[From Chile Earthquake May Have Shortened Days on Earth - Yahoo! News]

[From Parrot AR.Drone: Coolest iPhone accessory ever? [VIDEO]]

The explosive spread of electromagnetic fields across the world has undeniably spawned at least one disorder: electrosensitivity syndrome. Millions of people — most of them in Europe — say they suffer headaches, depression, nausea, rashes and other problems when they’re too close to cellphones or other sources of EMFs. They’ve formed their own support groups, started their own newsletters and taken drastic steps to avoid EMFs, with some even wearing metallic clothing. A band of EMF “refugees” has moved to a valley in southern France to avoid radiation.

[From Victims of electrosensitivity syndrome say EMFs cause symptoms - latimes.com]

Scientists have isolated a gene sequence that appears to determine how fast our bodies age, the first time a link between DNA and human lifespan has been found.

The discovery could have a profound impact on public health and raises the best hope yet for drugs that prevent the biological wear and tear behind common age-related conditions such as heart disease and certain cancers.

[From Living fast? Scientists show lifespan is linked to DNA | Science | guardian.co.uk]

(PhysOrg.com) — Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.

[From Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything]

Blue Chevy
Culver City, CA
Fall 2009

[From Vans and the places where they were.]

Cheers To Finger Power!

Mind you, this is not a “Green” concept and neither does it claim to be “Eco Friendly”. It’s just a helpful solution for a tricky situation. The situation being: you running out of juice on your mobile phone. So what do you do? Remove the battery from the back of the phone; give it a few good turns around your index finger and its gathered enough power to last you a conversation or a safe trip to your charger and electric point.

[From Swing Your Energy - Mobile Phone Battery Charger System by Song Teaho & Hyejin Lee » Yanko Design]

designer jamie o’shea must have really wanted a nap when he created his vertical bed design. the vertical
allows the user to sleeping standing up right in the middle of the street. not satisfied without testing his
creation, o’shea slept for 40 minutes in downtown new york. the bed design can be collapsed into a small
suitcase and is attached to a subway vent when in use. the help the user gets a peaceful rest, the bed comes
with noise canceling headphones, opaque sunglasses and a free-standing umbrella for napping in the rain.
next time you walking down the street and feeling tired, simply set up the vertical bed and take a nap.

[From vertical bed]

Verizon is terminating internet service to an unknown number of repeat copyright scofflaws, a year after suggesting it was not adopting a so-called graduated-response policy.

While it was not immediately clear whether other internet service providers were following suit, the move comes as the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are lobbying ISPs and Congress to support terminating internet access for repeat, online copyright offenders.

All the while, the United States has been privately lobbying the European Union to “encourage” so-called three strikes policies, according to leaked documents surrounding a proposed international intellectual property accord.

Verizon was not immediately prepared to comment in detail on the developments, first reported by CNET, or to detail how many of its more than 8 million broadband subscribers it has terminated — although CNET said the number was “small.” The RIAA declined comment.

“We reserve the right to do that,” Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson said in a telephone interview regarding the terminations.

The RIAA announced a year ago it was ending its litigation campaign against individual file sharers, about 30,000 lawsuits in all. Instead, the music industry’s lobbying and litigation arm said it would rely on a series of accords it had reached with “leading” internet service providers, in which ISPs have agreed “on principle” to shut off internet access to customers the RIAA catches file sharing repeatedly.

At that time, in a Jan. 5, 2009 interview, Verizon spokeswoman Ellen Yu said that, in reference to the RIAA announcement: “We are not working with them on this.”

Cara Duckworth, an RIAA spokeswoman, said the same day that “We have an agreement on principle with several leading ISPs but not all, and the agreement on principle is confidential.”

Other than Verizon, none of the leading ISPs have acknowledged practicing what the content industry is calling “graduated response.” Under Verizon’s plan, the ISP notifies customers that unlawful file sharing allegedly is taking place on their accounts — file sharing discovered by the RIAA or other intellectual property holders who actively police networks and IP addresses. Internet service could be terminated perhaps after several warnings.

[From Verizon Terminating Copyright Infringers’ Internet Access | Threat Level | Wired.com]

As the cost of display technology comes down and the size of displays increases the popularity of public video billboards has also increased. Such displays allow for TV-like adverts to be displayed in shopping malls, at the side of the road, and generally anywhere there is a lot of faces to look at them.

