MaxRedline

King Bluetooth Of Denmark

A 13 year-old kid and an amateur archaeologist were out with their metal detectors on the northern German island of Rugen and they happened across this stuff.

Braided necklaces, pearls, brooches, a Thor’s hammer, rings and up to 600 chipped coins were found, including more than 100 that date back to Bluetooth’s era, when he ruled over what is now Denmark, northern Germany, southern Sweden and parts of Norway.

Apart from the pearls, the loot mostly consisted of silver. So how did it end up there?

The oldest coin is a Damascus dirham dating to 714 while the most recent is a penny dating to 983.

The find suggests that the treasure may have been buried in the late 980s – also the period when Bluetooth was known to have fled to Pomerania, where he died in 987.

Bluetooth unified Denmark during his reign, and introduced Christianity to the people. Unfortunately, his son Sven ultimately led a rebellion against him, leading to his hasty departure.

Most of Pomerania is today part of Poland, although its westernmost portion - including this island - is in eastern Germany. It was there to which King Bluetooth fled.

Today, the wireless technology that allows computers and smartphones to communicate (effectively unifying the devices) is named after him.

King Bluetooth's first name was Harald; the Bluetooth symbol is composed of two merged Nordic runes, H and B. A popular implementation in vehicles today for enabling hands-free operation of cell phones when driving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tech News

In addition to shutting down the "Backpage" website and its affiliates, the feds are taking legal action against the owner and staff:

Seven individuals affiliated with the website, including 69-year-old Backpage founder Michael Lacey, have been charged in a 93-count indictment with a range of money-laundering crimes as well as facilitating prostitution using a facility in interstate or foreign commerce, and conspiracy to do so.

Also charged are Backpage employees James Larkin, Scott Spear, and John E. “Jed” Brunst of Arizona, and Daniel Hyer, Andrew Padilla, and Jaala Joye Vaught of Texas.

From Huffington Post:

“For example, for several years, Backpage’s official policy, when presented with an ad featuring the prostitution of a child, was to delete the particular words in the ad denoting the child’s age and then publish a revised version of the ad. Such editing, of course, did nothing to change the fact the ad featured the prostitution of a child ― it only created a veneer of deniability and helped Backpage’s customers (i.e., pimps trafficking children) evade detection.”

Yeah, those folks could probably do with some prison time. At 69, that Lacey fella could be in for some real trouble. Couldn't happen to a better bunch of folks.

Meanwhile the infamous "Craigslist" has decided to head off the feds:

“US Congress just passed HR 1865, “FOSTA”, seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully.

Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day."

The bill passed 94-1 with five non-votes. The only nay vote was Rand Paul.

Sex traffickers are bailing, and the apologists for "sex workers" are really unhappy.

 

Tech News

A lot of people don’t realize that Amazon Prime members also get unlimited photo storage, plus 5 gigs of cloud storage on Amazon Drive. Gmail users can also snag 15 gigs of free cloud storage on Google Drive—saving you the paid iCloud subscription. So if you're a Prime member and/or have a gmail account, you can save a little cash on data storage.

And more overdue but good news came today:

I've read a lot about this sleazeball site and its affiliates over the years, and have been wondering why little was being done about online sex trafficking. Finally, something has; although the CEO was busted in October 2016, it didn't seem to slow the sites down. Until now.

The chief executive officer of Backpage.com, a portal for adult classified ads, was arrested yesterday on charges of pimping, pimping a minor under 16 years of age, and conspiracy to commit pimping, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

CEO Carl Ferrer was arrested in Houston, Texas, after arriving on a flight from Amsterdam.

Backpage.com is owned by a Dutch-based limited liability corporation, but its main place of business is in Dallas, Texas, according to the report. Last month the company told the U.S. Supreme Court, after being subpoenaed, that the Backpage.com itself is a victim, of an overreaching government that is not respecting First Amendment rights.

Ferrer now faces 22 years in prison. In a statement provided to the Chronicle, Ferrer's lawyer said the charges are "trumped up."

People like Carl need to be put away. And thankfully, the site and its affiliates are all offline at last.

 

 

Uber Fail

(Bloomberg) -- Uber Technologies Inc. disabled the standard collision-avoidance technology in the Volvo SUV that struck and killed a woman in Arizona last week, according to the auto-parts maker that supplied the vehicle’s radar and camera.

“We don’t want people to be confused or think it was a failure of the technology that we supply for Volvo, because that’s not the case,” Zach Peterson, a spokesman for Aptiv Plc, said by phone. The Volvo XC90’s standard advanced driver-assistance system “has nothing to do” with the Uber test vehicle’s autonomous driving system, he said.

Uber’s system failed to slow the vehicle as 49-year-old victim Elaine Herzberg crossed the street pushing a bicycle.

On the other hand, Elaine wasn't in a crosswalk in a well-lit area; worse yet, she was dressed in dark clothing. Still, the active radar that Uber disengaged likely would have picked her up in time to slow or halt the vehicle.

Uber: not ready for prime-time.

