Weird News of the World Thread - Part 2

[KevanG]

Didn't someone chuck a shoe at Bush?

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Ya and he is probably still in Guantanamo Bay haha

 

[Marvolo]

About fifty sniper bullets?

Nah they'd wait until the person was heading back home and they'd predator drone him then hold a press conference claiming there was a terrorist adjacent to his position who was the actual target and their intelligence made no indication that a civilian was nearby the target. Oh and they'd be real real sorry about it...but not really.

 

[dude stannis]

Or they'd send someone to shoot him in the head three of four times, plant the gun in his hand and rule it a suicide.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Medical Robots Can Be Hacked During Surgery, Researchers Find

Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle have just hijacked a teleoperated surgical robot, demonstrating major security weaknesses in the machines that may eventually replace a surgeon’s hands in hospitals worldwide. Yikes.

When trained surgeons are a plane ride away, remotely operated surgical bots can save lives.
Doctors have been performing telesurgical procedures since 2001, when a surgeon in New York successfully removed the gall bladder of a patient in France. While telesurgery is by no means the status quo yet, it may well be in the future, given that the medical industry is quickly embracing robots in many aspects of patient care.

The advantages of remote surgery may be obvious, but like any tool that relies on the telecommunications, there are inherent security risks. Communication between the surgeon and the robot typically takes place over public networks, and in some cases, poor internet connections. To explore how cyberattacks could disrupt a surgical robot, security researchers used the Raven II, a medical bot with two surgical arms that are manipulated through a state-of-the-art control console that includes a video feed and haptic feedback. The researchers controlled the robot over a standard network connection, using it to move rubber blocks from one part of a peg board to another.

MIT Tech Review describes the researchers’ experiments:

The team tries out three type of attacks. The first changes the commands sent by the operator to the robot by deleting, delaying or re-ordering them. This causes the robot’s movement to become jerky and difficult to control.

The second type of attack modifies the intention of signals from the operator to the robot by changing, say, the distance an arm should move or the degree it should rotate and so on. “Most of these attacks had a noticeable impact on the Raven immediately upon launch,” say Bonaci and co.

The final category of attack is a hijacking that completely takes over the robot. This turns out to be relatively easy since the Interoperable Telesurgery Protocol is publicly available. “We effectively took control over the teleoperated procedure,” they say.

They even worked out how to generate movements that triggered an automatic stop mechanism built in to the robot....By constantly sending commands that triggered this mechanism, the team were able to carry out a kind of denial of service attack. “We are able to easily stop the robot from ever being properly reset, thus effectively making a surgical procedure impossible,” they say.​

So yea, that all sounds pretty bad. As a final coup de grâce, the researchers note that the robot’s video connection was publicly accessible, meaning basically anyone could watch the operation in real time.

Many types of cyberattacks could be prevented by encrypting communications between the control console and the robot. But as we’re all well aware, crafty hackers can sometimes find ways around even the most sophisticated security systems. It’d seem that medical practitioners, policy makers and the public have to make some tough choices about what level of telesurgery security is acceptable. And if we’d like to avoid a Saw-esque horror scene, this is probably a conversation we ought to have sooner rather than later.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/537001/security-experts-hack-teleoperated-surgical-robot/

Well that is downright terrifying

 

[Teelie]

And not surprising as virtually every time I hear about one of these easily hacked stories, it's because security is always secondary.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

You would think having a robot that goes inside of people and cuts them up that you would want that to be pretty secure

 

[squeekness]

Scary stuff. Bad when you can't trust your medical provider. Hope I never need that kind of surgery.

 

[Marvolo]

Medical Robots Can Be Hacked During Surgery, Researchers Find

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/537001/security-experts-hack-teleoperated-surgical-robot/

Well that is downright terrifying

Besides the obvious risk it poses to everyone the scariest prospect is a cyberterrorist using this to assasinate someone. I just hope this serious design flaw is fixed asap.

 

[Guts]

Didn't someone chuck a shoe at Bush?

