Friday Demotivator: Mindfuck July 31, 2009
Posted by Joey in Demotivator.Tags: Demotivator, Mindfuck
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Or not.
“Cash For Clunkers” Program Clunks To Halt July 30, 2009
Posted by Joey in Automobiles, Bailout, Government, Politics.Tags: Cash for Clunkers
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Looks like auto buyers like sucking on the government tit, as the “cash for clunkers” program has already run out of funds.
‘Clunkers’ Auto Rebate Plan So Popular It’s Broke.
After an unanticipated level of response from car shoppers seeking new auto discounts under the “cash for clunkers” program, the government was reported Thursday evening to have exhausted the funds available, leaving unclear whether further applications would be accepted.
The National Automobile Dealers Association surveyed its members in recent days and told the Transportation Department Thursday that it had a very large backlog of applications, according to Bailey Wood, a spokesman for the association.
Late in the day the group said the Transportation Department had responded by telling it to stop taking applications at midnight. Both the government and the dealers were concerned that buyers would drive off the lot assuming they had a big rebate that would not, in fact, be available.
The Transportation Department had no official comment on Thursday, but in the evening, a White House official, who refused to be identified, said that the program had not, in fact, been suspended. The dealers’ group said, though, that the last instructions it had were to cut off applications at midnight Thursday.
Will Civil Disobedience End Traffic Cameras? July 29, 2009
Posted by Joey in Culture, Government, Politics, Technology.Tags: Civil Disobedience, Red Light Cameras
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It seems people around the world realize that traffic cameras are nothing but a cash cow for grossly overfunded governments.
UK, California and New York Destroy Traffic Cameras.
Traffic cameras smashed in Fremont, California; grabbed in New York City, New York; burned in West Yorkshire, UK.
Two men bashed a red light camera with a baseball bat in Fremont, California on Wednesday at 11:45pm, the Fremont Bulletin reported. The device, owned and operated by Australia’s Redflex Traffic Systems, is located at the intersection of El Portal Avenue and Niles Boulevard. Police have no suspects.
On the next day in West Yorkshire, England, vigilantes set fire to a speed camera at 11:40pm, the Huddersfield Examiner reported. The device located on Woodhead Road in Lockwood was severely damaged.
Jailbreaking Your iPhone “Threatens National Security” July 28, 2009
Posted by Joey in Culture, Gadgets, Internet, Software, Technology.Tags: Apple, iPhone, Jailbreaking
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Ooooh! Jailbreaking your iPhone is “threatens national security”, says Apple. I guess that makes you a terrorist if you jailbreak your phone.
I’m just saying…
iPhone Jailbreaking Could Crash Cellphone Towers, Apple Claims.
The company’s filing explained that jailbreaking could allow hackers to altering the iPhone’s BBP — the “baseband processor” software, which enables a connection to cell phone towers.
By tinkering with this code, “a local or international hacker could potentially initiate commands (such as a denial of service attack) that could crash the tower software, rendering the tower entirely inoperable to process calls or transmit data,” Apple wrote the government. “Taking control of the BBP software would be much the equivalent of getting inside the firewall of a corporate computer — to potentially catastrophic result.
“The technological protection measures were designed into the iPhone precisely to prevent these kinds of pernicious activities, and if granted, the jailbreaking exemption would open the door to them,” Apple added.
Threat Level had no idea the iPhone was so dangerous. We’re gratified that Apple locked down this potential weapon of mass disruption before hackers could unleash cybarmageddon. This also explains why Apple rejected the official Google Voice App for the iPhone this week. We thought it was because Google Voice posed a threat to AT&T’s exclusivity deal with Apple. Now we know it threatened national security.
Drug War Simmers Beside War on Terror July 28, 2009
Posted by Joey in Economics, Politics, War On Some Drugs, War on Terror.Tags: Afghanistan, Ahmed Wali Karzai, Hamid Karzai, Taliban, War on Drugs, War on Terror
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The DEA is in Afghanistan, allegedly to cut off poppy production. That’ll be quite a trick, since Hamid Karzai’s brother is running the poppy production in Afghanistan.
I won’t go off on a rant about the drug war, I’ll just point out that If opium were legal, the Taliban wouldn’t be able to use it as a cash crop to fund their insurgency.
U.S Drug Agents Target Afghan Poppy Pushers : NPR.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is beefing up its presence in Afghanistan, sending dozens more agents to go after caches of opium that are a main source of money for Taliban insurgents.
The DEA is also drawing up a list of the top 10 or 20 narco-traffickers in Afghanistan, and plans on working with Afghan officials to track them down and arrest them.
