ADSL was a miracle when it debuted, delivering high speeds over old copper, thanks to a protocol that was so adaptable to suboptimal media that it was said it could run “over a piece of wet string.” (more…)
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You can run DSL over wet string
The Pineapple Fund was started by some nice person whose early acquisition of bitcoins made him a multimillionaire. He’s donating $86 million to different charities, including the EFF (who gets $1 million) FAQ Who are you, and why? Sometime around the early days of bitcoin, I saw the promise of decentralized money and decided to mine/buy/trade some magical internet tokens. The expectation shattering returns of bitcoin over many years has lead to an amount far more than I can spend. What do you do when you have more money than you can ever possibly spend?Donating most of it to charity is what I’m doing. For reference, The Pineapple Fund is bigger than the entire market cap of bitcoin when I got in, and one of the richest 250 bitcoin addresses today. How many bitcoins do you have? The Pineapple Fund represents a majority of my cryptocurrency holdings. Why are you remaining anonymous? Publicity has never been the point of this fund. I’m an individual. Can I get some bitcoins? The answer is no. Pineapple Fund is charity, but not that kind of charity. Please do not apply or email. We have never funded an individual request and we never will. Why the name, Pineapple Fund? I like pineapple. The only bad thing about pineapple is you can’t eat too much 🙁
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An anonymous person with $86 million in bitcoin is giving it to charity
Critics hate The Orville , Seth McFarlane’s uncanny love letter to Star Trek and The Next Generation , but they love the gloomy, ultra-2017 Star Trek: Discovery . Viewers love The Orville , though, while remaining divided on and indifferent to the new official series. The critics are mistaken; the viewers are right. I was surprised at how intimately Seth McFarlane — Seth McFarlane! — is tuned into Gene Roddenberry’s sense of humanity’s future potential and why it’s OK to have a shipful of lovers. It’s TNG with dick jokes! And, let’s face it, the time is right for some happy technocommie utopian SF.
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The Orville is better than Star Trek: Discovery
The kindly North Korean government is doing its part to contribute to quantitative easing by printing US$100 bills that are nearly indistinguishable from the ones printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Let’s hope this eases tensions between the two countries! From The Telegraph : “It seems that whoever printed these supernotes has the facilities and high level of technology matching that of a government”, Lee Ho-jung, a bank spokesman said. “They are made with special ink that changes colour depending on the angle, patterned paper and Intaglio printing that gives texture to the surface of a note”. Another bank source told The Hankyoreh newspaper, “To print supernote-level forgeries, you need a minting corporation-level production line in place, which costs hundreds of billions of won. “This makes if difficult for ordinary criminal organisations to produce them”. Earlier versions of supernotes have been around for at least 15 years, with US government officials estimating in 2006 that as much as $250 million worth of fake $100 bills could be in circulation worldwide. … In the past, North Korea was believed to distribute the bills overseas through criminal groups and by transporting them abroad through the diplomatic pouch to embassies from where they could be slipped into circulation.
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North Korea makes the best counterfeit $100 bills
A Justice department attorney representing the people owed money by Toys R Us doesn’t believe the bankrupt corporation should pay lavish bonuses to the same executives who drove the toy store chain into the ground. From Judy Robbins filing: “It defies logic and wisdom, not to mention the Bankruptcy Code, that a bankrupt company would now propose further multi-million dollar bonuses for the senior leadership of a company that began the year with employee layoffs and concludes it in the midst of the holiday season in bankruptcy. Apparently, this Christmas, Toys “R” Us intends to deliver not only ‘children their biggest smiles of the year’ but the insiders, too.” Nevertheless U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Keith Phillips approved the payouts. From CW39 : Because Toys “R” Us filed for bankruptcy in September, it must now must get court approval for many of its basic business decisions. These new bonuses will be in addition to another $8.2 million in retention bonuses paid to some of these same executives before Toys “R” Us filed for bankruptcy. They would be required to return the retention payments should they quit the company within a year of receiving them.
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Toys R Us is bankrupt, but top execs are cleared to receive $16 million in bonuses
With nearly 183 million views since June, this Thai music video is the top globally trending video of 2017, according to YouTube. It’s called “Until we become dust” and it’s performed by a singer in a full silver and white costume whose head is elaborately masked in oyster shells and pearls. The mysteriously-garbed musician is competing in a strange Thai TV singing show called ” The Mask Singer .” Here are the show’s rules : The contestants are broken up into four groups, each group containing 8 masked celebrities. Each episode consists of two pairs of battling contestants, up until the final for each group, where the contestants perform a duet before battling it out. The winner reveals their identity in the last episode of each season… The contestants are prompted to sing a song of their choice and design a unique costume with a team of designers. Each costume covers the entirety of the contestant’s body… The identity of each contestant is kept confidential. When they arrive at the studio, staff members bring them cloaks to conceal their identity. Before filming the show, each contestant has to sign a contract ensuring they keep their identity a secret. During rehearsals, their voices are modified. The staff members who are authorized to know contestants’ identity such as makeup artists, costume designers, the director, and studio staff, have signed contracts to keep it confidential. When editing the footage and audio, they lock the doors to stop anyone from looking through. Later, according to CNBC , the masked celebrity was revealed to be singer Pandavaram Prasarnmitr of the Thai rock band, Cocktail. Here’s one of their music videos where you can see what he looks like without oyster shells on his face: https://youtu.be/UsnIyScLe-s
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A mysterious Thai singer performing in an oyster costume is the top YouTube video for 2017
Etsy engineer Samantha Goldstein made a small wooden earring to hold her YubiKey 4 Nano , a tiny USB two-factor authentication device. From Motherboard : She laser cut wood and acrylic for the base, and then used sterling silver for the posts. The key slides into the base portion for safe keeping. Goldstein plans to put up a small batch for sale later this week on her Etsy store . “Between my work badge and my phone (and sometimes my computer) I’m lugging around a lot of accessories all the time,” Goldstein told me in a Twitter direct message. “I wanted a way to carry around a Yubikey but not burden myself with one more thing to carry in my hands.” Working late in the labs on these yubikey earrings! eeee! pic.twitter.com/fDto5kSDwZ — *:･ﾟ✧ Samantha ✧･ﾟ:* (@samantha_gold) December 5, 2017
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Woman makes earring to store her two-factor authentication device
Matthew Combs, a Fordham University Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station grad student worked with colleagues from Fordham and the Providence College Department of Biology to sequence the genomes of brown rats in Manhattan, and made a surprising discovery: the geography of rats has a genetic correlation, so a geneticist can tell where a rat was born and raised by analyzing its DNA. (more…)
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New York’s rat population has genetically diverged into "uptown" and "downtown" subspecies
Chris Vickery from Upguard found an Army Amazon Web Services instance with no password or encryption, containing 100GB of data on a defunct NSA program called Red Disk. (more…)
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US Army doxes itself, reveals $100 million NSA spy program that got flushed before it was ever used
Walks in Rome is an interactive map project that updates and modernizies a famous 1870 guidebook of Rome by August Hare. (more…)
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Cool interactive map of Rome’s landmarks and related literary musings