Meet Point Defiance Zoo’s 9-week-old Canada Lynx kitten. Jasper is part of the Species Survival Plan for Canada Lynx, which are listed as endangered in Washington state. He now weighs about 1.8kg and is being hand-reared by Point Defiance Zoo staff. Jasper will make periodic appearances around the zoo this summer as he grows into his role as an ambassador for his species — via ZooBorns
The longer one lurks in the Internet underground, the more difficult it becomes to ignore the harsh reality that for nearly every legitimate online business there is a cybercrime-oriented anti-business. Case in point: Today’s post looks at a popular service that helps crooked online marketers exhaust the Google AdWords budgets of their competitors.
AdWords is Google’s paid advertising product, displaying ads on the top or the right side of your screen in search results. Advertisers bid on specific keywords, and those who bid the highest will have their ads show up first when Internet users search for those terms. In turn, advertisers pay Google a small amount each time a user clicks on one of their ads.
One of the more well-known forms of online ad fraud (aka click fraud
) involves Google AdSense publishers that automate the clicking of ads appearing on their own Web sites in order to inflate ad revenue. But fraudsters also engage in an opposite scam involving AdWords, in which advertisers try to attack competitors by raising their costs or exhausting their ad budgets early in the day.
Enter GoodGoogle
, the nickname chosen by one of the more established AdWords fraudsters operating on the Russian-language crime forums. Using a combination of custom software and hands-on customer service, GoodGoogle promises clients the ability to block the appearance of competitors’ ads.
Are you tired of the competition in Google AdWords that take your first position and quality traffic?
reads GoodGoogle’s pitch. I will help you get rid once and for all competitors in Google Adwords.
The service, which appears to have been in the offering since at least January 2012, provides customers both a la carte and subscription rates. The prices range from $100 to block between three to ten ad units for 24 hours to $80 for 15 to 30 ad units. For a flat fee of $1,000, small businesses can use GoodGoogle’s software and service to sideline a handful of competitors’s ads indefinitely. Fees are paid up-front and in virtual currencies (WebMoney, eg), and the seller offers support and a warranty for his work for the first three weeks — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Chilling Effects is the largest public repository of DMCA notices on the planet, providing a unique insight into the Internet’s copyright battles. However, each month people try to de-index pages of the site but Google has Chilling Effects’ back and routinely rejects copyright claims — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A 15-year-old Japanese schoolgirl has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a classmate and dismembering her body, local media have reported.
The suspect, whose name was not released as she is a minor, has admitted to strangling the victim and severing her head and left hand, according to the Kyodo news agency.
She allegedly delivered blows to the head of 15-year-old Aiwa Matsuo with a metal instrument before strangling her in the city of Sasebo, in Nagasaki Prefecture, southwest Japan.
The victim’s body was found on a bed in the suspect’s apartment early on Sunday and investigators discovered tools nearby, reports said.
The suspect, who lived away from her parents though in the same city, told police she acted alone in the grisly killing, Kyodo added.
Matsuo had reportedly gone out to meet friends on Saturday afternoon, but her parents notified the police when she failed to return home at night.
The two girls graduated from the same junior high school — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A leaked discussion paper from both Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has floated the possibility of websites being blocked, and measures to compel ISPs to take steps to prevent their customers infringing on copyright online.
Five months after first flagging a crackdown was on its way, Brandis appears to be pushing ahead with plans to crack down on Australians using programs such as BitTorrent to obtain copyright-infringing content such as TV shows, music, and films.
The discussion paper, leaked to Crikey, had been expected to be released this month, following Brandis meeting with representatives in the US and UK governments on their respective copyright infringement deterrence schemes.
It outlines a number of potential legislative measures the government can implement to deter what the paper said is a long standing issue
with Australians having high illegal download rates
.
The government states in the document that it believes even if an ISP doesn’t have a direct power to prevent its users from infringing on copyright, there are reasonable steps
it can take to deter infringement.
In a move to undo the 2012 High Court judgment that iiNet did not authorise its users’ copyright infringement, the paper proposes amending the Copyright Act to extend authorisation of copyright infringement and the power to prevent
infringement would just be one factor the courts would consider in determining whether an ISP was liable for infringement — via redwolf.newsvine.com
I thought long and hard about how we could incorporate a hands-on activity for mummification. Someone suggested we mummify a chicken, but I opted not to do that mainly because it sounds nasty, but also because we don’t eat meat and therefore don’t buy it. Then I heard about a project in which you can mummify fruits or veggies. Sounded a bit more like my kind of thing, but ultimately I really I wanted to do something that had more to do with the ritual aspect of mummification. So, we decided to mummify Barbie! — via Kids Activities Blog
Remember the wandering wolf
, OR-7, who traveled from Oregon to California and back while wearing a GPS collar? The US Fish and Wildlife Service discovered that he’s now a proud dad to at least three pups, thanks to some camera trap photos.
