http://boingboing.net/2011/11/11/stop-sopa-save-the-internet.html

Jonathan Zdziarski wrote this fascinating piece, makes me glad that none of my vehicles have OnStar. Really, REALLY glad. If yours does, you won’t want to miss.

OnStar Begins Spying On Customers’ GPS Location For Profit

Bonus discussion: How soon before such systems become mandatory in every vehicle?

This is why your website sucks by C. Todd Fluhr

How are you faring? Here, I found that we were offline when I tried to log in this morning. We’d been down for a while, apparently, as the servers had stopped their incessant chatter to my inbox. Power cycling the cable modem put things right.

Coincidence? [shrug]

Alas, Optimum Online doesn’t support IPv6. I hear they’re not alone.

A recent study found that a vast majority of the money collected by spammers flows through a small number of financial companies. The best quote from the article is as predictable as it is telling:

Visa, the largest credit card company, declined to comment.

Go read John Markoff’s article, Study Sees Way to Win Spam Fight.

This article, from The Chronicle of Higher Education, is a very astute response to what’s probably the most common retort, “if you’ve got nothing to hide then there’s nothing to worry about.” Actually, the worries are very, very real.

Go read Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’, by Daniel J. Solove.

WordPress, the popular blog-hosting site, is reporting a breach of several of its servers.

Automattic, the company that drives WordPress, as well as Akismet, “had a low-level (root) break-in to several of our servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed,” said WordPress [...]

Folks that use WordPress or other Automattic products will want to keep an eye on this.

http://www.darkreading.com/security-monitoring/167901086/security/attacks-breaches/229401553/wordpress-reports-multiserver-breach.html

Apparently one cinematic scientist has hit upon a way to fit an entire movie into one image? Howzat? It works something like this.

Take a frame and stretch it vertically while compressing it horizontally. Take the next frame and do it again. And the next and the next until you’ve processed the whole movie. Stand back and look at your work.

Fascinating!

(How the hell can I get a job like that?)

http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/

There’s too much not-necessary-for-driving stuff that you can do with cars these days, and few of ‘em are any good. At best, many new features serve to distract you from the task at hand: driving the thing competently.

Even stealing cars isn’t what it used to be. With the demise of discrete wiring in favor of networks, in some cases all you need to do is access the network. Used to be you needed to break off a mirror to gain physical access. Jack in with your laptop and command the doors to open, the engine to start…

But now? Make a “phone call” from your laptop.

How long before we see car-botnets controlled from IRC? Or maybe viruses to cause an accelerator to stick? Or brakes to stop braking? Or, more subtly, stability controls to destabilize? Hmmm, cause your ex to seem like s/he’s driving drunk? For a price, of course, cash, please.

Here’s a NY Times article that ought to shake you up. (But I’ll bet it won’t.)

Researchers Show How a Car’s Electronics Can Be Taken Over Remotely

http://www.getridofthings.com/

http://wordsbynowak.com/2011/02/22/10-myths-from-usage-based-billing-supporters/

Last year I paid my ISP a bit under US$600 for my Internet service alone. I’m expecting costs to rise this year, mostly because recent legislation will allow my service provider to add extra charges depending upon the ‘flavor’ of the bits consumed, i.e. Netflix streams. In the face of this, and also over the past year, quality of service has declined perceptibly: I’ve logged more service interruptions and outages.

I’m curious. How much does your service cost? And has your quality of service changed?

Scientists Steer Car with the Power of Thought

Computer Scientists at Freie Universität Couple Brain Waves with Driving Technology – Testing at Former Tempelhof Airport

http://www.fu-berlin.de/en/presse/fup/2011/fup_11_047/index.html

Find out. The results may, no will surprise you.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/adding-up-the-worlds-storage-and-computation-capacities.ars

Top 10 Favorite Art Pieces Made from Data

Corporate reporting was never like this!

Well, check this guy out!

http://dontevenreply.com/

I just love the net; recreation is wherever you find it.