Some employees with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who work in the Washington, D.C. area and in Philadelphia, PA were unable to access the DHS computer network on Tuesday, reports Reuters , citing “three sources familiar with the matter.” (more…)
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U.S. Homeland Security staff were unable to access DHS computer network because the security certificates expired
It’s called Cayla , it’s about a foot tall, and it can be used to listen to and talk to the child playing with it. But who is doing the listening? Anyone in Bluetooth range, reports Germany’s Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). An official watchdog in Germany has told parents to destroy a talking doll called Cayla because its smart technology can reveal personal data. … The Vivid Toy group, which distributes My Friend Cayla, has previously said that examples of hacking were isolated and carried out by specialists. However, it said the company would take the information on board as it was able to upgrade the app used with the doll. But experts have warned that the problem has not been fixed. The Cayla doll can respond to a user’s question by accessing the internet. For example, if a child asks the doll “what is a little horse called?” the doll can reply “it’s called a foal”. Watch the BBC’s video of Cayla, in its squeaky, sinister voice, say “I’ve been hacked to say all sorts of scary things.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Y2KUN6XPM Cayla was on Boing Boing last year when the FCC received complaints about it. Cayla is on Amazon for $45 . It’s so easy to hack that everyday YouTubers are at it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvMb_TusPPs
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Germans warned to DESTROY Cayla, network-connected doll that spies on children
The GPD Pocket is a wee laptop with a 7″ high-dpi touchscreen display and an enticing $399 price tag. It’ll be light on power, with an Intel Atom CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, but promises about 12 hours on a charge and two USB ports, one of them type C. There’s a ThinkBook-style tracknipple in lieu of a trackpad. It’ll run Ubuntu or Windows 10 and, somehow, they managed to sneak a headphone jack on there. (more…)
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The world’s littlest laptop is yours for $399, but is it the ultimate writers’ gadget?
China’s Ministry of Public Security said today that starting on Friday–tomorrow–at one airport then at others, the government will begin recording fingerprints of each foreign visitor upon arrival. China is ramping up security along its borders, according to reports in state media. (more…)
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China to require fingerprints of all foreign visitors as new security step
In 1913, English mathematician G.H. Hardy received a package from an unknown accounting clerk in India, with nine pages of mathematical results that he found “scarcely possible to believe.” In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we’ll follow the unlikely friendship that sprang up between Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, whom Hardy called “the most romantic figure in the recent history of mathematics.” We’ll also probe Carson McCullers’ heart and puzzle over a well-proportioned amputee. Show notes Please support us on Patreon!
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The story of Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan
John Collins holds the Guinness World Record for designing the farthest flying paper airplane. The plane, folded from a single piece of A4 paper, flew 69.14 meters in 2012. Harvard University made this video of Collins folding his masterpiece during a recent visit with Harvard’s design engineering graduate students. More designs at The Paper Airplane Guy .
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How to fold a World Record-winning paper airplane
Zuck That says, “Have you ever been on the Internet when you came across a checkbox that says “I’m not a robot?” In this video, I explain how those checkboxes (No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHAs) work as well as why they exist in the first place.” I mention CAPTCHA farms briefly, but the idea behind them is pretty straightforward. If a company wants to create an automatic computer program to buy 1,000 tickets to an event or make 1,000 email accounts, they can make a script that fills out the form one at a time, and when the program gets to a CAPTCHA, it will send a picture of it to a CAPTCHA farm where a low-wage worker will solve it and send the answer back to the computer program so that it can be used to finish filling out the form.
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How "I’m not a Robot" checkboxes work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCON4zfMzjU Hyperloop One engineers demonstrate the power of maglev using spinning arrays atop a copper plate. Despite weighing over 100 pounds, the gadget floats and could hold considerably more weight. (more…)
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This maglev quadcopter hints at transportation’s future
Rich countries have low birthrates (in part because they have more rights for women, and women who can control their bodies and fates choose to have fewer children on average than women who live in poor countries with fewer rights for women); Japan, one of the most xenophobic of all the rich countries, has the killer combination of a near-total ban on immigration from poor countries (where all the young people are) and a high standard of living. (more…)
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Unprecedented: Japan’s population has declined by 1 million in 5 years
Imagine the horror being trapped in a hostile landscape surrounded by snowflakes that were one objects of amusement but now form a blizzard of menacing proportions. Then smile because you’re not a fascist, and are merely stuck on a polar icebreaking vessel for 10 hours. 10 hours video of Arctic ambience with frozen ocean, ice craking, snow falling, icebreaker idling and distand howling wind sound. Natural white noise sounds generated by the wind and snow falling, combined with deep low frequencies with delta waves from the powerful icebreaker idling engines, recorded at 96 kHz – 24 bit and designed for relaxation, meditation, study and sleep.
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10 hours of ambient noise from an icebreaker in the frozen arctic