They'd taken a SCAR assault rifle, and put a "black box" inside the handgrip, networking it with the soldier ("with a kind of Bluetooth" according to the PR guy), and also to home base. The grip is a sealed, 10-year unit that logs the number of bullets fired and remaining ammo a la Aliens. They're also working on pairing to specific soldiers, perhaps using biometrics. Deactivating it if the Taliban get it, for instance? "In the near future," said PR man enigmatically.

The second part of the suite is the Moving Red Dot Fire Control Unit, which is a networked firing solution computer for the grenade launcher. You press a button next to the trigger to activate the laser rangefinder, then the computer calculates the solution, shows it to you in the LED display, then moves the red dot to aim it. That's right—laser-guided grenades. You are your own air support. [FN Herstal]

Apoorva Prasad is a freelance writer and photographer based in Paris, France, who covered the Milipol 2009 military-police expo for us. He has a thing for holo-scoped assault rifles, and sounds disappointed when admitting he's never been Tased.

As many of you know, the steel or titanium black box is actually painted orange or red so it's easy to spot. And it's often actually two boxes (and in this case, one's a cylinder), with one "box" recording voice, one "box" recording data.

The voice recorder grabs two hours of audio feeds from pilot headsets and in-cockpit microphones. In recent years, it's gotten a digital upgrade that's less susceptible to environmental problems than tapes of yore.

The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) records measurements on about 88 different flight performance issues at an interval of once every few seconds. When the shit hits the fan (or, in some cases, the plane), the FDR records measurements at a faster rate.

But even with as neat as the black box may be from the standpoint of apocalyptic durability, it seems like a dated idea in an era when realtime wireless communication is available globally. [Wired and Getty]

That padding? It's not fluffy down. From the modder:

To clear out the storage half, I used a large auger bit and a drill. I also occasionally soaked the asbestos to help keep it from finding its way into my lungs. I started to question whether this mod was worth lung cancer, then decided it was.

(Ed note: we'd make a joke about death here, but were the modder to actually die of lung cancer, we'd feel like douches for the rest of our lives. So pardon our restraint.) [brettsprojects via technabob]

When the machines can no longer keep the patient alive, the stats on the frame flatline, just like you see on TV. However, the death of the patient does not bring with it the death of the frame; everything has been recorded on a black box, which rewinds to the beginning and plays the patient's life, on a loop. Now your family can sit around the fireplace, stare at the frame, and recount the good old days. "Oh look! That's when Timmy's blood pressure was 120 over 80! And he was still breathing! I miss that day."

Cohen has made a video of some of these patients describing what their machine-assisted life is like, and you can see a clip below. Just remember, before you complain that a minute of your time was wasted, these people are on freakin' life support.[Interactions via WMMNA]

Its 135-degree field of view camera gets hung on your windscreen, with all the accelerometry going on inside the 4.5 x 3 x 0.8-inch black box itself. Honda hopes this system will turn you into a safer driver, though we imagine it might also make insurance claims a little more straightforward. You can also switch on recording just for the hell of it, and amuse your friends with a show later: "Hey, check out that braking after I missed the red light." Available in Japan for ¥54,600 (around $500), and, sadly, only if you have an Honda car or your name is Jenny or Debra.

Hey, it's Friday. [Honda via Gizmodo Japan]

Created to document unfortunate situations for the accident prone, this little device has a G-force sensor hooked up to a solid-state camera that's always recording, and if it senses a sudden stop, it saves the 15 seconds of video before and five seconds afterward, perfect to play back in court when you're trying to explain to the judge why it's not your fault.

Clarion has constructed the DriveEye out of tough magnesium alloy, hoping that it will be able to survive all but the most horrific accidents. We're thinking it might be bad luck is to tack one of these suckers on your windshield, as if you're expecting—or maybe even hoping—to get into a really bad wreck. Well, if you get overly eager to use the thing, it also has a manual recording function.

They must have a lot more accidents in Japan, because that's where this DriveEye will first be available for $412. Reminds us of a similar device marketed in Korea, the Black Eagle GPS that works the same way. Maybe these systems are coming soon to an accident scene near you. [Technabob]

The Black Box is a bit pricey at $60, so unless you're really anal, it's probably better just to handle your cord situation yourself. – Jason Chen

Black Box Cord Organizer [Kangaroom Storage]

Black Box concept handset [uberphones]