Archive for the 'Technology' Category
China: Prisoners Forced to Play Video Games to Earn Credits That Prison Bosses Exchange for Real Money
May 26th, 2011Except for the forced physical labor part, this sounds strangely similar to the lives of many IT workers I used to know. They would sell digital game shit on eBay to make extra money, but these men and women (yes, women) really just lived to play video games. Gaming was a sort of digital drug […]
France Attempts to “Civilize” the Internet; Internet Fights Back
May 25th, 2011Via: Ars Technica: For some time, French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy has talked about his dream of a “civilized” Internet, but this dream has long been a nightmare for those who worry that “civilization” is really a code for “regulations favorable to big business and the national security state.” To make his vision a reality, Sarkozy […]
Facebook Is Coming for Your Children
May 23rd, 2011Via: Today: Wearing the mantle of education reform, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told attendees at a recent summit on innovation in education that, “My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age.” A really, really good way to do that, Zuckerberg said, is to let kids […]
NSA Collects as Much Data as Is Stored in the Entire Library of Congress Every Six Hours [???]
May 23rd, 2011I try to avoid the black/grey/white propaganda narratives surrounding the alleged Bin Laden assassination. The whole thing is so absurd that it’s just impossible for me to take it seriously at all. However, in my routine monitoring of stories about the NSA, I came across the claim that the agency is processing an amount of […]
China Expands Export Quotas of Rare Earth Metals
May 20th, 2011Via: BBC: China has expanded export quotas for rare earth metals, further tightening its grip on the minerals used in a number of high-tech electronics. From Friday, iron alloys containing more than 10% of rare earths will fall under the export quota, the commerce ministry said in a statement. Rare earths are a collection of […]
Researchers Cancel SCADA Hacking Presentation After Department of Homeland Security’s ICS-CERT and Siemens Raise Concerns
May 19th, 2011Via: NSS Labs Press Release: Dillon Beresford, security researcher at NSS Labs, who was scheduled to present at TakedownCon 2011 on SCADA vulnerabilities chose to withdraw his presentation at the 11th hour after collaborative discussions with ICS-CERT and Siemens regarding the serious consequences it may have to human lives and the world at large. The […]
Air Force Wants to Track You Forever With a Single Camera Click
May 19th, 2011Via: Wired: Don’t bother with the iris scanner or the fingerprinting machine. Leave the satellite-enabled locators and tell-tale scents back on the base, military manhunters. If an Air Force plan works out as planned, all you’ll need to track your prey is a single camera, snapping a few seconds of footage from far, far away. […]
The Secret Sharer
May 17th, 2011Yet again, we learn that there was a desire to generate dossiers on people that, besides the Internet, financial transactions and telephone surveillance data, included physical tracking information. Bill Binney, the NSA employee who led the team that created the ThinThread system (described below), also alleges that all email “transmitted in America” is archived and […]
‘We are 100% certain that governments will start banning bitcoins in the next 12 to 18 months.’
May 16th, 2011Well, they can’t stop people from transferring bitcoins to each other. As long as the Internet exists, bitcoins can be sent and received around the world. The governments, however, can shut down exchanges that handle national fiat currencies in and out of bitcoins. I wonder if people will continue to be use bitcoin after the […]
Arcimoto Electric Vehicles: Made in Eugene, Oregon
May 16th, 2011Arcimoto
