Sep 26 2008 Man Crosses English Channel With Jetpack
Yves "Fusion Man" Rossey successfully crossed the English Channel with a jetpack today. This is one small pew for man, one giant PEW PEW PEW for mankind.
Rossy, a pilot who normally flies an Airbus airliner, crossed the 22 miles between Calais and Dover at speeds of up to 120 mph in 13 minutes, his spokesman said.
Awesome. And as a guy who has made his girlfriend wear a jetpack during sex, I've got to tell you: don't do it from behind.
Hit the jump for a video.
Continue Reading " Man Crosses English Channel With Jetpack "
Jul 17 2008 Disgruntled IT Administrator Comandeers San Francisco City Network, Gets Arrested, Sticks It To The Man By Refusing To Give Up Password
Terry Childs, 43, is acting like one and refuses to give up the password he created that is effectively blocking all access to San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar network. Why did he do it? Possibly because he was on the verge of canning.
Childs has worked for the city for about five years. One official with knowledge of the case said he had been disciplined on the job in recent months for poor performance and that his supervisors had tried to fire him. "They weren't able to do it - this was kind of his insurance policy."Officials also said they feared that although Childs is in jail, he may have enabled a third party to access the system by telephone or other electronic device and order the destruction of hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents.
As part of his alleged sabotage, Childs engineered a tracing system to monitor what other administrators were saying and doing related to his personnel case, law enforcement officials said.
Damnit Terry, the city paid you $149,269 last year, just do your freaking job. I'd do anything for that kind of money, including, but not limited to: work, selling all my internal organs except the kidney, televangelism, and turning tricks in the back of a hybrid. I'm telling you, eco-friendly johns are a growing market. If the Prius is a rockin' don't bother knockin', you have to wait your turn or pay $5 to watch.
Way more in-depth article link follows.
S.F. officials locked out of computer network [sfgate]
Thanks Romeo, now lets do something similar to Skynet before it's too late.
Jul 2 2008 Oh Great: Robot Can Learn To Use Tools
Wonderful, just wonderful. The UMass Mobile Manipulator, developed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, can learn (by itself) how to use different tools (weapons).
UMan uses a regular webcam to look down at a table from above. By analyzing differences between adjacent pixels, it guesses where an object's edges might be found. Then it prods the object and, on the basis of how it moves, revises its estimate of the object's shape. It continues shoving the object around, observing how its parts move in relation to each other. UMan will push the object backward and forward along its width and length and at a 45-degree angle to both, if necessary, until it's satisfied that it understands how the object moves. Wherever the movement is restricted, the robot concludes that there's a joint. UMan then uses that information to figure out the best way to manipulate the object. It can also tell if there are multiple joints, and how those relate to each other.
Oh my God this is the exact opposite of awesome. I can see it now: some robot lopping my melon off with a pair of compound pruning shears. Great, this is just great. F*** you, UMass robot sympathizers.
Robot Learns To Use Tools [technologyreview]
Thanks Steve, Shawn and Jim, now I have to break everything in my toolbox.
Jul 1 2008 Valve Hacker Blows $20 Million With Stolen Credit Cards, Is Not The Brightest Criminal
A 20-year old hacker that goes by MaddoxX (not the best page in the universe guy) busted up in a third party Valve server and stole the credit card info of Steam Cyber Cafe users. Then he proceeded to "burn 13 million Euros playing poker online and shopping for notebooks, flat screens and MP3 players". Holy crap, this kid is either the worst poker player in the world or painted the walls of his apartment with flatscreens. And still, that'd have to be a huge freaking apartment. But then MaddoxX got real stupid about the whole thing and boasted about the hack in April of 2007 and posting a bunch of stuff about the feat, that led to his recent arrest.
MaddoxX then posted an archived file that included unverified credit card numbers, transaction amounts, Valve's supposed bank balance, and data that reportedly allowed the creation of counterfeit cyber cafe certificates.In addition to the Valve caper, MaddoxX is being charged with hacking his way into an Activision server and subsequently downloading an unfinished version of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. MaddoxX also stole 50,000 credit card numbers from an English ticketing website.
You just had to have that Quake Wars before everybody else, didn't you MaddoxX? Tssk, tssk. Seriously though, stealing from other gamers? That's just wrong. Robin Hood, MaddoxX, Robin Hood. It's "steal from the rich and give to the poor", not, "steal from the gamer and give to the Amazon". You greedy bastard.
Valve Hacker Caught by Dutch Police [shacknews]
Thanks Peter, now lets take turn sucker punching this guy in the nads.
Feb 18 2008 Super Massive Music Collection On eBay
A dude is selling his massive music collection on eBay. How massive is massive? Try 3 million records and 300,000 CDs. That, my friends, is what is known as a shit-ton of music.
From Thomas Edison to American Idol, this is the complete history of the music that shaped and defined five generations. 3 million records and 300,000 CDs containing more than 6 million song titles. It's the undisputed largest collection of recorded music in the world. About half of the recordings are new and never played, and every genre of 20th century music is represented. There are countless rare recordings worth hundreds, or even thousands of dollars each on the collectibles market. Organized and cataloged, the collection is meticulously maintained and housed in a climate-controlled warehouse. The estimated value of this amazing collection is more than $50 million.
Every recording in the collection was purchased by the collection's owner over the past fifty years and represents a lifetime of work and his desire to see the music preserved for future generations. Advancing age and health concerns are forcing the owner to sell.The history of 20th century music belongs in a museum (existing or new), or a music library. The collection's owner is seeking a private collector or a philanthropist willing to buy and donate the collection. A donation would qualify as a tax-deductible event. The collection contains many thousands of duplicate copies, which could be sold individually on the collectibles market to recoup a substantial part of the purchase price.
The bidding starts at $3 million but if you apply for an eBay Mastercard you get $10 back after the purchase.
A couple pictures and a link to the auction and website after the jump.
