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Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook

Jun 27, 2016

10 stabbed, beaten at white nationalist rally in California

yahoo.com

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Ten people suffered stab wounds and other injuries on Sunday after members of a white nationalist group that planned to rally outside the California state Capitol building in Sacramento clashed with a larger group of counter protesters, authorities said. The fight broke out when…

Jun 27, 2016

Inside the World of Large-Scale Food Heists

eater.com

muratart/ Shutterstock On March 26, 2013, Veniamin Balika pulled his 18-wheeler over at the New Jersey Turnpike's Vince Lombardi rest area. The reprieve didn’t last long, as Balika soon found himself handcuffed and arrested by state policemen. The driver didn't have anything too suspicious in his…

Jun 27, 2016

Why Fruits and Veggies Are So Crazy Cheap in Chinatown

wsj.com

Last week, while shopping at a tiny produce market on Mott Street, Giselle Isaac found a crazy bargain: fresh ginger for 50 cents a pound. She promptly stuffed a plastic bag to bursting with the pungent root. “I’m West Indian and we make a lot of ginger beer,” she explained. “This is the cheapest…

Jun 27, 2016

The “Cobra Effect” that is disabling paste on password fields

troyhunt.com

Back in the day when the British had a penchant for conquering the world, they ran into a little problem on the subcontinent; cobras. Turns out there were a hell of a lot of the buggers wandering around India and it also turned out that they were rather venomous which didn’t sit well with the…

Jun 27, 2016

A personal tour of MAD magazine, in the crucible of a young life

polygon.com

The front door was as white and blank as a new refrigerator's, its only sign a small, typewritten label taped above the vertical mail slot by the the doorknob: PLASTICMAN ENTRANCE "This must be MAD ," said my father. Inside the lobby of MAD magazine was an orange naugahyde couch, an old standing…

Jun 27, 2016

US Customs wants to collect social media account names at the border

theverge.com

Mark Wilson/Getty Images Your Twitter handle may soon be part of the US visa process. Yesterday, US Customs and Border Protection entered a new proposal into the federal register , suggesting a new field in which persons entering the country can declare their various social media accounts and screen…

Jun 27, 2016

Massive Ocean Garbage Collector to Be Tested in North Sea

abcnews.go.com

A Dutch foundation aimed at removing plastic pollution from the world’s oceans launched a prototype of a new clean-up system yesterday in the North Sea. The prototype is a 100-meter long barrier system, "which acts as an artificial coastline, passively catching and concentrating ocean debris," The…

Jun 27, 2016

Senate GMO Labeling Deal Would Ban State Requirements

agweb.com

Republicans and Democrats on the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee have struck a deal that would create the first nationwide standard for foods containing genetically modified organisms. Under the agreement, consumers may still have difficulty figuring out if the food they are buying is genetically…

Jun 24, 2016

Senators Reach Deal On National GMO Labeling Bill

npr.org

A new disclosure statement on a package of peanut M&Ms candy notes they are "partially produced with genetic engineering." Lisa Rathke/AP Just a week before a Vermont law kicks in requiring labels on food containing genetically modified ingredients, U.S. Senate agriculture leaders announced a deal…

Jun 24, 2016

From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story

arstechnica.com

Who did you share your cell with? In Brooklyn, I shared my cell with a young American IT guy. We could talk for days. We played soccer barefoot just to fill in the time. The worst thing was if you didn’t get tired during the day that meant you couldn’t sleep. What did you do in the prison in…

Jun 24, 2016

China Wants to Build a Deep Sea 'Space Station'

motherboard.vice.com

China's plans to secure sovereignty over the South China Sea were illuminated this week in a discovery of the nation's blueprints for a deep sea "space station." The manned deep sea platform would sit 9,800 feet under disputed waters in the South China Sea, and would be a key resource in China's…

