McDonald's restaurants (if you can even call them that) in Australia, having suffered from a recent spat of robberies (who the f*** robs a McDonald's? Taco Bell or GTFO), have teamed up with security firm SelectaDNA to install sprayers above its doors that will douse robbers with an invisible mist of DNA. Why? To make them glow under blacklight for police identification. Wait, WHAT?
The newly introduced DNA will then seep harmlessly into his or her skin for two weeks (and clothes for six months) allowing the police to reveal the culprit using UV light.
The spray is both invisible and odorless, but even if the hapless highwayman notices the deoxyribonucleic acid rain cloud, SelectaDNA assures that its chemical concoction is "virtually impossible to remove." Making matters worse for the offender is that each DNA sequence is unique to the location to which it was installed, meaning a successful forensic identification is 100% admissible in court. Basically, if you get caught in this stuff, you're screwed.
No word if the DNA will cause you to mutate into a supervillain, but brobro in the picture there does look kinda like a Star Wars character, so that's something. Not something I'd be willing to rob a McDonald's to achieve, but I'm also smart enough to only rob Burger Kings. *putting on cardboard crown* NOW LEAD ME TO THE ROYAL TREASURE ROOM.
Australian McDonald's Now Spraying Thieves With DNA [escapistmagazine]
Thanks to Sore_Dong, who may or may yes have permanently injured his unit. Smooth move buddy -- your DNA spraying days are OVER.
from Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome http://www.geekologie.com/2012/01/rob-an-australian-mcdonalds-get-hosed-wi.php
mikejuk writes "Professor Sebastian Thrun has given up his Stanford position to start Udacity — an online educational venture. Udacity's first two free courses are Building a Search Engine and Programming a Robotic Car. In a moving speech at the Digital Life Design conference, he explained that after presenting the online AI course to thousands of students he could no longer teach at Stanford: 'Now that I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It's like a drug. I won't be able to teach 200 students again, in a conventional classroom setting.' Let's hope Udacity works out; Stanford is a tough act to follow."
The excellent ReadNow application, which allows you to easily read articles from your Instapaper and Read It Later articles on your Mac, has been pulled from the Mac App Store "...because of an infringement letter." Developer Michael Schneider added "[i]n my current situation I'm not allowed to provide any further information."
The good news is that if you have already purchased the app, you can still download it from the "Purchases" tab in the App Store.app even though the iTunes page for ReadNow now leads to the message, "Your request could not be completed."
However, as I waited for the Mac App Store to load on my iMac this morning, I found myself wondering "What would I do if I couldn't re-download it from the Mac App Store?"
Fortunately I have the app on my MacBook Air, so I could go to /Applications/ReadNow.app and then select File » Compress "Read Now" (or control+click the app and choose "Compress" from the menu).
Terminal option
If you wanted to make a copy of ReadNow (or any app) on the command line, I believe that your best option is using ditto like this:
(I don't claim to be a ditto expert, but I can tell you that worked for me. The -k option tells ditto to make zip archives. The --rsrc --extattr and --qtn options are all the default, so they don't need to be explicitly specified.)
I then copied the 'ReadNow.zip' file to my Dropbox so I would have it, just in case Apple removes the option to download it.
This should work for all Mac App Store apps (Xcode and "Install Lion" excepted), but may not work for other apps which use an installer and may install other files besides the ones in /Applications/.
Show me all of my Mac App Store apps
Speaking of the command line, if you want to see a list of all the Mac App Store apps that you have installed on your computer, you can run this command in Terminal.app:
Note: this won't show you Xcode, because Xcode is an unusual case. It is an installer which installs Xcode and then the installer is removed.
An ounce of prevention
There has been no indication that Apple will remove ReadNow from your list of Purchased apps, I just wanted to have a backup 'just in case.' Hopefully the "infringement letter" issue will be settled soon and it will be available again. However, if the iOS App Store is any indication, eventually jettisoned apps will become unavailable for re-download. Also, the upcoming sandboxing requirements may lead to some existing applications being removed.
