Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 90 of 153).

ABB lights up Marbles with $1 million donation

I meant to say something about this yesterday because it’s so chock full of awesomeness. Power grid giant ABB is donating $1 million to Marbles Kids Museum to build an interactive power grid play area for kids. When I told my kids about these plans this morning, their eyes lit up like a solar farm at full sun.

Bravo, ABB, and congratulations Marbles! (Oh, and hey ABB: we’d love to have you in downtown Raleigh, too!)

Global engineering firm ABB, which builds electricity grids and designs utility equipment, is donating $1 million to Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh to develop an interactive play area that will let tykes pretend they are operating wind farms and power plants and lighting up neighborhoods.

ABB officials said the donation symbolizes the Triangle’s emerging reputation as a national smart-grid hub known for attracting research, startups and federal grants. ABB, which employs 2,000 people in North Carolina, made the initial payment of $100,000 Wednesday. ABB will also contribute equipment, including motors, towers, cables, transformers and control systems.

The exhibit is scheduled to open to the public in 2014 and shows interest in downtown investment by a global conglomerate that does not have a downtown presence.

via ABB lights up Marbles with $1 million donation – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

Car thieves targeting transponder keys

Here’s a video from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) showing (in general terms) how thieves are stealing cars protected with high-tech transponder keys.

Incidentally, the NICB is one of the agencies investigating last week’s discovery of a “chop shop” in Durham. Many of these high-end vehicles get shipped to Middle Eastern countries, which makes me wonder if this is what the man arrested in the Durham case, Samer Othman, had in mind.

Using Prey for laptop tracking: smart or foolish?

This N&O article yesterday got my attention. One of my neighbors installed the open-source Prey tracking software, after which his new MacBook Air laptop was stolen. He used the software to successfully recover his laptop:

While still on his honeymoon, Moss got an e-mail from his landlord. It appeared that his house had been burglarized.

That’s when he took matters into his own hands and tracked down his stolen laptop, using his iPad from his hotel on the small island of Aruba.

Prey software, available in both Mac or PC versions, is a web service that’s free for the first three items a user registers.

The software can detect the wireless network closest to the registered device, even if the user is not signed onto that network. Prey also uses webcam technology, if available, to capture images of the device’s location.

I use open-source software every day so I thought I would look into Prey. It seemed like cheap (free!) peace of mind. Then I read one person’s quick security audit of Prey, after which he began steering people away from it:

Prey is able to parse config files over the web and it blindly accepts them with no authentication whatsoever. This means if an attacker used trivial ARP spoofing attacks on a network, a coffee-shop’s wireless for example, s/he could replace your config file with their own. Worse, what is in your config file gets eval’ed by bash with full root privileges. Simply, this means the attacker can run any code s/he wants to. Your hard drive could be deleted, or a reverse SSH session could be set up giving the attacker a command prompt as root.

Granted, his post is over a year old but it does give me pause. I’ve downloaded a copy of Prey myself and will be looking into it myself this weekend. While I’d like to be able to track my laptop if it’s ever stolen, I don’t want my laptop exposed to a giant security hole for 99.99999999% of the rest of the time.

via Raleigh man uses GPS tracker to locate man who stole his laptop – Crime/Safety – NewsObserver.com.

The drugs don’t work: a modern medical scandal | Ben Goldacre | Business | The Guardian

This is a frightening, eye-opening look at the sham taking place with drug trials, where the sponsoring pharmaceutical company often cherry-picks the results.

Because researchers are free to bury any result they please, patients are exposed to harm on a staggering scale throughout the whole of medicine. Doctors can have no idea about the true effects of the treatments they give. Does this drug really work best, or have I simply been deprived of half the data? No one can tell. Is this expensive drug worth the money, or has the data simply been massaged? No one can tell. Will this drug kill patients? Is there any evidence that it’s dangerous? No one can tell. This is a bizarre situation to arise in medicine, a discipline in which everything is supposed to be based on evidence.

via The drugs don't work: a modern medical scandal | Ben Goldacre | Business | The Guardian.

Rethinking Sleep – NYTimes.com

Here’s an interesting look at the power of naps, i.e. breaking up the so-called usual 8-hour sleep cycle.

