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This Video of a Vet Pulling a Slipper Out of a Snake Is Gnarly as Heck

3/30/2018

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This Video of a Vet Pulling a Slipper Out of a Snake Is Gnarly as Heck

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Photo: HerpVet (Facebook)

An elderly Australian man went to bed on Tuesday of last week with his slippers under his bed, but woke up Wednesday morning to find only one of the slippers waiting for him.

When the man went looking for his slipper days later, he found it. Or at least he found a python with a slipper-sized bulge inside it, according to Australia outlet The Courier-Mail.

The man called snake catchers Sally and Norman Hill to apprehend the python. “You could feel the rubber in its stomach, you could feel the sole of the slipper through the skin,” Sally Hill told Australia’s ABC News. “My opinion is a rat or possum crawled all over the slipper, or peed on it, or maybe there was a rat or mice in it and the snake saw it.”

Photo: HerpVet (Facebook)

Australia is a magical place.

The snake then went to veterinarian Josh Llinas so the serpent and slipper could be saved.

Llinas is used to removing strange things from snakes. “I had a pillow case removed from a black-headed python, and just a few months ago, I had a tennis ball removed from a snake,” Llinas told The Courier-Mail. “This was probably one of the more unusual things I’ve removed. I’ve heard of others swallowing thongs, stuffed toys. You name it, they will eat it.”

Llinas took an X-ray, but could tell immediately the problem was that the snake had swallowed a shoe. “Sometimes you can remove the foreign bodies by helping them after they’ve been relaxed … by helping them move it up the digestive tract and out of the mouth.” Llinas told The Courier-Mail. “This was just way too big and it wasn’t going to come out.”

Here’s a Facebook video of the [Warning: Graphic] surgery.

Llinas performed a coeliotomy and gastrotomy surgery to remove the slipper, then closed up the snake’s stomach. The snake will spend the next several weeks in recovery before it goes on to hunt for other strange things to eat.

[The Courier-Mail





Digital Trends

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

March 30, 2018 at 10:45AM
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11 Tell-Tale Signs Your Accounts and Devices Have Been Hacked

3/30/2018

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11 Tell-Tale Signs Your Accounts and Devices Have Been Hacked

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No one likes getting hacked, and it’s generally true that the quicker you can spot something has gone awry, the better your chances of minimizing the damage. These are the main warning signs to look out for, what they might mean, and some quick pointers about what you should do next.


1) Unexplained financial transactions

One of the biggest red flags likely to send you into a mild panic is a record of a purchase that you’ve got nothing to do with: It usually means a scammer has either got access to some of your card details or one of your online payment accounts, such as Amazon or PayPal. If you check your bank balance daily you’ll notice this one very quickly – if you don’t, maybe you should start.

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Where possible make sure your purchases are always set to be confirmed as emails or SMSes, which will help you catch this kind of hack more quickly—and don’t ignore any suspicious payment confirmations, even from retailers you’re not registered with, as fraudsters could be testing the waters. Scams like this aren’t necessarily connected to your computer or phone apps, but they could be, especially with banking increasingly moving online and going mobile.


2) Your phone or computer seriously slows down

Hijacking your computer or phone to mine Bitcoin or send out malware takes a lot of processing power, so you should be on the lookout for significant slowdowns in performance on any of your devices, or indeed on your network connection—if Netflix suddenly starts buffering all the time, something untoward that’s sneaked past your security software could be to blame.

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Of course that’s not to say every system slowdown or buffering message is due to compromised security, because gadgets tend to slow down over time anyway. What you should particularly pay attention to are drops in performance that are significant, sudden, and long-term—at that point it’s probably a good idea to run through as many security checks as you can.


3) Disabled or buggy security software

Once malware takes root on a system, it loves to feather its nest and make sure it can take maximum advantage—that means disabling any security programs that might spot and get rid of it, and giving other malware apps the green light through your computer’s defenses.

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If you find your antivirus program gets disabled and keeps getting disabled, or disappears altogether, or won’t run scans when you ask it to, then malware could well be to blame, and you need to root it out as soon as you can (see the bottom of the article for some tips). Of course a malware warning from your antivirus suite is a pretty big red flag too.