As always, it's good to have your own backups rather than relying on being able to re-download anything from "the cloud." I wrote a small shell script which will look in /Applications/ for any applications which have the Mac App Store receipt, and create a .zip file for each of them. (While I have tested it myself and it works for me, YMMV, use only at your own risk, etc.)
To use it, download the script to your Desktop (or wherever) and then run:
chmod 755 ~/Desktop/backupmas.sh
And then run it via
~/Desktop/backupmas.sh
(Obviously if you saved it somewhere else, use that path instead of ~/Desktop/.)
It may ask for your administrator password. If so, that's the one you use to log in to your computer, not your Mac App Store password.
Sina Weibo, one of China’s premiere microblogs and alternatives to Twitter, saw a record number of messages sent per second Monday, in honor of the Chinese New Year.
Kicking off the Year of the Dragon, the new record — 32,312 messages per second — trounces Twitter’s record 25,088 messages sent per second, which was set last December in Japan during a TV screening of anime movie Castle in the Sky.
Chinese news site DoNews reports the first minute of the new year saw 481,207 messages sent, roughly three times the number of messages sent during the first minute of the last new year. That figure is on par with the site’s 296% increase in users during 2011.
Sina Weibo now has 250 million registered users, making the site slightly smaller than its largest domestic rival, Tencent Weibo, which has 300 million registered users. However, according to DoNews, Sina Weibo is the more-used of the two, seeing some 100 million users visit the site each day.
Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow’s overtime touchdown pass earlier this month set the U.S. record for the most tweets per second at 9,420.
Perhaps, given the Twitter-based enthusiasm of football fans, the upcoming Superbowl Feb. 5 will give the U.S. a chance to catch up with the Chinese and Japanese microblogging records.
As China’s online population continues to grow, do you expect microblogs like Sina Weibo to continue to appeal to the mainstream? Let us know in the comments.
A group of engineers from Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace released a "Don't Be Evil" bookmarklet that tweaks the Google+ integration in Google search results to display the most relevant social network for an individual rather than simply promoting their (often less relevant) Google+ page. More »
If you have an iPhone and iPad or Mac, you can set up an indoor surveillance system. All you need to get it going is AirBeam, which is software that turns your iPhone into a spy cam and your Mac desktop into a remote viewing station. Setup is simple -- just install AirBeam on all your hardware and the software will do the rest.
There's a universal iOS version for your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch and a desktop version that'll run on your Mac. The desktop version is the viewer which will let you watch video and listen to audio streamed from your iOS device(s). You'll need a camera-enabled device if you want video; otherwise, you will only receive audio stream. Once you fire up the software on all your iOS devices, the desktop software will automatically detect their streams. You can watch one stream or multiple streams at the same time. The app keeps the iOS device running so you will have a stream as long as you have battery power.
No worries if you don't have a Mac, as the iOS version of the software can work as a monitor, too. This handy feature lets you use your iPhone/iPod touch as a camera and your iPad as the monitor (or vice versa). This is perfect if you have a little one napping upstairs and you want to watch him or her while you're sitting at your desk. The only catch with this setup is that the iOS devices and the Mac must be on the same Wi-Fi network.
AirBeam is more than just a novelty; it's sophisticated surveillance software that'll let you set up a motion alarm, an audio alarm and even off-network monitoring so you can monitor your house while you're out running errands. You'll have to know your external IP (the one assigned to your modem) and set up port forwarding on the router for this remote viewing to work. AirBeam also has a recording feature that'll capture up to 30 seconds of video when the software detects motion or sound. You can watch that video remotely using the IP address and port assigned by the AirBeam software. Though you can't pan the remote iOS device, you can toggle both the LED and the camera on and off.
In my time using AirBeam, the software's performance was flawless and provided a far better experience than any remote camera I've owned. There was zero configuration, and the video quality was excellent. The only surveillance camera feature I missed was movement. Most security cameras include a swiveling mount which lets you control the position of the camera. You lose that control with AirBeam, but you get almost every other surveillance feature at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated camera. You can grab the Mac version of AirBeam for free, while the iOS version will cost you US$3.99.
Hacktivist group Anonymous made the rounds over the weekend, attacking sites from CBS.com to (once again) Universal Music.
