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The latest governmental attack on 3D printed guns came from the U.S. State Department on Thursday.

In a letter sent to Defense Distributed, a nonprofit advocating for the creation of 3D printed firearms, the State Department demanded the removal from a public Web site of a set of 3D files used to print gun components. The State Department said that the online dissemination of the files could violate restrictions on exporting guns covered by International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)

Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson said he obeyed the federal directive. It followed the announcement yesterday by California state … Read more

Despite politicians lining up to regulate 3D printed guns, and a new directive from the U.S. State Department arguing that disseminating 3D files for such weapons may violate weapons export rules, some think that it may all be much ado about nothing.

On Thursday, Forbes reported, the State Department demanded that Defense Distributed, a nonprofit dedicated to creating 3D printed guns, take down a set of files that theoretically enable anyone to print their own firearm.

"The government says it wants to review the files for compliance with arms export control laws known as the International Traffic in … Read more

A Texas man has become the first person to successfully fire a real bullet from a gun created on a home 3D printer. Sound crazy? In fact, the blueprint for the pistol is available for free online for anyone to access. And it's legal.

University of Texas law student Cody Wilson, 25, released a video of a 3D-printed gun named the "Liberator" taking test shots over the weekend. The gun is mostly made of plastic, with the exception of two metal pieces: a metal firing pin and a 6-ounce piece of steel that's required by law under the Undetectable Firearms Act. Of course, the piece of steel that makes the weapon visible to metal detectors, and legal, can certainly be omitted by future hobbyists.

Wilson invited Forbes reporter Andy Greenberg to witness the trial. Greenberg reports that 15 of the gun's 16 pieces were printed by a Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer -- the metal firing pin is the 16th piece. … Read more

NEW YORK--For months, a debate has raged in the media and on Capitol Hill about whether or not society (and the law) should allow 3D-printed guns.

After listening to Cody Wilson speak for a few minutes, one can't help but come away feeling that the national discussion is moot: 3D-printed firearms are inevitable.

Today at the Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo, Wilson, the founder and director of Defense Distributed, argued for an environment in which people can use 3D printers to make guns.

It's not that he doesn't recognize -- or care -- that there's … Read more

The risk that an Internet-connected computer is infected with malware will never be reducible to zero. It's just the nature of software that errors happen. Where there are software-design errors, there are people who will exploit those errors to their advantage.

The best PC users can hope for is to minimize the chances of an infection and to mitigate the damage a piece of malware can inflict -- whether it intends to steal a user's sensitive data or to commandeer the machine as part of a cyber attack on servers thousands of miles away.

Last week, Internet users … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Listen to the music of Bayside and check them out at one of their upcoming shows.

- Nick's clothing label is called Born and Bred, and 404 listeners can save 20 percent off all merchandise with code BB404.

- Follow Nick Ghanbarian and Born and Bred on Twitter

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Wells Fargo was the target of another distributed denial-of-service attack.

The bank's Web site was slowed down by the attack yesterday, affecting a certain number of customers, according to Fox Business News.

"Yesterday we saw an unusually high volume of Web site traffic which we believe was a denial of service attack," a Wells Fargo spokeswoman told CNET today. "The vast majority of customers were not impacted and customer information is safe. For customers who had difficulty accessing the site, we encouraged them to call us by phone, use ATMs or try logging on again as … Read more

Users in search of ad-blocking apps on Google Play won't have any luck as of today. Google has reportedly launched a campaign to remove apps that interfere with advertising from its app store.

Several app developers for apps such as AdBlock, AdAway, and AdFree received notices from Google today saying that their apps had been taken down, according to Phandroid. Apparently, these apps were in violation of Google Play's Developer Distribution Agreement.

This agreement says that developers must agree not to "engage in any activity with the market, including the development or distribution of products, that interferes … Read more

The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project has scored its 14th consecutive victory, discovering the largest prime number so far.

The number, 2 to the power of 57,885,161 minus 1, is a digit that's 17,425,170 digits long. That's big enough that if you want to see the full text, you'll have to brace yourself for a 22.5MB download.

GIMPS, a cooperative project splitting the search across thousands of independent computers, announced the find yesterday after it had been confirmed by other checks. At present, there are 98,980 people and 574 … Read more