 

 

Facebook Arrogance

“Dumb fucks.” That’s how Mark Zuckerberg described users of Facebook for trusting him with their personal data back in 2004. If the last week is anything to go by, he was right.

Since the Observer reported that the personal data of about 50 million Americans had been harvested from Facebook and improperly shared with the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, it has become increasingly apparent that the social network has been far more lax with its data sharing practices than many users realised.

“This is the story we have been waiting for so people will pay attention not just to Facebook but the entire surveillance economy,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia.

Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, added her own comment: “We know that this was a major violation of people’s trust, and I deeply regret that we didn’t do enough to deal with it.”

The company will investigate apps that had access to “large amounts of information” before the 2014 changes and audit thousands of apps that show “suspicious activity”. The company will also inform those whose data was “misused”, including people who were directly affected by the Kogan operation.

These actions don’t go far enough, said Vaidhyanathan.

“Facebook has a history of putting on that innocent little boy voice: ‘Oh I didn’t know that I shouldn’t hold the cat by its tail,’” he said. “I think we’re tired of it at this point.”

Well put. I deleted my account, and posted a brief "how-to" on this site for anyone who's interested in dumping their account. By the way, it takes at least two weeks for Facebook to get around to actually completing the deletion - just in case, you know, you change your mind; why would anyone not want to use Facebook?

Oh gosh, let us count the reasons....

 

Facebook-Free

You probably have a Fecesbook account; if so, you may have found it somewhat troubling that the company is so lax that they allowed others to rummage through the data like raccoons in a dumpster, and might therefore have considered killing the account. But it's not entirely easy.

Start here. Then follow the steps, which involve entering your password and then solving the "captcha" puzzle. Get through that, and you're on your way. "On your way" means just that - FB will retain your data for a few days, just in case you change your mind; if you log in during this period, they cancel the deletion.

Give it a few days, and don't log back in.

You might want to download your account data, which are pretty extensive, before you kill the account. Look here. What they collect may blow your mind. The information you can download includes everything from the photos and statuses you post, to the ads you’ve clicked and the IP addresses you’ve used.

You can download it all onto DVD or external drives to keep from cluttering up your primary drive. I suggest the latter. Then kill the account.

You can go here to download.

Thankfully, I never used FB much, though I know a lot of people who do.

Bear in mind: it's not a service, but a product. And you're what they're selling.

 

 

Uber Killed A Pedestrian Last Night

Uber Technologies Inc. halted autonomous vehicle tests after one of its cars struck and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona, in what is likely the first pedestrian fatality involving the technology. The 49 year-old woman, Elaine Herzberg, was crossing the road outside of a crosswalk when the Uber vehicle operating in autonomous mode under the supervision of a human safety driver, struck her, according to the Tempe Police Department. She was transferred to a local hospital where she died from her injuries.

Uber has halted all testing of its autonomous vehicles as multi-agency investigations into the incident unwind. It appears that the presence of a "human safety driver" was of no value. Tempe PD, the NTSB, and the company are all looking into the circumstances surrounding the death.

Don't expect that pizza delivery by autonomous vehicle any time soon.

 

It Was Only A Matter Of Time

Raleigh, North Carolina police have taken to issuing broad-based search warrants for phones, tablets, and other accounts. Rather than identifying a suspect and then searching through his or her accounts for relevant data, they've taken to casting a wide net, apparently hoping to winnow out a potential suspect by going through the data of all accounts in the surrounding area.

In one case, Raleigh police requested information on all Google accounts within 17 acres of a murder, overlapping residences, and businesses.

The actions have understandably drawn the attention of ACLU and EFF.

 

Pizza-Pizza!

The much-ballyhooed autonomous vehicles we've been hearing about will likely get their start by delivering fast-food and other items to your door, not carting you around.

The early conversations around driverless cars have focused on robot taxis because taking the human driver out of a cab seemed like the quickest path to profitability. But an increasing number of companies—automakers, tech giants, startups, parcel services—are seeing autonomous delivery as the more lucrative venture.

70% of delivery costs are due to hiring humans to drive the deliveries.

Ford Motor Co. just began a pilot in Miami to understand how self-driving cars and vans would deliver pizza, groceries and other goods. Here’s how short-haul robot delivery might work, according to those creating it: You order an item online or on your phone and specify a window of time for it to be delivered to your home or office. As the package nears its destination, you get an alert telling you to come to the curb to retrieve your merchandise from a locked compartment in the vehicle. You unlock it with a code punched into a touchpad on the side of the vehicle or by scanning a barcode texted to your phone.

A big question is: are people going to be willing to run out in the rain to pick up a pizza? Nobody knows as yet.

 

Why, I Don't Know

But if you want to turn your Android phone into a Microsoft Windows gadget, you can, and pretty easily.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to run Windows 10 on their phones, but it seems that some people like the idea, and since Microsoft killed the Win-phone, this seems to be the backup plan - port it to Android. Whatever. I use several operating systems, so switching among them isn't a problem, but some folks prefer to stay with just one. Now they can use Windows 10 on their Android smartphones.

Yee-hah!