In Moscow video billboards are positioned alongside some of the busiest highways showing advertising
and information 24 hours a day. But on Thursday night the video being played on two of these displays wasn’t an advert and it brought traffic to a halt; blocking the roads while drivers stopped to watch in amazement.

Some enterprising hacker/s had managed to take control of these two billboards located on Moscow’s Garden Ring Road. The video they chose to upload or stream was X-rated pornography.

The owner of the hacked displays is an advertising company
called Panno.ru. It was notified of the “problem” three minutes after the porn had started playing, but it took them a further fifteen minutes to co-ordinate and switch off the displays.

Pennu.ru do not know who or how the display was accessed and aren’t ruling out a competing advertising company being involved in this eye-opening event.

[From Traffic halted as hackers replace roadside video adverts with porn – Tech Products & Geek News | Geek.com]

(updated below – Update II – Update III)

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants.  Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.” In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.

[From Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com]

First Tech Credit Union reports:

We recently learned that a fraudster developed a rogue Android Smartphone app. It creates a shell of mobile banking apps that tries to gain access to a consumer’s financial information.

Droid09 launched this phishing attack from the Android Marketplace and it’s since been removed. It’s called phishing because scammers go fishing for information about you or your financial account that may be used for identity theft.

Please note that this attack didn’t target First Tech accounts. Accessing your First Tech account from your phone’s web browser is completely secure.

If you did download the Droid09 app, please remove it from your phone and take it to your mobile provider to ensure it’s completely removed.

[From MacDailyNews - Malware designed to steal bank information pops up in Google's Android app store]

“Light-emitting wallpaper may begin to replace light bulbs from 2012, according to a government body that supports low-carbon technology.

A chemical coating on the walls will illuminate all parts of the room with an even glow, which mimics sunlight and avoids the shadows and glare of conventional bulbs.

Although an electrical current will be used to stimulate the chemicals to produce light, the voltage will be very low and the walls will be safe to touch. Dimmer switches will control brightness, as with traditional lighting.

The Carbon Trust has awarded a £454,000 grant to Lomox, a Welsh company that is developing the organic light-emitting diode technology. The trust said it would be two and a half times more efficient than energy-saving bulbs and could make a big contribution to meeting Britain’s target of cutting carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020. Indoor lighting accounts for a sixth of total electricity use.

[From Glowing Walls Technology Could Make the Light Bulb Obsolete | Best Of StumbleUpon]

Hackers have released an application designed to thwart a Microsoft-packaged forensic toolkit used by law enforcement agencies to examine a suspect’s hard drive during a raid.

The hacker tool, dubbed DECAF, is designed to counteract the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, aka COFEE. The latter is a suite of 150 bundled, off-the-shelf forensic tools that run from a script. Microsoft combined the programs into a portable tool that can be used by law enforcement agents in the field before they bring a computer back to their forensic lab. The script runs on a USB stick that agents plug into the machine.

The tools scan files and gather information about activities performed on the machine, such as where the user surfed on the internet or what files were downloaded.

[From Hackers Brew Self-Destruct Code to Counter Police Forensics | Threat Level | Wired.com]

This is so brilliant! An anti-rape female condom invented by Sonette Ehlers… A South African women working as a blood technician with the South African Blood Transfusion Service, during which time she met and treated many rape victims.

The device, known as The Rape-aXe, is a latex sheath embedded with shafts of sharp, inward-facing microscopic barbs that would be worn by a woman in her vagina like a tampon. If an attacker were to attempt vaginal rape, their penis would enter the latex sheath and be snagged by the barbs, causing the attacker pain during withdrawal and (ideally) giving the victim time to escape. The condom would remain attached to the attacker’s body when he withdrew and could only be removed surgically, which would alert hospital staff and police. This device could assist in the identification and prosecution of rapists.

[From Rape-aXe: The Anti-Rape Condom | Arkitip Intel]

Scientists have located a giant 13-billion year old galaxy at the edge of the observable universe. Detecting this huge galaxy was a challenge because of the massive quantities of light coming from the black hole, and if you think you spotted two problems in that sentence, read on.

The galaxy, which is 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, is as large as the Milky Way galaxy and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as does our Sun.

“It is surprising that such a giant galaxy existed when the universe was only one-sixteenth of its present age, and that it hosted a black hole one billion times more massive than the sun. The galaxy and black hole must have formed very rapidly in the early universe,” said University of Hawaii astronomer Dr. Tomotsugu Goto who discovered the object.

[From Giant 13-Billion-Year-Old Galaxy Found at Very Edge of Universe]