Many have heard of “swatting” it is commonly associated with fairly harmless pranks.  However, it can go in different directions besides the harmless pranks.  There are perfectly innocent legitimate uses for swatting.  At the same time though, there are pranks that take things way too far.  One genius known as “Little Hacker” has been telephone hacking since he was 14.  Now 19, Mathew Weigman has been at this for a few years.  He’s a part of a full group of telephone hackers that met up on telephone party lines.

The issue isn’t so much that this group is swatting, it’s more that they are screwing with 911.  Which yes, that is entirely possible, but it is a touch more tricky.  This group is associated with over 60 different swatting calls to 911 numbers across the country.  They make their prank calls to 911, but use spoofing technology to make it appear as if the call is coming from their chosen victim’s house.  The appeal behind it being, that the person they’ve made it appear is calling is going to have several police standing at their door with weapons drawn.  As of now caller-ID spoofing is still legal for most of the US.  Lawmakers in New York and Louisiana are now trying to control the practice.  Whether it be best that new laws are created or old ones modified, making calls such as this to 911 is taking things way too far.  Of course hopefully they won’t cause issues for those that have legit reasons for making swatting calls.

Source: NetworkWorld

China’s CCTV recently made an attempt to slam Google for allowing innocent users to search for porn and actually find it.  So they interview someone who claims to be just an innocent little university student.  This particular student had heard claims that porn would give one memory loss.  I know, we’ve all heard hairy palms and that it’s possible to go blind, but this claim is a new one to me.  Well a friend of his decided to test the theory and check out some sites for himself.  The poor guy sacrificed himself in the pursuit of knowledge, which he soon forgot about.  Alright, he may not have forgotten that, but according to the guy being interviewed he then became absent minded for a few days.

Soon after this was aired, viewers became outraged.  They felt that the student had been coached and then set themselves about hitting the internet to get to the bottom of things.  They soon discovered that what seemed to be just a student, was actually an intern at the time of the interview.  They discovered this on a Chinese social networking site called Xiaonei.com.  They then even went about publishing things about the student, Gao, like his mobile phone number, details of his instant messaging account and even finishing up by posting photos of him and his girlfriend.  Moral of the story, don’t piss off porn loving tech users.  At least make up a fake name and talk about it on the radio where your face can’t be seen.

Source: BoingBoing

There is finally proof that Twitter is going to be the death of mankind or at least the death of the very ignorant portion of mankind.  One Romanian 17 year old decided that she had to Twitter so badly that she had to do it even while she was in the bathtub.  So while soaking in the tub, she happened to notice that her laptop battery was getting low.  At this point the logical thing would be to close the laptop and end the Twitterfest.  However, logic was something this girl apparently lacked.

Instead she picks up the cord with her nice wet hands and manages to electrocute herself to death.  I can’t help but wonder what her last post was about.  Did she even get it posted before she managed to fry herself just to keep her social network up to date?  I did find a supposed Twitter feed under her name, but I have my doubts as to the authenticity of the page.  The first post is on the 19th and her death was reported by the Autstrian Times on the 17th.

Source: Geekologie

Happy Father’s Day dads, it’s a day to celebrate your parental achievements by listening to Obama tell you how you’re doing it wrong.  In true politician style, he went straight for the easy scapegoat too.  If you didn’t hear it yourself, you can probably guess it.  Yes, he went straight for video games.  I still strongly appreciate that he didn’t claim that violent video games were specifically a problem.  Instead, he just mentioned that it might be better to pick up a good book with your kids, instead of flipping on the Xbox.

“We need to set limits and expectations. We need to replace that video game with a book and make sure that homework gets done… We need to tell our sons, Those songs on the radio may glorify violence, but in our house, we find glory in achievement, self-respect, and hard work.”  Not a bad statement really, it’s just another case of what could be considered inappropriate timing.  On Father’s Day, a day to celebrate the fathers of the world, he states why they’re not good enough.  So fathers, Happy Father’s Day from Obama and could you please quit screwing it up.

Source: GamePolitics

Thank you Captain Obvious.  Anyone else tired of researchers spending money just so that they can prove something we already knew?  This time they’ve spent money just to prove that people spend more time reading up on things that support their point of view on the internet than things that don’t support them.  They monitored 156 college students to conduct this study.  They analyzed what subjects they read up on, including things like gun control and abortion.  They then tracked the amount of time the students spent reading different viewpoints.

“As a result, she found that participants spent 36 percent more time reading articles that agreed with their point of view. They had a 58 percent chance of choosing articles that supported their views, as opposed to a 43 percent chance of choosing an article that challenged their view.”  That’s not exactly news that’s going to shock anyone and frankly makes you question the sanity of the researchers.  After all, when is a study too obvious to conduct? The only interesting thing they actually discovered is that liberals were even less likely to check out articles supporting the opposing view.  Whereas the conservatives would be slightly more open minded and spend a little more time reading up on the other side of the story.

