asprinkleofeverything

Beautifulpeople.com kick off 30,000 ugly members

2011-06-20T14:40:00.001+01:00

BeautifulPeople is a dating website with ruthless member screening. If you apply and you're not their definition of 'beautiful' you are denied and your account is deleted. BeautifulPeople has made the news before for kicking out 5,000 members that had 'let themselves go' and once again, it's back in the spotlight.

Apparently, a computer virus on their system allowed 30,000 new members to bypass the screening process and gain full access to the website. When the was figured out, all 30,000 members had their monthly subscription payment returned and were locked out from the website, costing the website over £62,000.

Greg Hodge, the director of the website claimed that "members pay to only have beautiful people on the website, and we can't scrape 30,000 ugly people under the carpet."

"We got suspicious when tens of thousands of new members were accepted over a six-week period, many of whom were no oil painting," Hodge claimed.

This month, the website triggered anger in Ireland when it said that Irish men were among the ugliest in the world. This was based on the reasoning that only 9% of male Irish applicants to the site were accepted. Only 20% of Irish women are accepted, compared with nearly 70% of Swedish women who sign up. Either Ireland does have ugly women, or Swedish women are more desperate.

Conceding that the latest set back was a "very embarrassing day", Hodge said he felt "very sorry" for the "unfortunate people who were wrongly admitted to the site and believed, albeit for a short time, that they were beautiful".

You'd think if Mr. Hodge did feel sorry for the people that had their accounts deleted, he's stop referring to them as 'ugly' every chance he gets.

Air Conditioning military tents costs more than NASA's yearly budget

2011-06-18T15:19:00.000+01:00

Steve Anderson, a retired brigadier general who was Petraeus' chief logistician in Iraq, says that the Pentagon spends $20 billion a year just to air condition tents and temporary buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's more than NASA's entire annual budget.

There's an easy fix, says Anderson: Spray tents with polyurethane foam. An existing $95 million contract to spray-insulate tents is providing $1 billion in cost-avoidance, Anderson says. But insulating tents instead of air conditioning them is still not official military policy.

It's strange when you consider what NASA can do with $19 billion, and for the same cost the military is only just managing to keep their soldiers well ventilated.

UPDATE: Bitcoin specific virus

2011-06-17T18:14:00.000+01:00

Malware authors move fast. Following on from the previous blog post on Bitcoin botnet mining, we have seen a recent Trojan in the wild targeting Bitcoin wallets. The Trojan is Infostealer.Coinbit and it has one motive: to locate your Bitcoin wallet.dat file and email it to the attacker. This is not surprising considering the potential values in a Bitcoin wallet. We have also discovered source code on underground forums which locates the wallet and, using FTP, uploads it to the attacker's servers.

We expect that code similar to the techniques described above will find a way into other malware considering the amount of attention this sort of attack is currently receiving and with the amount of Bitcoins currently available for purchase. (For an overview on how Bitcoin works, view this Bitcoin overview video).
If you use Bitcoins, you have the option to encrypt your wallet and we recommend that you choose a strong password for this in the event that an attacker is attempting to brute-force your wallet open.
Thanks to Mario Ballano for his assistance in identifying the threat.

Taken from [Symantec]

Stuxnet - the next generation of warfare

2011-06-17T13:33:00.002+01:00

By now, most people have heard of Stuxnet but for those of you who haven't:

Stuxnet is a working and fearsome prototype of a cyber-weapon that will lead to the creation of a new arms race in the world. It remains unknown who created it although fingers have been pointed at middle-eastern governments, along with the US and Siemens. It targets industrial control systems in order to take control of industrial facilities, such as power plants. While the attacker’s exact motives for doing so are unclear.

Historic data from the early days of the Stuxnet worm attack showed that Iran, Indonesia and India accounted for the bulk of the countries where computers were targeted.

While the video claims stuxnet to be readily availble to anybody online, it's not. And the virus uses closer to 4 zero-day exploits, not 20.

After learning the capabilities of this virus, it's scary to think that soon, we may be entering the age of the keyboard soldier.

Nokia victorious over Apple

2011-06-16T18:22:00.000+01:00

The father of smartphones, Nokia has been struggling recently in the market. It's not recent news. With rivals such as Apple and HTC popping up, Nokia has been shunted off to the side.

