Digital Culture
Cornell Tech researchers Vitaly Shmatikov and Martin Georgiev claim web URL shorteners are built on predictable syntax that can be searched and identified in a potential breach of privacy.
The academics studied URL shorteners – including those created by Google, Bit.ly and Microsoft – finding that attackers could find private documents and foist malware by enumerating pre-existing addresses with ease, and that well-resourced adversaries could find out existing URLs of all shortening services.…
…For the full story of the invention of the computer mouse, we’ll begin by backtracking slightly to a British engineer whose invention was subsequently classified as a military secret and hidden from the public.…
Joyce Vogelman Taylor, of Potwin, Kansas, has been on the receiving end of years of harassment over an Internet mapping glitch that defaulted IP address locations to her farmhouse… Her home only contains an old Gateway computer that is used by Taylor to type up her monthly Sunday school lesson for the nearby Hillside Christian Church.…
…On Ethereum, the same types of services offered by companies like Facebook, Google, Ebay, and Amazon, will be provided instead by computers distributed around the globe. But how does Ethereum bring together these scattered nodes into one network? By using the groundbreaking organizational system known as a blockchain, which The Economist has aptly dubbed "the trust machine."…
A robot, operating on the behalf of the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs, has been accused of harassing students at the Ivy League Brown University in the US after it attended a discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The incident has been branded "dystopian" by a student group.
The debating cyborg, operated by one of the right-wing group's directors, Shahar Azani, was accused of "policing academic discourse" at the Rhode Island university, the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz reported.…
THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT filed a motion this morning asking a federal court to compel Apple to help the FBI hack into an iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooter suspects.… Apple responded on Friday evening saying the FBI changed the password to Farook’s phone and then forgot it.… Apple could have recovered information from the iPhone had the iCloud password not been reset,…
Legislation permanently banning taxes on Internet services is headed for President Obama’s desk.
The Senate voted 75-20 Thursday afternoon to approve a conference bill on customs and border policy that includes the ban, the last step needed before it is signed by the president.…
Ousted Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich has a new Internet browser, and it’s nothing less than you’d expect from the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of the company behind FireFox.… aims to “fix the Web.” How? By blocking everything except the content you explicitly want. That means no ads, no cookies, nothing that you haven’t personally requested from the Internet.…
When most people visit BackgroundAlert, they are surprised by the amount of personal information that is available for anyone to search.
Simply enter someone's name and BackgroundAlert will instantly search over 37 billion public records from thousands of federal, state and commercial databases to provide you with a background report with tons of personal details.
With the click of a mouse you can now have access to anyone's criminal records, arrest history, marriage records, divorce records, address history, known relatives, associates, licenses, sex offenders search, mug shots and the list goes on and on.…
Hello Barbie," the world's first artificial intelligence-enabled Barbie doll, has become both the subject of delight for little girls and fear for some parents, worried their children's privacy could be at stake.…
Huma Abedin Just Joined Twitter. Hilarity Ensued. (DO NOT CLICK If You Can't Deal With Inappropriate Humor. Seriously. Just Don't.)
'If the internet goes down, half the planet will come to a standstill': why 'preppers' will be the last ones standing…
Here are the latest standings of conservative news and opinion sites, which are ordered using theirAlexa traffic rankings. Yes, some of these are center-right, libertarian, or more middle-of-the-road sites, but they are included because they do publish center-right opinion pieces on a regular basis.
…Starting next month, the e-commerce giant will pay independent authors based on the number of pages read, rather than the number of times their book has been borrowed.
The move is aimed at authors enrolled in Kindle Direct Publishing platform - which lets authors set list prices, decide rights and edit the book at any time - and is applicable to ebooks made available via the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners' Lending Library programs.…
[viral tweet by conservative comedian Evan Sayet…] My favorite drawings at the Muhammad cartoon festival in Texas were the two chalk outlines out front. … [Sayet regrets:]
"I only regret we live in a society where a joke at the expense of would-be mass murderers is something that anyone thinks I have to defend. And, again, the Leftists have accomplished their goal. Who is really irreverent here, me in a silly tweet about would-be mass murderers or those who sought to assault that which SHOULD be revered, the First Amendment right — the HUMAN right — of free speech?"
