Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, “I just got back from the big debate on is free law like free beer that has been brewing for months at the American Bar Association over the question of who gets to read public safety codes and on what terms.” (more…)
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American Bar Association votes to DRM the law, put it behind a EULA
University of California San Diego nanoengineers developed a flexible, wearable sensor that measures the blood alcohol level of its wearer and transmits the info to a mobile device. From UCSD News : The device consists of a temporary tattoo—which sticks to the skin, induces sweat and electrochemically detects the alcohol level—and a portable flexible electronic circuit board, which is connected to the tattoo by a magnet and can communicate the information to a mobile device via Bluetooth. The device could be integrated with a car’s alcohol ignition interlocks, or friends could use it to check up on each other before handing over the car keys, he added. “When you’re out at a party or at a bar, this sensor could send alerts to your phone to let you know how much you’ve been drinking,” said Jayoung Kim, a materials science and engineering PhD student. ” Noninvasive Alcohol Monitoring Using a Wearable Tattoo-Based Iontophoretic-Biosensing System ” (ACS Sensors)
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Electronic temporary tattoo measures how drunk you are
The world’s first psychedelic computer enters the universal library. And it all runs in the browser, meaning you’ll never have to hunt for Workbench disk images again.
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Vast collection of Amiga games, demos and software uploaded to Internet Archive
A team led by Ang Cui ( previously ) — the guy who showed how he could take over your LAN by sending a print-job to your printer — have presented research at Defcon, showing that malware on your computer can poison your monitor’s firmware, creating nearly undetectable malware implants that can trick users by displaying fake information, and spy on the information being sent to the screen. (more…)
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1 billion computer monitors vulnerable to undetectable firmware attacks
After the July 3 suicide bomb that killed 300 people in Baghdad, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi banned the use of the ADE 651. a fake bomb detector made by British fraudsters, who claimed the gadgets could detect bombs, ivory, drugs, and golf balls. The Iraqi military had purchased $60 million worth of the bogus devices. The founder of the company that made the useless devices is in prison serving a ten-year sentence. I think he should spend a lot more time than that behind bars, since a great many people died by putting their trust in the devices. ABC News Faced with mounting criticism, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an investigation into the effectiveness of the devices in 2010. The outcome was inconclusive, and they continued to be used. The head of the Interior Ministry’s bomb squad department, Jihad al-Jabri, was convicted in 2012 and sentenced to four years in prison for accepting a bribe from the British manufacturers. But the case against him did not address whether the wands were effective. Many Iraqis believe he was a scapegoat to protect more senior Iraqi officials from prosecution. Politics also may have played a role. After the July 3 blast, al-Abadi fired the military officer in charge of Baghdad’s security and accepted the resignation of Interior Minister Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban, who was in charge of police.
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Iraq stops using $60,000 dowsing rods for bomb detection
A day after an expensive, multinational police effort to remove KickAssTorrents from the net culminated in the arrest of its founder and the confiscation of its domains, the inevitable happened . It’s back online. This morning the founder of kat.cr was arrested in Poland. It is another attack on freedom of rights of internet users globally. We think it’s our duty not to stand aside but to fight back supporting our rights. In the world of regular terrorist attacks where global corporations are flooded with money while millions are dying of diseases and hunger, do you really think that torrents deserve so much attention? Do you really think this fight worth the money and resources spent on it? Do you really think it’s the real issue to care of right now? We don’t! You don’t have to believe the rhetoric to understand how futile it is trying to push cybertoothpaste back in the cyberbottle. Effectively, all the attempt did here was turn an underground piracy site into a mainstream phenomenon, its mirrors linked to by every major news site on the internet.
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Kickass Torrents returns after a whole day offline
In 1924, representatives of the world’s leading lightbulb manufacturers formed Phoebus, a cartel that fixed the average life of an incandescent bulb at 1,000 hours, ensuring that people would have to regularly buy bulbs and keep the manufacturers in business. (more…)
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For 90 years, lightbulbs were designed to burn out. Now that’s coming to LED bulbs.
Who will be the first to say, “I saw it immediately. I don’t understand why anyone would have trouble finding it?” [ via ]
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Can you find the iPhone that a woman dropped on the carpet?
Legendary automaker Porsche may have mistakenly swapped two screws in its 918 Spyder hybrid-hypercar’s seat belt system. Thinking of the customer, Porsche has voluntarily recalled their $850k practical, about town race car. Via Autoevolution : A mistake in the original parts catalog for the Porsche 918 Spyder has led to a recall of the hybrid hypercard. Porsche 918 SpyderAccording to Porsche, the printed document unwittingly transposed the locations for the screws which tighten the seat belt mount and the belt reel mount. Since those screws are one-time-use only, and are also not the same, technicians who had to work on them might have unintentionally installed the wrong screw in the wrong position. Because of this mishap in the original parts catalog, which has since been corrected, there is a risk of some Porsche 918 Spyder models having wrong screws fitted to their seatbelt mounts and seat belt reel mounts.
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Porsche screws up
Awaroa beach — which was open to all — in New Zealand’s Abel Tasman National Park was privately held by Michael Spackman (a businessman embroiled in complex financial shenanigans ) who had decided to sell it; two New Zealanders, fearing that the new owners would use it as a private beach, started a crowdfunding campaign that raised about NZ$2.3m from some 40,000 people to buy it and donate it to the country’s national parks system. (more…)
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New Zealanders raise millions to buy beach and donate it to the public