have you heard about...?

[mbw]

Some seriously effed up shit going down in the world lately.
It saddens me that this gets so much less media time than what went down in Paris.


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/09/boko-haram-deadliest-massacre-baga-nigeria

i wonder why it doesn't get as much coverage? 

[Undermind]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2908057/Wife-chopped-husband-s-penis-discovered-cheated-cut-surgeons-managed-reattach-China.html

[Buffalo Budd]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/69-dead-in-mozambique-after-drinking-beer-poisoned-with-bile-1.2897074

[anthrax]

http://fox17online.com/2015/01/23/mother-outraged-after-spotting-satanic-symbol-in-school-bus-brake-lights/

[mbw]

http://fox17online.com/2015/01/23/mother-outraged-after-spotting-satanic-symbol-in-school-bus-brake-lights/

All aboard!    :evil: :rawk: :evil:

[whatthecello42]

Lars Andersen, master of ancient and long-forgotten bow skills

http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/lars-andersen-shows-off-insane-archery-skills/?fb=dd

[mbw]

zombie/jesus cat

http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/zombie-cat-buried-cat-believed-dead-meows-back/story?id=28519513&cid=fb_abcn

[emay]

http://benswann.com/the-federal-government-is-storing-hundreds-of-millions-of-american-license-plate-records/

They know where you travel

The Federal Government is Storing Hundreds of Millions of American License Plate Records

    Police State

By: Derrick Broze Jan 27, 2015
4

The American Civil Liberties Union has revealed the existence of a national program operated by the Drug Enforcement Administration  that collects and analyzes license plate information.

According to heavily redacted documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act Requests, the DEA has gathered as many as 343 million records in the National License Plate Recognition program.

The initiative allows the DEA to connect its Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) and collected data with that of law enforcement agencies around the nation. Using the Department of Homeland Security's Fusion Centers this program only adds to the growing list of data collection by the US government.

ALPR's are used to gather license plate, time, date and location, that can be used to create a detailed map of what individuals are doing. The devices can be attached to light poles, or toll booths, as well as on top of or inside law enforcement vehicles. In 2012 the Wall Street Journal reported that the five previous years the Department of Homeland Security distributed over $50 million in grants to fund the acquisition of license plate readers.

One document shows the DEA has at least 100 license plate readers in eight states, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey. Law enforcement in Southern California's San Diego and Imperial Counties and New Jersey are among the agencies providing the DEA with data. The program opened to local and state partners in 2009.

The Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) is one of the federal agencies working with the DEA. The documents also reveal the program mining license plate reader date "to identify travel patterns."  The DEA has established 100 license plate readers in  eight states, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and New Jersey. A 2010 document also explains that the DEA had by then set up 41 plate reader monitoring stations throughout Texas, New Mexico, and California.

The new information came as the result of public records requests, and FOIA requests filed by the ACLU in 2012. The ACLU discussed the specific danger of the federal government using such tools.

    "With its jurisdiction and its finances, the federal government is uniquely positioned to create a centralized repository of all drivers' movements across the country — and the DEA seems to be moving toward doing just that."

A 2011 survey by the Police Executive Research Forum found that of the more than 70 police departments surveyed, 70 percent used ALPR technology and 85 percent expected to be using or increasing use of the technology within the next five years. Some believe that by 2016 as much as 25 percent of police vehicles will come equipped with the cameras.

Government agencies are not the only groups interested in this data, however. Recently, it was discovered that  repossession, or "Repo" companies were using license plate readers to gather data. Once the companies take possession of a vehicle from delinquent owners the companies use the LPR's to gather data which can then be sold to the highest bidder.

Jennifer Lynch, attorney with the  Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern over the database of information being sold to banks, insurance companies and law enforcement agencies. "These private companies have amassed databases of over a billion records," she said.

In early 2014, the EFF and the ACLU of Southern California filed the opening brief  in their lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff Department. The lawsuit deals with how the law enforcement agencies are using Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR) to gather information. The two watchdog agencies attempted to argue that the two departments are illegally keeping quiet on how the information is used.

Soon after a judge would rule in agreement with with law enforcement, claiming that the data caught by the readers should not be released to the public. The LAPD and LASD argued that 100 percent of the information was part of an investigation and therefore should not be released.

The LAPD and LASD have been called "two of the biggest gatherers of automatic license plate recognition information," by LA Weekly. The ALPR gather information and officers from the LASD or LAPD can access up to 26 other police agenices in the county as they search for a hit in the system.

I have previously written for BenSwann.com on the danger of ALPR's and "hot lists".

"Departments and officers can create lists of "vehicles of interest" and alert other ALPR users when the vehicle is spotted. Officers can search individuals plates numbers in the ALPR system to track during their shift. There seems to be no prerequisite of reasonable suspicion or a warrant needed to be added to such a list. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department manual on the ALPR offers more insight into the program.

