Forget about a kill switch. Planned obsolescence? Already obsolete. The Pentagon's blue-sky researchers want tomorrow's military hardware to literally cease to exist at a predetermined point. Welcome to the age of suicidal sensors.

Darpa isn't imagining planes or ships that melt into a metallic puddle when their replacements come off the production line. The research agency is thinking, in one sense, smaller: sensors and other "sophisticated electronic microsystems" that litter a warzone - and create enticing opportunities for adversaries to collect, study and reverse-engineer. Since it's not practical to pick them all up when U.S. forces withdraw, Darpa wants to usher in the age of "transient electronics."

If you've ever lost your phone and worried about random strangers sifting through your data, you have a sense of why the idea appeals to Darpa. But you probably never imagined Apple creating a piece of hardware "capable of physically disappearing in a controlled, triggerable manner." That's where Darpa comes in. Next month, it's going to invite interested scientists and manufacturers to a Virginia conference to kick around ideas for creating what it calls "triggered degradation." Oh, and some of that degradation will occur inside a soldier's body.

The program to create transient electronics is called VAPR, for Vanishing Programmable Resources. Darpa's going to say more about it in the coming weeks. But thus far, the idea is to make small hardware that performs just like current sensors, only fabricated from materials that can rapidly disintegrate on command.

In absolute disregard for both the US Constitution and international law, US drones are currently killing civilians, including women and children¹, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda and the Philippines. Thousands have been killed, and tens of thousands more terrorized, by fleets of remote-controlled 'drone' aircraft.²

For those living in these drone-infested regions, the reality they experience on a daily basis is horrifying. In the dark future envisaged in the science fiction Terminator movies, human decisions are removed from strategic operations once an artificial intelligence (AI) called 'Skynet' takes control. In real life we have the conscienceless Military-Industrial Complex - run by humanoids in the CIA, Pentagon, British Ministry of Defence, US and UK Government administrations and weapons manufacturers - working together to develop a war machine that has removed all semblance of humanity from combat operations. In the movies we're invited to excuse Skynet's creators because it is no longer under their control. In real life, terminator drones are programmed to 'double-tap' their targets, a euphemism for deliberately targeting rescuers attempting to drag victims from rubble in the aftermath of the initial drone strike. The predictable result, is that for every "terrorist" killed in Pakistan 49 civilians are murdered also .

10,000 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) aka drones are said to be currently in service around the globe, "protecting Western civilization from terrorists". A thousand of these are armed and most of them are American-operated. It is reported they have killed more non-combatant civilians than died in 9/11 (and that's just the 'official estimates'). While military personnel cuts have shrunk the sizes of standing armies, 'theaters of operations' have expanded. In the US, the 'FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012', has seen the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA and other agencies work towards the total integration of commercial drones into US airspace. Ethical and privacy concerns are simply swept aside while the proliferation of drone technology is driven by the greed of powerful defense contractors.

Each year, hundreds of millions of metric tons of dust, water, and humanmade pollutants make their way into the atmosphere, often traveling between continents on jet streams. Now a new study confirms that some microbes make the trip with them, seeding the skies with billions of bacteria and other organisms - and potentially affecting the weather. What's more, some of these high-flying organisms may actually be able to feed while traveling through the clouds, forming an active ecosystem high above the surface of the Earth.

The discovery came about when a team of scientists based at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta hitched a ride on nine NASA airplane flights aimed at studying hurricanes. Previous studies carried out at the tops of mountains hinted that researchers were likely to find microorganisms at high altitudes, but no one had ever attempted to catalog the microscopic life floating above the oceans - let alone during raging tropical storms. After all, it isn't easy to take air samples while your plane is flying through a hurricane.

Despite the technical challenges, the researchers managed to collect thousands upon thousands of airborne microorganisms floating in the troposphere about 10 kilometers over the Caribbean, as well as the continental United States and the coast of California. Studying their genes back on Earth, the scientists counted an average of 5100 bacterial cells per cubic meter of air, they report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Although the researchers also captured various types of fungal cells, the bacteria were over two orders of magnitude more abundant in their samples. Well over 60% of all the microbes collected were still alive.

A newly discovered exploit in a technology standard known as "universal plug and play" (UPnP) is big enough that hackers on the Internet could remotely access and control "millions" of compatible devices like cameras, printers and routers, security researchers said Tuesday.

Researchers working for the security firm Rapid7 said they found bugs in the UPnP standard that exposes personal devices to being remotely accessed and controlled. That means an enterprising hacker could, say, exploit the bug to print unwanted messages on a personal printer, or turn on a webcam unbeknownst to the owner.

A hole this large has likely already been exploited on a selective, individual basis, researchers warned, noting that something like 40 to 50 million network devices make use of UPnP.

The quest for cheap energy and cheap labor is a conquering human urge, one that has played out with notable ferocity starting with the Industrial Revolution. The introduction of coal into British manufacturing and the more recent outsourcing of Western manufacturing to Asia have marked key thresholds in this ongoing progression.