4) Software or browser add-ons you don’t recognize

As we just mentioned, malware that’s taken root or is taking root on your system will often invite some of its friends along to the party—these additional programs can then make your computer more exposed or cause additional damage. Be on the look-out for programs you didn’t ask for appearing anywhere on your system or in the memory, or any browser add-ons you don’t remember installing.

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Task Manager on Windows (find it through the search bar on the taskbar) and Activity Monitor on macOS (find it through Spotlight by hitting CMD + Space Bar or clicking the magnifying glass in the top right corner) can help you check on what’s actually running on your system. For your browser, open up the page of installed add-ons—on Chrome, for example, open up the app menu then choose More tools and Extensions.


5) A lot more pop-ups than you’re used to

Do you like pop-ups? Malware and viruses do, and will often bombard you with them—whether it’s to run a security scan of your system (don’t), or to enter a lucky prize draw (don’t), or to verify your account credentials on the web (don’t). These will often look very authentic, but the clue should be in their randomness—if you didn’t ask for them, and haven’t seen them before, be very wary.

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The browsers and indeed operating systems of today do a very good job of policing pop-ups, so chances are if you’re seeing malicious messages get through, there’s something pretty seriously wrong with your system. Ads that actually belong on your computer or phone will be for genuine brands, and expected, and easily closed.


6) Changes in system settings

Has something changed about the way your computer’s configured? An unauthorized app lurking on your system could be to blame. The classic examples are a change in your browser’s home page or search engine—most modern browsers are now too savvy for that trick, but it shows how malware can guide you further down a dangerous rabbit hole to further the hacker’s own ends (even if it’s just affiliate links).

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Watch out for requests to change system settings or to elevate the permissions of a particular program, which could be something like a keylogger wanting autonomy over your computer (this also goes back to the disabling of security software, which we’ve already mentioned). Not all malware will be so visible, and might change your settings in a way you can’t notice—but keep your eyes open.


7) Your computer or phone goes out of your control

If you get the sneaking suspicion your computer or phone has a mind of its own then there’s a chance it’s being remotely controlled via a backdoor app installed somewhere on your device, as scary as that idea is. Look for unexpected mouse movements, key presses, or app launches, as well as your computer or phone display waking up when you’re not doing anything with it. Lots of hard disk activity when your computer is idle is sometimes (though not always) is a sign of a hack too.

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Fortunately these types of attacks are very rare, but they’re also some of the most serious—disconnect your device from the web and restart it before attempting some of the remedies we’ve mentioned at the bottom of this article. Some damage may have already been done, but you can wrestle back control.


8) Random shutdowns and restarts

Another symptom that can either point to a hack or just an unhealthy computer or phone: Random shutdowns and restarts. They might mean unauthorized apps have taken control (or part-control) of your device and are destabilizing the system as a whole.

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If it happens once or twice, don’t worry too much about it. If it keeps happening, investigate more thoroughly—is this just a bug or something more serious. Again the Task Manager (Windows) or Activity Monitor (macOS) can help you see what’s running on your system, or fire up the full list of installed apps from the Settings screen of your phone. This can also manifest itself as a device’s battery running hotter than normal.


9) Sent messages you had nothing to do with

Malware apps and hackers who’ve gained access to accounts will often try and spread their tentacles by reaching out to as many of your contacts as they can get their hands on. For that reason it’s always worth checking all your sent folders—on email, on SMS, on IM apps, on social media, and so on. Be very suspicious of anything sent by you that you don’t remember sending—this often points to someone else having access to the platform in question, either from your device or via the cloud.

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That’s a lot of ground to cover of course, but if your friends and family have their wits about them, you’ll quickly get alerted by a barrage of notifications from them asking why you’re hawking links to dodgy sites or dodgier downloads. Hopefully, you’ll be able to nip it in the bud before any serious damage is done.