In what looks like hacking-spree retribution following the FBI’s shut down of file-sharing site Megaupload, Anonymous didn’t just take CBS.com offline on Sunday with a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks — it redirected visitors to different web servers all together. This means that visitors trying to access CBS.com saw what appeared to be a completely deleted site for about 20 minutes.
Anonymous redirected CBS.com visitors to servers that showed a directory file and error messages when trying to load pages. CBS.com is now back up and functioning properly.
The group also took down other sites over the weekend, including UniversalMusic.com — a site the group attacked last week — as well as its parent company, Vivendi. Various Brazilian sites were also involved in the cyber-attacks, including one for popular singer Paula Fernandes. Elysée — the official website of the French government — as well as several Polish government sites were also hit. Although Twitter accounts for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report were also hacked Sunday night, it appears to be an act from Anonymous supporters — not Anonymous itself.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted seven people and two companies which ran the file uploading site Megaupload.com. The site — which called itself “the leading online storage and file delivery service” has been shut down for making $175 million on about a half a billion dollars in copyright infringement. Anonymous threatened in a video (above) to bring other sites down if Megaupload isn’t reinstated soon.
The video states that Anonymous has gained access to the servers of the United Nations, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and various banks, and threatened to take them down: “We are prepared to launch a global blackout of these websites” if Megaupload isn’t back online in 72 hours. The video was released last Thursday.
“We have access to banking and credit card information of millions of citizens,” the video said. “But as for the citizens, do not fear — for your accounts will not be compromised. This is simply to raise awareness — a demonstration to those that doubt our abilities. To those that support SOPA and PIPA. To those congressmen that want to vote yes on those bills. We are not f-ing playing. You have been warned.”
According to a Huffington Post report, @ColbertReport and @TheDailyShow were also hacked on Sunday night, as identical tweets were sent out to followers with a link to this picture — two men in a disguise, one wearing a Pokemon hat. But the hackers said they were not associated with Anonymous, although they do support their efforts. The tweets also included hash-tags that referenced Anonymous and Stop ACTA!, a protest group of the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement. The tweets also included this message: “Watch your security, bro <3."
Soon after, the accounts reportedly tweeted followers to ignore the previous messages, implying that they had been hacked. Other Viacom accounts -- including @ComedyCentral and @Spike_TV -- were also hacked in the process through Hoot Suite, social media dashboard that helps companies manage and send messages to Facebook and Twitter.
The messages have since been deleted from @TheDailyShow, but @ColbertReport has left up a message denying ties to Anonymous: "We are not anonymous, however we do respect @anonops and @poisanon we are however http://twitter.com/ashpluspikachu <3 #stopACTA."
What site do you think will be Anonymous' next big target? Do you think Anonymous will ever be stopped? Let us know thoughts in the comments.
What is Anonymous? Check out the video below to learn more.
iOS (Jailbroken): Siri can do a lot of things, but one thing iPhone 4S users have been wanting since the phone was released is the ability to launch apps and toggle settings. SiriToggles adds this ability to jailbroken iPhone's as a simple tweak. More »
Mac/iOS: We've mentioned that regular writing can have big mental and emotional benefits, and even how keeping a work journal can help your career, but to really get into the habit of regular writing, you'll need a tool that encourages you to do it—one you'll enjoy using. If pen and paper doesn't suit your fancy, try Day One, a journaling app that looks great, helps you keep track of every entry you make, plan future notes and entries, password-protect your journal, and even inspire you when you feel like you're out of ideas. More »
Probably not, but right now American ownership is going down:
The Nielsen Company announced the 2012 Advance/Preliminary TV Household Universe Estimate (UE) is 114.7 million, down from 115.9 million in 2011. Marking the first integration of the 2010 Census counts, the 2012 UEs reflect an aging population, as Baby Boomers increasingly shift out of the 35-49 demographic, as well as greater ethnic diversity.
The 2012 UEs also reflect a reduction in the estimated percent of U.S. homes with a television set (TV penetration), which declined to 96.7 percent from 98.9 percent.
There is much more at the link, and for the pointer I thank Mark Thorson.