firehose

A House Made Of Sugar via The Pop-Up City

Installation artist William Lamson created a small greenhouse out of caramelized sugar. The small shed called Solarium functions as both an experimental greenhouse that grows three species of miniature citrus trees, and as a meditative environment. This is edible architecture!

“I am I, and I wish I weren’t.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

The puppy knows what he likes and how to get it

Frozach Submitted

In Quebec, Canada, pizza-ghetti, pizza and spaghetti served together on the same plate, is a popular meal at restaurants. Canadian convenience store chain Couche-Tard is now taking it to the next level with Pizzaghetti Sloches, which is essentially frozen pizza-ghetti slushies. The spaghetti sloche is sold on one side and the pizza sloche is on the other and it’s up to the customer to combine them. The chain is known for their crazy sloche combos.

Here’s the TV ads for the Pizzaghetti Sloches:

image via plagues138

via The Clearly Dope, That’s Nerdalicious!, Huffington Post, Foodbeast

The NSA and FBI are tapping into the servers of nine U.S. Internet firms, extracting audio, video, photos, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.

WASHINGTON—According to a study published Monday in the Journal Of Financial Economics, 83 percent of gamblers quit right before hitting the jackpot and striking it rich. Lead researcher, Dr. Richard Howe of the University of Chicago, confirm...

Briefly: Making a hot tub travel through time is never easy, so it’s good to have a repairman on hand just in case. Thankfully, in Steve Pink‘s upcoming Hot Tub Time Machine 2, the original hot tub repairman will be returning. Chevy Chase has signed to reprise his mysterious role in the 2010 cult comedy. There’s no word on how big his role will be this time around, but we do know the film (which also returns Craig Robinson, Clark Duke and Rob Corddry) takes the friends a decade into future where they meet the son of John Cusack’s character (who isn’t returning) played by Adam Scott. [Deadline]

• Rob Corddry Drops New Details on ‘Hot Tub Time Machine 2′
• Adam Scott Replaces John Cusack in ‘Hot Tub Time Machine 2′
• MGM Pulls the Cover Off ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ Sequel, John Cusack Not Likely to Jump In
• Hot Tub Time Machine Movie Trailer #2
• Hot Tub Time Machine Red-Band Trailer: This Time, It’s NSFW
• Hot Tub Time Machine Movie Trailer

The Washington Post and Guardian report that the US National Security Agency had developed ties with some of the world’s largest technology and social media companies that allowed the NSA to sift through data about users in a program called Prism.

As it happens, just six hours ago, the NSA’s careers office tweeted about a job opening in its “Digital Network Exploitation Analyst Development Program,” located at its main campus in Fort Meade, Maryland:

National Security Agency #IT #Job: Digital Network Exploitation Analyst Development P… ( #FortMeade , MD) bit.ly/ZEcfzW—
NSA (@NSACareers) June 06, 2013

To be clear, we can’t connect this job with the top-secret Prism surveillance program. 

The posting describes a three-year internship:

Digital Network Exploitation Analyst Development Program (DDP) is to develop individuals who can perform discovery and target technology analysis of digital network and mobile communications. Individuals will support the Analysis and Collection Offices in Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)…Individuals will support the Analysis and Collection Offices in Signals Intelligence (SIGINT).

The job offers a salary of $42,209 to $81,204, and advertises that “graduates of this program are aggressively sought after because of their in-depth knowledge and breadth of experiences.”

Perhaps they can even get jobs at Google, Facebook, and other companies that are said to be part of Prism.

thingssheloves:

Temptresses by kristahuot on Flickr.

the-great-gau8-in-the-sky:

Ever wonder the proper method to attack a tight formation of enemy planes by yourself?

MiamiHerald.com

Senate defeats Democratic, Republican loan plans KASA WASHINGTON (AP) — College students faced increasing uncertainty about the cost of new student loans after senators failed Thursday to advance partisan proposals to keep interest rates from doubling on July 1. Dueling measures in the Senate would have ... A long-term solution for student loan interest ratesMcCook Daily Gazette Senate Blocks Dueling Student Loan BillsRoll Call (blog) all 184 news articles »

The soaring skyline and frenetic pace of Shanghai are depicted in a seamlessly connected series of time-lapses in “This is Shanghai” by filmmaker Rob Whitworth and urban explorer JT Singh.

