Fatbob

"For the last time, we're NOT a security risk"...

It’s been a mixed week for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei after the firm announced impressive financials but was forced again to deny allegations of security weaknesses in its products.…

A class action lawsuit suggests that Target knew about the POS vulnerability since 2007.

Guillermo Reyes was driving home from a bar in Mexico City when he encountered a DUI roadblock. When police talked to him, they heard a voice from inside the car saying, "He's drunk! He's drunk!" They shone a light into the car, but there were no other passengers, just Reyes' parrot. Apparently he'd heard people say that phrase enough to learn it. The cops gave Reyes a Breathalyzer test, and concluded that he was, indeed, driving while impaired. Reyes was sent to the drunk tank overnight, and the parrot was allowed to accompany him. The original story is in Spanish at El Universal. Google translation. -via Uproxx

(Unrelated image credit: Wayne Sutherland)

By all accounts, WarioWare's Ashley is pretty strange. She chooses to live in a haunted mansion and she chooses to never comb her hair. Who never combs their hair? Bald people, sure, but folks with hair have no excuse. Still, we're pretty excited ...

Not all soldiers are crack shots, but the U.S. military is reportedly hoping to make that happen -- with a little help from "smart" rifles, that is. According to a startup called TrackingPoint, the military bought six of its precision-guided firearms ...

Finally, Gone Home can become a real videogame with the Gun Home DLC.

Thanks to the geniuses over at Dorkly for this one.

A 17'x6', 42-lb puzzle with the works of NYC street culture artist Keith Haring.

This puzzle isn't just big, it's huge. At 32,000 pieces it is listed with the guinness book of world records as the largest commercially-available puzzle in the world. Challenge yourself with this breathtaking masterpiece of pop art icon Keith Haring.

Keith Haring: Double Retrospect - 32000 Pieces Puzzle, from Ravensburger

Happy Jar | via

Thanks sg

 

We're more than half a century past 1960, when the Doomsday Clock ticked down to two minutes before midnight. Yet, despite the steady outpouring of movies and TV shows featuring rogue nukes and dirty bombs, fewer and fewer people actively worry about a nuclear bomb going off. That being said: Do you know where and when to take shelter if it does?

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The Donald Duck family tree is huge. Who knew? Above is only a sample. See the full version here.

The National Security Agency has planted spy software and hardware into 100,000 computers worldwide, not 50,000 as previously reported

These bugs allow the agency to conduct surveillance even on computers that are offline — or air-gapped, as they are referred to in spy lingo, per documents leaked by Edward Snowden

The implants are tiny radio transceivers that must be surreptitiously planted inside a computer, either before being shipped to manufacturers or afterward by an agent with access to the computer as part of a so-called "black bag job." The transceivers, which can look like normal USB plugs, then "infiltrate" and "exfiltrate" data from the hacked computers to an NSA relay station the size of a large suitcase, up to eight miles away Read more...

More about Hacking, Surveillance, Us World, Us, and World

State needs to 'regulate' it before we start making er, coin, from transacting with it

America's biggest bank, Wells Fargo, has called together finance execs, virtual currency experts and US government officials to talk about the "rules of engagement" when it comes to virtual money Bitcoin.…

I grant you, Filmation cartoons are not my favorite incarnation of Masters of the Universe. Adam West's 1966 Batman isn't my favorite version of Batman either, but that's not to say I didn't order the Surfing Batman action figure in a heartbeat once he became available. Fact is, there has yet to be a decent MOTU game - and if it takes a fan-made version where I embody the pageboy haircut hero of Grayskull in a side-scrolling beat-em-up, then Green Goddesss-dammit, I'll take that. I wish the download instructions weren't so complicated. Or maybe they're not. If Orko can figure out how to wield a sword, as this game shows he can, such rules will not defeat me. Now excuse me while I use my powers to brew a latte. Continue reading "Unauthorized Filmation He-Man Game Gives Me the Power of Boners" >

HP now has a 6-inch and 7-inch "phablet" and they run Android instead of WebOS.

Alcohol may not solve all our problems, but it can solve at least one: A researcher in Scotland has found a way to purify arsenic-tainted water with the barley husks leftover from making whiskey.

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Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you updated on what's happening in the digital world.

The team behind Facebook’s News Feed is gearing up to launch a news reader that looks and feels a lot like Flipboard, according to Re/code.

China Mobile’s chairman says customers have already ordered millions of iPhones ahead of their Jan. 17 release

The New York Times reports that the National Security Agency can access a computer using radio waves, even when it isn’t connected to the Internet. It also installed software on 100,000 computers around the world that allows the U.S. government to spy on the device and open a gateway for possible cyberattacks. Read more...

More about China, Iphone, Apple, Flipboard, and First To Know Series

Cheese is delicious, and if you spend a little money on a nice piece of specialty cheese, you want it to stay fresh and tasty as long as possible (if you don't eat it all in one sitting.) Ditch the plastic wrap or baggies—the folks at Food52 have a better way to store your cheese so you can continue to enjoy it.

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For some reason mankind has been happy to settle for elastic rubber bands that only exist in two dimensions. So far they've served us mostly ok, but the talented designers at Nendo have realized that taking rubber bands into the third dimension vastly improves their usefulness. From securing rolled up documents, to binding together a bunch of pencils, it's just an all together better design.

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