The court battle has been going since 2009 and has been stretched out over so long due to countless counter suits. It first came about when Nokia decided to sue Apple in the United States claiming that Apple was using patented tech owned by Nokia. It has been said that Nokia will now be awarded up to 2% of all iPhone sales, giving the Finnish company a much needed boost. This will most likely be awarded in a lump sum with the possibility of future royalties.

This victory has spurred Nokia into being more aggressive with it's patents and it may be compelled to chase other rival companies. While this has given Nokia a boost, it's still going to be an uphill struggle to compete against Android and iPhone devices.

$500,000 in cyber-currency stolen

2011-06-15T17:33:00.001+01:00

By now, I'm sure most people will know what bitcoin is, but for those of you that haven't ventured into the geeky parts of the interwebs, I'll explain.

Essentially bitcoin is a virtual currency which is generated on your computer. It can be sold to other users or exchanged for services and goods. It has come under fire from law agencies as it has been linked with narcotics websites as a use of payment. Like any currency, the market value of a BitCoin can fluctuate. Recently, BitCoin’s value had skyrocketed, up to nearly $30 US from $5 in a span of about a month.

Obviously this skyrocketing in value grabbed many people's attention and they jumped on the bandwagon.

A certain bitcoin user who had been an early adopter of the virtual currency, had watch his little gold coins generate and build up in his "virtual wallet." With the news of the value dramatically increasing you can imagine his giddy excitement when he looked at what his coins were worth... $467,500. So you can only imagine his reaction when he logged onto his computer and found out he had been literally robbed. His coins were gone.

Now the thing with bitcoins is, it is like real money you have in your wallet. There's no "reverse transaction" like there is with Paypal. Although, then that would mean you'd have to deal with Paypal, I'd rather just let someone steal my money. So when his money had been deposited into someone else's account, anonymously, it was in essence, gone.

The user, whose forum nickname is "Allinvain" - which, is alarmingly fitting looked for help on the bitcoin forum. Unfortunately the stance of the bitcoin developers is that the transactions are anonymous and so they is no way to tell if this is a legitimate claim. Other users are sympathetic towards Allinvain and are nervous that this may have been caused by a security flaw in the bitcoin service itself, while others think Allinvain may have had his computer infected.

I can only imagine what Allinvain feels right now. I don't personally use the service myself, but this is a harsh reminder of always keep your money safe. Virtual or physical.

Five FireFox add-ons everybody should have.

2011-06-15T03:13:00.001+01:00

Firefox is a great browser. Generally, it runs smoothly, very rarely crashes, loads pages quickly and has an incredible amount of add-ons available to it. Here are five add-ons which everybody should have, if you don't already.

Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus is absolutely fantastic. I've had it nearly as long as I've had Firefox. Basically, when you install adblock, it will come with a list of pre-defined known advertising websites and completely remove them from your browser. Things like those annoying flash adverts on youtube are automatically removed. Also, you can right click on images/left click the tab on flash media and add your own filter to block ads on certain websites. A definite must!

FoxyTunes
If, like me, you ALWAYS have your internet browser open, then FoxyTunes is definitely for you. I will always have music or a movie playing through iTunes or VLC. FoxyTunes lets you control multiple media players straight from your browser. This means you don't have to minimize what you're doing to change your music. I thought it seemed a bit of a gimmicky idea, but after trying it, I'm glad I installed it. Definiteley worth a shot.

StumbleUpon
Ahh StumbleUpon. While a huge time-sink, this has to be one of the best add-ons available for any browser. Users of the addon can submit a website, picture, blog or video to the site and when approved it's entered into circulation. When you install the addon, you see a little toolbar in your browser with a button that says "Stumble!" All you need to do, is click this button and you're taken to a totally random website that someone has submitted. I cannot even begin to tell you how addictive this is. Think of wikipedia, but better. I've discovered at least five websites that have gone into my daily "Oh it's been five minutes since I last checked, I wonder if they've put anything new on yet" routine.

