Binaryjesus

An anonymous reader writes: FinFisher, the hacker that broke into Italian firm Hacking Team, has published a step-by-step account of how he carried out the attacks, what tools he used, and what he learned from scouting HackingTeam's network. Published on PasteBin, the attack's timeline reveals he entered their network through a zero-day exploit in an (unnamed) embedded device, accessed a MongoDB database that had no password, discovered backups in the database, found a BES admin password in the backups, and eventually got admin access to the Windows Domain Server. From here, it was easy to reach into their email server and steal all the company's emails, and later access Git repos and steal the source code of their surveillance software.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Video Link)

Here's Peter Yarrow of the 60s folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary. What does he want? The answer is blowing in the wind, my friend: he wants you to get a colonoscopy. His was a very positive experience, for his "colon took first prize," as he recounts in this funny song.

This is 1 of 7 funny colonoscopy videos rounded up by VA Viper. It includes tales by Dave Barry, Damon Wayans, and Homer Simpson.

Question: why is there no Oscar category for colonoscopy video?

Thought Leader presents Jeff Hong: Unhappily Ever After:

Here is a video interview I did with the wonderful people from www.Thoughtleader.global talking about my thoughts and process behind Disney Unhappily Ever After.

You Can Fuck Anything in Heaven Church Poster

fakescience:

An "elite FBI forensic unit" admitted that for two decades, nearly every examiner "gave flawed testimony" (aka lied) about hair sample evidence in criminal trials. And geepers, they sure feel bad about all those people who were executed in prison because of it.

Washington Post:

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

University of Virginia law professor Brandon L. Garrett said the results reveal a “mass disaster” inside the criminal justice system.

Remember this the next time the FBI asks for an encryption backdoor and promises not to abuse it.

Katherine Welles / Shutterstock.com

An innocent man was minding his own business one day in 2014, walking out of an Atlanta Wal-Mart with a tomato he'd just bought. An off-duty Atlanta police officer who moonlit doing security at Wal-Mart on the side accused the man of stealing the tomato on his way out of the store, and beats the man so severely that he breaks his leg and severs his artery. More than $75,000 in medical expenses later, the victim now walks with a titanium rod in his leg, with a limp.

(more…)

Caresto is a Swedish company that specializes in automotive design, development, and building prototype cars. If you could do all those things, and you told me you wouldn’t at least want to try building a Batmobile , I’d have trouble believing you, especially now that Caresto has built what may be the most amazing actual, drive-able Batmobile ever.

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Because a thermite-blasting cannon isn’t crazy enough, Colin Furze used a pair of motors and propellers designed for parasailing to build himself a fully functional flying hoverbike. It’s easily one of the mad scientist’s most dangerous builds to date, but seeing how maneuverable it is almost makes us want to build one too.

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QUICK! You’re flying shotgun in a helicopter, and the engine goes out. Also, the pilot you hired for the day is dead, for some reason. Don’t worry about why. Doesn’t matter. You need to land the helicopter, now. Stop praying and watch this video.

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Every time a new Mazda model is announced, a certain number of unwashed yokels always seem to mention that the car would be hella better if only they used the Wankel rotary. News flash: the rotary is a garbage engine.

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Qoros, the maker of cheap sedans and cheap SUVs Europeans can’t really buy just yet , likes Christian von Koenigsegg’s camless engine technology so much that they put it in one of their concepts. It’s supposed improve fuel economy, lower emissions, and save weight, all at the same time. In other words, it’s supposed to change the car world.

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Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for May 02, 2016

 

dictionnaire-infernal:

Memento Mori watch owned by Mary, Queen of Scots. 16th century. Engraved along the base of the skull is a verse from Horace: “Pale death visits with impartial foot the cottages of the poor and the castles of the rich.“ 

This is Poldi, a pet owl. He's just one and a half years old.

Poldi lives with Tanya Brandt, a photographer. Recently, when Poldi and Brandt went out together, it started to train. Poldi sought shelter under a mushroom. The resulting photo is like something out of a fantasy movie!

