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12 Dec 2010 23:34

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Politics: Max Headroom: Shepard Smith calls Obama “Omaba” somehow

  • “Anonymous” goes mainstream: Remember when “Anonymous” was simply a joke on the Internet that most people didn’t take seriously? It’s been a long time since those days. Now, we have “Operation Payback” (an offshoot of whatever “Anonymous” is) showing up as the number one item on “Countdown.” It’s a fascinating time we live in where something that started out as an apparent internet joke can actually raise some eyebrows. Our question: Will future attacks be scare tactics, like shutting down Mastercard and Visa? Or will they go for the jugular, like the massive hacking attack that tore through Gawker today?
  • Great Washington Theater The thing that we enjoyed the most about Friday’s ad-hoc press conference at the White House on Friday? We got to see a cheery, almost casual approach by both Obama and Bill Clinton. That said, guys like Anthony Weiner (part of the panel) aren’t having it. He backs Clinton while questioning Obama.
  • “Omaba”: A one-term president? We love when our boy Shepard Smith makes on-air mistakes. They’re always supremely entertaining – including the epic clip where he suggested Jennifer Lopez couldn’t get a blowjob block party in her old neighborhood. In this case, he called Obama “Omaba,” which is such a bizarre mistake to make.

12 Dec 2010 22:43

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Politics: Ten years ago today, the chads stopped hanging in Florida

  • So guys, remember ten years ago, when our country was so divided that we had to debate how stupid Florida’s ballots were? You probably don’t, because ten years of drama has happened since then, but today marks the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision that gave George W. Bush the electoral college win – and led to his two twisted terms. It’s a reminder that no matter how far we’ve come since then, the partisan bickering never really went away. source

12 Dec 2010 22:29

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Biz: Well that’s cool: The Atlantic (on top of being great) is profitable

  • We imagined ourselves as a venture-capital-backed start-up in Silicon Valley whose mission was to attack and disrupt The Atlantic. In essence, we brainstormed the question, ‘What would we do if the goal was to aggressively cannibalize ourselves?’
  • Atlantic Media Company president Justin B. Smith • Revealing the secret that The Atlantic has used to become profitable this year after years in the red. Much of what they’ve done has not been to focus on the magazine, but to find ways to reinvent itself on the Web. The hiring of Andrew Sullivan from Time.com was a very good starting point;  from there, they’ve created really cool things to go along with that. (The Atlantic Wire – apparently a big success for the company –occasionally links to us, which is neat.) It’s cool to see a magazine like The Atlantic – long seen as the smartest kid on the block – reinvent itself for the Web. So, hey, Atlantic, since you’re thinking reinvention, whaddya think of a site that presents news in number-and-quote-and-blurb form? We hear it’s a growth market or something like that. (thanks futurejournalismproject)  source

12 Dec 2010 21:57

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World: Wikileaks: Al-Jazeera targets of U.S. scorn, and they’re not happy

  • Who might that be? Well … back in 2005, when Al-Jazeera was a tad bit more controversial, it leaked that George W. Bush and Tony Blair talked about attacking up the Qatar headquarters of the Middle East’s most-well-known news outlet. More recently, in the latest spat of WIkileaks data, cables suggested U.S. was concerned that the news outlet was a mouthpiece for Qatar. Al-Jazeera denies those allegations, saying that their goal has long been “to give a voice to the voiceless; to hold centres of power to account; and to uphold our editorial independence no matter what the cost.” In recent years, this has perhaps become a bit more obvious, but after 9/11 … source

12 Dec 2010 21:15

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Politics: Obama tax compromise: Democrats resigned to its eventual passing

  • We’re not going to hold this thing up at the end of the day.
  • Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen • Admitting what’s been obvious from the outset – the Obama tax compromise will eventually pass. The GOP knows this. Obama knows this, and House Democrats, who perhaps have been most dead-set against it (barring Bernie Sanders) are starting to turn around and begrudgingly accept it. By offering up the compromise he did when he did, Obama knew what he was doing. source

12 Dec 2010 21:11

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Tech: Hackers: Gawker used very outdated form of password encryption

  • yeah … Gawker staffer Scott Kidder claimed that users’ passwords should be safe from hacking. “Passwords are encrypted anyway,” he says, “so stealing passwords isn’t even possible.”
  • … but A document from the hackers in their bittorrent explains that the passwords used a very outdated form of encryption that only protected the first eight characters. Yikes. Freaking yikes. source

12 Dec 2010 20:27

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Tech: An open letter to the dudes who hacked Gawker Media

  • Gawker is a site that’s easy to hate, we know this. We’re sure that plenty of people were taking lots of joy in Nick Denton’s misery today. But the thing that bothers us about that stance is that, as harsh as Gawker and Denton come across sometimes, they prove they’re worth their weight in salt every time they get a scoop. When it comes to the Web, nobody tops them, honestly.
  • why they’re uniqueThey’re not afraid of taking on the tawdry story because it’s tawdry. They’re not afraid of paying a source because it requires paying a source. They’re not against digging into rumors just because they’re rumors. And they know just when to play each of those hands.
  • Why they matterAs much as we’d like to hate Gawker and its sister sites for being the most arrogant content network on the entire internet, every time we want to hate them, they do something really freaking cool. They make reading the news online worthwhile, ’cause they get it.
  • They hate you? So what? Gawker talks crap about 4chan or Anonymous or whomever? So what. They talk crap about everybody. And they deserve to get away with it. Because unlike the gossip sources of yore (think National Enquirer), they actually have substance. source
  • » Oh yeah: One thing we cannot and will not get behind is making a million and a half commenters pawns in this silly game. Gawker may deserve it (to some degree), but the readers aren’t worth getting crapped on. We feel bad for them more than anyone else in this endeavor.
 

12 Dec 2010 12:14

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Tech: Best news ever: Paul Allen’s patent troll lawsuits thrown out

  • whatThe patent-troll lawsuit Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen filed against every major technology company in the world failed in court on Friday. Good for everyone but Paul Allen.
  • whyHis company wasn’t specific about how the many companies he was suing violated the patents. They have until December 28 to refile to prove specific damages. source

12 Dec 2010 12:03

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U.S.: Worst trip to Branson, ever: Riverboat gets stuck overnight

  • 567 number of passengers stuck on a cruise ship that left Branson yesterday; 76 crew were also stuck on the ship
  • 20 number of hours they’ve been stuck on the ship with a comedian – FROM BRANSON; what a nightmare!
  • 30 length, in feet, of the plank people will have to walk on to get off the boat; that’s right, they’re walkin’ the plank source

12 Dec 2010 11:49

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Tech: This is how the terrorists will defeat the full-body scanners

  • It is very likely that a large (15-20 cm in diameter), irregularly-shaped, cm-thick pancake with beveled edges, taped to the abdomen, would be invisible to this technology, ironically, because of its large volume, since it is easily confused with normal anatomy.
  • Leon Kaufman and Joseph W. Carlson • In a piece titled “An evaluation of airport x-ray backscatter units based on image characteristics,” which they wrote for the Journal of Transportation Security. To put it simply – if terrorists were smart enough to create pancake-shaped plastic explosives that look like someone’s belly on a full-body scanner, the technology would be defeated and we’d all be dead. Good to know.  source