Download Statusbar
This one might not appeal to everybody, but for me, it's a must. I find myself downloading A LOT of files. One thing that annoys me about FireFox is the download window. I know you can change your config so that it doesn't show, but that creates other complications. I'm quite petty when it comes to little things I don't like, which is why I'm still using the Windows 98 theme on Windows 7. Yes, I know, retro. Download Statusbar just puts a small bar at the bottom of your browser showing the status of your downloading files.

AutoProxy
Everybody has heard of a Proxy by now so there's no need to explain it. While I've never really felt the need, some people only like to go to... certain websites via a proxy. AutoProxy makes it easy. You no longer need to switch your proxy on. If you prefer to visit a website via proxy, just add it's domain to AutoProxy's preference. After that, when you surfing, specified websites will be transfered through proxy while leaving others connect directly.

Oh why not, I'll do a bonus addon.

Morning Coffee
This is quite a recent addon for me and I absolutely love it. Each day when I come online, I check around 10-12 websites. These are things such as Facebook, blogs, news websites, tech websites etc. I used to sometimes forget to check one for a day or two and while this was fun when I remembered as I had two days worth of information to catch up on, it was quite annoying. Hello Morning Coffee. Morning Coffee is a simple yet fantastic addon. All you do is click the icon when on a certain website and it's addon into your "Websites to open" cache. Then, each morning when you come onto your computer just click the icon and every website you've entered will automatically open. It couldn't be more simple.

I hope some of you readers find some of these add-ons as useful as I have, although I'm sure most of you will already have a fair few of them.

Some great photoshop tutorials

2011-06-14T18:23:00.005+01:00

Water Colour

This is one of my favourite tutorials. In just 10 steps you can create your own water colour painting.

A Picture is worth 1000 words

Really nice tutorial showing you how turn any picture in the effect shown above.

Trendy typo-art

Create a trendy-looking poster in a few steps.

And last but not least:
A great list of amazing tutorials here

Airbus' concept - transparent walls

2011-06-14T12:52:00.000+01:00

Some people are absolutely terrified of flying in planes, which is understanble. Thousands of feet up in a tin can and you have absolutely no control over it. If something goes wrong, well... that's most likely the end of that.

The fact that so many people have a phobia makes this concept plane from Airbus even more intriguing. Just before the Paris airshow 'Le Bourget' Airbus invited passengers of 2050 to discover their concept cabin.

The aircraft’s bionic structure mimics the efficiency of bird bone which is optimised to provide strength where needed, and allows for an intelligent cabin wall membrane which controls air temperature and can become transparent to give passengers open panoramic views.

The cavin includes areas for activities such as virtual golf and interactive conferences. The concept cabin will be 100% recyclable. It will have self-cleaning materials made from sustainable plant fibres which reduce waste and maintenance and will harvest passenger body heat to power cabin features.

Aggressive shark spotted off Cornwall coast

2011-06-13T16:29:00.005+01:00

Following on from our other shark post

The whitetip shark has been blamed for many attacks on humans. While most attacks can be a can of mistaken identity the whitetip can be an extremely aggressive species of shark. Last year, a 71 year old woman was killed by a thought-to-be 'rogue' whiteip in Egypt. Reports indicated that the shark didn't just bite the victim once, but made repeat passes each time inflicting more damage. The 71 year old woman died as a result of her arm being torn off.

A 60 year old fisherman claims that his boat was rammed by the suspected whitetip shark off Cornwall's coast as he fished for Mackerel. Experts are skeptical as the whitetip prefers much warmer tropical oceans but the fisherman claims he was clearly able to identify the shark and estimated it to be 6-7foot in length. The shark's trust stance is that without proper evidence such as DNA or a tooth it's impossible to confirm the identity of the shark and that it's unlikely it was a whitetip.

British waters, in the warmest summer, can reach around 17-18 degrees. This is right on the bottom end of what the whitetip can survive in, so while unlikely, it is entirely possible.

Zombie invasion policies?

2011-06-12T17:52:00.000+01:00

Leicester City council have been forced to admit that they "currently have no plans of what to do in the event of a zombie invasion." A strange individual, thought to be Robert Ainsley, asked the council under the Freedom of Information Act, what their plans were in the event of a Dawn of the dead-style invasion.

Lynn Wyeth, the council's head of information governance, said: "We've had a few wacky ones before but this one did make us laugh. She then added "To you it might seem frivolous and a waste of time, but to different people it actually means something."