You can see more photos of Poldi at play at Bored Panda.

-via My Modern Met

(Photos: Fayetteville Observer)

Sgt. Joseph Serna of the US Army Special Forces served 3 combat tours in Afghanistan. He had a very rough time there, experiencing the full horrors of war.

When Serna got out of the Army, he took those horrors with him.

Serna was arrested and charged with driving under the influence in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He got probation and entered a treatment program. He had to regularly report to the court on his treatment. During one of those court appearances, he confessed to Judge Lou Olivera that he had lied about a recent urine test.

Judge Olivera was himself a veteran, having served during the Gulf War. He understood that though Serna had broken the law, he was not a criminal by nature.

But he had to do his duty, so Judge Olivera sentenced Serna to spent 24 hours in jail. Then he took off his robe and joined Serna in his cell for the full 24 hours. The Fayetteville Observer reports:

"Where are we going, judge?" Serna asked.

"We're going to turn ourselves in," Olivera said.

"He said he was going to stay with me," Serna said. "I couldn't process a judge being my cellmate.

"They take me to the cell, and I'm sitting on my bunk. And, then, in walks the judge.

And then the two veterans talked:

Mostly, from five in the afternoon on April 13 until 6:30 a.m. the next day, the judge and the veteran talked about their respective military service, Serna's post-traumatic stress disorder from three tours of duty in Afghanistan and how the inmate could turn around his downward spiral that had resulted in a driving-while-impaired charge and other serious traffic offenses. […]

"We talked for hours about our families and our military service," Olivera says. "Our dreams for us and our families, and the road to take us there."

The judge wanted to help Serna climb out of the hole:

"I thought about a story that I once read," Olivera says. "It talked about a soldier with PTSD in a hole," he says. "A family member, a therapist and a friend all throw down a rope to help the veteran suffering. Finally, a fellow veteran climbs into the hole with him.

"The soldier suffering with PTSD asks, 'Why are you down here?' The fellow veteran replied, 'I am here to climb out with you.'

-via Glenn Reynolds

The term “fast car” is extremely subjective. While it can mean anything that chirps second gear to anyone with VTEC stickers on their fenders, it usually means face-melting acceleration and neck-snapping G-forces on unassuming off ramps. Simply put, a fast car is whatever can kick your ass without a second thought. Here’s how to make a fun-spec Miata into a bona fide ass-kicking machine.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation just filed comments with the FDA in its embedded device cybersecurity docket, warning the agency that manufacturers have abused the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, threatening security researchers with lawsuits if they came forward with embarrassing news about defects in the manufacturers' products. (more…)

Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 25, 2016

I don’t know if that Double Clicks Dinosaure shirt actually exhists. But they have Cats.

Don’t waste your time ruining your SUV’s on-road dynamics by perverting the air suspension into some kind of lift. Heck why even bother with knobby tires when you can just drive right on to a set of treads?

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It's been 21 years since the Republican Congress zeroed out the $20M budget of the Office of Technology Assessment, a casualty of Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" that deprived Congress of its principal source of technological expertise. (more…)

My photographer friend Clayton Cubitt, whom I met here in the Boing Boing comments a decade ago, did an amazing project to support the campaign of U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

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In the 1980s, Jerdon sold this, er, clever 357 Magnum Hair Dryer complete with holster. They can be had on eBay for around $100 to $300. YouTuber Rachell Tan gleefully demonstrates in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LObaUw7k1g

(Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

Johnny Scuz combined two awful things: the new PowerPuff Girls cartoon and the "it's time to stop" meme. If you want a picture of the future, Winston, imagine beloved things being drowned in irony, lame topicality and imitation of things young people don't even do anymore, forever.

Retro Report did a short feature on the moral panics about D&D in the 1980s. It's a fun, 13 minute look back at the moment when D&D totally changed a bunch of kids' lives, only to be vilified and literally demonized by opportunistic members of the religious right. (more…)