Be sceptical of vague new ‘national security’ powers

Any proposal by the government to increase its own power should be treated with scepticism.

Double that scepticism when the government is vague about why it needs that extra power. Double again when those powers are in the area of law and order. And double again every time the words national security are used.

So scepticism — aggressive, hostile scepticism, bordering on kneejerk reaction — should be our default position when evaluating the long list of new security powers the Federal Government would like to deal with emerging and evolving threats — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Human corpses harvested in multimillion-dollar trade

On February 24, Ukrainian authorities made an alarming discovery: bones and other human tissues crammed into coolers in a grimy white minibus.

Investigators grew even more intrigued when they found, amid the body parts, envelopes stuffed with cash and autopsy results written in English.

What the security service had disrupted was not the work of a serial killer but part of an international pipeline of ingredients for medical and dental products that are routinely implanted into people around the world.

The seized documents suggested that the remains of dead Ukrainians were destined for a factory in Germany belonging to the subsidiary of a US medical products company, Florida-based RTI Biologics — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Art Deco-Inspired Contemporary House / Hayling Island

Seeing a lot of new builds inspired by the art deco era of late, the latest of which is this art deco-inspired contemporary four-bedroom house in Hayling Island, Hampshire.

It’s a recent waterside build with all the latest amenities, but also a house with a foot (if a house has a foot) firmly in the 1930s when it comes to the look. There is also plenty of glazing that offers panoramic views over Langstone Harbour — location is certainly a selling point here.

You’ll need some money to secure it though. Somewhere around the £1,750,000 mark — via WowHaus

Senate report: HSBC ‘allowed drug money laundering’

A US Senate probe has disclosed how lax controls at Europe’s largest bank left it vulnerable to being used to launder dirty money from around the world.

The report into HSBC, released ahead of a Senate hearing on Tuesday, says huge sums of Mexican drug money almost certainly passed through the bank.

Suspicious funds from Syria, the Cayman Islands, Iran and Saudi Arabia also passed through the bank.

HSBC said it expected to be held accountable for what went wrong — via redwolf.newsvine.com

WWII Régulateur Heritage / Bell & Ross

Bell & Ross has announced the release of the WW2 Régulateur Heritage. Their latest watch to be inspired by military history reinterprets pocket watches bomber pilots strapped to their legs during World War II. The WW2 Régulateur Heritage separates the time information with a central hand for the minutes, a counter for the hours, and a small independent seconds hand. The case has a gun-metal grey steel finish. This watch retails for $6600 — via Watch Time

Tasmanian cops decline to ‘censor internet’

Tasmania’s police force has taken the unusual step of asking the public to stop alerting it to every abusive or harassing comment posted to Facebook or other social media sites.

The force said it was increasingly receiving complaints about material posted to the sites.

However, it sought to clarify that the use of technology to undertake some conduct does not in itself create an offence.

If the conduct complained of would not amount to an offence if it occurred off-line, then it is not an offence simply because in a particular instance it was undertaken with the aid of digital technology, the department noted — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Cisco acquires Virtuata to secure virtual-machine data

Cisco has acquired Virtuata, a privately held developer of technology for securing virtual-machine data in multi-tenant data centres, the company said Monday.

Virtuata helps to isolate each virtual machine from others in the same virtualised data centre or cloud environment, Cisco said. It can help to address the security concerns of enterprises or service providers that want to host multiple customers, departments or applications in a single infrastructure. Cisco said the acquisition complements its mission to help customers create unified data centres — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Symantec confirms blue-screening Windows XP PCs

Symantec last week crippled a large number of Windows XP machines when it shipped customers a defective update to its antivirus software, the company acknowledged Friday.

After a full evaluation and root cause analysis … we have determined that the issue was limited to machines running a combination of Windows XP, the latest version of the SONAR technology, the July 11th rev11 SONAR signature set, and certain third-party software, said Orla Cox, of the company’s security response team in a 14 July blog post — via redwolf.newsvine.com

White Rhino / Singapore Zoo

Singapore Zoo recently celebrated the birth of its thirteenth White Rhino — an adorable and curious youngster. Aptly named Jumaane (which means born on Tuesday), he arrived on Tuesday, 10 April, weighing approximately 70kg at birth — undoubtedly one of the biggest babies the Zoo has welcomed to date. He can be seen running or rolling around in the mud in his spacious exhibit at the Wild Africa region. Mum Shova is always close by, keeping a watchful eye — via ZooBorns

Cafe Racer BMW R100 / Aric Russom

For custom builders, older BMW airheads are starting to approach Honda CB and Triumph Bonneville levels of popularity. This one was built by Aric Russom, an artist and photographer from Western Massachusetts. He’s owned the BMW for 13 years, and in that time, has given it two major overhauls — via Bike EXIF

Britain flooded with ‘brand police’ to protect sponsors

Hundreds of uniformed Olympics officers will begin touring the country today enforcing sponsors’ multimillion-pound marketing deals, in a highly organised mission that contrasts with the scramble to find enough staff to secure Olympic sites.