Source: Switched

Hot or Not is a pretty infamous program, it would be difficult for anyone who hasn’t been on the internet within the past few years to not know about it.  Basically it’s a website you can visit where you rate people purely based on their appearance.  It’s one of those things that usually involves intense boredom, a group of friends and on occasion some kind of alcohol.  Well it would seem the Microsoft is attempting to get a patent for something that sounds alarmingly similar to Hot or Not.  So similar, one almost wonders if Microsoft isn’t somehow behind the website.

The patent is the invention of three Microsoft Research employees, Patrick Baudish, Daniel Liebling and Sridhar Srinvasan.  In their words; “The contributor uploads self images for viewing and rating (or voting) by viewers who choose provide an opinion on different fashion and/or cosmetic looks of the contributor.”  Who knew that Microsoft was so wrapped up in rating whether people are Hot or Not on a scale from 1-10?  Something tells me that Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer wouldn’t exactly receive high marks.

Source: Slashdot

You may have heard about the new Wii Vitality Sensor that was announced last week at E3.  It looked much like what you would have jammed on your finger while you’re sitting in the hospital.  Well it’s entirely possible that this Vitality Sensor could be used in order to detect when someone is not telling the truth.  That could of course be used for serious things, giving the common man a chance to get the truth out of someone.  Could even give fathers a chance to know what exactly their daughter’s boyfriend is actually up to.  Which is just about every teen’s worst nightmare.  However, it could also be used for much more lighthearted reasons.

There were even hints from Nintendo that perhaps it could be used to go with an electronic game of Truth or Dare.  Which in a warm friendly environment, might be alright.  However, there are still ways that this could be used that would cause problems.  If Austrailia’s Herald Sun is correct, then due to the way the sensor attaches to your finger and measures pulse and skin conductance, it could be more than enough to easily turn this into an at home polygraph.  Even if the Wii never uses this to their benefit, I’m sure someone will find a way to hack their Wii to torture young male teens that would like to date their daughter.

Source: GamePolitics

Yes, that’s right, and every single conspiracy theorist is going to cry out at once that it must be a lie.  Usually when one thinks of the Feds, they think of hearing about them watching over conversations to pick up on key terms to look for terrorists or something along those lines.  However, oddly the Feds have an issue with places like Google watching what you search.  Google defends that they don’t save a ton of information on what you search, just a few key details.

They also defend that there is a way to “opt out” that makes it so it stops tracing your searches.  The point behind such traces are purely to give personalized ads.  However, none of that is good enough for the Feds, the Federal Trade Commission actually thinks that you should have to select “opt in” so that more people are aware that they’re being watched.  The FTC are supporting a new bill introduced by Rep. Rick Boucher that forces Google to offer that function.  All of this just makes the world feel like it has been turned upside down.  Although, I’m sure that the conspiracy theorists would see right through this plot and recognize that it’s secretly going to somehow take away our privacy even more.  For those that want to “opt out” just check out your profile on Google and within it you’ll find a spot to select that function.

Source: Switched

Twitter is now even being utilized to study the supernatural, to be specific they’re studying “remote viewing” which is the psychic ability to identify distant locations.  Apparently this is the absolute first experiment to be conducted using this particular social messaging service.  It’s definitely the first I’ve heard of to test psychic abilities over the internet.  Perhaps one of the scientists received a bad reading over the net and is now determined to disprove all others in their abilities.  Beyond that, I can’t think of a single reason they decided to go for this experiment.

It will be done by asking the members, and they expect to have about 10,000, to tweet their impressions of a random spot in the UK that one of the researchers has visited.  Then it will be repeated with visually different locations four different times.  In order to prove that extra-sensory perception is real, they will have to vote and correctly identify three out of the four locations.  So if you’re a psychic or just someone that wants to screw up the psychic’s results, it’d be great to get in on this experiment.  Unfortunately, you’re likely too late since the results of the experiment will be out on June 5th.

Source: Newlaunches

Alright, so he is still a teenager, 19 to be exact, but still old enough to be out of the house.  He pops the GPS unit into his pocket and she can find him within a 15 foot radius while he travels.  It even sends her a text message if he ends up someplace he shouldn’t be.  At this rate, why don’t we just strap one of these to every kid and not have to worry about watching them.  Even better if we could just insert a microchip in their neck as you would a puppy who has the tendency to run away from home.

Her son is currently in Australia, while she is sitting at home in the UK.  Peering into her computer watching his every move.  He did make the point that if he didn’t want her to know where he’s at he could just leave the GPS in the car.  It’s also great to give him piece of mind by knowing that if anything happened to him he would be found.  The GPS device is only the size of a credit card, so easily could be concealed in his pocket.  The Traakit, which is what he’s using costs £279 with an additional monthly service charge of £11.  A small price to pay so that you can give the illusion that you’ve let your wee ones out of the nest, while still controlling their every move.

Source: CoolBuzz