The forces of Anonymous have taken aim at several companies who are refusing to do business with WikiLeaks. 4chan's hordes have launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against PayPal, Swiss bank PostFinance, and other sites that have hindered the whistleblowing site's operations.
A self-styled spokesman for the group calling himself "Coldblood" has said that any website that's "bowing down to government pressure" is a target. PayPal ceased processing donations to the site, and PostFinance froze WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's account. The attacks are being performed under the Operation: Payback banner; Operation: Payback is the name the group is using in its long-running attacks on the RIAA, MPAA, and other organizations involved with anti-piracy lawsuits.
The initial attacks against PayPal were substantially ineffective; the PayPal blog was taken offline, but the main PayPal site wasn't harmed. The attacks against PostFinance, however, have resulted in the bank's website being unavailable for more than 16 hours. It remains unavailable at the time of writing. The latest target is the site of the Swedish prosecutors in Assange's sexual misconduct trial. This too appears to be offline. Twitter has also been named as a future attack target, due to its censorship of the #wikileaks hashtag.
ars technica
December 2, 2010
Are Aliens Among Us? Sort of, NASA Says
Alien life has been among us all along, according to new biological findings announced by NASA Thursday.
Research conducted by biochemist Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon from the U.S. Geological Survey has turned the quest for alien life on its ear, suggesting that phosphorous -- which is found in every living thing -- is not necessarily the only sign of life. Wolfe-Simon will explain the findings at a hotly anticipated NASA press conference today at 2 p.m.
After a two-year study at California's Mono Lake, near Yosemite National Park, Wolfe-Simon found that a bug will grow in the presence of the toxic chemical arsenic when only slight traces of phosphorous are present. It's a radical finding, says molecular biologist Steven Benner, who is part of NASA's "Team Titan" and an expert on astrobiology -- forcing the space agency to redefine the quest for other life in the universe.
Fox News
Amazon cuts off WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks no longer has a home at Amazon.
The controversial site, which has roused the ire of the U.S. government for leaking classified information, is no longer being hosted by Amazon's Web servers as of yesterday.
WikiLeaks had been tapping into Amazon's EC2, or Elastic Cloud Computing service--including earlier this week. WikiLeaks said yesterday it's now being hosted by servers in Europe, according to Reuters.
cnet
The controversial site, which has roused the ire of the U.S. government for leaking classified information, is no longer being hosted by Amazon's Web servers as of yesterday.
WikiLeaks had been tapping into Amazon's EC2, or Elastic Cloud Computing service--including earlier this week. WikiLeaks said yesterday it's now being hosted by servers in Europe, according to Reuters.
cnet
November 22, 2010
November 8, 2010
Nicaraguan Invasion? Blame Google Maps
An embarrassing error on Google Maps has been blamed for Nicaragua’s accidental invasion of Costa Rica. Last week, Nicaraguan troops crossed the border, took down a Costa Rican flag and defiantly raised their own flag on Costa Rican turf.
But the troops’ commander, Eden Pastora, told a Costa Rican newspaper, La Nacion, that his invasion was not his fault, because Google Maps mistakenly said the territory belonged to Nicaragua. Government officials in Nicaragua have also blamed a “bug in Google” for the error.
Wired
But the troops’ commander, Eden Pastora, told a Costa Rican newspaper, La Nacion, that his invasion was not his fault, because Google Maps mistakenly said the territory belonged to Nicaragua. Government officials in Nicaragua have also blamed a “bug in Google” for the error.
Wired
"They all look alike": Understanding the "other race effect"
We’ve all heard conversations, comments, and even jokes about how all the members of some race look alike. While that statement is certainly a generalization, it is true that people have a harder time distinguishing between people from a different race than they do within their own race. This phenomenon, called the “other race effect,” was first written about nearly a century ago (and supported by several subsequent studies), but researchers have made little progress on determining why, exactly, this task is so hard for people. Last week, two European psychologists published a paper in PNAS that begins to help us understand the neurophysiological basis of the other race effect.
Twenty-four subjects participated in the study; half were of East Asian descent, the other half were Western Caucasian. Each participant saw a series of two faces presented on a computer screen and had to determine whether the two faces belonged to the same person or not. The two faces were either both East Asian or both Western Caucasian, and were either the faces of two different people, or the same person’s face repeated twice. In all trials, the facial expression changed between faces to make the same face slightly harder to identify.
ars technica
Twenty-four subjects participated in the study; half were of East Asian descent, the other half were Western Caucasian. Each participant saw a series of two faces presented on a computer screen and had to determine whether the two faces belonged to the same person or not. The two faces were either both East Asian or both Western Caucasian, and were either the faces of two different people, or the same person’s face repeated twice. In all trials, the facial expression changed between faces to make the same face slightly harder to identify.
ars technica
November 2, 2010
Is NASA Covering Up the 100-Year Starship?
A NASA official may have made a 35-million-mile slip of the tongue.
The director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California casually let slip mention of the 100-Year Starship recently, a new program funded by the super-secret government agency, DARPA. In a talk at San Francisco's Long Conversation conference, Simon “Pete” Worden said DARPA has $1M to spend, plus another $100,000 from NASA itself, for the program, which will initially develop a new kind of propulsion engine that will take us to Mars or beyond.
There's only one problem: The astronauts won't come back.
FOX News
The director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California casually let slip mention of the 100-Year Starship recently, a new program funded by the super-secret government agency, DARPA. In a talk at San Francisco's Long Conversation conference, Simon “Pete” Worden said DARPA has $1M to spend, plus another $100,000 from NASA itself, for the program, which will initially develop a new kind of propulsion engine that will take us to Mars or beyond.
There's only one problem: The astronauts won't come back.
FOX News
November 1, 2010
Yes, Violent Video Games are Protected by the First Amendment
Tomorrow the Entertainment Software Association will stand before the Supreme Court and argue on behalf of the video games industry that video games are protected by the same First Amendment rights as music, books, and movies. The law they'll be arguing against involves an attempt by California's legislature, signed into law by governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, to ban the sale of "violent video games" to minors.
Were the law to pass, stores found in violation of selling such games to minors would be subject to a $1,000 fine.
What's a "violent video game"? According to the California law, a game which depicts the "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting [sic] of an image of a human being in a manner that a reasonable person would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors." If this first "prong" applies, it's then run through a second check that asks whether "the patently offensive, deviant level of violence causes the game as a whole to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."
PC World
Were the law to pass, stores found in violation of selling such games to minors would be subject to a $1,000 fine.
What's a "violent video game"? According to the California law, a game which depicts the "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting [sic] of an image of a human being in a manner that a reasonable person would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors." If this first "prong" applies, it's then run through a second check that asks whether "the patently offensive, deviant level of violence causes the game as a whole to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."
PC World
October 11, 2010
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