10) Online activity you don’t recognize

Sure, we’re all prone to sending off the odd social media comment after a few beers and then forgetting all about it the next day, but other suspicious and unexplained activity on your accounts is a sure sign that you’ve got an unwelcome visitor logging into your accounts from somewhere other than your phone or your computer. The trouble is it might not come to light for several days.

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So this could be getting signed up for Facebook groups or email lists that you’re just not interested in, or following a bunch of Twitter accounts that you had nothing to do with (perhaps trying to dupe your friends into compromising their accounts too). Or maybe something weird pops up in your Netflix viewing activity. Try and stay vigilant across as many of your accounts as you can (click the View Activity Log link on your Facebook profile, for example).


11) You can’t log into your accounts

A pretty obvious one—you can’t get into an online account because someone else has changed the password. Unless you think you might have genuinely forgotten what the right password was, it’s likely your account has been compromised somehow (you might want to check in your inbox for evidence of a password change notification).

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Try not to panic. Most online accounts, especially the major ones, have a variety of tricks and techniques to help you regain access—they’ll know which devices and computers you regularly use, for example, and where in the world you are, and all this information can help re-establish your identity. Follow the account recovery links and then work through the steps as best you can.


Recovering from a hack

The rules for recovering from a hack are pretty much the same across the board: Even if it only seems like your web accounts are compromised, there could still be malware lurking on your local computer, and vice versa. It’s best to do a clean sweep of all possible causes than to leave any holes left open.

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With that in mind you should, as a matter of course, change your passwords on all your accounts, especially if you tend to use the same password on more than one of them (which you definitely shouldn’t be doing). In the case of online hacks, you should also report the breach to the site or app your using—a link should be fairly easy to find.

When it comes to computers, a thorough virus scan is essential, either by whatever you have installed, or (if that’s been compromised) by an on-demand scanner like ClamWin Portable or Bitdefender Virus Scanner. If you can’t get these working on your main computer (maybe because they’re being blocked by malware, or you’ve had to disconnect from the web), download them on a friend’s and copy them across.

After you’ve blitzed a suspected infection with as many security scans as you can get running, you might still need a complete system reset, whether on mobile or desktop. Fortunately, backing up all your data and resetting everything is easier than ever on Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS.

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Recovering from a hack is a whole other article in itself, but that should get you started. The good news is you’ll often get help from the accounts or software you’re using, or (in the case of financial hacks) your card or banking provider. Get in touch with them for some more detailed advice.





Digital Trends

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

March 30, 2018 at 10:33AM
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SpaceX successfully launches Iridium-5 Falcon 9 mission

3/30/2018

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SpaceX successfully launches Iridium-5 Falcon 9 mission

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SpaceX has successfully launched its Iridium-5 mission, which carries 10 satellites to add to Iridium’s NEXT global communications constellation. This is the fifth set of 10, out of a total of 75 that SpaceX is launching for client Iridium, and today’s launch used a first stage Falcon 9 booster originally employed last October for the third Iridium NEXT satellite launch.

The launch included reuse of a flight proven rocket, but it did not include a recovery attempt for the first stage booster this time around. SpaceX is attempting to recover one half of the fairing used during the launch, which is the protective metal shielding that covers the cargo as the rocket blasts through the atmosphere en route to space. The fairing alone is worth around $6 million, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has indicated that it would be relatively easy to refurbish this part for repeat flight, provided their recovery plan works.

We’ll update this post regarding that part of the mission’s progress as info becomes available.

Meanwhile, the 10 satellites were deployed as planned to their target low-Earth orbit, and will join the NEXT constellation, providing commercial communications capabilities to Iridium clients on the ground.

This is Spacex’s fifth Falcon 9 launch of 2018, and its sixth launch of the year overall when you include the Falcon Heavy launch which took place in February. That was a significant milestone for the company, and additional Falcon Heavy launches are planned for later this year, as well as another Falcon 9 launch on April 2: The twelfth commercial resupply mission SpaceX will fly for the International Space Station.