The pups are also historic; OR-7 and his mate are the first wolves known to have bred and produced offspring in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains (which stretch from British Columbia to Northern California) since the 1940s! They’re a small, adorable conservation success story — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Photo: USFWS Pacific
Conservationists battling to save the Scottish wildcat say a remote area in the north-west Highlands presents the only chance for the species’ survival.
The Highland tiger
is one of the world’s most endangered animals. Experts estimate there may be only 35 pure-bred individuals left. This compares with fewer than 2,500 wild Bengal tigers and makes the wildcat 70 times rarer than the giant panda.
The Ardnamurchan peninsula, which has some of Scotland’s wildest landscapes and few human residents, has been identified as a sanctuary. The Wildcat Haven Project aims to protect the species by catching and neutering feral and hybrid wildcats in the area to prevent them breeding with pure wildcats.
Geneticist Paul O’Donoghue, from Chester University, the scientific adviser to the project, said: Feral cats are the biggest danger to the future of the Scottish wildcat. They interbreed and you end up with hybrids of varying degrees.
The aim is to reduce and eventually remove the feral cat population from this area. We want to catch all the feral cats, neuter them and put them back where we found them, and eventually the population will die out over time.
Dr O’Donoghue and Kent-based charity the Aspinall Foundation took over the project from the Scottish Wildcat Association (SWA) last year — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Le octopus has made his home on a 20” stainless steel chain. This is a pewter version of my original clay sculpture, hand polished in a lovely antiqued finish. Each necklace comes carefully packaged in a gift box, and includes a small descriptive card and storage pouch — via Etsy
The earliest recorded tattoo was found on a Peruvian mummy in 6,000 BC. That’s some old ink! And considering humans lose roughly 40,000 skin cells per hour, how do these markings last? Claudia Aguirre details the different methods, machines and macrophages (you’ll see) that go into making tattoos stand the test of time.
Lesson by Claudia Aguirre, animation by TOGETHER — via Youtube
The photo was taken at Blue’s Point, North Sydney 10 August 1972. The car is a 351cu V8 Falcon and the motorcycle is a 4 cylinder 750cc Honda.
Senior Constable Barry Dening is the cyclist. He retired some years later as Chief Inspector in charge of Hornsby Police Station.
The officer in the car is Constable Dennis McKellar.
1960 bike car OH7221, originally uploaded by NSW Police
Wikipedia blocks US Capitol computers from editing online encyclopaedia after ‘disruptive’ revisions
Wikipedia has imposed a ban on page edits from computers at the US House of Representatives after anonymous changes were made to entries about politicians, businesses and historical events.
In response to what it calls disruptive
revisions, Wikipedia has a 10-day ban blocking any editing from an IP address at the US Capitol, which is shared among a number of computers.
One entry referred to former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as an alien lizard who eats Mexican babies.
Another said that John F Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted on behalf of Fidel Castro
.
The ban came after unusual revisions were pointed out by Twitter account @congressedits, which describes itself as a bot that tweets anonymous Wikipedia edits that are made from IP addresses in the US Congress
.
The account was created by a software developer named Ed Summers — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A remote, 76-foot lighthouse is for sale in Maine, and it could be yours for only $31,500. It’s located far to the south of the coast of Bailey Island, on a place called Halfway Rock, due east from Portland in the cold ocean waters of Casco Bay. Indeed, it’s so far out in the waves that Google Maps doesn’t even show detail for the seas around it — via BLDGBLOG
This video has been carefully designed to create a strong natural hallucination based on the motion aftereffect illusion (MAE). Use full screen and HD for better results — via Youtube
Matthew Simmonds, an art historian and architectural stone carver based in Italy, has created a collection of exceptionally beautiful miniature spaces carved from stone. Having worked on a number of restoration projects in the UK — from Westminster Abbey to Ely Cathedral — his skills have been transferred into work of a much smaller, if not more intricate, scale. Hewn from large stone blocks (some of marble), the level of intricacy Simmonds has achieved in the architectural detailing is almost incredible. Capitals, vaults and surfaces all distort and reflect light in a very beguiling way — via ArchDaily
Lego Village People, originally uploaded by Red Wolf
Derek Debit, retailer of Joe Hockies.
Originally aired on ABC TV: 24/07/2014 — via Youtube
Restoration of a Gargoyle from Kronborg Castle Denmark. The Gargoyle was cast in plaster and repaired before it was 3D scanned with Scantech SL 3D Scanner and carved out in sandstone on a 5-axis Breton CNC machine — via Youtube
Cone of Shame, originally uploaded by Red Wolf
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