As with many emerging technologies the future is still being written and opportunities for corruption and abuse are plenty. In 2009 the BBC reported on the case of John Cat. Catt is a regular attendee of anti-war protests in his home town, Brighton. His vehicle was tagged by police at one of the events and he was added to a "hotlist". He said later while on a trip to London he was pulled over by anti-terror police. He was threatened with arrest if he did not cooperate and answer the questions of the police.

A recent investigation by Mudrock and the Boston Globe revealed that the Boston Police Department violated its own policies by failing to follow up on leads that were flagged by the ALPR scans. Public records requests by MudRock found that the BPD also collected information on its own officers. The BPD has reportedly stopped responding to email and phone calls seeking documents that they are required to disclose."

For more information check out the ACLU's report "You Are Being Tracked: License Plate Readers Explained"

[anthrax]

those license plate readers are insane.  a lot of cops have them in their vehicles now.  it will alert them if there's a stolen car, suspended license, etc, anywhere near the cop car.  criminals have no shot these days!  good thing weed is practically legal!

[rowjimmy]

Lars Andersen, master of ancient and long-forgotten bow skills

http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/lars-andersen-shows-off-insane-archery-skills/?fb=dd

This guy puts on an interesting show. You guys should watch it.
Then check this unrestrained take-down from GeekDad
http://geekdad.com/2015/01/danish-archer/

[sls.stormyrider]

thanks
great distraction on a slow day at work

[Buffalo Budd]

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/montreal-man-7-seconds-too-late-for-27m-lotto-jackpot-1.2211551

[emay]

bitcoins not so secret

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/prosecutors-trace-13-4-million-bitcoins-silk-road-ulbrichts-laptop/

Prosecutors Trace $13.4M in Bitcoins From the Silk Road to Ulbricht's Laptop

If anyone still believes that bitcoin is magically anonymous internet money, the US government just offered what may be the clearest demonstration yet that it's not. A courtroom PowerPoint presentation traced hundreds of thousands of bitcoins from the Silk Road anonymous marketplace for drugs directly to the personal computer of Ross Ulbricht, the 30-year-old accused of running that contraband bazaar.

In Ulbricht's trial Thursday, former FBI special agent Ilhwan Yum described how he traced 3,760 bitcoin transactions over 12 months ending in late August 2013 from servers seized in the Silk Road investigation to Ross Ulbricht's Samsung 700z laptop, which the FBI seized at the time of his arrest in October of that year. In all, he followed more than 700,000 bitcoins along the public ledger of bitcoin transactions, known as the blockchain, from the marketplace to what seemed to be Ulbricht's personal wallets. Based on exchange rates at the time of each transaction, Yum calculated that the transferred coins were worth a total of $13.4 million.

"You mean direct, one-to-one transfers?" prosecutor Timothy Howard asked Yum.

"Yes, direct, one-to-one transfers," Yum responded.

Yum's testimony represents another damning line of evidence connecting Ulbricht to the Silk Road, on top of a journal detailing the Silk Road's creation found on his laptop and testimony from a college friend who said that Ulbricht confessed creating the site to him. Ulbricht's defense has argued that despite initially founding the Silk Road, the 30-year-old Texan quickly gave it up to the site's real owners, who later lured him back just before his arrest to serve as the "perfect fall guy." But Yum's analysis showed that Ulbricht was receiving bitcoin transfers from Silk Road servers in data centers near Philadelphia and Reykjavik, Iceland long after his defense has argued he turned over control of the site.

More broadly, Yum's testimony confirms what most savvy bitcoin users already know: that the cryptocurrency is by no means untraceable or anonymous by default. Although using bitcoins doesn't necessarily require revealing any identifying information, all bitcoin transactions are traced on the blockchain, the same widely distributed list of transactions designed to make counterfeiting bitcoins impossible. If someone can identify a user's bitcoin addresses—in Ulbricht's case, by seizing the laptop he was actively using at the moment of his arrest—then they can often be used to trace his or her transactions.

In fact, Berkeley computer science professor Nicholas Weaver had already shown that he was able to follow more than 29,000 bitcoins from the Silk Road to Ulbricht's laptop based only on publicly available information. The prosecution, with access to Ulbricht's hard drive, had far more success. Nearly 500,000 bitcoins of the 700,253 bitcoins were transferred from September to November 2012, explaining their relatively low total exchange rate.

Remarkably, that total trail of drug-tainted coins represents more than four times as many bitcoins from Silk Road Ulbricht's laptop than have yet been found and seized in the Silk Road investigation. It's still not clear from Yum's testimony where the rest of them ended up.

