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The State Department has ordered ultra-libertarian group Defense Distributed to remove the files that provide instructions for building a 3D printed gun, until it has examined them for legality, says a report from BetaBeat. A red banner appeared atop the group’s website Thursday noting that the US government now controls the files. Defense Distributed, the brainchild of 25-year old University of Texas law student Cody Wilson, has made a name in the past year by pushing the limits of what a 3-D printer can create: an assault rifle. Wired listed Wilson as one of the most dangerous people in the world in 2012 and earlier this week Forbes broke that the group had successfully built a gun printed entirely (except the firing pin) on a 3D printer.

Amazon is reportedly developing a smartphone that sports a 3D screen that relies on retina-tracking technology to make images seem to float above the screen like a hologram. With the smartphone, users would be able to navigate through content by using their eyes alone, according to two unnamed people who discussed the phone with the Wall Street Journal.

A Texas group run by a self-described anarchist has posted what appears to be the first video of the live firing of a handgun created with a 3-D printer. The 53-second video shows a single shot being fired from The Liberator, a plastic handgun that, with the exception of its metal firing pin, was assembled from parts made with a 3-D printer, according to Defense Distributed. The gun appears unscathed after the test firing, although the brief clip does not reveal anything about its range or accuracy.

A camera able to create 3D images up to one kilometre (0.62 miles) away has been developed by a team in Edinburgh. Physicists at Heriot-Watt University developed a technique which uses lasers to scan almost any object. With extra research, the camera's range could extend to 10km (6.2 miles), the team said.

The company that developed 3D printed gun parts has announced plans to launch a new firm, dedicated to copyright-free blueprints for a range of 3D printable objects. Defcad, as the firm will be known, has already been dubbed the Pirate Bay of 3D printing. The site will become a "search engine for 3D printing," according to its founders.

In his State of the Union address last week, along with the standard calls for education reform and energy independence, President Obama gave a shout-out to a growing technology. In a lab in Youngstown, Ohio, the president said, “Workers are mastering the 3-D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost anything.”

The release of 3-D versions of "Star Wars" Episodes II and III, previously planned for next fall, have been postponed while Lucasfilm focuses on new episodes, the company said Monday.

When Ford wants to try out a new transmission part, an engineer sends a digital blueprint of the component to a computer, and what happens next once seemed like the stuff of science fiction.

Cameras that can record in 3-D are usually pretty complicated, sporting two lenses instead of one, to mimic human binocular vision. Samsung says it has a more elegant solution: a single lens that can go from 2-D to 3-D mode with the flip of a switch.

The promise of home 3-D printing is that you can construct anything you want from the comfort and convenience of your own living room. For a group whose mission is to 3-D print a working pistol from scratch, however, that promise has been revoked.