If you like the new look of Lion, you’re out of luck on a Mac but oddly in luck if you own a Windows 7 PC. Lion Skin Pack is an easily installable set of GUI customizations for Windows 7 that make Windows look just like the next generation Mac operating system. More
Now, although there is likely to be a little flare-up of concern regarding this issue over the next couple days, it’s not so much the potential privacy breach I’m worried about as not knowing what tools the police have at their disposal. In this case, although this device might potentially be used for less-than-ethical purposes, the important part is simply raising awareness of the availability of such a device and how it pertains to your rights.
The report concerns a device, apparently Cellbrite’s UFED Physical Pro, billed as a “mobile forensics” tool. It basically does everything it can to get by security measures on phones to access call records, pictures, and so on. Very useful, as you can imagine, in an investigation where, say, a kidnapping victim’s phone might reveal their last location.
But the ACLU is concerned the devices could be used (though I see no suggestion that they are) on routine traffic stops after coercing drivers or passengers into surrendering their phones. Certainly a potential risk, but not one that appears to have occurred much, if at all. They’re useful devices that could easily be misused &mdsah; kind of like guns, which of course we don’t allow police to have, right?
The more troubling part is that the police are asking for half a million dollars to share information on the program. Now that’s ridiculous. We should all know our rights well enough to refuse an unreasonable search, but it’s important to know what the police may ask of us as well. The police are public servants and should serve this information up publicly as soon as they are asked.
Taxpayers need to know how their money is being used, and as citizens, we should know how our laws are being enforced, how the information acquired is kept private, and so on. It’s as simple as that, and with luck the courts will bear it out.
[via Reddit and The Truth About Cars]
Read the article:
ACLU Looking Into Mobile Phone Scanner Being Used By Michigan Police
These are the remains of a “desert kite”, a giant animal corral built out of stones some 5,500 years ago. They were effectively the world’s first slaughterhouses, as dozens of animals at a time were herded inside and killed. More
These are the remains of a “desert kite”, a giant animal corral built out of stones some 5,500 years ago. They were effectively the world’s first slaughterhouses, as dozens of animals at a time were herded inside and killed. More
These are the remains of a “desert kite”, a giant animal corral built out of stones some 5,500 years ago. They were effectively the world’s first slaughterhouses, as dozens of animals at a time were herded inside and killed. More
These are the remains of a “desert kite”, a giant animal corral built out of stones some 5,500 years ago. They were effectively the world’s first slaughterhouses, as dozens of animals at a time were herded inside and killed. More
nanoflower followed up on a recent story about the unpredictable future of data storage. That story talked about Western Digital buying Hitachi, leaving just 4 players. Now:
“Yet another hard drive company is going by the wayside, as Seagate is buying the Samsung HDD unit. Seagate is buying the unit for $1.375 billion (half in stock, half in cash.)”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
See original article:
Samsung HD Unit Bought By Seagate
If you’re an HBO subscriber, the upcoming HBO Go app will let you stream HBO’s entire catalog of very excellent shows and various movies to iOS and Android devices. More
This image of baby leaf veined slugs, taken by evolutionary genetics Ph.D. student David Winter, is oddly adorable. And Winter’s story of his quest to figure out what leaf veined slugs eat is oddly fascinating. Apparently, there’s a surprising amount we don’t know about slug behavior. Slug diets, in particular, are a black box about which very little is definitively documented.
Sure enough, searching through the literature on the 30 or so species of leaf veined slug in New Zealand, there is no indication of what it is that they eat. That was too depressing for me, we know so little about the biology of our native invertebrates, but this species (Athoracophorus bitentaculatus) isn’t particularily rare, we should at least know what this one eats.
So, I took to stepping outside an night time, finding a couple of slugs, and placing them in a bucket. In the morning I’d move them back to the shrubs from which they’d been plucked and collect [from the bucket] a few fecal samples to inspect …
The Atavism blog: The Sight of a Wild Slug Eating
Via hectocotyli
Read the article:
Baby slugs, and what they eat
