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More than 500 officers smashed their way into thousands of safety-deposit boxes to retrieve guns, drugs and millions of pounds of criminal assets. At least, that’s what was supposed to happen. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark investigate.

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Deirdre Walker, a 24-year police veteran who retired after serving as the Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police writes up a recent interaction with the TSA in the Albany airport, subjecting it to critical policing analysis and finding it sorely, sorely wanting. This is a very good critical piece on conducting [...]

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Earlier this week we learned that Netflix streaming was coming to the PS3; it already works with your Xbox 360, so it’s only natural that Netflix streaming is on its way to the Wii gaming console in short order. Looks like the Wii should be good for more than just hacking for homebrew very soon.

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A friend of mine, and many commenters here and elsewhere, had issues receiving, downloading, or simply executing the $30 “student” Windows 7 upgrade. Microsoft has admitted some issues, and now offers tools for getting your upgrade done.
Assuming you’ve picked up your license from a valid .edu address, you can burn the ISO image below to [...]

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Today, EFF is launching our new ‘Takedown Hall of Shame’ project, which collects the worst and most shameful examples of bogus DMCA takedowns. We’ve got everything from the recent Ralph Lauren takedown to Michael Savage’s attempts to silence critics to a video NPR tried to remove just last week!
“Free speech in the 21st century often [...]

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Here’s a video for a new book that I received from the publisher a couple of days ago called Rules for My Unborn Son, by Walker Lamond, based on his entertaining blog 1,001 Rules for my Unborn Son.
The Lamond’s rules are good advice for sons, as well as anyone else, really. I wish my wife [...]

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Meeting scheduling service When is Good looked at 100,000 responses to 34,000 events logged to their service over 2 years and found that 3pm—specifically Tuesday at 3pm—seems to be the most agreeable time for a meeting.
When Is Good, a free service, goes into a lot more detail about why some folks might be more receptive [...]

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Are you already feeling some ill will toward Facebook for splitting up your Facebook home page with a split “News Feed” and “Live Feed”?
Click “More” in your left-hand News Feed panel, then drag the “Status Updates” to the top of the update stack. Refresh your home page, and you’ll notice your default feed is a [...]

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Play This Thing reviews Brutal Mario, a Tarantino-esque Super Mario World hack that sounds like an incredible hoot to play…
This is obviously a labor of love, as the developer knows her stuff. This game is highly allusive and drops constant references to other works like its Gaiman’s Sandman. Super Mario World is its core, but [...]

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I often get email from writers who are starting out asking for career advice for “breaking in” to the field. I’m somewhat helpless to answer these queries — my first professional sale was more than a decade ago, that sale itself represented a further decade of hard work on both my craft and my career. [...]

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Celebrate the launch of Windows 7 by illegally downloading your very own copy!

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Today only, Amazon.com offers the ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO AMD Phenom II X3 2.8GHz Barebones Kit for $279.99 with free shipping. That’s a $59 drop and, excluding rebates, the lowest total price we could find for such a bundle. Billed as a “gamer bundle,” this kit includes an ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO socket AM3 motherboard, AMD Phenom [...]

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A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. A collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, taken from my book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th).
Of course, the political spectrum is not quite so polarised. Actually, it’s more of a diamond shape, apparently. But this is how it’s mostly presented via the [...]

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Do you have a mental picture? No? Well, here it is, courtesy NASA.

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Robin Barooah gradually weaned himself off coffee and found that his concentration actually improved. He explains how he did it and what he discovered on the Quantified Self blog, which covers news about self-testing and self-monitoring.
As part of a separate experiment, I have been keeping track of the amount of time I spend working on [...]

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Vermonters have long stood behind their right to bear arms, boasting some of the highest rates of gun ownership and the least restrictive gun laws in the country. Currently the only state that allows its citizens to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, it may soon be the first to require a permit for [...]

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