Researchers at Incapsula have discovered a botnet that runs on compromised CCTV cameras. There are hundreds of millions, if not billions, of these in the field, and like many Internet of Things devices, their security is an afterthought and not fit for purpose. (more…)
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Botnets running on CCTVs and NASs
In the French city of Grenoble, there are unusual vending machines that don’t dispense soda or snacks — they print out short stories that look like paper receipts instead. These machines were built by a publishing company called Short Édition , which placed eight of them in public locations (such as the city hall and libraries) as part of a pilot project. Each dispenser has 1-minute, 3-minute and 5-minute buttons, so readers can choose how long their stories are, all of which were written by members of the Short Édition community. Company co-founder Christophe Sibieude told Agence-France Presse that his team came up with the idea while in front of a chocolate candy machine: “We said to ourselves that we could do the same thing with good quality popular literature to occupy these little unproductive moments.” Best thing about these story dispensers is that they’re free, giving residents something to do if ever they get tired of poking on their phones or want to read the old school way. Via: PSFK Source: Short Edition , Konbini
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Short story vending machine promises old-school distractions
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Mimic implements a devilishly sick idea floated on Twitter by Peter Ritchie: “Replace a semicolon (;) with a Greek question mark (;) in your friend’s C# code and watch them pull their hair out over the syntax error.” There are quite a few characters in the Unicode character set that look, to some extent or another, like others – homoglyphs. Mimic substitutes common ASCII characters for obscure homoglyphs. Caution: using this script may get you fired and/or beaten to a pulp. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Mimic, the Evil Script That Will Drive Programmers To Insanity
The video starts slow, just a magnified view of the belly of a female scorpion. Be patient. Something amazing is about to happen. Slowly, as you watch, she’ll push her first baby out of her genital opening into the embrace of her “birth basket”–made by flexing her front two pairs of legs. Read more…
The $150 Smarter Ikettle lets you start your water boiling from anywhere in the world over the Internet — and it also contains long-term serious security vulnerabilities that allow attackers to extract your wifi passwords from it. (more…)
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Putting your kettle on the Internet of Things makes your wifi passwords an open secret
(credit: Jason Farrar ) The Federal Communications Commission is about to face another lawsuit, this time over a vote to cap the prices prisoners pay for phone calls. Yesterday’s vote came after complaints that inmate-calling companies are overcharging prisoners, their families, and attorneys. Saying the price of calls sometimes hits $14 per minute, the FCC has now capped rates at 11¢ per minute. “None of us would consider ever paying $500 a month for a voice-only service where calls are dropped for seemingly no reason, where fees and commissions could be as high at 60 percent per call and, if we are not careful, where a four-minute call could cost us a whopping $54,” FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said before yesterday’s vote. Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Prison phone companies fight for right to charge inmates $14 a minute
LichtSpektren writes: Ubuntu 15.10 “Wily Werewolf” is now released and available, along with its alternative desktop flavors (MATE, Xfce, LXDE, GNOME, KDE, Kylin). This release features Linux 4.2, GCC 5, Python 3.5, and LibreOffice 5. The default version is still using X.org display server and Unity7; Mark Shuttleworth has said that Mir and Unity8 won’t arrive until Ubuntu 16.04 “Xenial Xerus.” Not much has changed beyond package updates, other than replacing the invisible overlay scrollbars in Nautilus with the GNOME 3 scrollbars. Phoronix brings us the only bit of drama regarding this release: Jonathan Riddell, long time overseer of Kubuntu, has resigned with claims that Canonical has “defrauded donors and broke the copyright licenses.” Another reader adds a link to a Q & A session with Riddell. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ubuntu 15.10 ‘Wily Werewolf’ Released
Custom furniture maker Craig Thibodeau created this showpiece “Automaton Table” to illustrate all the different ways that he can hide secret compartments in the pieces he builds. (more…)
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Astounding showpiece table full of hidden compartments nested in hidden compartments
Twitter’s new CEO Jack Dorsey has enough cash to go round. So much so, in fact, that he’s announced that he’s giving one-third of his stock holdings in the social media company to his employees. Read more…
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Is Giving $200M of His Twitter Stock to Staff
Earlier this year, the Record Industry Association of America began to pursue Pandora on behalf of record labels to seek royalties for the use of tracks recorded before 1972. Now, it’s reached a settlement that will see Pandora stump up $90 million for using the songs. Read more…
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Pandora Has to Stump Up $90M For Its Use of Pre-1972 Songs