Thank god I don't live in Leicester, that's all I can say.

We all live in a yellow submarine...

2011-06-11T19:51:00.001+01:00

GRP Laminates has announced a new concept, the MSV Explorer. The MSV Explorer sits 1.2M under the surface of the ocean and provides 360 degree views.

Electrically propelled to reduce its impact on marine ecosystems, the highly maneuverable MSV Explorer can be easily controlled by single or dual joystick, or remotely controlled from the launch and recovery catamaran. It has an all-day operating capacity (7.5 hours operation at full speed) allowing for a full working day underwater, and a truly unique experience for users.

Although the MSV-Explorers look like mini subs, they are in fact surface water craft, designed to place two observers in an acrylic cockpit at a constant 1.2 m below the surface of the ocean, providing a complete panoramic sub surface view of the marine environment without the need for scuba gear or any form of specialist training. Simply push the joystick and go in any direction, with a 360 degree, turn on its own axis capability.

Still, I'd rather have a shark cage.

Sniper Ghost Warrior - First Impressions

2011-06-11T16:15:00.001+01:00

I recently bought myself a new laptop - a Dell L502x with fairly beastly specs. Now that I've had it a few days and grown quite comfortable on it, I wanted to see what it was like for playing games. I couldn't decide on the game as I mainly wanted an FPS but had played most well-known PC titles on the Xbox 360.

Eventually, I settled on Sniper Ghost Warrior. While not exactly the most recent title, it does look quite stunning. I put everything on max and was expecting a fairly large amount of frame lag. I had absolutely none, not even in intense fire-fights. The graphics remind me quite a lot of BFBC-2.

Anyway, the gameplay.

I've only played through the first mission but it's fairly varied. The controls seem like most FPS titles, you have the backbone - the sprint, generic move/zoom keys and then you have your special keys such as "Focus." Focus means time essentially slows down and you have more time to take your shot while zoomed in.

As you can see from this screen I took, the graphics are really quite nice. The hud is one of the better ones I've seen recently as more games seem to be leaning towards an intrusive hud that invades your screen and can be quite annoying.

When you headshot certain enemies, you get a nice little cut-scene of the bullet flying through the air and burying itself in their skull.

The game, so far, has nice little touches such as variable zoom on scopes and throwing knifes for extra stealth. There are a few problems though, such as enemies shooting away from your direction, yet their bullets somehow hit you. Enemies are also extremely difficult to spot as they are the exact same colour as the surrounding terrain.

Overall, quite impressed with it so far.

Want an alternative to Spotify?

2011-06-11T00:03:00.001+01:00

With the recent changes Spotify have made to their service, many people have been left annoyed and unhappy. It seems no other music service allows you to search for the exact music you want to listen to and let you listen free or uninterrupted without adverts.

HELLO Grooveshark! Grooveshark is a great little web-passed program that lets you search for the exact song, artist or album you want to listen to; much like Spotify. You can register, share songs via URL, create playlists, share your music on social networking sites and more. Also, there are NO adverts. It great.

Check it out here: Grooveshark

Ever wanted to completely delete an old website account?

2011-06-10T21:01:00.001+01:00

Not all web sites make it easy for users to delete their accounts, and some might actually make it so difficult that it's nearly impossible to do without help. That's where AccountKiller comes into play, because it not only gives clear and simple instructions for deleting accounts at all the most popular sites, but it also uses a definitive color-coding system to rate each one's "ease of service."

The colors used to rate sites are white, grey, and black.
White - Easy to delete
Grey - Not too easy but not too hard
Black - You're going to struggle to delete

AccountKiller currently tracks and rates over 150 sites, including major destinations such as Facebook (grey), Gmail (white), iTunes (black), and Skype (black). Some of the ratings are quite surprising, and some aren't, but clicking through to a site's information page gives a detailed description of the process for deleting an account there.

Ever wanted a Star Wars speeder bike?

2011-06-10T15:49:00.001+01:00

Australian engineer Chris Malloy has spent his spare money and time building a flying motorcycle he calls the Hoverbike. The Imperial Speeder Bike-like bike could reach 10,000 feet and fly 170 mph when finished.

