Now 17, David hit on the idea of building a model breeder reactor, a nuclear reactor that not only generates electricity, but also produces new fuel. His model would use the actual radioactive elements and produce real reactions. His blueprint was a schematic in one of his father’s textbooks. Ignoring safety, David mixed his radium…
Read More Those Boy Scouts…Always Building Nuclear ReactorsI am deeply saddened to have missed this story until now: Vandals set light to a giant straw goat Saturday night in a central Swedish town, police said, an event that has happened so frequently it has almost become a Christmas tradition. It was the 22nd time that the goat had gone up in smoke…
Read More 13 Meter Straw Goat Met His MatchI’ve made a bunch of changes to style and template stuff. Most noticeable should be that post titles are now links to the posts. There’s also a whole lot of consistency improvements for the Moveable Type 3.2 software. The one remaining change is to bring full (extended) entries into the RSS feed. That Mt3.2 software…
Read More Relentless Navel Gazing, Part 6In a report remarkable for what it doesn’t say, WLBT TV of Jackson, MS reports: A possible security breach has one bank giving customers new debit cards. BancorpSouth is sending out new cards to about 6500 customers. The vice president of the banks security department says account numbers were either lost or they were somehow…
Read More BancorpSouth, 6500 debit cards, unknownWe get Mystery Science Theater 3000, they get Badly Dubbed Porn: Badly Dubbed Porn showcases vintage soft porn movies re-dubbed with a wickedly funny soundtrack by some of Britain’s most talented comedy actors. Via the lovely and very funny Ms. Kitka.
Read More USA 0, UK 1I’d like to draw your attention to two worthy causes: Tor, and the Creative Commons. Larry Lessig is looking to raise money to ensure that the Creative Commons maintains their non-profit status, and the fine folks who bring you the Tor Internet privacy tool are looking for donations so they can continue their important work.
Read More Holiday Charity(I got it from Mikko at F-Secure. If you don’t understand, click here.)
Read More Merry Chrisma EXEC!The Tallahassee Democrat reports on an interesting disclosure instance: whistleblowers revealing allegedly shoddy data security practices at their former employer. The twist is that those doing the talking are not the folks whose jobs were outsourced, but former employees of the outsourcing firm. From the article: In an affidavit taken for a lawsuit by five…
Read More Florida workers claim outsourced HR system reveals PII, lacks audit trailThe federal government is responsible for issuing Social Security numbers, but it may not be doing enough to protect these critically personal pieces of information on its own Web sites. Acting on a tip, InformationWeek was able to access Web pages that include the names and Social Security numbers of people involved in Justice Department-related…
Read More US Department of Justice, several SSNs, Process ErrorsFrom the good old days, when science was not a matter of press releases, perception management or “long held beliefs.” Click the picture for a larger version at Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Read More Apollo 8