The Silk Road advertised that it protected users by "tumbling" coins, mixing them up between users to prevent anyone's transactions from being identified. But Yum's testimony makes it clear that withdrawals from the site could still be tied to users, particularly after the FBI possessed the Silk Road's servers. Bitcoin anonymity tools like Bitcoin Fog or Dark Wallet could further obscure bitcoins' digital trail, but it doesn't seem that Ulbricht himself used those protections, instead transferring the coins directly to his own wallet. Based on earlier testimony from FBI agents, Ulbricht likely believed his hard drive's encryption would prevent anyone from tying his bitcoin addresses to his real-world identity.

When the morning's testimony ended, the prosecution still hadn't finished questioning Yum, and that questioning will be followed by cross examination from Ulbricht's defense attorneys. Given the mind-twisting complexity of the bitcoin blockchain for an unschooled jury, the defense may yet have plenty of room to inject doubt into the government's analysis. Stay tuned for further updates later today.

[emay]

awesomenes

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/25/technology/lsd-psychedelics-silicon-valley/index.html

Sex, Drugs & Silicon Valley
When Silicon Valley takes LSD
By Erica Fink   @EricaFink January 25, 2015: 3:37 PM ET


NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
"So, I don't think there is such a thing as recreational LSD use," veteran Silicon Valley engineer Kevin Herbert said wryly. "I would be at a Grateful Dead show, high on LSD ... and something about my work would just come to me."

Herbert, who works at Cisco, has been in the tech sphere for decades. For him, geek-dom and psychedelics have intersected since the start of his adult life: The first LSD he took was created in an M.I.T. lab at and consumed at a science fiction convention.

In Silicon Valley, there is a premium on creativity, and tools thought to induce or enhance it are avidly sought. Some view psychedelics as a weapon in the arsenal, a way to approach problems differently.

There's no definitive scientific evidence that LSD or other hallucinogens improve creativity, and the DEA classifies LSD as a highly addictive, Schedule I drug. But the belief that they might work as a creative tool is enough to fuel some technologists' hope for professional epiphanies.

For people like Herbert, 51, Silicon Valley today feels a bit like the '70s all over again. Herbert drops acid three or four times a year and finds that it helps him solve work problems -- it's a way to "hack" the limits of his natural thought.

"There was a case where I had been working on a problem for over a month," Herbert said. "And I took LSD and I just realized, 'Wait, the problem is in the hardware. It's not a software issue at all.'"

Many of Herbert's colleagues are younger, and he says rising stars in the industry often share anecdotes from weekend LSD trips. CNNMoney encountered many engineers and developers who were uncomfortable sharing their habits on the record but use psychedelics both to enhance their work and as their recreational drug of choice.

More from Sex, Drugs & Silicon Valley

Tim Ferriss, a Silicon Valley investor and author of "The 4-Hour Workweek," says he knows many successful entrepreneurs who dabble in psychedelics.

"The billionaires I know, almost without exception, use hallucinogens on a regular basis," Ferriss said. "[They're] trying to be very disruptive and look at the problems in the world ... and ask completely new questions."

An employee of one of the biggest Silicon Valley companies said he recently made a pivotal career decision while under the influence of magic mushrooms -- changing course from a management track and moving into product security.

"I have a habit of boxing up difficult thoughts and emotions I'm having, and I find psychedelics good for unpacking that stuff," he said.

The phenomenon was satirized on HBO's Silicon Valley when psychedelic mushrooms guide one of the show's main characters in the hunt for a new name for their startup.

However, by all accounts, psychedelics are not treated as a simple fix-it for work conundrums. The last thing he would do, Herbert says, is take LSD and then code. It's more subtle: "if you have issues in your life or anything, you're going to think about them [while high], and think about them in a different perspective."

A recent study at Imperial College London provides a possible explanation as to why that happens. Twenty participants ingested LSD and then had their brain activity monitored in an fMRI machine. The drug broke down certain brain networks, allowing new patterns of communication to form.

"Psychedelics dismantle 'well-worn' networks, and this allows novel communication patterns to occur ... modules that don't usually talk to each other are talking to each other more," explained Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, the researcher who conducted the study.

Psychedelics have a long history in Silicon Valley.

Daniel Kottke, a college friend and early employee of Steve Jobs', used to drop acid with him at Reed College.

"He was very forthcoming about that, about psychedelics being very helpful for getting him in touch with creativity," Kottke said of Jobs.

According to Kottke, Jobs was not interested in smoking marijuana during college because it didn't expand consciousness in the same way.

Meanwhile, in the late '90s, a former high level employee of a major software company (who asked not to be named) said he was taking psychedelics with the "specific intent of working on software problems." On one highly successful trip, he came up with design ideas, features and architectural improvements to a piece of software today used by millions.

Of course, people still like to trip for fun. Technologists flock to the annual Burning Man gathering in the Nevada desert, and many attendees say it's an experience best enjoyed on psychedelics -- no professional quandaries required.

[whatthecello42]

A former "Power Ranger" is behind bars, accused of stabbing his roommate to death with a sword.

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/video/11092240-former-power-ranger-accused-of-stabbing-roommate-to-death-with-sword/