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Archive for September, 2009
Massachusetts: Cops Need Warrant To Stick GPS Device On Your Car
For the past few years, it's become increasingly common for police to put GPS devices on suspects' cars to track where they are. But, that's kicked up a bunch of legal questions concerning whether or not it's legal to do that without a warrant. So far, the courts have not really agreed. Earlier this year, we saw one court (a federal appeals [...]
Occult historian Mitch Horowitz’s new book Occult America
Mitch's fantastic new book Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation shares a "sacred space" on my bookshelf with works by Manly Hall, Robert Anton Wilson, Charles Fort, Jacques Vallee, and Erik Davis. In fact, Mitch, who is also a book editor/publisher, has revived essential classics by several of those folks. I’m [...]
Here come the airport rectal exams!
Uh-oh. Now that a terrorist has tried unsuccessfully to blow up a Saudi prince with a bomb shoved up his ass, the TSA is obliged to perform rectal exams on every flier for the rest of time. After all, once a jihadi failed to blow up a plane with his shoe, we all needed to start taking our shoes off. Then some knuckleheads believed they could blow [...]
Ron Paul’s Imagine Speech
Those that would give up freedom for security, deserve neither.
Nintendo Wii Game Console w/$25 gift card for $200 shipped
Amazon.com offers the Nintendo Wii Game Console for $199.99 with free shipping. Plus, you'll receive a $25 Amazon.com gift card with your order. That's tied with a mention from two weeks ago (which didn't include the gift card) and is the lowest total price we've seen for a new, factory-sealed unit since July. It includes the Wii console, Wii [...]
German study: Staring at women is as good as 30 minutes in a gym.
The five-year study conducted by Dr. Karen Weatherby, followed 200 men. Those who partook in boob ogling for just 10 minutes a day enjoyed benefits equal to those of 30 minutes of grunting, groaning, sweating and doing push-ups at the gym. Weatherby found that a mere 10-minutes of staring at well-endowed females is roughly the equivalent of a [...]
This text and the one beside it are equal
People tend to have the misconception that making an anagram gets harder the longer the sentence is - the opposite is true. The longer a sentence gets, the more possibilities there are for making small re-arrangements in the anagram to fit the original text. See this famous anagram: To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler [...]
Newly Declassified Files Detail Massive FBI Data-Mining Project
A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, declassified documents obtained by [...]
Really Microsoft?
WTF? If i get invited to a Windows 7 launch party, I'm finding new friends...
Guyot Designs Squishy Bowls
Cool Tools reviewed these cool food-grade silicone bowls and cups from Guyot Designs. For weight- and space-conscious backpackers or car campers, the squishy bowls offer an alternative to old-school non-collapsible aluminum/stainless steel/titanium bowls. And while these food-grade silicone bowls won't stand up to direct fire, they are oven safe [...]
HOWTO: Reproduce a key from a distant, angled photo
Sneakey is a project from Benjamin Laxton, Kai Wang, and Stefan Savage at the UCSD vision lab that has shown that it is possible to duplicate keys from photos taken at a distance and/or an angle. They've published a paper and are offering to release their code if there is "sufficient interest." The access control provided by a physical lock is [...]
Subway yearbook photos from Improv Everywhere
The Subway Yearbook project is the latest bit of fun from the joy-sharing pranksters at Improv Everywhere... We installed a photography studio on a random subway car. We claimed that the MTA had hired us to take photos of every single person who rides the subway and that we'd be producing a yearbook at the end of the year. Most people were happy [...]
AES explained by stick figures
If you've always wondered how AES -- the Advanced Encryption Standard, the gold-standard for crypto -- works, and if you enjoy explanations in stick-figure cartoon form, you are in luck, for Moserware's "A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)" is funny, lucid and fascinating. (more...)
LeBron James signs books in Cleveland
WESTLAKE, OH —LeBron James autographed books for hundreds of fans. Next, they want his signature on a contract extension with the Cavaliers. Ditching his trademark New York Yankees cap for a Cleveland Indians model featuring a smiling Chief Wahoo, James signed copies of his new book, “Shooting Stars” on Friday for fans, some of whom [...]
Netflix is about to commit a privacy Valdez with its customers’ viewing data
How about Netflix's insane new plan to release millions of customers' personal information -- ZIP code, gender, year of birth -- as a sequel to its Netflix Challenge. Latanya Sweeney's famous study on de-anonymizing data has shown that date (not just year) of birth, gender and ZIP are sufficient to personally identify 87% of Americans. In other [...]
MIT’s Project “Gaydar”
They just check to see if you are a fan of Project Runway and a fan of Twilight, if yes (and not 14 year old girl) = gay. Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at [...]
RIAA’s in-school propaganda asks kids to act as unpaid PR staff
The RIAA has updated its Music Rules! school program -- which contains blatant falsehoods about copyright. The new version asks kids to act as unpaid PR staff: "Take your campaign a step further by contacting the editor of your community newspaper or the director of your community cable television station to see if you can submit an article or [...]
Peter Bagge’s Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me
I've been enjoying cartoonist Peter Bagge's contributions to Reason Magazine for years now, which I've always read on their website. But now Fantagraphics has collected them into a great-looking trade paperback! Here's a PDF of a free chapter (link). (more...)
