‘For months, Shira Barlow’s cell phone was flooded with wrong-number calls and text messages, mostly between 2 and 4 a.m. on weekends. Told they had reached a college student, callers refused to believe it.
“Baby girl, how are you?” one man purred in a foreign accent. “Why are you doing this?” a woman asked. “This is so rude.” And there were several seemingly random references to “Paris.”
As in Paris Hilton. [..]
Barlow had been given a recycled phone number that used to be Hilton’s. The practice stems from efforts to conserve phone numbers to minimize area-code splitting. [..]
Barlow plans to keep the number because she says it has been a greater source of amusement than a hassle.’
It’s funny because it’s true.
‘US researchers say they have invented a lightweight paper battery that could serve as an enhanced power storage device for the next generation of consumer electronic devices.
The battery produces electricity in the same way as the conventional lithium-ion batteries that power so many of today’s gadgets, but all the components have been incorporated into a lightweight, flexible sheet of paper.
An early prototype of the device, just big enough to be held between thumb and forefinger, kicks out 2.5 volts, enough juice to power a small fan, or illuminate a light, and its inventors say the battery can be easily scaled up to provide enough power to run any number of electronic gadgets.
“You can stack one sheet on top of another to boost the power output,” said Robert Linhardt, a biology and chemistry professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and a project team member.’
‘We just received a tip that the source code for the Facebook main index page has been leaked and published on a blog called Facebook Secrets. There are at least two possible ways that the source code got out – the first is that a Facebook developer has sent it out, or the more likely option that a security hole or other method has been used on either one of the Facebook servers or in their source code repository to reveal the code. The blog that published the code only has a single post on it, so it was created exclusively to publish this code – meaning that whoever is behind this both isn’t taking credit for the hole and doesn’t want to be associated with it. While there is no certain way to verify if the code is actually from Facebook, by taking a quick look through the code and by double-checking some paths that have been referenced, we can say with some certainty that this seems to be both real and also a recent version of the main Facebook page.’
‘You’ve probably never heard of the E70 because Nokia’s marketing team is busy finding every last dick in the universe to suck, so I’m going to do their job for them and tell you about this product. And no, I’m not being paid to do this. I’m just tired of the iPhone fanboys shooting huge sticky wads and high-fiving each other (literally) over their stupid cellphones.
First of all, the E70 has a full keyboard, not some shitty stripped down, tap-and-pray smudgy piece of shit. Nokia uses a technology that’s even more advanced than the iPhone’s tap screen, allowing you to actually feel the keys you press as you’re pressing them! The technology is called “tactile response,” and it allows you to do things like dial a phone number without staring at your screen like a shit-chucking ape. In fact, every other cellphone ever made has this technology, sometimes called “buttons.”‘
‘My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or “jump” in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.
These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data. [..]
The effect of the correction on global temperatures is minor (some 1-2% less warming than originally thought), but the effect on the U.S. global warming propaganda machine could be huge.’
This is apparently some footage from a human powered boat competition.
(18.5meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘It looks like a big flashlight — but it’s really a nonlethal weapon designed to make you sick.
Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc., of Torrance, Calif., has been granted a contract by the Department of Homeland Security to develop what it calls the “LED Incapacitator,” according to a DHS online newsletter.
The handheld device using light-emitting diodes to emit super-bright pulses of light at rapidly changing wavelengths, causing disorientation, nausea and even vomiting in whomever it’s pointed at.
“There’s one wavelength that gets everybody,” says IOS President Bob Lieberman. “Vlad [IOS top scientist Vladimir Rubtsov] calls it ‘the evil color.'”‘
‘The thought screen helmet blocks telepathic communication between aliens and humans. An abductee who took voltage readings from a second helmet while wearing another one demonstrates that this communication is a form of electromagnetic energy.
Aliens cannot immobilize people wearing thought screens nor can they control their minds or communicate with them using their telepathy. When aliens can’t communicate or control humans, they do not take them.’
One of the abductees is kinda hot. I’d certainly probe her if I was an alien.
‘Today I come rushing home because it’s the end of the semester and I have finals coming up and I need to write two papers tonight so that I can go camping this holiday weekend with peace of mind so I get home and GIL says, hey honey, you’re just in time! I’m cooking french fries!
Oh that’s good, I say, because I haven’t eaten yet and I have all this work to do. Let me just put my bike away. I walk into the kitchen and notice my computer’s not on the kitchen table. Which. Means. It’s…. oh, SHIT!!!!