But despite the harvesting of additional productivity gains from the more recent revolution in information technology, the suite of macro data suggests that the rate of advancement in physical production has slowed, notably, in the past thirty years.

Seen in this light, the greatest gains to global industrial production were probably enjoyed from the late 18th century (when coal extraction and use began in earnest) into the mid-20th century (when oil reached broad distribution). In contrast, computers, the Internet, and the leveraging of developing world labor might eventually be seen as the finishing touches on this great industrial wave.

Activists in Berlin are teaming up to trash surveillance cameras. Points are given, with bonus scores for the most innovative modes of destruction

Link to video: Activists destroy CCTV cameras in Germany

As a youth in a ski mask marches down a Berlin U-Bahn train, dressed head-to-toe in black, commuters may feel their only protection is the ceiling-mounted CCTV camera nearby. But he is not interested in stealing wallets or iPhones - he is after the camera itself. This is Camover, a new game being played across Berlin, which sees participants trashing cameras in protest against the rise in close-circuit television across Germany.

The game is real-life Grand Theft Auto for those tired of being watched by the authorities in Berlin; points are awarded for the number of cameras destroyed and bonus scores are given for particularly imaginative modes of destruction. Axes, ropes and pitchforks are all encouraged.

The rules of Camover are simple: mobilise a crew and think of a name that starts with "command", "brigade" or "cell", followed by the moniker of a historical figure (Van der Lubbe, a Dutch bricklayer convicted of setting fire to the Reichstag in 1933, is one name being used). Then destroy as many CCTV cameras as you can. Concealing your identity, while not essential, is recommended. Finally, video your trail of destruction and post it on the game's website - although even keeping track of the homepage can be a challenge in itself, as it is continually being shut down.

© John Giles/PAA surveillance drone used by Merseyside police, one of three forces that have permission to use UAVs.

Missile manufacturer, police forces and golf video company among more than 130 groups licensed to use technology

Defence firms, police forces and fire services are among more than 130 organisations that have permission to fly small drones in UK airspace, the Guardian can reveal.

The Civil Aviation Authority list of companies and groups that have sought approval for the use of the unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, has not been published before - and it reflects the way the technology is now being used. The BBC, the National Grid and several universities are now certified to use them - as is Video Golf Marketing, which provides fly-over videos of golf courses.

Including multiple or expired licences, the CAA has granted approval to fly small UAVs more than 160 times.

"People are going to see more and more of these small vehicles operating around the country," said John Moreland, general secretary of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems Association (UAVS), a trade body with more than 100 members. "There are any number of uses for them, and the technology is getting easier to use and cheaper all the time. These vehicles can operate anywhere in the UK, within reason."

Once common sightings of hedgehogs are becoming rare in the UK's gardens, parks and hedgerows, say ecologists

The once common sight of hedgehogs in gardens could become a thing of the past, with the spiny species having suffered a dramatic decline in recent years on a par with the loss of starlings, red squirrels and other quintessentially British wildlife.

Ecologists this week published figures suggesting hedgehog numbers declined by over a third between 2003 and 2012.

Such a precipitous drop means the hedgehog, celebrated in culture from Beatrix Potter's Mrs Tiggy-Winkle to Philip Larkin's poetry, is becoming an increasingly rare sight in the UK's gardens, parks and hedgerows.

European Space Agency's Venus Express has made unique observations of Venus during a period of reduced solar wind pressure, that the planet's ionosphere balloons out like a comet's tail on its nightside. For Earth, which has a strong magnetic field, the ionosphere is relatively stable under a range of solar wind conditions.

But by comparison, Venus does not have its own internal magnetic field and relies instead on interactions with the solar wind to shape its ionosphere. Venus Express' new results have revealed for the first time the effect of a very low solar wind pressure on the ionosphere of an unmagnetised planet.

The observations were made in August 2010 when NASA's Stereo-B spacecraft calculated a drop in solar wind density to 0.1 particles per cc, around 50 times lower than normally observed this persisted for about 18 hours.

Recycling entrepreneur Tom Szaky is stubbing out the world's cigarette problem -- one butt at a time.

The 30-year-old who dropped out of Princeton University to start his innovative company TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey, says there's no such thing as trash, even when you're talking about the contents of ashtrays.

In a program started in May in Canada and now running from the United States to Spain, TerraCycle collects cigarette butts from volunteers and turns them into plastic, which can be used for anything, even ashtrays themselves.

The discarded cigarettes, which litter countries around the world, are first broken up, with the paper and remaining tobacco composted.

The filter, made of a plastic called cellulose acetate, is melted down and turned into an ingredient for making a wide range of industrial plastic products, such as pallets -- the trays used to ship heavy goods.

It seems that for once smoking benefits everyone. The tobacco industry, happy to get some decent publicity, pays TerraCycle.

Volunteer collectors win points per butt, which can then be redeemed as contributions to charities.

Sidewalks start looking cleaner. And TerraCycle, which sells recycled products to retailers like Walmart and Whole Foods, gets more business.