Almost 300 enforcement officers will be seen across the country checking firms to ensure they are not staging ambush marketing or illegally associating themselves with the Games at the expense of official sponsors such as Adidas, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and BP. The clampdown goes on while 3,500 soldiers on leave are brought in to bail out the security firm G4S which admitted it could not supply the numbers of security staff it had promised.

Yesterday, the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, refused to rule out that even more soldiers may be called upon to help with security, but dismissed the issue as merely a hitch. However, as well as the regular Army, the Olympic brand army will start its work with a vengeance today — via redwolf.newsvine.com

DARPA’s ‘Wall-of-Sound’ Fire Extinguisher

DARPA is showing off a new system that can put out flames using only sound. It’s part of the US defence agency’s Instant Fire Suppression program.

At the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have published the video alongside details of how the technique was achieved in their labs back in December 2011.

The team arranged two speakers either side of a liquid fuel flame to demonstrate how fire can be controlled by amping up an acoustic field. The sound increases air velocity, which then thins the area of the flame where combustion occurs, known as the flame boundary. Once the boundary area is thinned, the flame is easier to extinguish. At the same time, the acoustics are disturbing the pool of fuel and creating higher fuel vaporisation — this widens the flame, thinning it out so it is less concentrated and cool enough to extinguish.

Even better, the sound does not even need to be offensively loud to achieve any of this — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Kawasaki KZ1000 Mk II / AC Sanctuary

Late 70s Japanese superbikes have character by the bucketload—unlike the plasticized contemporary offerings. There’s ample performance too: a stock Kawasaki KZ1000 puts out around 90 hp, and can run the quarter mile in just over 12 seconds.

Unfortunately, the dynamics of such bikes have fallen a long way behind modern standards. And that’s where the custom workshop AC Sanctuary steps in, restoring and modifying machines like this KZ1000 Mk II — via Bike EXIF

Maison L / Christian Pottgiesser Architectures Possibles

Less than half an hour’s drive west from Paris city centre, designed [Christian Pottgiesser Architectures Possibles] as an extension of a private residence to an 18th-century structure, sought to provide every family member with a private realm. The roughly 5000 m2 plot of old trees called for a project that would leave the spacious ground predominantly untouched — via ArchDaily

Health Centre and Houses for Elderly People / IPOSTUDIO Architects

The project [IPOSTUDIO Architects] is located on an area with a landscape of great importance for its intrinsic agricultural tradition, characterised by the presence of terraces built with dry stone walls of considerable size. A compromise between the design philosophy and the morphologic complexity of the soil had to be reached due to the peculiarity of the settlement type. On that account, emerges the idea of a single façade towards the valley and its bending profile which simulates the soil contour lines — via ArchDaily

Amazon same-day delivery: How the e-commerce giant will destroy local retail

Why would Amazon give up its precious tax advantage? This week, as part of an excellent investigative series on the firm, the Financial Times’ Barney Jopson reports that Amazon’s tax capitulation is part of a major shift in the company’s operations. Amazon’s grand strategy has been to set up distribution centres in faraway, low-cost states and then ship stuff to people in more populous, high-cost states. When I order stuff from Amazon, for instance, it gets shipped to California from one of the company’s massive warehouses in Kentucky orNevada.

But now Amazon has a new game. Now that it has agreed to collect sales taxes, the company can legally set up warehouses right inside some of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation. Why would it want to do that? Because Amazon’s new goal is to get stuff to you immediately — as soon as a few hours after you hit Buy.

It’s hard to overstate how thoroughly this move will shake up the retail industry. Same-day delivery has long been the holy grail of Internet retailers, something that dozens of startups have tried and failed to accomplish. (Remember Kozmo.com?) But Amazon is investing billions to make next-day delivery standard, and same-day delivery an option for lots of customers. If it can pull that off, the company will permanently alter how we shop. To put it more bluntly: Physical retailers will be hosed — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Is Digg Dead? Betaworks Grabs Up Site for a Song

People just don’t dig Digg as much as they used to, it seems. In an amazing fall from grace for a company that helped pioneer the social-media boom, the Digg tech-news sharing network was gobbled up this week by Betaworks for a price reported by The Wall Street Journal to be $500,000. The company claims the deal was higher but hasn’t disclosed the price.

Betaworks will merge Digg with its News.me service — via redwolf.newsvine.com