In 1980 Shanghai had no skyscrapers. It now has at least 4,000 — more than twice as many as New York. ‘This is Shanghai’ explores the diversities and eccentricities of the metropolis that is Shanghai going beyond the famous skyline.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Last December in an interview with Russia Today (video above), former NSA crypto-mathematician William Binney disclosed the extent to which he believed the US government was not only capable of, but actively engages in spying on internet data and web activity across the country. Binney said that the FBI has access to the emails of everyone in the US, holds a target list and monitors every email to and from those contained on the list.

If the interview was alarming in its suggestion then, it’s downright scary considering this evening’s report from the Washington Post and the Guardian that the US government has allegedly been mining data from eight of the world’s largest internet companies, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and others. (The report mentions nine companies; one of them, YouTube, is part of Google.)

Here’s some of what Binney guessed at back in December:

The FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of everybody in the country.

…This can happen to anyone. If become a target for whatever reason, if they’re targeted by the government, the government can go in–or the FBI or other agencies of the government can go into that database and pull all that data they’ve collected over the years and reanalyze it all, retroactively analyze everything they’ve done. Over the last 10 years at least.

…It’s everybody.

If Binney erred at all, it was merely in underestimating the reach of the government’s surveillance, which, if the report is to be believed, is capable of not only tracking emails, but a person’s movements and contacts over time.

Here’s some of what the Washington Post reported this evening:

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.

The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before.

The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

Read: Twitter boosts its privacy cred with its absence from NSA surveillance program

Two years after a car drove through a fence surrounding the site of Joe Shuster’s former home in Cleveland, it’s happened again.

The Plain Dealer reports that a 41-year-old Cleveland man has been charged with drunken driving, leaving the scene of an accident and driving without a license after he allegedly drove off the street late Wednesday afternoon and plowed through the wooden fence. While a portion of the fence and seven large metal plates reprinting the first Superman story are missing, it’s unknown whether those plates are destroyed or were merely removed until repairs can be made.

The plates were installed in 2009 by the Glenville Development Corporation and the Siegel and Shuster Society. Shuster and Jerry Siegel were teenagers living in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood when they created Superman in 1933.

The last person to drive through the fence was believed to be a neighbor, who promised to pay the estimated $2,600 to replace the seven plates he destroyed.

MIAMI—Applying an analytical framework dating back to 360 BC, Spurs power forward Tim Duncan used the concept of infinite divisibility Thursday to argue that, in theory, no team could win the NBA championship.

The Washington Post is reporting that a ”horrified” career intelligence office has provided slides detailing a secret US government spying program in which the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI allegedly have direct access to the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.

Here are the alleged details, as reported so far by the Post and the Guardian:

• One in seven NSA reports are using data gathered from the system, called PRISM
• Data from the PRISM program appeared in 1,477 articles in President Obama’s daily brief in 2012
• Data is apparently piped directly from the servers of Google, Yahoo, etc. to NSA systems, where it is filtered for “foreignness.” User accounts where security analysts have at least 51% confidence in a target’s “foreignness” may be examined.
• The filter for “foreignness” is imperfect, so data from many US citizens is also examined by intelligence analysts, but, according to one government presentation slide provided to the Post, “it’s nothing to worry about.”
• Without referring to PRISM specifically, Google in a statement appeared to deny involvement. The company said “From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.”
• Facebook has also denied involvement, telling The Next Web that “We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers.  When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.”
• Apple has denied involvement as well, telling CNBC that “We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers.”
• The report alleges that NSA can access Google services including Gmail, voice and video chat, files stored on Google Drive and photos. Search terms can be monitored in real time.
• Everyone in a suspected terrorist’s email inbox or outbox is effectively swept in with the data gathered on a target
• Microsoft was the first corporate partner of the spying program, beginning in May 2007.
• For unknown reasons and by unknown means, Apple held out for five years after Microsoft joined the program, but is now a part of it. Twitter doesn’t appear to be part of it, according to the documents.
• Growth in use of data from the PRISM program by analysts has been “exponential.”
• “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the anonymous intelligence officer told the Post.