I’m a big believer in new sleep patterns. I think we’re doing it wrong by sleeping for long chunks. Without a spouse who’s willing to share my sleep habits, however, I’m not likely to change much!

Rather than helping us to get more rest, the tyranny of the eight-hour block reinforces a narrow conception of sleep and how we should approach it. Some of the time we spend tossing and turning may even result from misconceptions about sleep and our bodily needs: in fact neither our bodies nor our brains are built for the roughly one-third of our lives that we spend in bed.

via Rethinking Sleep – NYTimes.com.

Chick-Fil-A Agrees To Cease Funding To Anti-Gay Orgs

Bravo for Chick-Fil-A!

Could Chick-fil-A be turning over a new leaf?A Chicago-based lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender LGBT advocacy group reports that the restaurant chain — which was at the epicenter of a media firestorm this summer after its president confirmed his company’s anti-gay stance — has agreed to cease donations to right-wing groups that oppose same-sex marriage.

via Chick-Fil-A Agrees To Cease Funding To Anti-Gay Organizations, Chicago LGBT Group Claims.

Launch of TV News Search & Borrow with 350,000 Broadcasts | Internet Archive Blogs


For a while now I’ve wanted to build a search engine that would index TV shows by the shows’ closed-captioning transcript. Now I don’t have to, because the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) has built it for me!

The Internet Archives TV News Search & Borrow is amazing! It’s a catalog of news video which is searchable by keyword. Now anyone can do the video research that the wizards to on shows like The Daily Show do, right from their own desks. Obama made a speech about indefinite detention? Find it in seconds. Want to see Romney mixing up Randy Owens of Alabama with Lynard Skynard? A few clicks and it’s in front of you.

Give it a try and see for yourselves. It’s addicting.

Today the Internet Archive launches TV News Search & Borrow. This service is designed to help engaged citizens better understand the issues and candidates in the 2012 U.S. elections by allowing them to search closed captioning transcripts to borrow relevant television news programs.

The Internet Archive works to preserve the published works of humankind. Inspired by Vanderbilt University’s Television News Archive project, the Internet Archive collects and preserves television news. Like library collections of books and newspapers, this accessible archive of TV news enables anyone to reference and compare statements from this influential medium.

via Launch of TV News Search & Borrow with 350,000 Broadcasts | Internet Archive Blogs.

Why Rahm Emanuel and The New York Times are wrong about teacher evaluation – The Washington Post

The Washington Post deconstructs why standardized testingis bad for education.

I’ve often wondered why politicians have felt the need to meddle with education when few or none of them are education experts.

The Times can say that using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers is a sensible policy and Obama can say it and Education Secretary Arne Duncan can say it and Emanuel can say it and so can Bill Gates (who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop it) and governors and mayor from both parties, and heck, anybody can go ahead and shout it out as loud as they can.

It doesn’t make it true.

via Why Rahm Emanuel and The New York Times are wrong about teacher evaluation – The Answer Sheet – The Washington Post.

Slain ambassador true believer in Libya, its people – USATODAY.com

USA Today had a great bio of Chris Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya who was killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. He was an amazing diplomat.

Three weeks ago, Ambassador Chris Stevens cut the ribbon to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Libya, the place where Libyans could get visas to the U.S.

“Ahlan wasahlan bikum” he welcomed them in fluid Arabic to enthusiastic applause. “You are welcome to visit America, and there’s the door.”

Tuesday, Stevens and three other diplomats died when protesters incensed by a video maligning Islam stormed the consulate in Benghazi.

“He risked his life to stop a tyrant, then gave his life trying to help build a better Libya,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. “The world needs more Chris Stevenses.”

via Slain ambassador true believer in Libya, its people – USATODAY.com.

The Kerry-ization of Mitt Romney – POLITICO.com

Wow. This Politico article is pretty damning of Romney’s stance on military issues.

“A presidential election is ultimately a character test,” a top GOP strategist said. “This speaks to the credibility and plausibility of being commander in chief, and any candidate for president has to get over that hump. [Romney] looks tone deaf. Everyone is in the faux outrage business. But this time, people are actually offended. He offended military families in some crucial states.”

via The Kerry-ization of Mitt Romney – Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei – POLITICO.com.