…The decision makes it a lot harder for producers to be hit with aggressive infringement lawsuits. The company that owns the patent in question, Personal Audio, says it invented podcasting. In 2013, it began going around to podcast-makers, threatening to take them to court unless they paid a licensing fee. … "We’re glad the Patent Office recognized what we all knew: ‘podcasting’ had been around for many years and this company does not own it," said Daniel Nazer, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which called for the patent's invalidation. …
A December blackout of North Korea’s Internet was retaliation for that nation’s hacking of computers at Sony Corp.’s Hollywood studio, a top U.S. lawmaker on cybersecurity issues said without identifying who was responsible.
Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, on Tuesday became the first U.S. official to link the outage as reprisal for disrupting computers at Sony Pictures Entertainment.
…Alex has two favourite things, riding his bike and superheroes. But Alex has a birth defect, his right arm is only partially formed making it difficult to ride his bike. Limbitless… builds 3D-printed bionic limbs for disabled children… enlisted a fairly special friend to [give Alex his bionic arm].
[I can imagine a 7yo thinking, I know he's just an actor who plays genius inventor Tony Stark in the movies, but he brought me a real bionic arm! Don't know which is cooler, that I've got a bionic arm, or that I got it from Iron Man!]
"…Remarkably, the computer science class at Brenham High School used a design on the Internet and a $1500 3D printer to build Kaedon a new hand. …"
"Combining CNC (Computer Numerical Control) technology with embedded face recognition and tracking software, the system dispenses layers of batter directly onto a hot plate allowing the creation of detailed and complex images within the pancake surfaces. As the conventional pancake batter is applied it immediately starts to cook and change colour and as subsequent layers are added the different tonal qualities of the image build up. …"
"…CoeLux has developed an LED light that impeccably recreates the appearance of sunlight — so well that both human brains and cameras can’t tell the difference…."
…The letter claims that Google has been confusing America with 2016: Obama’s America, which was D’Souza’s first movie and has been out of theaters for two years, while Lionsgate released America on July 2 and it is currently playing in about 1,100 theaters nationwide. Google, according to the letter, has been "misdirecting many users who mistakenly believed the film was not playing in theaters. We understand this was brought to your attention for correction five days ago, yet the problem persists." …
Andrew Lampart found he couldn't access the National Rifle Association's website while on campus at Connecticut's Nonnewaug High School. But he could go to pro-gun control sites just fine. Investigating further, he found the state Republican Party's website was blocked, but not that of the Democratic Party. Anti-abortion websites were blocked, but not those of pro-choice groups. Christian websites, including that of the Vatican, were blocked, but not Islamic websites.
"Disguisable weapons wanted," says the ad. Hilarity ensues. [Graphic record at link.]
…privacy advocate Julian Oliver, member of a group called "Stop The Cyborgs…" published a simple computer program that can detect when Glass is being used and stop it from connecting to a network. That in turn means that Glass can't access cloud servers and apps….
Hackers apparently based in Iran have mounted a three-year campaign of cyber-espionage against high-ranking U.S. and international officials, including a four-star admiral, to gather intelligence on economic sanctions, antinuclear proliferation efforts and other issues. … "What they lack in technical sophistication, they make up in creativity and persistence."
Mozilla recently forced its CEO, Brendan Eich, to resign over his personal support for traditional marriage. The firing followed a vicious smear campaign against Eich by dating website OKCupid, in which OKCupid blocked Mozilla users from visiting their website….
The online-only vote will take place Oct. 27 in Canada, when Leamington, Ontario, will become the first Canadian municipality to cast all ballots via an Internet-only voting process. … The municipality’s website says “this sole method of voting follows Council’s strategic plan to be environmentally friendly and to embrace technology.”
Google may be on its way out as the dominant player in search, according to one analyst — and could even "disappear" in as little as five to eight years if the competitive pressures that ultimately claimed other search giants start to take root.
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