TUESDAY #2130

SOME NEWSY THINGS I'VE STUBLED ACROSS...


I'm not all that fluent in this, but it came from a trusted site...

Your photo contains EXIF data, which contains phone brand & model, camera serial number for some models, GPS coordinates if enabled, whether flash was used or not, focal length, etc. Some websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Imgur remove EXIF before making your photos public, but for other websites (such as Flickr, Picassa, Google+), you need to remove your EXIF by yourself before uploading. This way, the info won't be publicized along with the image.

 A brother of a friend of mine was selling some kind of high end mountain bike, and took a picture of it with his iPhone. Not sure what site it was put on, but, someone got the GPS data from the photo and stole the bike a day or two later

The concern is that most people take tons of pictures in their homes, and don't realize random strangers can find their home address from the photos. The GPS doesn't narrow down to a city, it narrows down to a few feet. That's how 4chan often tracks people down on the internet, check their blogs, look up exif from photos, order pizzas to those houses or report a shooting to get the swat team to show up or whatever.

I'm on the other side of it. I'm a professional photographer. I know how to remove and manipulate EXIF, but I usually actively add my email or other contact info to my photos so that if something gets out there and someone wants to use it for an Ad, they can get in touch with me to pay me instead of saying "I found it on the web with no info, it was orphaned so I figured I didn't have to pay anyone."

 **********************

 Everybody knows that middle-class incomes have stagnated while those of the richest Americans have skyrocketed, but trend is even more pronounced when you look at the relative fortunes of the super-duper rich. Consider the Walmart heirs: Since 1983, their net worth has increased a staggering 6,700 percent -- greater than the net worth of 1,782,020 average Americans.

 **********************

Mobile malware infections race through Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution

The protesters are dependent on mobile apps to coordinate their huge, seemingly unstoppable uprising, and someone -- maybe the Politburo, maybe a contractor -- has released virulent Ios and Android malware into their cohort, and the pathogens are blazing through their electronic ecosystem.

 **********************

In the next few years, researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine hope to transplant lab-grown penises into people who need them due to congenital abnormalities, disease, or traumatic injury. The penises are grown from the patient's own cells on a 3D collagen scaffold made from a donor penis. Studies on rabbits "were very encouraging," says tissue engineering pioneer Anthony Atala, director of the Institute.

 **********************

Have you ever read anything about the “FEMA Camps” set up all over America? There are many people who are concerned about them. Are ALL those people paranoid?

 ***********

Can we all just pray that the War On Ebola goes far better than our governments War on Drugs, War on Poverty and War on Violence.

*********

I went to have my teeth cleaned…which I hate. She hadn’t been working long before she said, “Oh, my, you must have had chicken for lunch.” I said, “You could tell that just by the flakes of food in my teeth?” She said, “No,” then reached in my beard, pulled out a big chunk of fried chicken, handed it to me, and said, “Eat this on your way home.”

Dog gets passersby to play fetch...

 Speaking of dogs...

I can’t believe the Secret Service is even less effective than the president they protect.

With an estimated 100,000 individual claps per season, Wheel calculates that Vanna White has clapped about 3.5 million times in her decades as co-host. Plus she has never worn the same outfit twice.

An Omagh plumber tunneled a hole from under his bed to the local pub 800 feet from his house over the course of 15 years. In his own words: “The wife has a bad snore on her and after watching the Shawshank Redemption on RTE one night in 1994, I decided to do something about it so I waited til she was in a deep sleep and then set about digging a hole under the bed in the direction of the pub. I used all manner of tools from spoons to a heavy duty tunnel boring machine I managed to sneak down there when she was at the shops. It wasn’t until 2009 that I hit the jackpot and came up through the women’s toilet mop and bucket room.”

UPDATE: IT'S A FAKE! TOO BAD. I guess if Boing Boing can get it wrong, then I don’t feel so stupid. 

When the volcanic island of Krakatoa erupted in 1883, it produced the loudest recorded noise on Earth. Measuring over 172 decibels, it produced a blast of high-pressure air so powerful that it ruptured the eardrums of sailors 40 miles away, and could be heard 3000 miles away. The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times

Google Street View Automatically Blurs the Faces of Statues

Two awesome cameras...

 A camera capable of taking 4.4 trillion photographs every second has been unveiled by Japanese scientists.

I’m not sure if everybody just stopped saying yolo or if everyone who said yolo is dead.

You know what they used to telegraph an apology?

Remorse Code.

I posted this the other day. Come to find out, the outfits are not transparent, but flesh colored and that is not pubic hair, but shadows.

Damn!

Never think that even your low skill job is secure...

Of course, some guy has to put the apple on the machine....for now.
Looping near perfect, by the way.

Man made a dumpster into a house...

Must make picking up women a bitch, though.

Two similar, both beautiful, black and white photos...

It’s a fact that most rioting in the world takes place in countries with the least bacon.

 At least 100,000 elephants have been poached in just the last three years. If this rate continues, African elephants could go extinct in a few decades.

And then...

California fish and wildlife regulations have helped the abalone population recover from near extinction. A repeat abalone poacher pleaded guilty to new charges this month, and faces 32 months in prison.

So you are telling me we can save the abalone, but not the elephant?!

Barbecue Lay's chips were green, and here's why...

"These green chips were dyed with food coloring so they'd be easy to find coming out of the fryer. Several times a day the amount of time the chips spend in the fryer is tested, and this makes them easy to find. Someone missed them obviously," says the guy who works there.

 In Japan they love to make perfect ice for perfect drinks. For that they use these metal machines to turn huge ice cubes into ice spheres using nothing but brute force. Surprisingly, the ice doesn't break thanks to the MAGICS of physics.

I saw an ad in the newspaper for free-range tofu.

The other-other white meat.

It's a chocolate covered banana....but that's not really the point, now is it?

Headlines Of Interest:

"Despite Legalization, Colorado Teenagers Stubbornly Refuse to Smoke More Pot."

 Anybody know anything about this?

How I imagine couples who masturbate together.

A devotee of the Chinese Bang Neow Shrine is seen in trance as more spikes are put through his cheeks and lips before a procession celebrating the annual vegetarian festival in Phuket.

I'll have some of what he had....sans spikes. 

A jet powered train?

 Could that be true?

One Of My Very Own...

 This sink's water is falling exactly into one of the drain holes...

 Just the way I like it.

Becoming a cynical son of a bitch wasn’t what I had planned to do with my life.

Tear gas is a chemical agent banned in warfare per the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, which set forth agreements signed by nearly every nation in the world — including the United States. The catch, however, is that while it’s illegal in war, it’s legal in domestic riot control.

Another place I will never visit...

I hope someone I hate hears their first Christmas song this year in October.

Hopare: Paris, France

Bikismo "Handshake", mural in New York City

Unknown artist...

If you're feeling down, park in a handicap space and soon a bunch of strangers will tell you that there's nothing wrong with you!