“One year ago we had 13 personnel in Afghanistan working counter-narcotics,” says Jay Fitzpatrick, a DEA assistant regional director who is based in the Afghan capital of Kabul. “We’re in the process of increasing the number of personnel to 81. We hope to be at that ceiling by December.”
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the Taliban makes hundreds of millions of dollars off the burgeoning opium trade in Afghanistan, as much as $400 million, that helps them buy weapons and pay local Afghan citizens, who need a job and might not necessarily agree with Taliban ideology. Military officers call them “$10 Tabies” because they are only in it for the money.
Is Swimsuit Technology To Blame for Phelps’ Defeat? July 28, 2009
Posted by Joey in Sports.Tags: Arena X-Glide, Michael Phelps, Paul Biedermann, Speedo LZR Racer, Swimming
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The swimming world is in an uproar over high-tech swimsuits worn by world-class swimmers. These suits are to be banned. Real soon now.
Biedermann Stuns Phelps Amid Debate Over Suits.
After the 400 freestyle, Biedermann acknowledged that his Arena X-Glide suit was an advantage. He said it makes him “really fast; honestly, about two seconds in the race.” He added, “I think the suits are destroying a little bit the sport. It’s just, put on a suit, and you’re really, really fast.”
He won’t get an argument from Phelps, who wears the less buoyant Speedo LZR Racer. Phelps appeared miffed after the race. An hour before the final, officials with FINA, the sport’s international governing body, held a press conference to announce that the suits would soon be banned, but not soon enough to please anybody except perhaps the Italian-based swimsuit manufacturers Jaked and Arena.
The ban on polyurethane suits was ratified, as were the guidelines for how much skin the racing suits can cover. When the new rules go into effect, suits will stretch only between the waist and the knees for men and from the shoulders to the knees for women. And yet, there is no firm date for when the reforms will take effect.
A Somali Pirate on the Economics of Pirating July 28, 2009
Posted by Joey in Economics.Tags: Gulf of Aden, Pirate Economics, Somali Pirates
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A shockingly frank interview about the economics of pirating in the Gulf of Aden.
Exclusive Interview: Pirate on When to Negotiate, Kill Hostages.
How do you know a ship in far away coast in the first place and its flagship?
Often we know about a ship’s cargo, owners and port of origin before we even board it. That way we can price our demands based on its load. For those with very valuable cargo on board then we contact the media and publicize the capture and put pressure on the companies to negotiate for its release.
From what I’ve seen, initial demands tend to be about 10 times the previous publicized ransom, is this a rule of thumb?
We know that we won’t get our initial demands, but we use it as a starting point and negotiate downwards to our eventual target. But as a rule, yes, that’s about right.
Does the length of a hijacking change the ransom that pirates are willing to accept?
Yes. Armed men are expensive as are the laborers, accountants, cooks and khat suppliers on land. During long negotiations our men get tired and we need to rotate them out three times a week. Add to that the risk from navies attacking us and we can be convinced to lower our demands.
Under what conditions would you kill the hostages?
Hostages — especially Westerners — are our only assets, so we try our best to avoid killing them. It only comes to that if they refuse to contact the ship’s owners or agencies. Or if they attack us and we need to defend ourselves.
Big Bro Is Still Listening July 27, 2009
Posted by Joey in Internet, Politics, War on Terror.Tags: GnuPG, James Bamford, NSA, PGP, TrueCrypt, Zfone
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It’s a good thing that the NSA, like so many government agencies, is so incompetent, or there’d be nothing left of our freedom.
For more detailed info on the NSA after 9/11, see James Bamford’s book, The Shadow Factory.
Here’s how to protect yourself:
The NSA is still listening to you.
This summer, on a remote stretch of desert in central Utah, the National Security Agency will begin work on a massive, 1 million-square-foot data warehouse. Costing more than $1.5 billion, the highly secret facility is designed to house upward of trillions of intercepted phone calls, e-mail messages, Internet searches and other communications intercepted by the agency as part of its expansive eavesdropping operations. The NSA is also completing work on another data warehouse, this one in San Antonio, Texas, which will be nearly the size of the Alamodome.
The need for such extraordinary data storage capacity stems in part from the Bush administration’s decision to open the NSA’s surveillance floodgates following the 9/11 attacks. According to a recently released Inspectors General report, some of the NSA’s operations — such as spying on American citizens without warrants — were so questionable, if not illegal, that they nearly caused the resignations of the most senior officials of both the FBI and the Justice Department.
Last July, many of those surveillance techniques were codified into law as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act (FAA). In fact, according to the Inspectors General report, “this legislation gave the government even broader authority to intercept international communications” than the warrantless surveillance operations had. Yet despite this increased power, congressional oversight committees have recently discovered that the agency has been over-collecting on the domestic communications of Americans, thus even exceeding the excessive reach granted them by the FAA.