I open the over door. No fries. Just one miserable looking laptop. (STOP: EXPLANATION OF WHY I KEEP MY LAPTOP IN THE OVEN: I keep it there because I live in a high crime area in a house with windows that don’t even lock. I figure the oven’s actually a very safe place. Who would think to look there for valuables? and if the house burns down the computer’d be okay. The system worked just fine when I was living alone.)’
‘A special council ‘dog fouling squad’ described today how an undercover surveillance operation caught a serial offender – but it wasn’t a dog. It was a man.
The CCTV operation was set up after a member of the public made a complaint to the environmental health service at Kirklees Council, West Yorkshire.
She was suspicious that the offending individual, who regularly left a mess in the same place in Cleckheaton, was not a dog.
Councillor Martyn Bolt, cabinet member for the environment, said: ‘An investigation confirmed the suspicions and concluded that the pile of excrement was not from a dog, but was of the human variety. [..]”
‘All in all, it hadn’t been a good day. Bad traffic, a malfunctioning computer, incompetent coworkers and a sore back all made me a seething cauldron of rage. But more importantly for this story, it had been over forty-eight hours since I’d last taken a dump. I’d tried to jumpstart the process, beginning my day with a bowl of bowel-cleansing fiber cereal, following it with six cups of coffee at work, and adding a bean-laden lunch at Taco Bell. As I was returning home from work, my insides let me know with subtle rumbles and the emission of the occasional tiny fart that Big Things would be happening soon.’
‘A flying saucer which glides up to 10 metres off the ground and carries two people could be yours for £65,000.
The saucer is powered by eight engines and can reach speeds of over 50mph as it moves gracefully through the air.
The bizarre flying pod, which is the size of a small car, is even able to land on skyscrapers – should the need arise.
It can take off and land vertically, like a helicopter, but it is almost noise-free and has been described by passengers as being “like a magic carpet ride.”
US company Moller International has begun manufacturing the flying saucer and says it has completed more than 200 successful test flights.’
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see it here »
‘Emissions from office laser printers can be as unhealthy as cigarette smoke, according to an Australian professor who is now calling for regulations to limit printer emissions.
Office workers breathing easy since smoking was banned in public places in the United States and the United Kingdom have new reason to worry, according to research from the Queensland University of Technology’s Air Quality and Health Program, led by physics professor Lidia Morawska.
The average printer releases toner particles that can get deep into the lungs and cause respiratory problems and cardiovascular trouble, according to Morawska’s team, part of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, and specialists in atmospheric particles.
The team tested 62 laser printer models–all relatively new–and found that 17 of them were “high emitters” of toner particles. Despite using similar technology, office photocopiers do not emit particles, the team found. ‘
‘NASA is investigating sabotage of a noncritical computer due to be flown to the International Space Station aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, which was cleared to lift off on August 7, the U.S. space agency said on Thursday.
NASA revealed the sabotage a day ahead of releasing studies that the publication Aviation Week reported had found astronauts were allowed to fly on at least two occasions despite warnings they were so drunk they posed a flight risk.
The damage to wiring in an electronics box was intentional and obvious, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.’
‘Some years ago, I (GLS) was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab’s PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab’s hardware hackers (no one knows who).
You don’t touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labeled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words ‘magic’ and ‘more magic’. The switch was in the ‘more magic’ position.
I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it’s a basic fact of electricity that a switch can’t do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side.’
‘The head of PC maker Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, has hit out at Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, saying that the “entire industry” was disappointed by it.
Microsoft Windows Vista
“The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista,” the head of the world’s fourth-biggest PC maker told the Financial Times Deutschland in its online edition on Monday.
Never before had a new version of Windows done so little to boost PC sales, he said.
“And that’s not going to change in the second half of this year,” Mr Lanci said.
“I really don’t think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista.” [..]
“Stability is certainly a problem,” he said.’
‘If you ever wanted to be Nevada’s governor for a day, it doesn’t seem to be that hard.
In what could be a whopping security hole, Nevada has posted the password to the gubernatorial e-mail account on its official state Web site. It appears in a Microsoft Word file giving step-by-step instructions on how aides should send out the governor’s weekly e-mail updates, which has, as a second file shows, 13,105 subscribers.
The Outlook username is, by the way, “governor” and the password is “kennyc”. We should note at this point that the former Nevada governor, a Republican, is Kenny C. Guinn, which hardly says much about password security.’
‘Nigerian schoolchildren who received laptops from a U.S. aid organisation have used them to explore pornographic sites on the Internet, the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on Thursday.
