Radio Flyer Parts

Libyan rebels turn toys into robo weapons

It's a killer toy, but nothing you'd give little Billy for Christmas. Libyan rebels are taking do-it-yourself weapons to a new level with an armed unmanned vehicle based on a Power Wheels Jeep.

Call it a weapon of clever construction.

An engineer in the rebels' ranks equipped the toy ride with a video camera and remote control unit and slapped a machine gun on top. An Al Jazeera story about Libyan rebels scrapping together improvised weapons out of everything from rocket shells to car and bike parts turned up this example of ultralow-budget military R&D. The robo gun shows up 55 seconds into the video below.

IEEE Spectrum's Evan Ackerman points out the serious side of the story:

Crave freelancer Eric Smalley has written about technology for more than two decades. His freelance credits include Discover, Scientific American, and Wired News. He edits Technology Research News , where he gets to preview the cool technology we'll all be using 10 years from now. Eric is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CBS Interactive. E-mail Eric .

Radio Flyer Review: Live: Parts and Labor, Zulus, Hunters

Although many of my favorite NYC bands have gone belly up or at least M.I.A. in the last year, one of the groups still giving me hope is Hunters , an experimental quartet who look like a cool band if you run into them on the street (as I recently did).  They've got "the look" in that slightly scary post-punk mad-scientist-meets-futuristic-slick way, minus all the post-glam trappings of the 1980's British scene.  There's nothing put on about the way Hunters look - they don't seem like one of those bands that sits down to discuss their "image."  They just look cool because they are cool. Of course, looking edgy, or even looking cohesive, does not make or break a band.  Or at least it shouldn't.  But it can help set the stage for an edgy sound, and that's what Hunters have.  Their music is contradictory: turbid and murky, but somehow not at all muddy; at once stagnant and anarchic.  There is a sort of gothic bleakness about the band, but the music itself is a breakneck jumble of noise.  Live, the band seems a bit standoffish but also driven with an intensity that inevitably sets co-fronters Isabel Ibsen and Derek Watson rolling on the floor in a pseudo-sexual, violent mass of body and guitar. But at Cake Shop, what caught my attention most was not the band's frenzy (which I've come to expect) but their pop appeal.  The last song of the set was a hooky sing-along, albeit enmeshed in No Wave-inflected chaos and noise.  The genuineness with which the band merges these two conflicting impulses - the catchy, spirited pop and the arty noise freakout - shows a band on the edge of something original and important.  I don't think they're there yet; there's still something unfocused and unarticulated in Hunters' post-post-post-post-post-punk set.  But if they keep moving, they just might end up making music that really matters . [myspace] Zulus played next.  The band's overall sound was very appealing - massively loud guitars, heavy but with tempos fast enough to keep them from feeling bogged down.  However, with no open space for their songs to breathe, the constant guitar and samey tempos made it hard to disinguish one song from the next after a little while.  Moreover, the band's vocals all sounded like an afterthought, tacked on at the last minute out of deference to convention.

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