short – Page 2 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Paleobiologists unearth camel remains in Canadian Arctic

When Canadian Museum of Nature paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski dug up what turned out to be camel bones in a High Arctic ridge in Canada, she recalls thinking: “This is something kind of off the charts.” She was right. Those bones belonged to the first camel ever found in the High Arctic . “The humped creatures once roamed in forests that extended as far north as Ellesmere Island 3.5 million years ago during a global warm spell that the scientists say holds important lessons for the modern world.” [National Post]

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Paleobiologists unearth camel remains in Canadian Arctic

Delicious giraffe found in South African snacks

British diners shocked to find mystery horsebeef in their meals can take heart: South Africans have learned that their own burgers contain donkey. And then there’s the giraffe meat in the antelope snacks .

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Delicious giraffe found in South African snacks

TESCO attaches tracking armbands to employees

Salon : “The Irish Independent reports that grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity, tracking their actions so closely that management knows when they briefly pause to drink from a water fountain or take a bathroom break. These unforgivable lapses in productivity impact workers’ performance score, which management then apparently uses to terrify them into working faster.”

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TESCO attaches tracking armbands to employees

Exploit was active on LA Times site for 6 weeks

“The Los Angeles Times has scrubbed its Web site of malicious code that served browser exploits and malware to potentially hundreds of thousands of readers over the past six weeks,” reports Brian Krebs . The paper’s statement on the matter is a model of how not to handle security clusterfucks.

U.K. “beef lasagne” made entirely of horse meat

What happens when you wed French suppliers and British standards? “The meat content of some beef lasagne products recalled by Findus was up to 100% horsemeat , the Food Standards Agency has said.” [BBC]

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U.K. “beef lasagne” made entirely of horse meat

USPS ending saturday letter delivery

Ron Nixon: “The Postal Service is expected to announce on Wednesday morning that it will stop delivering letters and other mail on Saturdays, but continue to handle packages , a move the financially struggling agency said would save about $2 billion annually as it looks for ways to cut cost.” [NYT]

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USPS ending saturday letter delivery

Newegg nails ridiculous “shopping cart” patent

At Ars Technica , Joe Mullin recounts the tale of a shameless patent troll and its recent loss in court to online retailer Newegg : “Soverain isn’t in the e-commerce business; it’s in the higher-margin business of filing patent lawsuits against e-commerce companies. And it’s been quite successful until now. The company’s plan to extract a patent tax of about one percent of revenue from a huge swath of online retailers was snuffed out last week by Newegg and its lawyers, who won an appeal ruling that invalidates the three patents Soverain used to spark a vast patent war.”

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Newegg nails ridiculous “shopping cart” patent

White House quotes Vader

Responding to a successful petition requesting the construction of a Death Star, the White House responds with ” This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For “, an explanation of the station’s formidable construction costs and poor bang-for-the-buck: “Remember, the Death Star’s power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”

TSA again weighs possibility of using commercial data to profile air travelers

The ACLU points to the TSA’s recently-issued “ Market Research Announcement ,” “in which the agency expresses a desire to expand its Pre-Check whitelist program by allowing private companies to carry out risk analysis of Americans that would determine whether they are ‘trusted’ enough to participate in the trusted traveler program.” If this comes to pass, it would represent a big step toward transforming the TSA’s Pre-Check whitelist into the sort of passenger profiling system proposed under the Bush Administration post-9/11.

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TSA again weighs possibility of using commercial data to profile air travelers

Tracking Oscar screener piracy, the 2013 edition

Since 2003, Waxy.org ‘s Andy Baio has been documenting evidence of pirated/leaked Oscars screeners— in other words, copies of nominated films sent to Academy Awards voters which then make their way on to filesharing networks. The 2013 edition of his spreadsheet is out . He’ll post analysis tomorrow. “Most shocking find so far,” he tweets , “The Les Misérables screener hasn’t leaked online yet. Everyone knows pirates love musicals!”

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Tracking Oscar screener piracy, the 2013 edition