firehose

Apple Senior Vice President Bob Mansfield has been removed from Apple's Leadership website in the past 24 hours with no explanation.

Violent attacks have erupted at airports across China, with passengers venting their rage on hapless staff over a summer of grinding delays.

Planned rapid transit lines for the Baltimore region. 1960.

c0d3g33k writes "Prompted by the addition of new security features in Android 4.3 that limit the effectiveness of elevated privileges, Steve Kondik wonders which uses really require full root. Most common activities that prompt owners to root their devices (backup/restore tools, firewall/DNS resolver management, kernel tuning), could be accomplished without exposing root, argues Kondik, by providing additional APIs and extensions to the user. This would improve security by limiting the exposure of the system to exploits. Reasonable enough, on the face of it. The title of the post, however, suggests that Kondik believes that eventually all useful activities can be designed into the system so the 'dangerous and insecure' abilities provided by root/administrator privileges aren't needed. This kind of top-down thinking seems a bit troubling because it leads to greater control of the system by the developer at the expense of the owner of the device. It's been said that the best tools are those that lend themselves to uses not anticipated by the creator. Reducing or eliminating the ability of the owner to use a device in ways that are unanticipated ultimately reduces its potential power and usefulness. Perhaps that's what is wanted to prevent an owner from using the device in ways that are inconvenient or contrary to an established business model."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CaptSlaq writes "According to the current imagery, it looks like Randal Munroe has finished the story he was telling with the Time series. The long running series that has spanned over 3000 images and spawned multiple methods of viewing and comment appears to have come to an end."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

tastefullyoffensive:

birdandmoon: ‘Cause we are living in a bacterial world, and I am a bacterial girl.

niggaimdeadass:

IM DYING

Mr. Buttoned-Down Cool.

Miles Davis, 1955, by Tom Palumbo.

Los Angeles-based “comedy imaginator” Eric Buss has invented the Bubble Wrap Bike, a bicycle outfitted to hold, dispense and pop bubble wrap as it’s ridden. In this video shot by Chris Gongora, Buss shows how it works and it’s no exaggeration to say that his invention is truly a beautiful, albeit noisy, thing.

via reddit, Daily Picks and Flicks

Sorry

From Sean Tejaratchi's wonderful [and sometimes NSFW] website: Shameful Dawn, a novel by United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

"A terrifying look at America’s sick, glistening future…" — American Conservative

Doesn’t every shoe simply look better in snuff suede? The Alden Longwing Blucher is no exception. These shoes are a pleasure to wear not only because they’re so damn good looking, but they also feel like slippers. The combination of velvety soft suede and the flexible double waterlock soles will have you wanting to wear these everyday.

Barrie Last, Snuff Suede, Double Waterlock Soles

Dr. Joseph Bonneau, an engineer at Google, is the first-ever winner of the NSA's new Science of Security (SoS) Competition, a prize for excellence in cyber-security research. On learning that he had won the first prize, he published a scorching blog-post excoriating the NSA for its dragnet surveillance and opining "I don’t think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form."

I don’t think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form. Yet I’m glad I got the rare opportunity to visit with the NSA and I’m grateful for my hosts’ genuine hospitality. A large group of engineers turned up to hear my presentation, asked sharp questions, understood and cared about the privacy implications of studying password data. It affirmed my feeling that America’s core problems are in Washington and not in Fort Meade. Our focus must remain on winning the public debate around surveillance and developing privacy-enhancing technology. But I hope that this award program, established to increase engagement with academic researchers, can be a small but positive step.

NSA Award for Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper (via EFF)

International Business Times

EBRSO: Park arrests needed different approach The Advocate The East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office said Sunday it should have taken a different approach with a task force that made at least a dozen arrests since 2011 using a struck-down law to arrest men at parish parks who discussed or agreed to have ... Louisiana sheriff's office arrested 12 men in the past two years under invalid ...Daily Mail La. city police arrested men under sodomy lawSalon One State Is Still Enforcing Its Anti-Sodomy LawThe Atlantic Wire Advocate.com all 57 news articles »

Eating a Hubig's fried fruit pie has been a ritual for decades for the local food-obsessed in New Orleans. But a year ago, a fire destroyed the baking facility and much of its custom machinery from the 1920s. Rebuilding is a long and expensive road, but fans are eagerly awaiting the bakery's comeback.

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robinlafevers:

kateelliottsff:

amarantines:

ardentblue:

tweed-eyes:

1300-1400 clothing of Lower Empire

The Byzantine Empire, that is.

Oh FUCK

My eyes have just fallen out of my head because of this gorgeous fabric.

