In a step that will bring the world closer to the realities of The Terminator and Robotjox, researchers in Germany have built a robot that can build its own tools. The only thing that will ensure humanity’s safety at this point is if they are powered by Windows.

[gizmodo]

[TDW Geeks]

Originally Posted By betterbooktitles

betterbooktitles: Christoph Niemann: The Police Cloud Inevitabile.

betterbooktitles:

Christoph Niemann: The Police Cloud

Inevitabile.

130 note

Legal Guinea Pig of the Day: This week, a judge ruled that UK college student Richard O’Dwyer can be extradited to the United States to face charges of copyright infringement.

The 23-year-old is the former administrator of TVShack, a website that linked to pirated video content. The site was taken down following O’Dwyer’s arrest last year.

Though linking to copyrighted content isn’t against the law in Britain, it is in the US. Even though O’Dwyer has never been here, a Westminster judge said that he could face prosecution in the States and up to five years of jail time.

The case sets a harmful legal precedent for trying non-US citizens for crimes committed out of the country (and potentially for extraditing US citizens to foreign countries to face charges for local crimes).

“There’s no safeguards here for British citizens,” O’Dwyer’s mother, Julia, said in response to the ruling.

[TorrentFreak / TheGuardian / image: Mirror]

[TDW Geeks]

Originally Posted By thedailywhat

thedailywhat: Tasty Terror Threat of the Day: A Massachusetts woman says TSA agents at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas confiscated her cupcake because its frosting violated TSA regulations by being too gel-like. “I just thought this was terrible logic,” Rebecca Hains of Peabody told NBC News. The Salem State University communications professor says the red velvet cupcake, which was sealed inside an 8oz mason jar, was a gift from a student. She says TSA agents at Boston’s Logan International Airport let her through without incident. “The TSA agent who saw them, picked them up and said, ‘these look delicious,’ and sent me on my way,” she told 7NEWS. When she confronted the McCarran agents with this fact, she was told that the agents at Logan must not have done their job. A TSA spokesperson said the matter was under review, and that passengers were generally allowed to bring cupcakes onboard with them. “It’s not really about the cupcake; I can get another cupcake,” Hains said. “It’s about an encroachment on civil liberties. We’re just building up a resistance and tolerance to all these things they’re doing in the name of security, when it’s really theater. It is not keeping us safe.” [whdh / overheadbin.] L’enfasi è mia.

thedailywhat:

Tasty Terror Threat of the Day: A Massachusetts woman says TSA agents at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas confiscated her cupcake because its frosting violated TSA regulations by being too gel-like.

“I just thought this was terrible logic,” Rebecca Hains of Peabody told NBC News.

The Salem State University communications professor says the red velvet cupcake, which was sealed inside an 8oz mason jar, was a gift from a student.

She says TSA agents at Boston’s Logan International Airport let her through without incident.

“The TSA agent who saw them, picked them up and said, ‘these look delicious,’ and sent me on my way,” she told 7NEWS. When she confronted the McCarran agents with this fact, she was told that the agents at Logan must not have done their job.

A TSA spokesperson said the matter was under review, and that passengers were generally allowed to bring cupcakes onboard with them.

“It’s not really about the cupcake; I can get another cupcake,” Hains said. “It’s about an encroachment on civil liberties. We’re just building up a resistance and tolerance to all these things they’re doing in the name of security, when it’s really theater. It is not keeping us safe.”

[whdh / overheadbin.]

L’enfasi è mia.

485 note
1 nota

How will .xxx affect online porn?

In case you hadn’t heard (and why should you have), as of Tuesday you can buy a website with the suffix “.xxx”, the intended home of pornography. The idea is that porn sites will set up on .xxx, and so all of the porn will be gathered in one place on the web, which means there won’t be any left elsewhere. As the press release puts it, “the new .xxx domain functions as a responsible alternative for sites that offer adult entertainment content and related services”.

The sites will be “appropriately labelled” and scanned for, ahem, infections. And this, says ICM Registry, the company which gets the money whenever someone registers a .xxx site, “means internet users can surf the internet with more confidence”.

You may be able to see the flaw in ICM Registry’s logic. Why would porn sites which rely on being easily found in search engines want to be corralled off into a virtual red-light district that web filters are guaranteed to block?

So .xxx isn’t going to get all the pornographers presently filling every nook and cranny of .com, .org, .net and so on to up sticks and head to .xxx. It almost certainly won’t make the web a cleaner place. But it should make a tidy sum for ICM Registry as worried brand-holders buy the corresponding domains in order to stop their names being besmirched by association. Already 100,000 businesses have signed up. So barclays.xxx, hsbc.xxx and lloydstsb.xxx have all gone. Still, good news: cliffrichard.xxx and charliebrooker.xxx are available. Don’t delay. (You can find out what’s been bought and what’s available at http://www.buy.xxx)

[The Guardian]

Dal 1968 al 2011 del movimento #Occupy tante cose sono cambiate. Per esempio, “Occupy” ha un cancelletto davanti non perché è in diesis ma perché è un hashtag in uso su Twitter – due cose che nel 1968 erani sci-fi puro. Tra le cose che si sono evolute, ovviamente, c’è l’equipaggiamento degli agenti di polizia, specie per quei casi in cui piccoli gruppi di forze dell’ordine devono tenere sotto controllo grandi masse di manifestanti. Il New York Times oggi ha pubblicato questo grafico, in cui si vede un poliziotto del 1968, uno del 1995 e uno odierno, e che spiega bene come un semplice uomo possa trasformarsi in qualcosa di simile ai droni di Star Wars. gootenberg » L’evoluzione dell’agente antisommossa

