Right-Wing German Extremists Tricked By Trojan Shirts

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday August 11, @01:05AM 

from the rinse-relax-repeat dept.

gzipped_tar writes"Fans at a recent right-wing extremist rock festival in Germany thought they were getting free T-shirts that reflected their nationalistic worldview. But after the garment's first wash they discovered otherwise. The original image rinsed away to reveal a hidden message from an activist group. It reads: 'If your T-shirt can do it, so can you. We'll help to free you from right-wing extremism.'"

Court Rules Sending Too Many Emails Is "Hacking"

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 10, @03:02PM 

from the if-you-send-it-more-than-twice-your-hacking-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes"An appeals court has ruled that having people send a company a lot of emails (in this case, a union protesting a company's business practices) qualifies as hacking under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. We're not even talking about a true DDoS action here, but just a bunch of protest emails. Part of the problem is that the company apparently set up their email to only hold a small number of emails in their inbox, and the court seems to think the union should take the blame for stuffing those inboxes."

Narcissism May Benefit the Young, Researchers Report; But Older Adults? Not So Much

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2011) — We all know one, or think we do: the person whose self-regard seems out of proportion to his or her actual merits. Popular culture labels these folks "narcissists," almost always a derogatory term. But a new study suggests that some forms of narcissism are -- at least in the short term -- beneficial, helping children navigate the difficult transition to adulthood.
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Antioxidant Spices, Like Turmeric and Cinnamon, Reduce Negative Effects of High-Fat Meal

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2011) — Eating a diet rich in spices, like turmeric and cinnamon, reduces the body's negative responses to eating high-fat meals, according to Penn State researchers.
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Pulling a Fast One: How Do Consumers React to Zippy Disclaimers?

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2011) — Consumers react negatively to most quick disclaimers at the end of ads, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. But if the fast disclaimer comes from a trusted company, they'll let it slide.
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IBM Plays SimCity With Portland, Oregon

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 10, @08:13AM 

from the enjoy-your-godzilla-and-wildfires dept.

Hugh Pickens writes"Portland, Oregon will be the first city to use IBM's new software called Systems Dynamics for Smarter Cities, containing 3,000 equations which collectively seek to model cities' emergent behavior and help them figure out how policy can affect the lives of their citizens. The program seeks to quantify the cause-and-effect relationships between seemingly uncorrelated urban phenomena. 'What's the connection, for example, between ... obesity rates and carbon emissions?' writes Greg Lindsay. 'To find out, simply round up experts to hash out the linkages, translate them into algorithms, and upload enough historical data to populate the model. Then turn the knobs to see what happens when you nudge the city in one direction.' One of the drivers of the 'Portland Plan' is the city's commitment to a 40 percent decrease in carbon emissions by 2030, which necessitates less driving and more walking and biking. After running the model, planners discovered a positive feedback loop: More walking and biking would lead to lower obesity rates for Portlanders. In turn, a fitter population would find walking and biking a more attractive option. But as the field of urban systems gathers steam, it's important to remember that IBM and its fellow technology companies aren't the first to offer a quantitative toolkit to cities. In the 1970s, RAND built models they thought could predict fire patterns in New York, and then used them to justify closing fire stations in NYC's poorest sections in the name of efficiency, a decision that would ultimately displace 600,000 people as their neighborhoods burned."

Why The US Will Lose a Cyber War

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 10, @09:37AM 

from the not-enough-code-red dept.

An anonymous reader writes"There's not another nation in the world that can wage kinetic warfare as effectively as the United States, and that's probably at the heart of the reason why the United States will lose a war fought in cyberspace, leading cyber security analyst Jeffrey Carr writes."

The London Riots and Facial Recognition Technology

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 10, @02:19AM 

from the digital-mobs-fighting-real-mobs dept.

nonprofiteer writes"A bunch of vigilantes are organizing a Google Group dedicated to using recently revealed facial recognition tools to identify looters in the London riots. While Vancouver discussed doing something similar after the Stanley Cup riots, the city never actually moved forward on it. Ring of Steel London, though, is far more likely to incorporate FRT into its investigative work."A related article points out how development of face-recognition technology has been kept under wraps by some organizations, but we're getting to the point where it'll soon be ubiquitous.