Digital Trends

via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com

March 30, 2018 at 10:26AM
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Magic Leap's Secrecy Obsession Is Reportedly Making Devs Say Screw It

3/30/2018

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Magic Leap's Secrecy Obsession Is Reportedly Making Devs Say Screw It

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At some point, Magic Leap is going to have to let people play around with its ultra-secret mixed reality device. Dev kits are now shipping to select partners, so it would seem that time is now. But the chosen few are required to take extra security precautions that make it unlikely you’ll bump into one of the headsets at a party.

Late last year, Magic Leap made news by showing us the first images of its long-in-the-works miracle tech, and it promised that developers would get their hands on it sometime in 2018. Earlier this month, it released an SDK, and it seemed that the ship date couldn’t be far away. Now, a Bloomberg report says that some priority developers are getting their units, but Magic Leap is insisting that it be kept locked in a safe.

The security requirements associated with being an early user were deemed too burdensome by some developers. At least one company decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and declined a test device, said a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified due to Magic Leap’s tight information rules.

A Magic Leap spokesman confirmed the company has given out a limited number of devices to partners and has not started distributing them widely. Up to this point, the startup has only allowed people to use the product in tightly controlled environments. Investors, potential business partners and journalists who have used prototypes typically have only been able to do so after signing nondisclosure agreements.

We’ve reached out to Magic Leap to confirm that some developers have decided to pass on the opportunity and we’ll update this post when we receive a reply. We also asked if developers are required to sign an NDA. In February, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz and Adam Silver, the Commissioner of the NBA, appeared at a Recode conference to promote a joint initiative that’s in the works. It was an embarrassing episode because neither was willing to really talk about anything in detail. At one point, Silver even said he signed the same NDA as everyone else, and he was only allowed to speak in vague language. This is not how you promote a product, it’s how you convince people that you have something to hide that’s not good.

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The Magic Leap hype train has officially jumped the rails, and the old “no such thing as bad publicity” adage couldn’t be more wrong. There’s a general feeling of indifference in the press and with online observers. Magic Leap seems to be reading that as anticipation. The only time we get real information about the company is when an employee sues them.

The reality is, the Magic Leap One probably won’t be impressive straight out of the box—that’s just life. Microsoft’s HoloLens has been in the hands of developers for two years, and it’s still not blowing anyone’s mind. If you have a developer friend who has a unit or $3,000, you can try the HoloLens out for yourself. Otherwise, it’s fun to watch the device’s progress through videos uploaded by people quietly chipping away at their personal projects.

All available evidence has left us skeptical that Magic Leap is about to ship Ready Player One-worthy tech yet. And if HoloLens continues to be more friendly to developers, it likely never will.

[Bloomberg]





Digital Trends

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March 30, 2018 at 10:15AM
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MailChimp clarifies its anti-ICO policy

3/30/2018

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MailChimp clarifies its anti-ICO policy

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Nobody wants to deal with ICOs. MailChimp, the popular mass mailing platform, has officially banned users who want to send emails about ICOs/token sales in its terms of use. They write in their legal policies page:

Also, we cannot allow businesses involved in any aspect of the sale, transaction, exchange, storage, marketing or production of cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies, and any digital assets related to an Initial Coin Offering, to use MailChimp to facilitate or support any of those activities.

However, in a Tweet, the company wrote that all cryptocurrency discussion was verboten. I’ve asked them to clarify their position and I will update it when I hear back.

Cryptocurrency-related information isn’t necessarily prohibited. It can be sent as long as the sender isn’t involved in the production, sale, exchange, storage, or marketing of cryptocurrencies. Our Acceptable Use Policy goes into more detail: https://t.co/JnHajBEUNk

— MailChimp (@MailChimp) March 29, 2018

Ultimately the big communications companies – Facebook, Twitter, and the like – are making these decisions in the dark. There is little SEC guidance on token sale marketing in specific but, given the scammy nature of most ICO marketing, they figure they’ll play it safe and ban it outright. This should a boon for services like Substack and apps like Sendy that strip away some of the MailChimp frills but are fairly agnostic when it comes to what you can post.

Ultimately this means two things will happen: first, legitimate, Wall Street-based token entities will begin using more expensive and vetted services and the ICO scammers will keep spamming us with ladies in bikinis.