Dal 1968 al 2011 del movimento #Occupy tante cose sono cambiate. Per esempio, “Occupy” ha un cancelletto davanti non perché è in diesis ma perché è un hashtag in uso su Twitter – due cose che nel 1968 erani sci-fi puro. Tra le cose che si sono evolute, ovviamente, c’è l’equipaggiamento degli agenti di polizia, specie per quei casi in cui piccoli gruppi di forze dell’ordine devono tenere sotto controllo grandi masse di manifestanti. Il New York Times oggi ha pubblicato questo grafico, in cui si vede un poliziotto del 1968, uno del 1995 e uno odierno, e che spiega bene come un semplice uomo possa trasformarsi in qualcosa di simile ai droni di Star Wars.

gootenberg » L’evoluzione dell’agente antisommossa

Mind-Blowing Photo Editing Technique of the Day: Kevin Karsch and his team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed an amazing technique for inserting synthetic objects into old photographs with lighting and positioning so close to the real thing that most people can’t tell the difference.

The method requires very little information to work well. Users just have to adjust the system’s guesses about vanishing points and scene corners, and then mark light sources in the image. With a few minutes’ work, even a novice user can insert (and even animate) realistic-looking objects.

The UIUC team will present their research at the SIGGRAPH Asia computer graphics conference in December.

[slashdot]

[TDW Geeks]

Tremo.

Laptop Security Measure of the Day

Laptop Security Measure of the Day: When the feds come for your laptop, you’ll be glad you had a sticker positioned above your hard drive, showing you exactly where to drill to ruin the thing.

This assumes you keep a drill on you 24/7 (which, if you’re someone who suspects your laptop could be seized at any time, you just might).

These stickers are free and downloadable from fffff.at, an organization of media artists who have a little bit of experience with confiscated computers.

[superpunch]

TDW Geeks

When you see it…

(via)

Originally Posted By thedailywhat

thedailywhat: Good Boy of the Day: As you may have heard by now, a lone Dog of War was among the 79 Navy SEALs involved in Operation Neptune Spear (AKA Operation Kill Bin Laden), but what you may not have heard is that this bomb-sniffing K9 likely had body-armor-piercing titanium teeth that cost $2000 a tooth to install. “It’s just devastating what these teeth do when they get into someone,” former US military dog trainer Alex Dunbar told The Daily. “It’s like being stabbed four times at once with a bone crusher.” “SEALs are the deadliest fighting force on the planet,” former SEAL sniper Brandon Tyler Webb is quoted as saying, “and you better believe those dogs are the same.” Below: A titanium-toothed police dog — [fp / @mikenizza / image: thedaily.] Non so se esaltarmi o andarmi a nascondere da qualche parte per la paura. Inevitabili i tag contrastanti, qui sotto.

thedailywhat:

Good Boy of the Day: As you may have heard by now, a lone Dog of War was among the 79 Navy SEALs involved in Operation Neptune Spear (AKA Operation Kill Bin Laden), but what you may not have heard is that this bomb-sniffing K9 likely had body-armor-piercing titanium teeth that cost $2000 a tooth to install.

“It’s just devastating what these teeth do when they get into someone,” former US military dog trainer Alex Dunbar told The Daily. “It’s like being stabbed four times at once with a bone crusher.”

“SEALs are the deadliest fighting force on the planet,” former SEAL sniper Brandon Tyler Webb is quoted as saying, “and you better believe those dogs are the same.”

Below: A titanium-toothed police dog —

[fp / @mikenizza / image: thedaily.]

Non so se esaltarmi o andarmi a nascondere da qualche parte per la paura. Inevitabili i tag contrastanti, qui sotto.

794 note

Journalists Are Obsolete of the Day: The software mavens at Narrative Science specialize in programs that “transforms data into high-quality editorial content,” and they can prove it.

The Evanston, Illinois, outfit was recently challenged by the sports nuts at Deadspin to see if their tech application could outdo this college newspaper clip that buried the lede on a historic no-hitter. Basically, Deadspin’s bloggers were skeptical of a ‘bot having a stronger nose for news than a living, breathing person. Turns out they were wrong.

Here’s the copy generated by Narrative Science’s program:

Tuesday was a great day for W. Roberts, as the junior pitcher threw a perfect game to carry Virginia to a 2-0 victory over George Washington at Davenport Field.

Twenty-seven Colonials came to the plate and the Virginia pitcher vanquished them all, pitching a perfect game. He struck out 10 batters while recording his momentous feat. Roberts got Ryan Thomas to ground out for the final out of the game.

Tom Gately came up short on the rubber for the Colonials, recording a loss. He went three innings, walked two, struck out one, and allowed two runs.

The Cavaliers went up for good in the fourth, scoring two runs on a fielder’s choice and a balk.

“Please remember, computer overlords,” one Deadspin staffer writes in response. “When the time comes, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in the silicon mines.”

[NPR] [TDW Geeks]

——————

NB - L’enfasi è mia.

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