First off, no, this teleconference isn’t even remotely similar to the way Hollywood portrays the FBI. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s as dumb as dull as it can get, and the only real thing “revealed” in it is that there’s a lot of bureaucratic time wasting going on.

The BBC has a meaty write-up on the subject if you’re into reading lots of words. If you don’t want to read too many words but are curious as to how Anonymous managed to gain access to the conference call, well, it was thanks to an email intercept containing the login information. Pretty nifty on Anon’s part, pretty dumb on FBI’s part. Although, considering how boring this call was, I think they could just make all their conference calls public because nobody would want to listen in.

Source: frugaldad.com

Just kidding. The money came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“By supporting the Global Fund, we can help to change the fortunes of the poorest countries in the world,” Gates said in a statement. “I can’t think of more important work.”

If there was ever a Steve Jobs Foundation, its aim would have been to undermine the efforts of the Gates Foundation. Sort of a counter-philanthropy thing.

“What’s that, Bill? You want to reduce poverty and expand access to information technology? You leave me no choice but to outsource ten thousand jobs to this Chinese company where workers are treated like slaves.”

via edition.cnn.com

After the internet’s major victory against SOPA/PIPA yesterday, the US Government has decided to show everyone that it can already do whatever the [censored] it pleases.

And just like that, they’ve shut down the file-sharing site Megaupload and arrested its owners. They’ve also indicted all of the website’s staff.

This is how I reacted when I heard the news.

Take that, Apple!

Stephen Hawking has recently sent a letter to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in which he said: “My speech input is very, very slow these days. Is there any way Intel could help?” Intel tasked a few groups to see what can be done to help Stephen, and they’ve built him a custom system based around the Lenovo X220 tablet.

The computer features an Intel Core i7 processor along with a forward-facing webcam, which Stephen uses to place phone calls using Skype.

 

Underneath the wheelchair is the black box, which contains an audio amplifier, voltage regulators and a USB hardware key that receives the input from the IR sensor on Stephen’s eyeglasses. The hardware voice synthesizer sits in another black box on the back of the chair and receives commands from the computer via a USB-based serial port.

Naturally, the PC runs Windows 7, because that’s what brilliant people require.

via freepress.intel

One of the world’s most loved tech giants, Microsoft, has just patented a GPS design which will allegedly offer users high quality information for pedestrian routes. Among the high quality features are options to avoid open areas with harsh temperatures and an option to avoid unsafe neighborhoods — aka ghettos.

The GPS technology was created for Windows Phones and will use the latest crime statistics and weather data in its route calculations.

Now I’m just guessing here, but I’m assuming that if the option to avoid unsafe neighborhoods is selected, the GPS map for Detroit will just show a circling road around the whole city.

via cbslocal