You’re trying to defend censorship with semantics.

What is the difference between marketing and news? Who decides?

Why do you allow other scammy industries to use your product if that’s what you’re worried about?

Were you served SEC letter or made decision yourself?

— Pomp ? (@APompliano) March 29, 2018





Digital Trends

via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com

March 30, 2018 at 10:14AM
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The SteelSeries Arctis Pro lineup is a new high-water mark in comfort and quality

3/30/2018

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The SteelSeries Arctis Pro lineup is a new high-water mark in comfort and quality

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SteelSeries has two new Arctis Pro gaming headsets out, and they pack a lot of tech and versatility into a comfortable, visually attractive package. The SteelSeries Arctis Pro Wireless and Arctis Pro + GameDAC are both incredibly capable headsets that deliver terrific sound, and depending on your system needs, should probably be your first choice when looking for new gaming audio gear.

The Arctis Pro Wireless is, true to its name, wire-free, but also promises lossless 2.4GHz transmission to ensure lag-free audio, too – a must for competitive gaming. The combination of the wireless functionality, the long-wearing comfort of the suspension system headband and the included transmitter base that can hold and charge a swappable battery as well as display all key information on an OLED readout makes this a standout choice.

There are some limitations, however – compatibility is limited to either PS4 or PC for this one, for instance. The wired Arctis Pro (without GameDAC) is compatible with the Xbox One, but both the wireless version and the version that connected to the wired DAC will only work with either Sony’s latest consoles or with a Windows or Mac-based gaming PC.

I’m a bit saddened by that since I’m a big fan of PUBG on Xbox, and also lately of Sea of Thieves, but I also do regularly play PS4 and PC games, and the Arctis Pro Wireless is my weapon of choice now when using either, either for multiplayer or single player games. The wearability and sound quality (which includes DTS X 7.1 surround on PC) is so good that I’ll often opt to use them in place of my actual 5.1 physical surround system, even when I don’t need to chat with anyone.

Other options, like the Turtle Beach Elite Pro Tournament Headset, offer different advantages including more easily accessible fine-tune control over soundscape, balance of chat and game audio and other features, but the SteelSeries offers a less complicated out-of-box experience, and better all-day wearability thanks to taking cues from athletic wear for its materials and design.

The GameDAC option additionally has Hi-Res Audio certificate, which is good if you’re looking to stream FLAC files or high-res audio from services like Tidal. The DAC itself also makes all audio sound better overall, and gives you more equalization options from the physical controller.

The main thing to consider with the Arctis Pro + DAC ($249.99) and the Arctis Pro Wireless ($329.99) is the cost. They’re both quite expensive relative to the overall SteelSeries lineup and those of competitors, too. But in this case, cost really is reflective of quality – channel separation and surround virtualization is excellent on these headsets, and the mic sounds great to other players I talked to as well. Plus, the Pro Wireless can connect to both Bluetooth and the 2.4GHz transmitter simultaneously, so you can use it with your phone as well as your console, and the retractable mic keeps things looking fairly stylish, too.





Digital Trends

via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com

March 30, 2018 at 10:09AM
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Azures availability zones are now generally available

3/30/2018

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Azure’s availability zones are now generally available

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No matter what cloud you build on, if you want to build something that’s highly available, you’re always going to opt to put your applications and data in at least two physically separated regions. Otherwise, if a region goes down, your app goes down, too. All of the big clouds also offer a concept called ‘availability zones’ in their regions to offer developers the option to host their applications in two separate data centers in the same zone for a bit of extra resilience. All big clouds, that is, except for Azure, which is only launching its availability zones feature into general availability today after first announcing a beta last September.

Ahead of today’s launch, Julia White, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Azure, told me that the company’s design philosophy behind its data center network was always about servicing commercial customers with the widest possible range of regions to allow them to be close to their customers and to comply with local data sovereignty and privacy laws. That’s one of the reasons why Azure today offers more regions than any of its competitors, with 38 generally available regions and 12 announced ones.