NAN said its reporter had seen pornographic images stored on several of the children’s laptops.
“Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials,” NAN said.
A representative of the One Laptop Per Child aid group was quoted as saying that the computers, part of a pilot scheme, would now be fitted with filters.’
‘The co-founder of semiconductor maker Broadcom Corp., under scrutiny in a federal stock options probe, was accused seven years ago of building an underground hideaway at his estate to indulge in drugs and sex with prostitutes, according to court documents.
In a draft complaint made against Henry T. Nicholas III, a construction crew claimed the billionaire failed to pay them millions of dollars for work performed between 1998 and 2002, and used “manipulation, lies, intimidation, and even death threats” when anyone threatened to quit.
The illegal network of tunnels and rooms underneath Nicholas’ Laguna Hills estate was kept secret from his wife and city officials, the documents said.
The purpose of one secret room was to allow Nicholas to “indulge his appetite for illegal drugs and sex with prostitutes,” the crew claimed.’
‘We get to see a lot of new products and services at TechCrunch, many of them bad; usually it’s a case that they won’t get a run. Then there are those that are so bad they a worthy of mention. Crunchgear’s John Biggs summed it up well in an email to me (see their very brief coverage here): “I was so disgusted that I couldn’t write anymore”. 3D Mailbox has also received attention from the press; Michael Parsons at The Times Online described 3D Mailbox as “The worst software application I have ever seen…a waste of valuable processing power,” Richard Bartle in the Guardian notes “When I first saw the trailer, I thought it was a parody.” Sadly Richard, it’s not.’
(2.5meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘A German man who startled his neighbors when he hurled his computer out of the window in the middle of the night, was let off for disturbing the peace by police who sympathized with his technical frustrations.
Police in the northern city of Hanover said they would not press charges after responding to calls made by residents in an apartment block who were woken by a loud crash in the early hours of Saturday. [..]
Asked what had driven him to the night-time outburst, the 51-year-old man said he had simply got annoyed with his computer.
“Who hasn’t felt like doing that?” said a police spokesman.’
‘Police officers in the UK are to be given head-mouted video cameras to film incidents and arrests, the footage of which can then be used in evidence.
The Home Office is to give police £3 million to fund a national roll-out of head cameras after regional trials proved they were successful in fighting crime, the Government has announced. [..]
A spokesman for the force said: “The clear evidence provided by head camera footage means that offenders have less opportunity to deny their involvement, leading to less paperwork for the police, earlier guilty pleas, less time spent in court and an increase in convictions.” [..]
According to the guidelines officers are to wear a sign and to announce: “I am video recording you.”‘
‘Google’s Security team has discovered vulnerabilities in the Sun Java Runtime Environment that threatens the security of all platforms, browsers and even mobile devices.
“This is as bad as it gets,” said Chris Gatford, a security expert from penetration testing firm Pure Hacking.
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“It’s a pretty significant weakness, which will have a considerable impact if the exploit codes come to fruition quickly. It could affect a lot of organizations and users,” Gatford told ZDNet Australia. [..]
According to Gatford, the bugs threaten pretty much every modern device.’
‘[..] I had recently read a few articles on submersion cooling, where you take your computer and dump it into a tub of non-electrically-conductive oil. It seemed to work really well, and was cheap. So I saw it as a type of poor man’s water-cooling.
I bought a large aluminium oven tray and 9 litres of canola oil.’
‘Police in Iran are reported to have taken 14 squirrels into custody – because they are suspected of spying.
The rodents were found near the Iranian border allegedly equipped with eavesdropping devices. [..]
The IRNA said that the squirrels were kitted out by foreign intelligence services – but they were captured two weeks ago by police officers.
A Foreign Office source told Sky News: “The story is nuts.”‘
‘A man has been arrested after an armoured personnel carrier (APC) was taken on a rampage in Sydney’s western suburbs.
Mt Druitt police on patrol discovered the armoured vehicle destroying an electricity substation in Sterling Road, Minchinbury, at about 2am (AEST) today.
They followed the APC through several suburbs, including Mt Druitt, Dharruk, Emerton, Glendenning and Plumpton.
The APC left a path of destruction, bringing down a number of mobile phone towers and relay sheds, police said.
The pursuit ended in Dean Park after about 90 minutes, when the vehicle stalled as it was being driven towards another mobile phone tower.’
This prompt used to annoy the crap out of me. Not anymore, hopefully. 🙂
