firehose

The Obama Administration has a comprehensive "insider threat" program to detect leakers from within government. This is pre-Snowden. Not surprisingly, the combination of profiling and "see something, say something" is unlikely to work.

In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.

The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for "high-risk persons or behaviors" among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.

Another critique.

It doesn’t make life better—it just makes us work more.

Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius (Konami - Super Famicom - 1995)

galadhir:

inmaledress:

Okay gang, send in your photos, links etc for this Tumblr. I don’t bite. I promise and I am sure there are more reenactment girls out there who will fit right in here. :)

This is me as a Saxon. Pink was not a gendered colour in those days..

Awesome!

ancientart:

The Prambanan Temple, characterized by its pointed and tall architecture, is the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia, and one of the biggest in Southeast Asia. This monument was restored with UNESCO’s help in the 1970s, and is listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Prambanan Temple Compounds consist of Prambanan Temple (also called Loro Jonggrang), Sewu Temple, Bubrah Temple and Lumbung Temple. Prambanan Temple itself is a complex consisting of 240 temples. All the mentioned temples form the Prambanan Archaeological Park and were built during the heyday of Sailendra’s powerful dynasty in Java in the 8th century AD. These compounds are located on the border between the two provinces of Yogyakarta and Central Java on Java Island.

While Loro Jonggrang, dating from the 9th century, is a brilliant example of Hindu religious bas-reliefs, Sewu, with its four pairs of Dwarapala giant statues, is Indonesia’s largest Buddhist complex including the temples of Lumbung, Bubrah and Asu (Gana temple). The Hindu temples are decorated with reliefs illustrating the Indonesian version of the Ramayana epic which are masterpieces of stone carvings. These are surrounded by hundreds of shrines that have been arranged in three parts showing high levels of stone building technology and architecture from the 8th century AD in Java. With over 500 temples, Prambanan Temple Compounds represents not only an architectural and cultural treasure, but also a standing proof of past religious peaceful cohabitation. (UNESCO)

Recommended further reading: Archaeology: Indonesian Perspective : R.P. Soejono’s Festschrift, edited by Truman Simanjuntak, pages 352-413 (I do believe it is even on google books).

This amazing photograph was taken by Jimmy McIntyre.

China’s National Audit Office announced on Sunday that it is conducting a comprehensive review of all local government debt, which has long been considered a potential time bomb that threatens for China’s economy. But how bad is the debt really?

An audit that took a sample of 36 local governments at the end of 2012 (15 provinces, their capital cities, the municipalities of Tianjin, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and one district from each municipal city) found that those authorities had taken on a total of 3.85 trillion yuan ($628 billion) in debt, up 12.9% from 2010. That works out to $17.4 billion each—just under the $18 billion in debt held by the US city of Detroit, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.

It’s not an arbitrary comparison: Detroit’s bankruptcy has been cited a wake-up call for Beijing to rein in local government debt before it’s too late. Of the 223 recently audited local government financing vehicles in China, some 80% had either made a loss or not enough profit to cover their interest payments.

Of course, Detroit versus Chinese local government isn’t exactly apples to apples: A shrinking population has left Detroit with only about 700,000 people within its borders—a drop in the bucket for major Chinese municipalities. Tianjin, for example, has a population of 13.55 million. Assuming it has an average $17.4 billion in debrt, that works out to $1,284 of debt per resident, compared to $25,714 in Detroit.

But there are also some striking parallels: Detroit was a modern American boomtown that drew in hundreds of thousands of migrants from the rural south to serve as cheap labor for a boom in industrial manufacturing, giving birth to a huge middle class that was prosperous for decades.

China’s cities are only part way through that cycle—millions of rural poor have migrated to the cities in search of work in the factories, but creating middle-class consumers has proven to be more difficult. In the absence of that transition, local governments have been unable to wean themselves off a relentless cycle of credit-driven growth, producing a mountain of debt. Jiangsu province, north of Shanghai, has been cited as one of the most vulnerable as its investments in shipbuilding and solar panels feel the bite of economic slowdown.

Detroit has thousands of abandoned homes and buildings; China has ghost malls. Now China’s audit office will find out just how similar their situations really are.