Malloy claims the idea for the Hoverbike came up during an argument about what an actual flying motorcycle would look like. Using his garage, he custom-built the carbon-fiber airframe attached to a 107-hp BMW boxer-twin engine. The wood rotors with carbon-fiber edges counter-rotate, allowing Malloy to avoid the vertical blade that would make a flying bike hostile to any human occupant.

Malloy needs additional money and know-how to actually put the craft in the air. But so far there's nothing beyond willpower that would keep the vehicle grounded. A production version is estimated to run about $40,000.

I think I speak for more people that myself here when I say, $40,000 for an Imperial Speeder Bike...time to start saving my pennies.

Fancy a tan?

2011-06-10T13:11:00.001+01:00

Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily.

Dr. Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland, outlined the scenario to news.com.au. Betelgeuse, one of the night sky’s brightest stars, is losing mass, indicating it is collapsing. It could run out of fuel and go super-nova at any time.

When that happens, for at least a few weeks, we’d see a second sun, Carter says. There may also be no night during that timeframe.

The Star Wars-esque scenario could happen by 2012, Carter says... or it could take longer. The explosion could also cause a neutron star or result in the formation of a black hole 1300 light years from Earth, reports news.com.au.

But doomsday sayers should be careful about speculation on this one. If the star does go super-nova, Earth will be showered with harmless particles, according to Carter. "They will flood through the Earth and bizarrely enough, even though the supernova we see visually will light up the night sky, 99 per cent of the energy in the supernova is released in these particles that will come through our bodies and through the Earth with absolutely no harm whatsoever," he claims.

There is no way of knowing when the star may go supernova. U.S. astronomer Phil Plait added, "Betelgeuse might go up tonight, or it might not be for 100,000 years. We’re just not sure."

Forget a labrador...I want a T-REX!

2011-06-09T23:21:00.001+01:00

If this doesn't appeal to the kid within you, then something is wrong here. The famous words "Welcome to Jurassic Park" may soon become a reality. This is quite fascinating stuff.

Paleontologist Jack Horner wants a pet dinosaur. According to his TED talk, we're actually getting closer to making Jurassic Park a reality. Thanks to chickens.

Researchers have already been able to create a chicken with teeth by using atavism activation, a process where one stimulates a leftover gene from an ancestral version of your chosen test subject. Chickens, Horner says, are dinosaurs—avian dinosaurs, to be exact. And in embryotic form, they exhibit some similarities with their 60-million-year-old reptilian cousins (like having a longer tail or hands/fingers instead of wings). But as the embryo grows, a gene kicks in to shorten the tail or change the structure of the hands. And so we're left with a boring, albeit tasty, "bird" that can't even fly.
But creating a Chickenosaurus, researchers believe, is the first step towards realizing Michael Crichton's (and Jack Horner's) dream.

We've obviously not learned our lesson from the 1993 blockbuster. Nothing here could go wrong, LETS DO IT!

Ahh so I'm not just paranoid!

2011-06-09T18:54:00.003+01:00

One thing I'm scared of is my laptop or my phone breaking. Not because it's broken, but because I know I'll likely have to send it off...and all my personal data along with it. I know it's illegal for a computer technician/repair center to look through your data but obviously people are curious. And it does happen.

Trevor Harwell, a 20-year-old computer repairman, is a pathetic, sick and malicious pervert. Instead of fixing computers, he installed software on women's computer that would allow him to take pictures of them while they were showering and undressing.
The software he installed would pop up a fake error message that told the user to try and "fix their internal sensor soon," and "try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor." Upon seeing such messages, the women would bring the computer into the bathroom with them as they undressed and showered. Harwell would then fire off a bunch of pictures to capture them naked. Just a total disregard for human decency.
Police have seized hundreds of pictures and videos from Harwell's computer and Harwell is currently out on $50,000 bond.

Now ok, you have to be pretty stupid to believe your computer has a "sensor" that needs to be placed near hot steam for several minutes. Steam is water. Water + Laptop = bad. Obviously, some people are completely computer illiterate and will fall for anything though. Still, doesn't mean they should be subjected to this kind of thing.

Can I export ALL my firefox settings to another computer?

2011-06-09T13:16:00.001+01:00

Getting my brand new laptop yesterday was great. It wasn't all good though. The only thing worse than all the bloatware new laptops come with is putting all your old data and settings onto them, especially things you use everyday; your web browser.

