This time, it’s Sony: Sony has admitted that hackers have stolen the personal information of customers who use the company’s online PlayStation Network…Some 77 million people have accounts with the PlayStation Network and Qriocity service, which allows gamers to play games online together as well as purchase and play movies and music. Sony does not […]
Tech
Posted inMedia
Gawker Keeps Losing Readers
In a story titled “Gawker’s Traffic Numbers Are Worse Than Anyone Anticipated,” The Atlantic looks into the Gawker redesign and discovers, well… Now that the complaints have, for the most part, slowed to a trickle and the tech blogs have stopped looking into Gawker’s traffic numbers, we decided to dig in a bit. What does […]
Posted inEthics
Why Doesn’t Oregon Have a “Euthanasia Roller Coaster”?
British researcher Julijonas Urbonas has drawn up plans for a roller coaster that kills people—BUT only if you want to be killed, and in a very “elegant” fashion. “Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetical euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster engineered to humanely — with elegance and euphoria — take the life of […]
Posted inTech
iPhone/iPad Keeps Detailed Records of Your Movements
Flying through the tubes right now is the discovery that iOS devices record very detailed information about the device’s location and retain that info in a file backed up to the user’s computer when the device is synced. The terms and conditions users of these devices agree to does state that Apple may collect non-personally-identifiable […]
Posted inBooks
Amazon to Allow Kindle Library Loans
Amazon has finally decided to allow Kindle users to borrow e-books from libraries. The Seattle-based retail giant did not specify when its “Kindle Library Lending” program would start, but the company did say that the perks of reading a purchased e-book on a Kindle e-reading device or through a Kindle app will be in place […]
Posted inTech
Please stop. Stop. STOP.
Just when the invitations to join LinkedIn start to drop off—I’ve never accepted an invitation to join LinkedIn, and I’d like to take this opportunity to say fuck you to everyone who “sent [me] an invitation to become part of his or her professional network at LinkedIn”—emails letting me know that a “friend or at […]
Posted inTech
Dating Website Makes Prostitution Fun and Easy!
Ugh! What is up with dating websites? I am a rich, lonely bachelor and I shouldn’t have to spend time and money sorting through profile after profile looking for attractive people who will love me for my money! Similarly, I am also a young, attractive, shallow person. Why do I have to trudge endlessly through […]
Posted inPolitics
This Just In: Obama Owns His Own Computer
In a live interview, Noticiero Univision anchor Jorge Ramos asks President Obama if he has his own computer. While the president will put up with a lot of dumb questions, he doesn’t put up with this one—which is good, because his response is priceless.
Posted inTech
The Wonder Computer of the 1980s
Say what you will about conservative blog The Corner—lord knows I have—but every once in a while King Conservageek Jonah Goldberg tosses up an amazing bit of nerdbait. Case in point: William Shatner’s commercial for the Commodore VIC-20. “Unlike games, it has a real computer keyboard!” He also posted Microworld, a Shatner-hosted documentary about how […]
Posted inMedia
How to Hack the New York Times Paywall
The New York Times paywall went into effect today, restricting readers to 20 articles per month. Well, that’s grossly simplified, since the terms of their digital subscriptions are labyrinthine. But there are already reports on how to hack, uh, circumvent the paywall. It’s surprisingly easy, according to an article posted on Mashable.com: Readers need only […]
Posted inHomo
Hack Back: Right-Wing Group Subpoenas Queer Activists’ Info from Google
Two Portland LGBT activists got an alarming email in their Google mail inbox this month—their “customer information” (including any name, home address, phone numbers, and billing info) had been subpoenaed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a right-wing Christian nonprofit. Google, along with several other email providers nationwide, was ordered to hand over the activists’ personal […]
Posted inTech
I Don’t Know How Some of These Homemade Sex Machines Are Supposed to Work
Here’s the video for “Elektrotechnique” by Dutch electronic/hiphop group De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig. (What? That’s their name! They’re Dutch.) Artists/directors Lernert & Sander created this extraordinary video of homemade sex devices, which are like Rube Goldberg meets Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” but, you know, SEXY. My favorite is the leaf-blower/chair device that spins out of control. […]