It’s been a tough year for Bo Guagua. The son of disgraced Chongqing politician Bo Xilai has seen his mother convicted of murder, his father charged with corruption, and to top things off he was at the Boston Marathon finish line when the bombs went off. But his family’s travails have apparently not shaken his belief in the rule of law, judging by his enrollment at Columbia University’s law school.

As the Telegraph noted last year, attending law school in the United States will aslo shield Bo Guagua from the Chinese government, allowing him to extend his US student visa without having to apply for asylum.

The junior Bo has remained largely quiet during his parents’ downfalls, other than when he defended his father in a statement posted on Tumblr in 2012. That contrasts with his playboy image prior to Bo Xilai’s downfall: while attending school in England the New York Times reported that he was seen as an “academically indifferent bon vivant with a weakness for European sports cars, first-class air travel, equestrian sports and the tango.” During his time at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Bo was repeatedly ticketed while driving a Porsche, much to the derision of Chinese social media.

Sending offspring to the United States for school is common among the Chinese elite. Li Wangzhi, Bo Xilai’s estranged eldest son, also attended Columbia for graduate school, and Xi Mingze, the daughter of Chinese president Xi Jinping, transferred to Harvard as an undergrad in May 2010, where she studies under a pseudonym. Let’s hope Bo Guagua and Xi Mingze don’t run into each other at what would certainly be a very awkward Ivy League mixer.

marvelentertainment:

MARVEL PANEL OF THE DAY

From: Avengers (1963) #280

We should all live our lives like Thor.

(Source: marvel.com)

You know, you get so used to him as a disembodied voice / AI that it’s easy to forget he was ever drawn.

Which is amusing, because here he looks a little like Terry Pratchett’s agent.

Who would have thought that a cafe packed with Nazi memorabilia would make people incredibly angry? Henry Mulyana, that's who.

"Whenever you get orders for condoms and lube, those customers expect you to be there within an hour."

Sherlock's new nemesis - introducing Lars Mikkelsen as Charles Augustus Magnussen. #sherlock pic.twitter.com/PyEkESbXyx

"Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?" the pontiff said, speaking in Italian. "You can't marginalize these people."

Lupin III: Densetsu no Hihou o Oe! 

(SAS Sakata/Epoch - Super Famicom - 199X)

from wikipedia: "As Lupin, the player must move through each maze-like floors of the skyscraper. The player must search around for the control computers in order to open the doors to freedom. The player also comes across an array of bizarre devices to aid in the quest, including spring shoes that allow Lupin to reach high places and to leap tall walls. Additional content was unlocked by scanning barcodes with Barcode Battler II connected via a ‘Barcode Battler II Interface’."

vintageblackglamour:

Melba Roy, NASA Mathmetician, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland in 1964. Ms. Roy, a 1950 graduate of Howard University, led a group of NASA mathmeticians known as “computers” who tracked the Echo satellites. The first time I shared Ms. Roy on VBG, my friend Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a former postdoc in astrophysics at NASA, helpfully explained what Ms. Roy did in the comment section. I am sharing Chanda’s comment again here: “By the way, since I am a physicist, I might as well explain a little bit about what she did: when we launch satellites into orbit, there are a lot of things to keep track of. We have to ensure that gravitational pull from other bodies, such as other satellites, the moon, etc. don’t perturb and destabilize the orbit. These are extremely hard calculations to do even today, even with a machine-computer. So, what she did was extremely intense, difficult work. The goal of the work, in addition to ensuring satellites remained in a stable orbit, was to know where everything was at all times. So they had to be able to calculate with a high level of accuracy. Anyway, that’s the story behind orbital element timetables". Photo: NASA/Corbis.

timelordy-teganbreann:

finally a ginger

YES. :)

renai42 writes "If you've been in the IT industry for a while, you'll know that Lenovo's ThinkPad brand has a strong reputation with large organisations for quality, dating back to the brand's pre-2005 ownership by IBM. However, all that may be set to change with the news that the defence agencies of key Western governments such as Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand have banned Lenovo gear from being used in sensitive areas, because of concerns that the Chinese vendor has been leaving back doors in its devices for the Chinese Government. No evidence has yet been presented to back the claims, but Lenovo remains locked out of sensitive areas of these governments. Is it fearmongering? Or is there some legitimate basis for the ban?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

althemeganerd:

Hell yeah!

