Read moreSome of the inmates teach me their particular “skills” in exchange for my time. One of them, in trade for teaching his daughter to read, showed me how to kill someone with a shoelace. Basically, all you have to do is hold the shoelace in such a way that when you shake someone’s hand, his index finger gets caught in a little noose. Then you pull sharply, he loses his balance, and you twist the shoelace around his neck and pull as hard as you can. The prisoner who showed me this technique is a really tiny guy, but he can do it in one swift move. It’s crazy to watch, almost like a magic trick.
Quotes
Read moreWho is the Bitcoinbillionaire? We messaged the account to ask for more details, and have not received an answer at the time of writing (we’re not sure we expect one either, the account is clearly a throwaway and they undoubtedly got a lot of messages).
There are snippets of information: he or she claims that they were an “early adopter”, and had forgotten they even had any Bitcoins. “I am bitcoin,” he or she wrote in a moment of megalomania.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), backed by Google and MIT, uses a set of onboard cameras to scan the skies for so-called exoplanets orbiting bright and nearby stars. Its objective is to discover terrestrial planets — ranging in size from Earth equivalents to gas giants — within habitable regions of space. TESS will deploy techniques similar to those used by the Kepler telescope, which has thus far identified more than 2,700 potential exoplanets, though its scope will be much broader.
“TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission,” MIT’s George Ricker, TESS’ principle investigator, said in a statement. “It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.”
NASA to launch planet-hunting mission with Google-backed satellite | The Verge
– can’t wait for Google Galaxy Maps
When 30 Rock lands on the cover of Rolling Stone, when any television show is lionized for being “smart,” someone’s laughing all the way to the bank — some company, it used to be General Electric, but now it’s Comcast. That there’s a difference between any of this shit is the greatest joke that television ever told. I mean, as the creator of Community, I’m telling you: It’s all garbage. And the idea that my garbage, y’know, needed a better time slot or deserved an Emmy or didn’t deserve an Emmy, the idea that it was better or worse than 30 Rock or Arrested Development or Freaks and Geeks and all that shit — you only have to take a couple steps back before you realize that you’re looking at a bunch of goddamn baby food made out of corn syrup. It’s just a big blob of fucking garbage. The medium is dispensed to people who can’t feed back, can’t change it, who only get it in 20-minute chunks interrupted by commercials, and you’re watching either really well-written jokes or so-so-written jokes or terribly written jokes, but you’re just watching jokes written by a bunch of people who all have one thing in common: They’re not allowed to say whatever they’re thinking! They’re not allowed. You’re definitely not getting truth; you’re getting lies. Now, so why does this concept of “meta” and smart TV and snobbery — like, why does it offend people? Why can’t you just say, “I don’t like that show; it’s not my cup of tea. I prefer this show”? Because we’re programmed to hate ourselves for being stupid. We are told that the goal is to be smart, and to differentiate between good and bad, and then we are told, from left to right, what is good and bad, and then we are told to go at each other’s throats. And that’s why, if a television show like Community has an element to it where someone says, “This feels a lot like a television show,” you can’t just ignore that — you can’t just take it or leave it. You have to violently — like, it’s a political issue. It’s like, you gotta fight it; you gotta hate it.
Dan Harmon (via azspot)
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Read moreThese days, the Surui are perhaps the most technology-savvy tribe in the Amazon. Their chief is among the most traveled of Indian leaders, one who has journeyed as far away as Dubai and Indonesia to lobby for international partnerships to save the rainforest in the Surui’s reserve.
Read moreDespite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a “top priority” this year.
The 350m Varga is expected to dock at Milford Haven in Wales to supply Britain with 266,000 cubic metres of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Another tanker, the Mekaines, docked at the Isle of Grain in Kent yesterday. Both vessels have come from Qatar. Together they carry enough gas to meet Britain’s needs for just 12 hours.
The continuing wintry weather had depleted gas reserves to about 10 per cent of capacity – enough to supply the country for just 36 hours. Stored gas is used as a back-up, so low reserves do not mean an imminent blackout. The Government has insisted gas supplies will not run out despite the extended cold snap. The Energy minister, John Hayes, has admitted that storage levels are low and has also told the National Grid to increase the flow of gas from Norway and the North Sea.
The country is currently working at 40 per cent above its usual gas capacity for this time of year and the price of gas hit record levels of 150p per therm (100 cubic metres) on Friday after a key pipeline between the UK and Belgium temporarily broke down.
Increasing gas insecurity has made the UK an attractive market for Qatari gas.
Britain’s big freeze: Qatari tankers sail to the rescue of UK gas supply crisis as snow and ice sets in – Home News – UK – The Independent (via iamdanw)
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We should all heed his warning as we are all rapidly becoming immortal though electronic tattooing. As we all post more and more information on who we are, what we do, like, dislike, think, and say, a big data portrait emerges that gets ever harder to lose, modify, erase. In a big data world we don’t just leave breadcrumbs behind, we voluntarily and involuntarily leave giant, detailed pointillist portraits of our everyday.
Been said a million different ways now, but this is the best metaphor I’ve heard so far.
(via wreckandsalvage)
Read moreMost new users of the internet in poor countries will be connecting to it via mobile phones. So, according to an intriguing piece by David Talbot in the MIT Technology Review, “Facebook and Google are … persuading wireless carriers in poor countries to offer customers free or very cheap online access that is limited to stripped-down versions of the web giants’ sites. The idea is that once these new users get some experience in a walled garden of Facebook or Google, they will want more internet access and pay for it, making the carriers’ initial investment worthwhile.”
It’s a smart strategy, and it will have one predictable outcome, namely, that many new users of the internet from poor countries will think that Facebook (or Google) is the Internet. This would be a particularly pernicious outcome for those who find themselves inside Facebook’s walled garden, because it’s much more comprehensively fenced than anything yet constructed by Google.
Read moreFor example, when a Mercedes-Benz driver requests data from the internet, this is processed via an external Daimler back end server. The data then move to the car via a secure virtual private network connection.
Many carmakers now offer customers downloadable apps such as via Toyota Motor’s Touch, Ford’s Sync and Chrysler’s Uconnect systems. However, these tend not to be fully open but rather offer a limited number of secure, approved apps.
Mr Hoheisel, at Bosch, says: “At the moment we don’t have open app stores in the car industry – these are really protected and shielded systems.”
A Ford spokesman says that “the safety, privacy and security of our customers is paramount” and therefore any software updates are “code-signed” and must be recognised as coming from Ford in order to update its Sync system.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 