Wednesday, 20. July 2016

Hacker ‘Phineas Fisher’ Speaks on Camera for the First Time—Through a Puppet


A little bit over a year ago, the normally quiet Twitter account of Hacking Team, an Italian company that sells spying tools to governments all over the world, started acting weird. “Since we have nothing to hide, we’re publishing all our e-mails, files, and source code,” read a Tweet published on late Sunday, July 5, 2015. The tweet was accompanied by a link to a torrent file of around 400 gigabytes, practically everything Hacking Team had on its corporate servers: internal emails, confidential documents, and even the company’s source code. Hacking Team, which at that point was already notorious for selling its wares to repressive regimes and governments such as Ethiopia, Morocco, and others, had just gotten hacked.

motherboard.vice.com

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The world's fastest consumer drone can record 4K video at 85 miles per hour


George Matus was 11 years old when he flew his first drone. "I was immediately hooked," the young man tells me with a grin. By age 16 he was competing as a professional drone racer and acting as a test pilot for new aircraft. Now 18, he recently finished high school but decided to defer college, opting instead to pursue a fellowship offer from tech billionaire Peter Thiel. He used that money to start his own company, Teal, which today is launching its first product, a consumer facing drone that a beginner can easily fly with an iPhone to capture 4K video. The difference between Teal's first drone and the competition is that this unit can also perform like a racecar, reaching speeds of 85 miles per hour while flipping, diving, and performing barrel rolls.

theverge.com

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Apollo 11 turns 47: A lunar landing anniversary retrospective


On July 20, 1969, at about four minutes before 10:00pm Central Daylight Time, former naval aviator and test pilot Neil Armstrong became the first human being to stand on the surface of the Moon. About 20 minutes later, he was followed by Buzz Aldrin, an Air Force colonel with a PhD in astronautics from MIT (Aldrin had, quite literally, written the book on orbital rendezvous techniques). Armstrong and Aldrin’s landing was the culmination of almost a decade of scientific and engineering work by hundreds of thousands of people across the United States. Even though the lunar program’s goals were ultimately political, the Apollo project ranks as one of the greatest engineering achievements in human history.

Aldrin faces the United States flag

arstechnica.com

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Erdogan emails: Turkey blocks access to WikiLeaks after release of 300,000 secret government emails


Turkey has blocked access to WikiLeaks in the country after the whistleblowing organisation released nearly 300,000 secret emails from the incumbent Justice & Development Party (AKP). The Telecommunications Communications Board, Turkey's Internet watchdog, said it had taken an "administrative measure" against the website – a term it commonly uses when blocking access to sites.

independent.co.uk

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Police Find Marijuana, Give Facebook Instructions on How Its Owner Can Retrieve It


As the Republican National Convention rages on, police in one Cleveland suburb have some jokes.

atlasobscura.com

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Fox News CEO Reportedly Loses Job Amid Sexual Harassment Claims


His show has been cancelled. The longtime conservative news executive will soon be out of a job after his standing went into a sudden free fall after allegations of sexual harassment from former Fox News Channel host Gretchen Carlson. A number of other women were reportedly ready to come forward with allegations of misconduct against the 76-year-old, including the network’s current leading female personality, Megyn Kelly. Fox hasn’t confirmed the departure, telling Deadline, “Roger is at work. The review is ongoing. And the only agreement that is in place is his existing employment agreement.”

good.is Megyn Against the World at Fox: Anchor Rebellion, Creation of Competitor Network Looms Amid Ailes Ouster Rumors

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Nigel Farage crashes and burns on live radio after a caller sets the perfect trap


Nigel Farage crashed and burned on live radio on Sunday when a caller to his weekly phone-in show set him a beautifully laid trap – and Farage walked straight into it. Here, the caller tells The Canary why he felt compelled to hold Nigel Farage to account.

thecanary.co

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Inside Donald Trump’s 3,000 Bizarre Domains


The first evening of the RNC was a spectacle. Viewers were treated to a variety of characters all making the case for Trump in their own way, and naturally, a new controversy came with nearly each segment of the show. It was a fascinating window into what day-to-day Donald Trump could be like, given the GOP at his side. In all, the night was a fitting extension of Trump’s abrasive and scattershot overall strategy. I don’t presume to be a political writer. Thousands of smarter people are already analyzing almost every angle of Donald Trump and his actions. Something I haven’t really seen touched on is Trump’s online strategy — not so much his unfiltered Twitter account or legion of supporters, but his entire online strategy. Before the campaign and before Twitter, how did The Donald operate online?

medium.com

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