Trip to the ATM? Beware of ‘Skimmers’. Skimming is the theft of credit card information used in an otherwise legitimate transaction. Instances of skimming have been reported where the perpetrator has put a device over the card slot of an ATM (automated teller machine), which reads the magnetic strip as the user unknowingly

Conductive paint pen challenge

Farnell/Newark/Element14 has been running a Conductive Ink Challenge with deadline of 31st August 2014. In it the competition the plan is to draw artistic circuits by hand using nickel or silver-laced “ink”. The aim is to make eye-catching piece of art.  Judging is based on creativity, originality and technical and is final To test conductive

New camera science and technologies

There has been lately some interesting science new and product articles on special camera technologies: World’s Fastest Camera Takes 4.4 TRILLION Frames Per Second: Researchers in Japan have developed a motion picture camera that can take 4.4 trillion frames per second. The work was published in Nature Photonics. They call their technique “sequentially timed all-optical

Electromagnetic Warfare Is Here

Electromagnetic Warfare Is Here article tells that a briefcase-size radio weapon could wreak havoc in our networked world. In the 2001 action movie Ocean’s Eleven, criminals use an electromagnetic weapon to black out a portion of Las Vegas. It might have seemed to bevVery futuristic at the time, but nowadays the threat is real and