Check your facts bro.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Google Attempts to Fight Patent Trolls with a Pretty Dubious Strategy

Google’s legal team has just announced that they’ll be buying as many patents as possible in order to “remove friction from the patent market” and defeat patent trolls, companies that buy patents just to sue people on bogus charges of infringement. But there’s a big problem with this strategy.

Patent trolls are formally known as “non practicing entities” or NPEs — instead of inventing something to sell you, they buy other people’s intellectual property and license it to you. At least, that’s the nice way of putting it. In reality, most NPEs buy up patents from other companies and then develop large legal programs to “protect” their intellectual property by suing anyone whose inventions appear to be infringing.

A study last year from PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that 67% of all patent lawsuits originate with trollish NPEs. A number of legal solutions have been proposed for this problem, and many states have legislation now that makes it much harder for NPEs to sue for infringement. And nonprofits like Electronic Frontier Foundation have been involved in many efforts to cut patent trolls off at the knees by getting their often-overbroad patents declared invalid.

Now Google is trying a new strategy. They’ll just buy your patent, so that patent trolls can’t get to it.

On the Google Public Policy blog, Deputy General Counsel for Patents Allen Lo writes:

Patent owners sell patents for numerous reasons (such as the need to raise money or changes in a company’s business direction). Unfortunately, the usual patent marketplace can sometimes be challenging, especially for smaller participants who sometimes end up working with patent trolls. Then bad things happen, like lawsuits, lots of wasted effort, and generally bad karma. Rarely does this provide any meaningful benefit to the original patent owner.

So today we’re announcing the Patent Purchase Promotion as an experiment to remove friction from the patent market. From May 8, 2015 through May 22, 2015, we’ll open a streamlined portal for patent holders to tell Google about patents they’re willing to sell at a price they set. As soon as the portal closes, we’ll review all the submissions, and let the submitters know whether we’re interested in buying their patents by June 26, 2015. If we contact you about purchasing your patent, we’ll work through some additional diligence with you and look to close a transaction in short order. We anticipate everyone we transact with getting paid by late August.

By simplifying the process and having a concentrated submission window, we can focus our efforts into quickly evaluating patent assets and getting responses back to potential sellers quickly. Hopefully this will translate into better experiences for sellers, and remove the complications of working with entities such as patent trolls.​

This is a great idea, executed by the wrong people. Patent trolling is a major blemish on the IP landscape, and has punished scores of small businesses and individuals who had no way to fight the frivolous threats issued by NPEs. But a for-profit business like Google should not set itself up as the entity that will remove patents from the marketplace to make the legal landscape safer.

Basically this is another one of Google’s good-guy strategies that rests on the “just trust us” principle. It’s true that Google has no history of being a patent troll. But stockpiling patents is not a smart way to stay on that path. Why doesn’t Google simply donate the money it’s using for this project to a non-profit entity, which could make the patents into public goods, licensing them to anyone who asks?

In their FAQ about the Patent Purchase Program, Google explains:

Any patents purchased by Google through this program will join our portfolio and can be used by Google in all the normal ways that patents can be used (e.g., we can license them to others, etc.).​

So basically this is a program to buy a lot of patents quickly, from small businesses that may not have the resources to sell those patents to non-trolls.

This doesn’t sound like an effort to defeat patent trolls — it sounds like an effort to compete with them.

http://gizmodo.com/google-attempts-to-fight-patent-trolls-by-buying-pat-1700413270/+leahfinnegan

I don't like this idea one bit

 

[Teelie]

Me either. Rewarding patent trolls is a bad idea.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Turkey Crashes Through Window, Turns on Sink, Floods Room, Is Careless

When Nancy Page walked into her Rhode Island home last week and found water pouring from the ceiling, she assumed a pipe had burst. No, Nancy. It was a wild turkey who did that to your house.

After noticing the water, Page quickly walked to her upstairs bathroom to investigate the flooding’s source.

“The door was open and I rounded the corner and there was a turkey— sitting on my vanity,” she told WLNE.

