BBC - Blogs - Adam Curtis - BUGGER
BUGGER The recent revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden were fascinating. But they - and all the reactions to them - had one enormous assumption at their heart. That the spies know what they are doing. But when you look at the history of MI5 the astonishing thing is they never seem to kno...
Hasnain says:
This was so long that even I almost gave up, but man is it amazing.
"The recent revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden were fascinating. But they - and all the reactions to them - had one enormous assumption at their heart.
That the spies know what they are doing."
Posted on 2013-08-09T17:47:44+0000
Death of a ballplayer: Billy Dillon was about to sign a contract with the Detroit Tigers -- then...
Billy Dillon was about to sign a contract with the Detroit Tigers -- then he was wrongly convicted of murder and spent the next 27 years of his life in maximum security prison. Now he's free, and looking for his mission.
Hasnain says:
So why, then? Why did they go after Billy Dillon? Their own selfishness? Just to make themselves look good and keep their jobs?
"Not even that," Dillon says. "It was society's selfishness. They wanted a killer. They wanted the people they hired to do anything to get him."
Posted on 2013-08-08T16:31:06+0000
Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News
Rob Malda, the founder of Slashdot and now an employee at WaPo Labs, weighs in on the future of news and why nerds distrust authority.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2013-08-08T12:15:13+0000
Computational Investing, Part I
Computational Investing, Part I is a free online class taught by Dr. Tucker Balch of Georgia Institute of Technology
What Strengthens and Weakens Our Integrity – Part I: Why Small Choices Count
Integrity. It’s a quality every man worth his salt aspires to. It encompasses many of the best and most admirable traits in a man: honesty, uprightness, t
Hasnain says:
"What this means is that if you want to maintain your integrity, the best thing you can do is to never take that first dishonest step. No matter how small and inconsequential a choice may seem at the time, it may start you down a path that tarnishes your moral compass, leads you to commit more serious misdeeds, and causes you to compromise your fundamental principles."
Definitely looking forward to the next few parts in the series.
Posted on 2013-08-07T16:27:27+0000
Schneier on Security: Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet
In July 2012, responding to allegations that the video-chat service Skype -- owned by Microsoft -- was changing its protocols to make it possible for the government to eavesdrop on users, Corporate Vice President Mark Gillett took to the company's blog to deny it.
Hasnain says:
"Since the Snowden documents became public, I have been receiving e-mails from people seeking advice on whom to trust. As a security and privacy expert, I'm expected to know which companies protect their users' privacy and which encryption programs the NSA can't break. The truth is, I have no idea. No one outside the classified government world does. I tell people that they have no choice but to decide whom they trust and to then trust them as a matter of faith. It's a lousy answer, but until our government starts down the path of regaining our trust, it's the only thing we can do."
Posted on 2013-08-07T16:08:07+0000
One Second on the Internet
A visual display of the data being uploaded every second.
Sarah Stillman: The Use and Abuse of Civil Forfeiture
The basic principle behind asset forfeiture is appealing. It enables authorities to confiscate cash or property obtained through illicit means, and, in many states, funnel the proceeds directly into the fight against crime. But the system has also given rise to corruption and violations of civil lib...
Hasnain says:
Really long, equally horrifying.
"It involved, in Guillory’s analysis, “a government entity that enjoys the benefit of most doubts, and a D.A. who enjoyed the most gold-plated kind of immunity there is: absolute prosecutorial immunity.” That was why, he thinks, authorities in Tenaha had managed to keep their dirty work largely obscured from public view—“shitting in high cotton,” he calls it."
Posted on 2013-08-05T20:54:58+0000
Lab-grown burger eaten in London
The world's first lab-grown burger was cooked and eaten at a news conference in London on Monday.
Hasnain says:
Man eats burger. News at 11.
On a more serious note, this is pretty cool.
Posted on 2013-08-05T13:52:12+0000
Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents · D. Kriesel
In this article I present in which way scanners / copiers of the Xerox WorkCentre Line randomly alter written numbers in pages that are scanned. This is not an OCR problem (as we switched off OCR on purpose), it is a lot worse – patches of the pixel data are randomly replaced in a very subtle and da...