The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ | World news | The Guardian

Good stuff from the Guardian.

There is a revealing moment in the most recent piece written for the Guardian by Sir David Omand, former head of GCHQ. He said that “the real debate we should be having … is about what privacy in a cyber-connected world can realistically mean given the volumes of data we hand over to the private sector in return for our everyday convenience, and the continued need for warranted access for security and law enforcement.”

That’s a total non-sequitur: Omand seems to think that just because we hand data over to Google and Facebook the government automatically has the right to access it. It’s as if, thanks to a global shortage of sticky gum, envelopes can no longer be sealed, so as a result the government awards itself a new right to mass-intercept and read everybody’s letters.

via The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ | World news | The Guardian.

Photographing a Color Run Will Destroy Your Camera Gear–Don’t Do It

Yikes! This color run powder is nasty stuff on camera lenses. Imagine what it must do to your lungs!

If there hasn’t been a Color Run 5k or 10k race near you, there probably will be soon. And with all that color, you certainly want to take some pictures, right? Not with your camera you don’t.

I’m never one to worry much about lens dust, but the color bombs they throw out at Color Runs are different. In the last month my lens rental business has had over 20 lenses and several cameras nearly ruined by these things. For what it’s worth, all of the renters tell us they really weren’t near any of the major ‘color bombs.’

via Photographing a Color Run Will Destroy Your Camera Gear–Don’t Do It.

Why We’re Shutting Off Our Comments | Popular Science

Popular Science is disabling comments on their stories. The research they cite shows how influential reader comments can be, undermining PopSci’s mission to promote science.

From the time I’ve spent in the reader forums of local media sites, I wholeheartedly agree that comments often do more harm than good.

Comments can be bad for science. That’s why, here at PopularScience.com, we’re shutting them off.

It wasn’t a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter.

via Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments | Popular Science.

Air Force introduces QF-16 drones

Boeing and the Air Force just introduced a new drone to their drone program: the F-16. It was the first time an F-16 has ever flown without a pilot aboard.

This video reminded me of my visit to the Tyndall drone range in 2009, watching old F-4 Phantom IIs roar over me. It was like I was back in the Navy with my destroyer acting as plane guard behind an aircraft carrier on flight operations.

Here’s a great story on the drone program if you’d like to learn more.

Goldsboro Broken Arrow

Yesterday, news outlets ran a story based on newly-declassified documents concerning the 24 January 1961 crash of a B-52 near Goldsboro which resulted in the release of two megaton-sized atomic bombs. I became captivated by the story and spent what free time I had today collecting information on it for its Wikipedia page.

I had known about the crash for some time as UNC’s ibiblio server has hosted documents about it for nearly two decades. It seemed to be an interesting plane crash story with a nuclear angle but it make me worried. What I did not know until today is just how close one bomb was to nuclear detonation, vaporizing much of eastern North Carolina and raining deadly fallout all over the East Coast.

Yesterday’s stories highlighted the fact that only one switch kept one of the bombs from completing its arming cycle and setting off a detonation 250 times as powerful as the bomb that leveled Nagasaki, Japan. While that’s certainly scary enough, today’s sleuthing revealed a much more terrifying situation. It turns out when the second bomb was found it had been fully armed. Its arm switch had been activated. No one knows why the bomb plummeted harmlessly into the ground at 700 MPH instead of reaching a thermonuclear critical mass and wiping out all living things within a 10 mile radius. Only sheer blind luck saved us from nuclear incineration.
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Hanky alert

This foreign language public service announcement is surprisingly moving.

Dear parents, you need to control your kids. Sincerely, non-parents

Nice rant about non-parents thinking they know more about parenting than parents themselves.

Anyway, listen, I don’t think you, of all people, should be telling other folks what they “need to learn.” If you just shut up and paid attention, you’d realize that YOU could learn plenty from mothers like the one we both encountered yesterday. I know I have lots and lots to learn as a young parent, which is why I’m always prepared for a more experienced parent to take me to school and teach me a thing or two, even if they don’t know they’re doing it. Parenting is the easiest thing in the world to have an opinion about, but the hardest thing in the world to do. You shouldn’t scrutinize parents when you aren’t one, for the same reason I wouldn’t sit and heckle an architect while he draws up the blueprint for a new skyscraper. I know that buildings generally aren’t supposed to fall down, but I don’t have the slightest clue as to how to design one that won’t, so I’ll just keep my worthless architectural opinions to myself.

via Dear parents, you need to control your kids. Sincerely, non-parents | The Matt Walsh Blog.

Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy | Wait But Why

This Huffington Post repost of a Wait But Why post draws an unflattering picture of Generation Y:

Say hi to Lucy.

Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y.

I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group — I call them Gen Y Protagonists — Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.

So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing:Lucy’s kind of unhappy.

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Hallie’s IMatterYouthNC video ad

Frank Eaton films Hallie

Friday afternoon, we spent a few hours with Raleigh documentary filmmaker Frank Eaton at the N.C. State Arboretum. Frank volunteered to make an informational video for Hallie’s IMatter Youth NC climate-change march she’s organizing for Sept. 28th in Raleigh. Along with our friends the Maugers, we set up a shooting location among the greenery of the arboretum while Hallie recited her lines for the camera.

Frank is an expert videographer and a fun guy to be around. He really connected with the kids, too, making it a fun experience.

The video came out beautifully and Hallie’s climate change rally is quickly generating attention. We hope the momentum continues to build through 28th!

If you’d like to know more, check out the IMatter Youth NC website. And if you’d like to look good on camera, check out Frank’s Bully Documentary Company.

Car thieves rob vehicles using ‘mystery’ wireless devices

Update 11 Aug 2015: Mystery solved?

Thieves are using a mystery device to break into cars and the cops are stumped. I came across this story back in June but never posted it here:

Cops across the country are investigating a new wave of car thefts that appear to be happening with nothing more than a click of a button, the “Today” show reports.

From California to Chicago, car thieves have been caught on camera breaking into parked cars using small electronic devices that could be “cloned” car remotes.

The thieves then raid the vehicles for valuables before skulking away.

Long Beach, Calif., Deputy Police Chief David Hendricks told “Today” he’s “stumped: by the robberies.

“We are stumped and we don’t know what this technology is,” he said.

via Car thieves rob vehicles using ‘mystery’ wireless devices: report – NY Daily News.

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