The bird had apparently flown through Page’s window, landed on her sink, and somehow turned on the faucet, which ran for hours.

Upon seeing the turkey and the chaotic scene it’d created, Page slammed the door shut and called 911.

“My emergency was water gushing through the ceiling... and a turkey in my bathroom,” Page told WLNE. “[The dispatcher] said what? And I said it again and said this really is true.”

Despite thousands of dollars in damage to her home, Page has remained cheerful about the ordeal.

“Everybody has gotten a really good laugh out of this because it is so comical. No one was hurt so we’re real thankful for that,” she said.

As for the turkey’s fate, there have been conflicting reports: The Associated Press says that police captured the bird and released it later, while WLNE claims the fowl required “little prodding” before standing up and flying off on its own.

http://www.abc6.com/story/28934865/warwick-woman-finds-wild-turkey-in-bathroom

Turkey's are jerks and they are plotting their revenge for Thanksgiving

 

[Marvolo]

I would have had that bird for dinner."You broke into the wrong house today, my fowl little friend."

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

This crazy bridge in Japan looks more like a terrifying roller coaster

If you look straight onto the Eshima Ohashi bridge in Japan, the ridiculously steep incline makes it look more like a roller coaster than a road for cars to drive on. I mean, come on, would you want to drive on that road? It’s basically a highway to outer space, a shortcut to vomiting from nausea.

The bridge is the third largest ridge bridge in the world (largest in Japan!) and stretches about a mile long with a height of about 144 feet and a 5.1% and 6.1% grade on each end. This picture from the China Times gives me the yeeshes:

But thanks to the wonders of civil engineering and expertly employed high fences, the roller coaster bridge doesn’t look that scary to drive on:

[YT]YkSOYumuODk[/YT]

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-craz...re-like-a-terrifying-1701569629/+alissawalker

That looks crazy

 

[KevanG]

It kind of reminds me of the Confederation Bridge to PEI. It has a lot of humps in it but nothing that extreme.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

How This Beetle Shoots Jets of Superheated Liquid Out of Its Butt

You do not want to piss off the bombardier beetle. When disturbed, it sprays noxious, near-boiling liquid out of its abdomen—an effective though confounding ability. After all, how does the beetle pull off such a violent chemical reaction without, well, damaging its insides?

A newly published study in Science sheds some light the bombardier beetle’s peculiar defense. Although the beetle has been photographed and videotaped, no one had bothered yet to peer inside, where the action really happens.

The research team used high-speed synchrotron X-ray imaging to see inside the beetles at 2,000 frames per second. The beetles create their spray by mixing two chemicals inside a protective chamber in their abdomens. Its internal plumbing is key to allowing the beetle to weather the speed of the explosion unscathed:

The X-ray images of the explosion reveal the dynamics of vapor inside the beetles’ abdomens. They show that spray pulsation is controlled by the passageway between two internal chambers; two structures control this process: a flexible membrane and a valve.

The opening and closing of this passageway between a chamber holding the precursor liquid and an explosion chamber seems to take place passively; an increase in pressure during the explosion expands the membrane, closing the valve. Then, after the pressure is released when the liquid is ejected, the membrane relaxes back to its original state and the passage reopens, allowing the next pulse to form.​

Pretty complex for a little beetle, huh? These insights may one day inspire blast-protection systems, the researchers say.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6234/563

Mother Nature is cray cray

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Here's How Much Earth Gets Blasted Away to Extract a Hunk of Diamond

If you were ever wondering how much land mass had to be moved to produce that diamond engagement ring, this series of photos should help put things in perspective.

Dillon Marsh, a photographer and artist from Cape Town, describes his ongoing For What It’s Worth series as an attempt to quantify mining, “an industry that has shaped the history and economy of the country so radically.” Last year, Marsh took photos of famous copper mines throughout South Africa, did the math to figure out how much metal had actually been removed, and inserted an scaled CGI orb of copper into each landscape.