See some of the government slides about the program leaked to the Post here.

actegratuit:

Onur Dink

photo by Kerry Clark

Alien Loves Predator UK is a fan page on Facebook that follows the crazy real-world adventures of two costumed film characters, Pedro T Predator and Abi T Alien. The Xenomorph and Predator seem to be an inseparable pair in all of their comical photos. The close friendship between the two totally reverses the usual adversarial relationship seen throughout the Alien vs. Predator franchise. You can also follow the odd duo on deviantART (Pedro and Abi).

Here are a few videos of Pedro and Abi dancing and having fun:

Here are some great photos by Mektography of Pedro and Abi enjoying some recreational activities:

images and video via Alien Loves Predator UK

via Nerd Like You, Archie McPhee’s Endless Geyser of Awesome

The list of technology companies allegedly participating in a vast US government surveillance program known as PRISM, which was just reported by the Washington Post and Guardian, is notable for one name that’s not on it: Twitter.

The seven-year-old startup is already well-respected for guarding its users’ privacy. It has fought government subpoenas that other companies, like Google, routinely comply with. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group, recently gave Twitter six out of six stars for protecting user data from government monitoring.

“No one wants a pen that’s going to rat them out,” Alexander Macgillivray, Twitter’s top lawyer, said last year.

It’s not clear why Twitter isn’t among the nine companies listed on the slides that purport to detail the PRISM program. A spokesman for Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Macgillivray didn’t, either, but after the stories were published, he retweeted another privacy group’s plaudits for Twitter’s data-privacy efforts.

Eight companies are said to be giving the NSA access to user data as part of PRISM: AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, and Yahoo. Dropbox was apparently described in an NSA presentation as “coming soon.” Facebook, Apple and Google have denied that they allowed the government direct access to their servers or, in Apple’s case, had even heard of PRISM.

One reason why Twitter might not have been asked to participate in such a program is that it doesn’t have as much private data about its users as, say, Google or Facebook. And it does comply with many government requests for data: 57% of 1,009 such requests in the second half of last year. By contrast, Google complied with 66% of 21,389 user information requests over the same period.

Nevertheless, Twitter’s absence from the PRISM list is likely to earn it praise at the same time that Americans, judging from the early reaction, heap scorn on the technology companies said to be participating in the NSA’s surveillance program.

As people become more familiar with the scope of digital data collection, privacy is an increasingly effective selling point for some companies. Microsoft’s new ad campaign is taglined, “Your privacy is our priority.” That will look hollow if, as the slides assert, Microsoft was the first company to join PRISM, back in September 2007.

The news comes as Twitter is laying the groundwork for an initial public offering that could propel it to a size more like some of the other tech giants. As it seeks to be more profitable, Twitter could feel pressure to play nice with the US and other nations that regularly demand information from technology companies. That’s the challenge facing Macgillivray and other Twitter executives as they navigate the company toward an IPO.

“We value the reputation we have for defending and respecting the user’s voice,” Macgillivray said last year. “We think it’s important to our company and the way users think about whether to use Twitter, as compared to other services.”

chicksdaddy writes "A new malicious program that runs on Android mobile devices exploits vulnerabilities in Google's mobile operating system to extend the application's permissions on the infected device, and to block attempts to remove the malicious application, The Security Ledger reports. The malware, dubbed Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a, is described as a 'multi function Trojan.' Like most profit-oriented mobile malware, Obad is primarily an SMS Trojan, which surreptitiously sends short message service (SMS) messages to premium numbers. However, it is capable of downloading additional modules and of spreading via Bluetooth connections. Writing on the Securelist blog, malware researcher Roman Unuchek called the newly discovered Trojan the 'most sophisticated' malicious program yet for Android phones. He cited the Trojan's advanced features, including complex code obfuscation techniques that complicated analysis of the code, and the use of a previously unknown vulnerability in Android that allows Obad to elevate its privileges on infected devices and block removal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.