After surviving for six weeks, The Last of Us' reign as UK No. 1 is over. Naughty Dog's game is blocked from the top spot by a resurgent Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, a 74 percent rise in sales seeing the XBLA game's disc version tower to the top in its fifth week at retail.

Meanwhile, The Last of Us drops all the way down to third, because the runner-up spot is claimed for the first time by a Wii U exclusive. Yes, the just-landed Pikmin 3 consumes second place in the UK to become the highest-charting Wii U-only game yet, a welcome boost for the fresh-faced console.

It's a positive-looking UK top ten for Nintendo all round, with 3DS games Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team comfortable in fourth and fifth. The big N almost made it four out of ten, the newly released standalone (and very green) retail version of New Super Luigi U coming in at the 13 spot.

Continue reading Minecraft topples The Last of Us in UK charts, Pikmin 3 second

Minecraft topples The Last of Us in UK charts, Pikmin 3 second originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 29 Jul 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That Pokémon Tretta 3DS accessory is HUGE

So I’m watching this trailer for Pokémon Tretta Lab, the 3DS game based on the Japanese token-based arcade title, and up until now its bundled token reader looked like reasonable pieces of plastic you attached to the handheld. But then the video flashes the back of the accessory for a few seconds, and holy moly, Nintendo is about to release the Kraken up in this piece.

PREORDER Pokemon X and Y, upcoming releases

NBC Southern California

Rioting Breaks Out After US Surfing Open; 8 Arrested KTLA HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (KTLA) — At least eight arrests were made in Huntington Beach Sunday night when rioting broke out following the U.S. Open of Surfing. The violent behavior erupted around 7 p.m. at Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway near ... 8 Arrested Following Looting, Fights At US Open Of SurfingCBS Local Police square off against unruly crowds following US Open of SurfingLos Angeles Times "Major" disturbance outside LA after surfing eventCBS News Daily Mail -SPORT24 all 32 news articles »

In most parts of the world, we can't exactly say that new architecture has been kind to our feathered friends (or any part of our environment for that matter). In a time of urban sprawl, pollution and environmental degradation, London-based Aaron Dunkerton's project "Bird Brick" is a nice nod to the role design could be playing in our less than healthy relationship with the environment. We've seen some similar projects, most notably the Brick Biotope by Micaelaa Nardella and Oana Tudose at "FABRIKAAT" during Salone Milan 2012, but Kingston University grad's approach seems to bypassing some potential structural issues by sticking to the brick making basics.

Using a traditional brick-making process and the help of MGH Freshfield Lane in West Sussex, UK, Dunkerton created a five-part brick system that provides a cavity for House Sparrows to nest. The house sparrow population in the UK has decreased by an alarming 70% in the last 50 years. Not surprisingly, pairing well-considered design with an endangered species is a pretty simple recipe for a project that strikes that sweet spot between design and doing good.

(more...)

We've looked at carbon fiber in 3D-printed bikes, in furniture design, and coming out of Lexus' crazy 360-degree loom. The stuff has long been vaunted for its high strength-to-weight ratio. And now, for the first time in decades, carbon fiber could experience a big change, thanks to one of the more popular breakthroughs in material science, graphene.

We've looked at graphene's application in battery-ending supercapacitors before, but for those who don't remember: Graphene is a one-atom thick layer of graphite (carbon) that is strong, and very, very light. And the tricky thing about graphene is making it, since it is so thin.

Recently, scientists at Rice University have managed to weave flakes of graphene oxide into carbon fiber. The result is something that surprised even the scientists who created it. The new fiber is considered to be extraordinarily strong, because knots created using the material are unusually strong.

We might think of knots as a handy way to tie something up. But in materials science they are way of measuring strength. Typically most fibers snap under the tension created at a knot. But with this new carbon fiber the strength at the knot is as strong as anywhere else along the thread of fiber.

(more...)

I proceeded to spend the next 2 hours drawing this in response.

But no matter how useful, how beautiful and how advanced these wristwatch-like devices end up being, at least one group of people likely won’t be moved by them: hardcore watch collectors, who favor wind-up watches with analog dials, gears, and springs over any hypothetical touchscreen or voice-activated product.