Because one can never get enough visuals of medieval clothing …

The United States are about to start utilizing a technology already being used by the Australian government to train and educate soldiers. While the interactive video game may be used for a wide variety of training, the Navy is thinking of using it to teach sailors about preventing sexual assault. I wonder if this gives gamers in the military an unfair advantage in passing their training?

mysticjc:

Alphonse Mucha

"Alfons Maria Mucha (Ivančice, 24 July 1860 – Prague, 14 July 1939), often known in English and French as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist, known best for his distinct style. He produced many paintings, illustrations, advertisements, postcards, and designs."

We don't have a mind reading machine. But what if we one day did?

lolzpicx:

The classic Gestalt Defense. [Full video]

If you are in City Hall Park in New York City, you might happen upon a colorful “big-bellied” clown sleeping while sitting on a park bench. It’s a performance piece by New York artist Ugo Rondinone called “Dog Days are Over” created in collaboration with fashion designer Victoria Bartlett. This performance piece, along with many sculptural installations in the area, are part of the public art exhibition “Lightness of Being” presented by Public Art Fund in City Hall Park which runs through December 13.

photo by Scott Beale

Artist Omer Fast looks at the people who fly drones from Nevada in a film commissioned by the Imperial War Museum

"It is a lot like playing a video game," admits a former Predator drone operator matter-of-factly to the artist Omer Fast. "But playing the same video game four years straight on the same level." His bombs kill real people though and, he admits, often not the people he is aiming at.

The remarkable insight into the working life of one of the most modern of military operatives is provided in a 30-minute film which will show at the Imperial War Museum from Monday, the first in a new programme of exhibitions under the title IWM Contemporary.

The project is something of a departure for the museum in one way, although it has been commissioning and showing artists since the first world war. "The idea behind this strand is to present a consistent offer," said Sara Bevan, a curator in the art department. "So people do identify us with contemporary art because it sometimes does get a bit lost." It will also allow the gallery to perhaps be more provocative and more reactive to contemporary events.

The work by Fast, an Israel-born artist who lives and works in Berlin, is called 5,000 Feet is the Best, which takes its name from the optimum flight altitude of a Predator drone.

Drones are aircraft with no humans on board operated remotely from bases in the country to which they belong. According to data published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism last December, there have been almost 1,200 drone strikes on suspected terrorists by US and British forces in the past five years on targets in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and, by the CIA, in Pakistan. Estimates as to how many they have killed vary, although one Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, said in February: "We've killed 4,700. Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of al-Qaida."

The subject engenders fierce debate and the artist attempts to capture its complexities.

What Fast's film does brilliantly is evoke the weirdness of people in Nevada endlessly trawling foreign countries for "bad guys" which they then get permission to fire on.

Fast interviews a former US air force drone operator who admits to making mistakes. "You see a lot of death," he says before pondering why he carries on – perhaps because if it was not him then it might be some "new kid doing it badly".

Bevan said Fast's film was "a visually stunning piece of work" which she – and hopefully visitors will too – got something more out of every time she watched it.

Fast advertised online for drone operators to come forward and some did, although the advert was subsequently closed down by the FBI and rather fewer operators were forthcoming.

One was willing. Some of his testimony in the film is the real man, blurred, and more uses an actor playing the operator talking to a journalist in a Las Vegas hotel room.

Bevan said one reason the Fast piece was chosen as the first commission was because drone warfare is such a "pressing, current issue". The plan is to have three shows a year with two documentary photographers scheduled next.

"Contemporary art is a really good way of dealing with lots of issues around contemporary conflict, such as issues to do with conflict not being confined to geographical boundaries," she said. "Art can deal better with the more intangible issues."

The opening of IWM Contemporary coincides with the partial reopening of the museum itself which has been shut for six months while it carries out major internal works including the building of new first world war galleries.

Although the main display spaces and atrium remain closed, the art galleries will reopen on Monday along with a Horrible Histories show on spies and the A Family in Wartime display, the Holocaust exhibition, and Lord Ashcroft's Victoria Cross gallery. The IWM is scheduled to open fully in summer 2014, coinciding with the centenary events marking the outbreak of the first world war.

headlikeanorange:

Amur tiger at Whipsnade Zoo. (The Zoo - ITV)

Kitteh. :)

Paul Rudolph Lower Manhattan Expressway Plan

In the 1950s and 60s the powerful Robert Moses famously planned to build highways through the heart of Manhattan before a storm of protest helped by the writer Jane Jacobs convinced city officials of the folly of such plans.  But ideas have a way of sticking around and after the Lower Manhattan Expressway was officially dead the Ford Foundation asked architect Paul Rudolph to take a hypothetical look at the road to see if and urban expressway could be better integrated into the city.  What Rudolph came up with was just as audacious as trying to bulldoze Soho: build a futuristic city above the highway with soaring towers around the Manhattan and Williamsburg Birdges.  The entire linear city would be mixed use with innovative sloping residential modular housing units (making the towers look like something out of Space Invaders) and all connected by a pod-like monorail system.  The project was never a serious proposal and by the time Rudolph finished planning it the city was in dire straits financially and had no appetite for such utopian visions.