Jun 24, 2016

China Tops U.S. in Supercomputers | EE Times

eetimes.com

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A new supercomputer in China—the first made with processors designed and made in the People’s Republic—has been ranked the world’s most powerful system by far. The news comes as China tops the U.S. for the first time in both the number and performance of systems on the latest…

Jun 24, 2016

Private prisons are shrouded in secrecy. I took a job as a guard to get inside—then things got crazy

motherjones.com

Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Chapter 1: “Inmates Run This Bitch” H ave you ever had a riot?” I ask a recruiter from a prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). “The last riot we had was two years ago,” he says over the phone. “Yeah, but that…

Jun 24, 2016

154 million voter records exposed, revealing gun ownership, Facebook profiles, and more

dailydot.com

When we eventually get to look back on 2016, we might be tempted to label it “The Year of Leaking Voter Lists.” The year began with many people distraught to learn that a database with voter registration records of 191 million voters had been exposed online. Voter registration lists include name,…

Jun 23, 2016

Politicians have a powerful new tool in Periscope, and democracy is better off for it

theverge.com

In March of last year, shortly after live-streaming via smartphones became a genuine phenomenon, Dan Pfeiffer declared that 2016 would be " the Meerkat election ." "Whether it is Meerkat, Periscope or someone else," wrote Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Obama, "the potential for a…

Jun 23, 2016

The world’s best sleepy-time media — Track Changes

trackchanges.postlight.com

In 2016 it is a normal thing to go to bed with earphones in your ears and your phone playing something soothing. Washes of noise are never far away—for example, you can listen to crashing waves on Spotify (that track I just linked has nearly 14 million listens). Personally I find that just too…

Jun 23, 2016

Teaching machines to predict the future

news.mit.edu

The left-most column shows the frame before the action begins, with the algorithm's prediction below it. The right columns show the next frames of the video. Image: Carl Vondrick/MIT CSAIL Full Screen Given an input frame (left), the deep-learning model has multiple neural networks that each predict…

Jun 23, 2016

Watch Syrian Refugees Preserve Their National Monuments in Miniature

citylab.com

Syrian Refugees Are Preserving Their National Monuments in Miniature Laura Bliss Jun 21, 2016 A new short film captures refugee artists carefully modeling treasured Syrian sites destroyed by war. The Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan is home to 80,000 Syrians forced from their homeland by…

Jun 23, 2016

Rise of Darknet Stokes Fear of The Insider — Krebs on Security

krebsonsecurity.com

With the proliferation of shadowy black markets on the so-called “darknet” — hidden crime bazaars that can only be accessed through special software that obscures one’s true location online — it has never been easier for disgruntled employees to harm their current or former employer. At least, this…

Jun 23, 2016

California's skyrocketing housing costs, taxes prompt exodus of residents

mercurynews.com

Living in San Jose, Kathleen Eaton seemingly had it all: a well-paying job, a home in a gated community, even the Bay Area’s temperate weather. But enduring a daily grind that made her feel like a “gerbil on a wheel,” Eaton reached her limit. Skyrocketing costs for housing, food and gasoline, along…

Jun 23, 2016

Uber Hacking: How we found out who you are, where you are and where you went! | INTEGRITY Labs

labs.integrity.pt

What can be more exciting than being authorized to test one of the most hyped companies in 2016? Here at Integrity we love to be challenged, so whenever there is some free time, there is encouragement to do research or to break some things ( https://labs.integrity.pt/advisories/ ) in addition to…

Jun 23, 2016

Battle of the Secure Messaging Apps: How Signal Beats WhatsApp

theintercept.com

This spring, text messages got a lot more private. In April, the world’s most popular messaging service, WhatsApp, announced it would use end-to-end encryption by default for all users, making it virtually impossible for anyone to intercept private WhatsApp conversations, even if they work at…

Jun 23, 2016

New Solar System Internet Technology Debuts on the International Space Station

nasa.gov

This month, NASA took a major step toward creating a Solar System Internet by establishing operational Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) service on the International Space Station. The DTN service will help automate and improve data availability for space station experimenters and will…

