Tag: Boing Boing

In a field of horrible, amoral scumbags, patent troll ArrivalStar is an exceptionally awful enterprise. They have a huge portfolio of ridiculous patents for obvious ways of tracking where public transit vehicles are and using that to coordinate schedule information, and they use that portfolio to extort massive sums from public transit systems in cities across America. After a years-long reign of terror — which included the Electronic Frontier Foundation getting one of their patents gutted on rexamination — the The American Public Transportation Association and the Public Patent Foundation have filed suit to get the whole portfolio knocked out. Good luck, APTA and PubPat: our cash-strapped cities need you.

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/06/27/public-transit-patent-trolls-g.html

Yitang Zhang is a largely unknown mathematician who has struggled to find an academic job after he got his PhD, working at a Subway sandwich shop before getting a gig as a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire. He’s just had a paper accepted for publication in Annals of Mathematics, which appears to make a breakthrough towards proving one of mathematics’ oldest, most difficult, and most significant conjectures, concerning “twin” prime numbers. According to the Simons Science News article, Zhang is shy, but is a very good, clear writer and lecturer.

For hundreds of years, mathematicians have speculated that there are infinitely many twin prime pairs. In 1849, French mathematician Alphonse de Polignac extended this conjecture to the idea that there should be infinitely many prime pairs for any possible finite gap, not just 2.

Since that time, the intrinsic appeal of these conjectures has given them the status of a mathematical holy grail, even though they have no known applications. But despite many efforts at proving them, mathematicians weren’t able to rule out the possibility that the gaps between primes grow and grow, eventually exceeding any particular bound.

Now Zhang has broken through this barrier. His paper shows that there is some number N smaller than 70 million such that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that differ by N. No matter how far you go into the deserts of the truly gargantuan prime numbers — no matter how sparse the primes become — you will keep finding prime pairs that differ by less than 70 million.

The result is “astounding,” said Daniel Goldston, a number theorist at San Jose State University. “It’s one of those problems you weren’t sure people would ever be able to solve.”

Unknown Mathematician Proves Elusive Property of Prime Numbers [Erica Klarreich/Wired/Simons Science News]

(Photo: University of New Hampshire)

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/05/21/unknown-mathematician-makes-hi.html

A rich, high-stakes gambler was dragged out of his opulent comp suite at the Crown Towers casino in Melbourne, accused of participating in a $32M scam that made use of the casino’s own CCTV cameras to cheat.

The Herald Sun understands remote access to the venue’s security system was given to an unauthorised person.

Images relayed from cameras were then used to spy on a top-level gaming area where the high roller was playing.

Signals were given to him on how he should bet based on the advice of someone viewing the camera feeds. Sources said the total stolen was $32 million.

They are capable of transmitting the most intricate detail of goings-on inside the building.

Casinos were the world leaders in CCTV use, and really represent ground zero for the panopticon theory of security. What is rarely mentioned is that “security” measures can be turned against defenders if attackers can hijack them. This is as true when a mugger uses his victim’s gun against him as it is when a casino’s own CCTVs are used to defeat its own anti-cheating measures. This is the high-stakes gambling version of all those IP-based CCTVs that leak sensitive footage of the inside of peoples’ houses onto the public Internet.

Crown casino hi-tech scam nets $32 million [Mark Buttler/Herald Sun]

(via /.)

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/03/18/the-cameras-at-crown-are-state.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

April Winchell is shutting down Regretsy, the site where she has tirelessly cataloged the most horrible things on Etsy, from “an oil painting of a couple copulating inside a burger bun, called Sex Burger; a vulva-faced zombie ornament; a custom unicorn hoodie and a cat hairball necklace.” She explains to Wired UK what it was like to run the site:

You would think that a joke and a photo wouldn’t take that long to crap out, but this site was a time suck like you would not believe. There would be days when I would be on the couch with my laptop for 16 hours, just exhausted and in tears.

First, you have to find the stuff. And you have find great stuff. And that gets harder because the shock needle keeps moving. After a year or two you’re like, “Eh, another teddy bear with a vagina, who cares.” Bad crafts are like drugs; you have to keep upping the dose to feel anything.

Then you have to write the joke or do the Photoshop or come up with the contest. You do the coding and resize the images and read hundreds of emails every day. We mailed thousands of books and packages, we fulfilled hundreds of charity requests, we did sales and fundraising and fan meet-ups and Secret Santa for underprivileged kids, and at one point I was writing four posts a day. I loved every second of it. But you can’t do that forever.

Regretsy closes, the world mourns the end of DIY meets WTF [Wired/Olivia Solon]

(via Beyond the Beyond)

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/02/11/regretsy-is-shutting-down.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

The production company that made the Hobbit convinced the government of New Zealand to suspend its labor laws and tax laws. Now the NZ Labour Party is asking for the details of the deal that the company struck with the government to be disclosed, and the production company is fighting it, saying that if the government tells the voters of NZ what sort of sweetheart deal they were handed, no one will want to make movies in New Zealand any more.

Radio New Zealand applied for the documents in November 2010 under the Official Information Act but ministers refused on the grounds they were commercially sensitive.

The broadcaster appealed the decision and on January 31, Ombudsman David McGee ruled 18 documents, including emails between Hobbit director Sir Peter Jackson and government officials, must be released.

In his 29-page ruling McGee said the information in the documents didn’t pose serious commercial risks.

But New Line warned this would affect future relations, objecting in a statement included in the ruling.

“If the government is not willing to adequately protect this sensitive information from disclosure, this will operate as a major disincentive to motion picture studios as well as local and foreign talent – to utilise New Zealand as a location for future productions.”

Threats fly over Hobbit document release [NZ Herald/Cassandra Mason]

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/02/07/hobbit-producers-to-new-zealan.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29

Brian sez, “I made an animated presentation about broadband and mobile data caps – specifically, how they discourage innovation, how the excuses used to justify data caps don’t hold water, and the real reasons that ISPs and mobile providers are moving towards caps.”

This is really good stuff. It might need an edit for time, but if you’ve got 11 minutes, this is what you should spend ’em on.

Why Data Caps Suck: The Animated Examination

(Thanks, Brian!)

via Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/01/14/why-data-caps-suck.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29