The government’s secret listening post GCHQ could sell its technical expertise to the private sector under plans being considered by the government — via redwolf.newsvine.com
There is tons of spam flying around the Internet. Most people can’t delete it fast enough. It’s virtually invisible. This site gives you access to a program that will encrypt a short message into spam. Basically, the sentences it outputs vary depending on the message you are encoding. Real spam is so stupidly written it’s sometimes hard to tell the machine written spam from the genuine article
The US State Department has pushed employees toward digital diplomacy
with Twitter and iPhone apps, but the department has banned all employees from using WikiLeaks — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Here’s a sentence you don’t read every day: last Sunday afternoon, our kitchen was brought to a standstill by the sound of a broken-down fairground ride with its calliope in a state of terrible disrepair wheezing out a wildly offkey version of Tom Jones’s It’s Not Unusual. The reactions among the Petridis family ranged from hilarity (me) to wild, howling terror (Agatha, aged one), both of which somehow seemed right: it was both uproariously funny and deeply unsettling. It was played on Jarvis Cocker’s fantastic BBC 6 Music show, but he had discovered it on the Tape Findings section of a website called sweetthunder.org. Here, an American bloke posts MP3 files of the sounds recorded on random cassettes he finds in thrift stores and garage sales — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The mastermind behind a SMS spam scheme that preyed on lonely hearts through dating websites has been fined $2 million.
Former porn site operator Scott Gregory Phillips was behind a Brisbane-based business which employed backpackers to create fake profiles on dating websites and send unsolicited text messages to victims — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Apache Pictures made a short film that imagines Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner as human beings. It’s called Wiley vs Rhodes. The special effects are impressive for an independent short film — via Neatorama
A group of twitchers in Peru have caught a rare glimpse of a bizarre-looking bird not seen for 26 years.
The bird-watchers spotted a long-whiskered owlet, a species first discovered in 1976 that has remained largely out of sight since.
The tiny species, Xenoglaux loweryi, has long bristles around its beak, and delicate feathers that extend into whiskers.
Its formal Latin name actually means strange owl
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
I had never heard of a Gorniczy Agregat Gasniczy
apparatus prior to the Pike River Mine disaster still unfolding in New Zealand, where one such device is about to be deployed.
The GAG, as it’s known, is a jet engine inertisation unit developed for use in mines, controlling and suppressing coal seam fires
, Wikipedia explains—another way of saying that it is literally a jet engine that you plug into one end of a sealed mine in order to blow high-powered chemical winds (carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor) into the tunnels below. These gases then lower the oxygen levels, suppressing fires and forcing methane out of the mine
— via BLDGBLOG
The harvesting of cocoa beans is in decline, the Nature Conservation Research Council warns, meaning the afternoon chocolate fix could become a costly indulgence — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Already under investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman, Australia’s largest poultry manufacturer, Baiada, has now been cited by WorkSafe Victoria over the death of a contract worker at one of its plants — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Journalists union The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance has come to the defence of anonymous disclosure site WikiLeaks.
In a statement this afternoon, the union accused Amazon, which withdrew hosting services from WikiLeaks, of caving in to hysteria.
It follows the release by Wikileaks – which is led by the Australian Julian Assange – of a huge amount of diplomatic exchanges involving the US.
Federal secretary Chris Warren said: Amazon’s decision is extremely disappointing. We need to take a step back from the hysteria. It is not known whether WikiLeaks has broken any law. It has – via a free media – upheld the public’s right to know
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Australia’s live sheep exports are facing renewed scrutiny, after animal welfare activists filmed graphic footage of the cruel treatment of sheep during an Islamic festival in Kuwait — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Foreign firefighting crews have begun to arrive in Israel to help battle a massive forest fire out of control in the north of the country — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In an uncharacteristically public way, Google has acknowledged modifying its search engine so it can identify businesses that provide bad service and lower their search results rankings accordingly.
Google took action after a recent story in The New York Times detailed the tactics of an online eyeware store owner who claimed his site’s high Google rankings were directly proportional to the many complaints posted by upset customers — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The website of whistle-blowing organisation WikiLeaks has been shut down by the company providing it with domain name services — via redwolf.newsvine.com
What if you could be recognized by the way your eyes moved? An Israeli company believes that tracking the unique signatures in the movement of your eyeballs could be the most foolproof biometric system ever. What’s more, its setup could be used as a lie detector, or a drug and alcohol test — via redwolf.newsvine.com
African nations can break dependence on food imports and produce enough to feed a growing population within a generation despite extra strains from climate change, a study said — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Astronomers have discovered there are three times more stars in the universe than previously thought, boosting the likelihood of extraterrestrial life — via redwolf.newsvine.com
At least 40 people have been killed and dozens injured in a huge forest fire in Israel — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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