Jun 23, 2016

Russia Lights It Rockets With a Giant Match

popularmechanics.com

"Really!? Russians light up their rockets with a giant match?" This was a question from one of my Twitter followers who'd seen a photo of a culprit in the aborted launch attempt of a Russian Soyuz rocket Saturday, when mission control called the abort just moments before takeoff because of an…

Jun 23, 2016

Apple confirms iOS kernel code left unencrypted intentionally

social.techcrunch.com

When Apple released a preview version of iOS 10 at its annual developers conference last week, the company slipped in a surprise for security researchers — it left the core of its operating system, the kernel, unencrypted. “The kernel cache doesn’t contain any user info, and by unencrypting it we’re…

Jun 23, 2016

Mir Spacecraft: Worst collision in the history of space flight

bbc.com

In June 1997, an unmanned supply vessel crashed into the Mir space station. The collision meant that the station began to leak air. The astronauts on board desperately tried to seal the leak. Michael Foale was one of the astronauts on board at the time. He spoke to Witness about surviving a crash in…

Jun 23, 2016

Act Out! [68] - The Gun Policy we Haven’t tried that Just Might Work & People vs. Pipelines - YouTube

youtube.com

Oops, your web browser is no longer supported. YouTube works with a wide range of browsers. However, if you'd like to use many of our latest and greatest features, please upgrade to a modern, fully supported browser. Find the latest versions of our supported browsers below. This message is based on…

Jun 23, 2016

Every Sperm Whale Alive Today May Have Descended From the Same Female

smithsonianmag.com

There’s no denying that sperm whales are amazing. As some of Earth’s largest mammals, they have the largest brain of any creature on the planet and can weigh up to 45 tons. But it turns out that the most impressive secrets of these huge animals are found in something much smaller: Their DNA. As John…

Jun 22, 2016

'Seismic strain': Land around the San Andreas fault is rising and sinking, new earthquake research shows

latimes.com

For the first time, scientists have produced a computer image showing huge sections of California rising and sinking around the San Andreas fault. The vertical movement is the result of seismic strain that will be ultimately released in a large earthquake. Advertisement > The San Andreas fault is…

Jun 22, 2016

Federal Judge Strikes Down Obama Administration's Fracking Rules

npr.org

A fracking site is situated on the outskirts of town in the Permian Basin oil field in the town of Midland, Texas. Spencer Platt/Getty Images ... regulation of an activity must be by Congressional authority, not administrative fiat. U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl A federal judge in Wyoming has…

Jun 22, 2016

India lightning strikes leave 93 people dead - BBC News

bbc.com

At least 93 people have been killed and more than 20 injured by lightning strikes in the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, officials say. Most of the people who died were working on farms during torrential rains on Tuesday, reports said. Lightning strikes are…

Jun 22, 2016

Mobile Advertising Network InMobi Settles FTC Charges It Tracked Hundreds of Millions of Consumers’ Locations Without Permission | Federal Trade Commission

ftc.gov

Singapore-based mobile advertising company InMobi will pay $950,000 in civil penalties and implement a comprehensive privacy program to settle Federal Trade Commission charges it deceptively tracked the locations of hundreds of millions of consumers – including children – without their knowledge or…

Jun 22, 2016

Where have all the iOS games gone? | The Grunting Ox

minotaurproject.co.uk

Gosh it’s been ages since I have posted anything on here. Anyway I see this question coming up a lot in my twitter stream so I thought I’d post a reply here that I can link to when it comes up. We spent two years doing games on iOS and in the end we stopped doing them because the income generated…

Jun 22, 2016

Tech Companies Fight Back After Years of Being Deluged With Secret FBI Requests

theintercept.com

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and technology and internet companies have been waging a little-known war for years over how much information companies are obligated to hand over about customers during national security investigations — absent a court order. In early…

Jun 22, 2016