“Microsoft started its infrastructure approach focused on enterprise organizations and built lots of regions because of that,” White said. “We didn’t pick this regional approach because it’s easy or because it’s simple, but because we believe this is what our customers really want.”

Every availability zone has its own network connection and power backup, so if one zone in a region goes down, the others should remain unaffected. A regional disaster could shut down all of the zones in a single region, though, so most business will surely want to keep their data in at least one additional region.





Digital Trends

via TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com

March 30, 2018 at 10:09AM
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Put Anker's New Alexa Speakers All Around Your House For Just $29 Each

3/30/2018

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Put Anker's New Alexa Speakers All Around Your House For Just $29 Each

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Anker Zolo Halo Smart Speaker | $29 | Amazon | Promo code MarKINJA

Anker already made a pretty decent Echo Dot clone, but the Eufy Genie’s speaker was...well, it wasn’t that much louder or better than the Dot’s. The Zolo Halo though is a big step up, packing in a perfectly respectable 5W speaker, along with the handsfree Alexa skills you’ve come to rely on. You can even link up to six of them together for multi-room audio.

It’s priced at $60, which isn’t bad considering the Dot is $50, but you can get it for an absurdly low $29 with promo code MarKINJA.






Digital Trends

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March 30, 2018 at 10:09AM
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Report AllegesRen & StimpyCreator John Kricfalusi Took Advantage of Underage Girls Interested in Animation

3/30/2018

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Report Alleges Ren & Stimpy Creator John Kricfalusi Took Advantage of Underage Girls Interested in Animation

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John Kricfalusi at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2016.
Photo: E. Perdu/CITIA (Flickr)

If you were in your teens in the 1990s, chances are good that you personally watched Ren & Stimpy on Nickelodeon, or had friends who were obsessed with the trippy antics of the animated dog-and-cat duo. An in-depth report published yesterday at Buzzfeed has two women on the record alleging that, when they were very young teenagers, Kricfalusi had inappropriate relationships with them after promising to help start their careers in animation.

Katie Rice, now 36, and Robyn Byrd, 37, both say they had long e-mail relationships with Kricfalusi when they were teens with more serious allegations from Byrd. The article reports on the situation in great detail with comments from co-workers who, according to Buzzfeed, “said stories of how Kricfalusi sexually harassed female artists, including teenage girls, were known through the industry. ‘It’s always been there.’” Kricfalusi never had sexual contact with Rice but he did with Byrd, who he hired to be an intern at his animation studio SpumCo. According to other employees who spoke to Buzzfeed, their relationship was an open secret and Kricfalusi showed nude and sexually explicit photographs of Byrd at company parties.

Nickelodeon declined to comment on the allegations but Buzzfeed received a statement via Kricfalusi’s lawyer which states in part, “For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend.”

It’s the kind of story that’s coming to light more and more of late but this one is particularly gross. You can read the full report here.

[Buzzfeed]





Digital Trends

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

March 30, 2018 at 10:03AM
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How I Fell For an Academic Vanity Honeypot Hacking Scheme

3/30/2018

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How I Fell For an Academic Vanity Honeypot Hacking Scheme

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A few weeks ago, I got a direct message on Twitter from one Larry Summers. Yes, the Larry Summers, if that nasty little aquafresh checkmark beside @LHSummers was to be believed.

Larry Summers of Harvard. Larry Summers of the World Bank. Larry Summers of the Treasury Department, for the love of god. Secretary Summers, President Summers. Receiver of medals for epochal contributions to macroeconomics, public finance, labor—not to mention his rare insight into women’s gender-borne intellectual shortcomings.

Yes sirree, Lawrence Henry Summers was just casually DM’ing me, because, well, he’d read an article of mine and found it astute. And now Larry Summers wanted feedback from me on an article of his.

Virginia Heffernan (@page88) is an Ideas contributor at WIRED. She is the author of Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art. She is also a cohost of Trumpcast, an op-ed columnist at the Los Angeles Times, and a frequent contributor to Politico. Before coming to WIRED she was a staff writer at the New York Times—first a TV critic, then a magazine columnist, and then an opinion writer. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree and PhD in English from Harvard. In 1979 she stumbled onto the internet, when it was the back office of weird clerics, and she’s been in the thunderdome ever since.