BUT DON'T WORRY

A great program called MozBackup packages up all your essential Firefox and Thunderbird settings: bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc. The newest release of this essential utility for all Firefox users now supports popular extensions Scrapbook and Tabbrowser Preferences.
Download MozBackup for Windows. Install the app and run it. Pick which Mozilla program and which user and choose "Backup a profile." You will be able to password-protect your backup file if you'd like. (Click to enlarge the screenshot.)

Firefox or Thunderbird can't be running while the backup is created. When you're done, the resulting .pcv file (which is really just a zip file) will contain all your settings. Email it to yourself and save it on your new work computer. Download and install MozBackup there and run it, this time choosing to "Restore a profile" rather than back up. That should set up your Firefox exactly how you had it at your old office.

There we go, within minutes you're ready to import all your old firefox settings to your new version/new computer. It's fantastic.

eBay. I've been scammed - HELP!

2011-06-08T20:53:00.000+01:00

Often times scammers can be easy enough identify and avoid, but we don't always have our guards up and some are more clever than others. If you fall victim to an eBay scam, it's not the end of the world. Here are a few things you can do to try and fix the situation.
Frugal living blog SquawkFox has a few suggestions for dealing with the unfortunate problem of being scammed by an eBay buyer.
First, you're going to need to contact the seller and try to resolve things yourself as eBay will not help you if you do not do this. Assuming that fails, you're going to want to report the problem to eBay, as well as PayPal (if that's how you paid), so everything is official and the long resolution process can begin. Make sure you do this within 45 days of payment and also be sure your purchase is covered by eBay's buyer protection policies. (Ideally you'd have done this before buying, but it's an easy thing to forget about.)
In the event eBay is useless in resolving the issue, as they often can be, you'll want to contact your credit card company or bank. Paying through PayPal using a credit card is almost always ideal because it's easier to have the charges blocked. If you used a debit card the money's likely gone, but sometimes your bank can still help you and it's worth making the call. If that fails, you can always contact the Internet Crime Complaint Center (that one's for America, here's one for Canada). Like with most theft, it's unlikely you're going to recover anything if it comes to this but that doesn't mean you shouldn't report the scammer to help the next person. Additionally, don't forget to leave negative feedback on their account and post about them online. Scam.com is one example of a forum where you can post your negative experiences.

Airplane Luggage Thief Smuggled Himself Inside Luggage

2011-06-08T14:25:00.002+01:00

I'm not sure whether this criminal scheme is brilliant or idiotic, but either way, it didn't work. A Spanish man attempted to plunder valuables from airport bags by making himself one of those valuables, the BBC reports. This takes cojones. The man was discovered after luggage handlers struggled to heft his unusually extremely heavy hiding spot along with the rest of the luggage. The rest of the luggage that didn't have humans inside. Once suspicions were aroused, police noticed the bag was warm—a little too warm—revealing the headlamp-adorned thief, who had contorted himself like a circus star to fit inside.

Facebook auto-tagging. Breach of your privacy?

2011-06-08T03:59:00.001+01:00

The Pandora's Box Facebook opened on the privacy issue just keeps spewing forth. This time around they've started changing privacy settings to automatically recognize a user's face in an image ready to be tagged. All without their consent.
The feature is called Tag Suggestions, and Facebook started rolling out the service late last year. It essentially maps your face and detects whether or not it matches us with images amongst your friends' albums. It then nudges them into tagging those pictures accordingly. This would be great for the average beach trip where tagging the same people over and over would be a bother, but it becomes problematic when a well-meaning friend or mistress tags you in something incriminating.
Now Facebook isn't letting users opt out of the feature beforehand, arguing that people would miss out on the functionality if they did. Although you can change your privacy settings back, this move doesn't differ too much from previous decisions they've made that put them in hot water time and time again.
The good news is that it's easy to stop Facebook from from using its facial recognition voodoo on you; Lifehacker's got a complete guide for you here. And the Times notes that the company has admitted some fault, a response on the official Facebook blog saying, "We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them." But that doesn't change the fact that this misstep is part of a pattern of "change settings and ask questions later" that needs to be fixed.