As we all know, diamond is much rarer than copper, so it’s not surprising that running through the same exercise again yields a much smaller amount of precious stone. Still, the sheer volume of Earth that gets blasted away to extract a relatively small amount of diamond is breathtaking. In order to properly depict this, for each mine Marsh captures a zoomed-out image of the entire pit, followed by a close-up of the diamond itself.

Kimberly Mine (1874-1914): 14.5 million carats of diamonds extracted

Koffiefontein Mine (1870 - 2014): 7.6 million carats of diamonds extracted

Jagersfontein Mine (1871 - 1969): 9.52 million carats of diamonds extracted

http://www.dillonmarsh.com/diamonds06.html

That is pretty insane

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Family Held Hostage Rescued by Mother's Pizza Order: "Get 911 to Me"

Highlands County, Fla., police were able to rescue a mother and her three children allegedly being held hostage by her knife-wielding boyfriend after the woman made a Pizza Hut order online for one large, hand-tossed pepperoni pizza with special instructions to “Please help. Get 911 to me.”

Employees at the Pizza Hut in Avon Park, Fla., recognized Cheryl Treadway’s name as a regular customer, and alerted police Monday when they received her order and message for help. “We’ve never seen that before,” Candy Hamilton, the restaurant’s manager, told WFLA. “I’ve been here 28 years and never, never seen nothing like that come through.”

Police arrived at Treadway’s home later that day, where she told cops that she and her boyfriend, Ethan Earl Nickerson, 26, had been arguing most of the day while he held a knife in his hand. When she tried to leave the house to pick up her two children from school, she told police, Nickerson took her cell phone and accompanied her to the the school.

Some time after returning home with her kids, Treadway apparently convinced Nickerson to let her order a pizza on her cell phone, where she left a message for Pizza Hut to call the police. After about 20 minutes of negotiating through Treadway’s front door, WFLA reports, cops were able to get Nickerson to leave the house.

Nickerson was charged by police with aggravated assault with a weapon, battery, false imprisonment, and obstructing justice by depriving communication to law enforcement, NBC News reports.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/deadline-miami/article20330262.html

Saved by Pizza Hutt

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Woman in Wheelchair with No Legs Wins Treadmill on the Price is Right

[YT]5m1z06Hg-3o[/YT]

Life is short and cruel and then you get on the Price is Right.

Case in point: Danielle Perez, a woman in a wheelchair who made it on the show Tuesday only to scoop up a brand-new treadmill.

According to CNN, Perez—who lost her legs in a 2004 accident—says the show edited out the audience’s “awkward” reaction.

She said the strangest thing about her win was the reaction of the staff members on the show.

“I kept thinking that it was a really big joke,” she said with a laugh, “But there was no irony in their cheers or applause.”

Despite a collective and awkward pause from the audience that she said was edited out of the show, “Everyone at CBS seemed genuinely excited for me that I won.”​

According to a spokesperson for the show, “Every member of The Price Is Right studio audience has a chance to be selected to play... Prizes are determined in advance of the show and are not decided based on the contestants.”

Perez tells CNN she’ll probably just use the $2,400 treadmill as a “piece of furniture.”

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/05/us/wheelchair-woman-treadmill-price-is-right/index.html

You can always just take the cash equivalent as well

 

[KevanG]

I'd love to see the crowds reaction. It sounds hysterical.

 

[Teelie]

North Korea publicly executes defense chief, South Korean spy agency says

I saw this one yesterday but forgot to post it.

Seoul, South Korea (CNN)North Korea has publicly executed the country's defense minister after the regime accused him of treason, according to reports from South Korea.

Hyon Yong Chol was killed by fire from an anti-aircraft gun at a military school in front of hundreds of people in Pyongyang, the South Korean Intelligence Agency was reported to have told parliament members in a closed door session.

Hyon was executed because he expressed discontent towards leader Kim Jong Un, and failed to follow Kim's orders on several occasions, according to Kim Gwang-lim, chairman of the National Assembly Intelligence Committee and a lawmaker with the Saenuri Party who attended the briefing.