See where this is going? I gazed at his formidable Twitter profile photo. One of those the-world-and-all-its-banks-are-mine skulls that looks like it’s made of feldspar and weighs a metric ton.

I was a new caliber of flattered; maybe inebriated. Granted, Larry Summers didn’t say exactly which piece of mine he admired—and I wouldn’t have picked Larry Summers for a fan of essays about Reddit or feminism (remember: women lack “intrinsic aptitude”). But I didn’t ask questions. I wanted to believe.

Would I look at an article of his and give him notes? Um, is spearphishing an internet scourge? Yes, I would.

I clicked on his link, larrysummers.ml. (Maybe don’t click till you see how this plays out.) This dot-ML seemed—because I was blinded by Larry Summers’ marquee macroeconomic celebrity—perfectly credible. Whoosh. I landed on a hinky page that asked for my … Twitter credentials.

Hm.

I wasn’t born yesterday. And what kind of file-hosting service used by the former secretary of the treasury, whose name is on some of our paper currency still, is accessed by cutesey Twitter handles?

But I was intoxicated by my longing to believe Larry Summers wanted my professional, astute opinion of some article of his on maybe, probably, economics. Well, don’t worry. I’m not without every instinct: I did manage to ask Larry Summers a cursory question. If nothing else, he would respect me more. “Is this legit?” I asked.

Looking back, why didn’t I test Larry Summers on the arguments he put forth in Understanding Unemployment (1992)? Or just give him a damned captcha.

Would you believe it, Larry Summers said it was indeed legit Larry Summers.

And that’s all I needed. Entered name, password, and…

Like that poor, poor dude who worked for John Podesta, the wretch (coulda been any of us) whose typo opened the door to Fancy Bear, the DNC hack, and the downfall of man, just like him, I was phished and hacked and night fell fast.

Zenci Musa was his name. Man or machine, he—not standing on pronoun ceremony here—seized my Twitter account. He told me “Relax Relax” in DMs, as Larry Summers evaporated. And then Zenci Musa was suddenly in Twitter’s main room, under my handle, posting images that looked like Assassin’s Creed or Ultimate Fighting tattoos. Under my handle!

It was confusing: He sent a message to me that looked like a tweet by me. “Your account has been hacked by the Turkish Cyber Army Ayyildiz Tim. Your DM correspondence and important data have been captured!”

“Oh no, V,” tweeted my friend Holly.

And then I was shut out of Twitter. Account not found. I asked another friend to tweet that I’d been hacked and to ignore my tweets, and any suspicious phishing DMs, till further notice. I didn’t want to hand on misery to my fellows, as @LHSummers has handed on his to me because I am a woman who lacks intrinsic aptitude. Google and Twitter, both on my laptop and phone, switched over to Turkish language. I couldn’t switch back to English. This, surprisingly, was the worst part. Zenci Musa had at least posted in English. But now that every single tab I opened on the Web was in Turkish, and I couldn’t read the internet, I became entirely impotent. I jabbed around the Turkish alphabet trying to get an Apple Store appointment. My location seemed to be Ankara, and I even looked out the window, anxiety rising; no minarets. I was in New York. I was also frantic.

Zenci Musa, I later learned, is Turkish for “Black Moses.” That was the name given to the fourth-century Egyptian ascetic Abba Moses the Black, who wandered the desert and was among the early Christian monastics known as the Desert Fathers. But Abba Moses is an unlikely patron saint for contemporary Turks. Almost certainly, my Zenci Musa pays homage to another Black Moses, a Sudanese Ottoman citizen born in 1880 and renowned for his otherworldly physical strength and his feats of heroism in the Ottoman army.

“Erdoğan followers may revere that Zenci Musa for loyalty to the empire,” a Turkish scholar told me. (Very few Turks in the US use their names publicly when speaking of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president.)

