NEWS
Nazis go on the dark web and get DDoS'd
Yesterday I wrote about how the Nazis have had trouble finding somewhere to host their race hate bullshit after Google and GoDaddy refused to continue to register their domains. In order to remain active, the Daily Stormer has ended up on the dark web. If you want to get your dose of why Jews rule the world and how blacks are inferior to whites, you gotta load up Tor. A patriot has launched a DDoS on the Daily Stormer's dark web site, so it doesn't even work properly. This person is basically the Hugo Stiglitz of the dark web - a hero to us all.
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Text messages between Levandowski & Kalanick go public, they don't like Tesla
Text messages between Anthony Levandowski and Travis Kalanick have been made public thanks to the ongoing court case between Uber and Waymo. The main thing Travis and Anthony talked about was how much they think Elon Musk is a jerk for hyping up Tesla's self-driving capabilities beyond what the hardware is capable of. Check out this message from Levandowski: "we've got to start calling Elon on his shit. I'm not on social media but let's start "faketesla" and start giv[ing] physics lessons about stupid shit Elon says". IEEE Spectrum has a few more messages if you're keen. Also, Uber will be subject to 20 years of audits from the FTC because they were ignoring their own privacy policy with that "God Mode" system they had going. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people.
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What's our great big metadata system being used for?
We finally got info from the Attorney General about what all that metadata about us they're hoarding is being used for. They were supposed to report on it in November last year, but didn't get around to it until Monday. According to this great article from Buzzfeed about the latest report, there's been 325,807 authorisations for metadata. Of those requests "57,166 were related to illicit drug offences, 25,245 requests were for homicide offences, and 4,454 requests were made to assist terrorism investigations". The WA police accessed the metadata collection 33 times to spy on journalists. The AFP handed over metadata gathered in Australia to 23 countries, including China. It also cost the tax payer $125m to collect and store all this data.
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Intel announces 10th-gen CPUs, even though 8th-gen aren't out yet
AMD is hogging the stage lately, with the hype around its Threadripper CPUs and Vega GPUs, the nerds are loving AMD's output. To remind us of their greatness, Intel threw some crumbs to the tech press with info about a new family of chips called Ice Lake. Intel hasn't actually said anything about the Ice Lake besides A) they're coming one day, B) they're called Ice Lake and C) it'll use a 10nm process. Intel hasn't even said anything about their previously announced Cannon Lake, which will be the first to use a 10nm process, so it's weird to announce the generation of chips now. Cannon Lake isn't even the next range of chips coming out - that's Coffee Lake (fuck me all these lakes), which will be revealed August 21st. Ice Lake probably won't be out until late-2019/early-2020, so to talk about something that far ahead for Intel must mean they're seriously concerned about AMD's efforts.
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NSW digital drivers licence pilot to begin in Dubbo soon
There's a bit of news about that digital drivers licence thing the NSW government wants to get going. The innovative town of Dubbo, well known for its population of early adopters will be part of a 12 month trial where those who live the great city can apply for a digital licence, meaning they can get their drivers licence in an app on their smartphone. During the trial they'll still need to carry the plastic card, so, I dunno why you'd voluntarily take part except for curiosity's sake. After the trial, Service NSW will roll it out state-wide in 2019. Part me of reckons they're doing it in Dubbo first because if it'll work with the geniuses in Dubbo, it'll be fine in the rest of the state. Smart thinking from Service NSW.
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COOL SHIT
Disposable smartphone chargers are stupid and wasteful
Big Clive's YouTube channel is a favourite of mine. He's just some British bloke who breaks open cheap electronics and explains how it works. Nothing fancy, but I like it. His latest video is of a "disposable" charger for smartphones. What the hell is a disposable charger? It's just a normal USB lithium battery pack, but without a USB socket to recharge it again - how incredibly wasteful! There's no need to make them without a way to recharge, it wouldn't cost more than a few cents to add the required socket and IC. These greedy bastards just want to sell you a new 600mAh battery every time you're caught with a flat smartphone battery. Shit like this should be illegal.
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Ubiquiti has a lifestyle camera thing to sell you
Ubiquiti has some new gear, but it's not a router or an access point - it's a lifestyle camera? The FrontRow is basically a necklace pendant with a display on one side and a camera on the other that'll let you broadcast live video to Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. It'll also take still photos every few seconds to create a time lapses of your excursion and fill your social media followers with intense FOMO. It can pair to your iPhone over Bluetooth, or talk directly to the internet over wi-fi if it's within range of a network. US$399 and out now apparently.
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Interesting look into the Romanian live sex cam industry
We've all seen those pop-unders for LiveJasmin right? Don't fucken deny it, I know you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, here's a BBC story about the industrial scale Romanian setups those women on sexcam sites work in. It's pretty much a live porn farm, women getting naked in dozens of small rooms set up for streaming video, broadcasting to millions of people's computers around the world, thanks to the magic of the internet. For the viewer, it's screens and screens of women doing all sorts of sex acts, you just gotta click and you're dropped in the action. That's some serious dystopian cyberpunk gear I reckon.
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Here endeth the sizzle (until tomorrow!)
--Anthony
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