Kind: Reposts
Reposting of content from another site, often with commentary.
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Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them
Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them (TechCrunch) Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and …
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The Search for England's Forgotten Footpaths
Nineteen years ago, the British government passed one of its periodic laws to manage how people move through the countryside. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act created a new “right to roam” on common land, opening up three million acres of mountains and moor, heath and down, to cyclists, climbers, and dog walkers. It …
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The 500-Year-Long Science Experiment
The 500-Year-Long Science Experiment (The Atlantic) In 2014, microbiologists began a study that they hope will continue long after they’re dead. In the year 2514, some future scientist will arrive at the University of Edinburgh (assuming the university still exists), open a wooden box (assuming the box has not been lost), and break apart a …
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Facebook to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger
Facebook plans to integrate its messaging services on Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
While all three will remain stand-alone apps, at a much deeper level they will be linked so messages can travel between the different services.
Facebook told the BBC it was at the start of a "long process".
The plan was first reported in … -
Facebook may have known it was defrauding children and families through its online games
Internal documents appear to show that Facebook knew it was defrauding children and families through its ecosystem of online games as early as 2011. Employees even had a name for the practice, which they dubbed “friendly fraud,” or FF for short. More damning, related documents show that Facebook employees had found a way to stop …
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The Vintage Beauty Of Soviet Control Rooms
Design You Trust
Click through for many, many more. -
Dropgangs, or the future of darknet markets
The Internet is full of commercial activity and it should come at no surprise that even illegal commercial activity is widespread as well. In this article we would like to describe the current developments - from where we came, where we are now, and where it might be going - when it comes to technologies …
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Vasectomy
Oh Joy Sex Toy
This comic from the fabulous Oh Joy Sex Toy folks gives a pretty good explanation of vasectomy that mirrors my experience (part one, part two)... except for the fact that I didn't have this dude's anxiety issue and was instead (according to the surgeon) "creepily interested" in the nitty-gritty of … -
RFC-20
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The choice of this encoding has made ASCII-compatible standards the language that computers use to communicate to this day.
Even casual internet users have probably encountered a URL with “%20” in it where there logically ought to be a space character. If we look at this RFC we see this:
Column/Row Symbol Name
2/0 SP Space … -
Evaluating the GCHQ Exceptional Access Proposal
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In a blog post, cryptographer Matthew Green summarized the technical problems with this GCHQ proposal. Basically, making this backdoor work requires not only changing the cloud computers that oversee communications, but it also means changing the client program on everyone's phone and computer. And that change makes all of those systems less secure. Levy and … -
The Route of a Text Message
With each tap, a small electrical current passes from the screen to her hand. Because electricity flows easily through human bodies, sensors on the phone register a change in voltage wherever her thumb presses against the screen. But the world is messy, and the phone senses random fluctuations in voltage across the rest of the …
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Security Checklist
Be safe on the internet.
An open source checklist of resources designed to improve your online privacy and security. Check things off to keep track as you go.
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SecurityCheckli.st
I'm pretty impressed with this resource. It's a little US-centric and I would have put the suggestions into a different order, … -
The most unexpected answer to a counting puzzle
3Blue1Brown (YouTube)
Summary: if an idealised weight slides into another, bouncing it off a wall then back into itself, how many times will the two collide? If the two weights are the same then the answer is 3: the first collision imparts all of the force of the first into the second, the second … -
The Mystery
BriTANicK (YouTube)
Brian and Nick are back for the first time in, like, forever. Do you remember what happened before this? It was The Faux Pas, two years ago. And before that? And before that? And before that? The short of it is that it's been a long time since your mom's butthole was … -
There's lots of ugliness in the world right now, so I think it's important to share these photos...
There's lots of ugliness in the world right now, so I think it's important to share these photos of what happened when my friend Marvin called me & said: "I'm getting married & we can only invite 100 people. You didn't make the cut. But you can come if you come …