Larry Summers, whether he’d approached me on behalf of gender essentialism or labor policy, was long gone. In his place was this new ghost, Zenci Musa, elegantly styled to terrify me. He spoke on behalf of Turkish Cyber Army, Ayyıldız Tim, or “Team Moon and Crescent,” and announced he had my DMs and data. For some reason this didn’t bother me. Doesn’t everyone have my DMs and data now?

Later, a hit on Snopes told me that this same group hacked Twitter accounts of Greta Van Susteren, Eric Bolling, the president of the World Economic Forum, and an Indian envoy to the UN. Were their traps also baited with the name of the former president of Harvard? Would the president of the World Economic Forum, Børge Brende, ever admit he still seeks Larry Summers’ approval? In every case, the most Ayyıldız Tim seemed to want from any of us was “to show you the power of the Turk!”

As I prepared to abandon my kids to secure my phone, I showed them the frontman of Ayyıldız Tim, the Turkish Cyber Army. “He looks like Peter Dinklage,” my son said. “He’s the coolest villain I’ve ever seen. Do you mind if I root for him?”

Hours later, I was replacing my phone at the Apple Store, every password changed, while Twitter support briskly exiled the overlords who had my account in chains. Twitter was efficient, I must say, though the transaction all went down in the automated help system, and I didn’t hear even a note of contrition. Not even my bank’s pro forma “I can understand how frustrating that must be for you.” (Lately we we seem to be waiting on a sincere apology from the big tech companies; it may never come.)

The Apple Geniuses were much nicer—and more smug.

But at first they didn’t believe me. With all the Genius gaslighting, I felt like a victim of domestic abuse or sexual harassment. “I’ve been hacked,” I told them. “I want a new phone, and a new—”

“Hold on,” the Genius said, slowly smiling, like he’d heard it all before. “Have you really been hacked?”

I pulled up my screenshot of Zenci Musa, hoping the cool villain would frighten this twerp. Did he think I was an hysteric, scared to trembling because my daughter had read a text over my shoulder?

I’d show him. Check out Zenci motherfucking Musa. I explained it was a real hack. I walked him through my experience. He was impressed, though I could tell he didn’t know who Larry Summers is.

The Geniuses jumped into action. Later I learned that they hadn’t thought I was hysterical—or not just hysterical—but rather that they firmly believe Apple products aren’t hackable. And to some extent, they’re right; Apple is aloof and styles itself, by and large, as too cool for the internet disco. Tim Cook’s been dragging Facebook right and left for privacy violations, venality, and data breaches, saying, most recently, that Facebook should have regulated itself, but “we’re beyond that here.”

With TWTR and FB looking peakèd, where AAPL’s intact, Cook and his Geniuses might be forgiven for gloating. At last, the phone was fixed. I had new, less-crackable passwords. And I knew my weakness, and could better correct for it: vanity. I had fallen for Larry Summers. Had been brought low by a word of flattery. What is wrong with me?

But then: When the Justice Department handed down indictments of nine Iranian hackers for ruthless and massive cyberattacks last week, something in the documents caught my eye. Many of the universities targeted by the so-called Mabna Institute, in Tehran, who had stolen more than 31 terabytes of data, had been phished in a suspiciously familiar way.

From the indictment: “In general, those spearphishing emails indicated that the purported sender had read an article the victim professor had recently published, and expressed an interest in several other articles, with links to those additional articles included.”

Aha. So I’m not alone in my vulnerability to what I’ve come to think of as the Academic Vanity Honeypot. Maybe you’re vulnerable too. Consider this, therefore, news you can use, and learn from my mistake. “Larry Summers” approaches you like a sex worker from the former Soviet states; he says, “I read your article.” (That’s “My, you have such broad shoulders” in the Academic Vanity Honeypot.) That’s when you lash yourself to the mainsail. Blindfold yourself. Tell yourself your work is good enough for you, has always been good enough, and Larry Summers, sexist economist, doesn’t matter. DO NOT CLICK.


When Hackers Attack

Photograph by WIRED/Getty Images





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March 30, 2018 at 10:03AM
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