A visualization of US Debt

http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us/

Plug-in Prius pulling into American driveways in February or March of 2012

By Terrence O'Brien  posted Aug 9th 2011 3:47PM

Good new PHV fans, the plug-in Prius you've been promised should start pulling into American driveways in February or March of 2012 -- at least according to a startup date chart at Donlen. The fleet management firm claims initial orders will be taken on November 10th of this year, with the vehicle scheduled to into production in January. An Autoblog tipster also claims to have some rather vague details about trim and color options, as well as its estimated MSRP, which should be below $30,000. Now we've just got to figure out how many extension cords it'll take to reach from our apartment window to the street below.

Patent Troll Lawyer Sanctioned Over Extortion Tactics

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 09, @11:48AM 

from the slap-that-wrist dept.

An anonymous reader writes"For all the stories of patent trolls and copyright trolls, there haven't been too many stories of either being sanctioned for abusive or extortion-like practices... until now. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (one level below the Supreme Court) has approved over $600,000 in sanctions against a lawyer for a patent troll, saying that filing over a hundred lawsuits, each of which was followed up almost immediately with offers to settle at fees much cheaper than it would cost to fight, has the "indicia of extortion." Now if only judges started doing that more often."

Succeeding in School: Stress Boosts Performance for Confident Students, but Holds Back Those With More Anxiety

ScienceDaily (Aug. 9, 2011) — Knowing the right way to handle stress in the classroom and on the sports field can make the difference between success and failure for the millions of students going back to school this fall, new University of Chicago research shows.
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Macs More Vulnerable Than Windows For Enterprise

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 09, @09:32AM 

from the commencing-holy-war dept.

sl4shd0rk writes"At a Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, researchers presented exploits on Apple's DHX authentication scheme which can compromise all connected Macs on the LAN within minutes. "If we go into an enterprise with a Mac and run this tool we will have dozens or hundreds of passwords in minutes," Stamos said. Macs are fine as long as you run them as little islands, but once you hook them up to each other, they become much less secure."

Kill Bill Vol: 2 Quote

Budd:
"They say the number one killer of old people is retirement. People got 'em a job to do, they tend to live a little longer so they can do it. I've always figured warriors and their enemies share the same relationship. So, now you ain't gonna hafta face your enemy on the battlefield no more, which "R" are you filled with: Relief or Regret?"

US map shows which states trend toward iOS versus Android

by Chris Rawson

Aug 6th 2011 at 3:00PM

A report from mobile advertising firm Jumptap has been compiled into a handy map that shows which US states trend toward Android or iOS usage. By measuring ad click stats from the 83 million users on its network, Jumptap determined the areas of the country where more ads were being clicked on Android versus iOS versus BlackBerry.

As the map shows, most of the US west of the Mississippi trends toward Android, while most of the Midwestern and Northeast states are showing iOS dominance. New York, Maryland, and Virginia are hotbeds of BlackBerry activity, which isn't at all surprising considering the preponderance of business and governmental users in those parts of the country. With RIM on the decline, it'll be interesting to see how this map changes over the next couple years.

As GigaOm says, this map could be of use to advertisers who want to target more users in their area. If an advertiser's state is ruled by Android according to Jumptap's stats, it might want to target that platform more aggressively than iOS.

You know what survey result I really want to see? How many of these highly-prized ad clicks are served up by people tapping them accidentally when they're just trying to scroll around a webpage? In my case, it's roughly 100 percent.

Build Your Own Camera, Launch It Like a Grenade

Posted by timothy on Monday August 08, @02:11AM 

from the sorry-about-the-eye dept.

angry tapir writes"Meet the Firefly. Israeli defense contractor Rafael Armament Development Authority calls it a 'revolutionary concept in tactical intelligence,' but really it's a wireless camera that's shot 500 feet in the air by a grenade launcher. And if a couple of hackers at the Defcon hacking convention get their way, soon anyone will be able to buy this type of military grade technology for only US$500."