CNN

For reference to how ridiculously overkill this is simply Google "anti-aircraft gun" and speculate on just how messy that was.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Ya that's insane. I saw something about it on Bookface but thought it was a joke

 

[Teelie]

Toyota Prius batteries being targeted by car thieves

People will steal anything for a quick buck. Like steal a 150 pound battery out of the back of a car.

First the thieves came for the car radios, and I did not speak out. Then it was airbags. And now, according to Toyota dealers, battery packs are increasingly becoming the target of smash-and-grab thieves.

The Toyota Prius, as you may know, is a hybrid—it has a small 1.5- or 1.8-litre engine, along with an electric motor that's driven by a battery pack (nickel-metal-hydride, NiMH, in the case of normal Priuses, and lithium-ion for the plug-in hybrid version). Like most batteries, the one in the Prius gradually loses its efficiency over time, eventually necessitating a replacement.

The cost for replacing a Prius battery pack is not insignificant—outside of the warranty period, it's about $2,500 in the US. Curiously, it's much cheaper in the UK: just £800 according to Toyota.

The second-gen Prius, released between 2003 and 2009, was a huge sales hit—and now, many of those vehicles are coming up to the point where they need a new battery. Some third-gen Priuses, which went on sale in 2009, may start seeing battery fade as well. That demand for replacement batteries, it would seem, is fuelling a number of battery thefts in California.

KGO-TV is reporting that there has been a "rash of thefts in San Francisco," and quotes a Toyota dealership that has replaced "quite a few" stolen batteries. Car thieves smash the rear windows of the Prius, cut through the connecting wires, and then pull out the 150-pound (68kg) battery pack. KGO reports that the thefts are being carried out in about 20 minutes.

According to John Nashed, who had his Prius broken into, "We looked on Craigslist, the batteries are going around $900 to a $1,000"—a lot of money for a 20-minute smash-and-grab job, and, for a prospective buyer, a good discount over an official replacement battery. Prius owners should of course be very wary of buying a used battery from the black or grey market; you have no idea how many miles have been driven on the battery.

Yahoo Auto reports that the thefts seem to be localised to San Francisco at the moment, and also that Prius battery packs aren't marked with a serial number or VIN, which makes them easy to sell. Apparently, according to Luscious Garage in San Fransisco, if you're a Prius owner who wants to mitigate against theft, you should replace the battery's existing 12mm bolts with tamper-proof bolts. Presumably that won't stop the thieves from first smashing your windows and damaging your upholstery, only to find out the battery can't be removed, however.

As electric vehicles become more popular, batteries will increasingly become the target of theft. The good news is that it should be fairly easy for car makers to secure the battery pack to the chassis in some way; and of course, the sheer size and weight of some battery packs should deter petty car thieves. The Tesla Model S battery, for example, comes in at around 1,000 pounds (450kg).

Ars Technica

 

[Godzilla2000]

You know how guys always love to fling around the erroneous crazy label a lot? This is a textbook example of legitimately crazy behavior I'd think.

Mother found pushing dead toddler on swing in Maryland park
http://news.yahoo.com/mother-found-pushing-dead-toddler-swing-maryland-park-222224204.html

A Maryland mother was found early on Friday pushing her dead 3-year-old boy on a park swing, authorities said.

Deputies responded to a call around 7 a.m. to check on a woman who witnesses said had been pushing a child for hours on a swing at Wills Memorial Park in La Plata, about 35 miles (55 km) south of Washington, D.C., said Charles County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Diane Richardson.

One witness told deputies she found it strange that the woman had been pushing the child for an unusually long period of time, possibly since the day before, Richardson said.

When the officers arrived they found the 24-year-old woman still pushing the child in the swing, and they realized immediately that the boy was dead, Richardson said.

The child had no signs of obvious trauma, she said, and had been dead for at least several hours.

The office of the chief medical examiner in Baltimore will perform an autopsy on the boy.

The mother, who was not identified, was transported to a nearby hospital for medical tests, police said.

The investigation is ongoing.