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Archive for “Internet” news
Philly Phanatic, Swoop, Do Harlem Shake with Angelo Cataldi
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/25/2013
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I promise this is the last Harlem Shake post I will ever write. But here's the 94WIP version, feat. Ben Franklin, Phanatic, and a bunch of middle-aged male radio jocks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGoPld2clmc
City Council Wants to Protect Your Facebook Party Pics
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/25/2013
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Councilman Bill Greenlee, whom we can't imagine is a big social media guy (he averages about a tweet per month), is fighting to protect you against your own embarrassing party pics, among other things. He's introduced a bill that would ban employers from requesting the social media passwords of employees or prospective employees, in the name of privacy. He cited sexual orientation as the sorts of factor employers might be able to use to discriminate against employees, if allowed access into a person's Facebook account.
Apparently, this is a very real phenomenon. (The U.S. House voted down a bill last year that would have
Introducing the Horrid Invention That Is Google Glasses
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/20/2013
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Behold: Google's most extensive peek yet at the profoundly invasive new "Glasses" technology (not yet on the market). In the video, you'll witness users snapping pictures, shooting videos, translating words, sending text messages (speech-to-text), telling the temperature, cooking vichychoisse and other stuff your iPhone does. Except you just have to tell your glasses to do it, making it the only computer device mute people can't use.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v1uyQZNg2vE
This invention, which Google previewed to a more limited extent in April, is disturbing for three main reasons. First, you can film people completely surreptitiously. Second, no one will have any idea whether you're really looking
PA High Schoolers Suspended For Particularly Lewd “Harlem Shake” Video
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/20/2013
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Today in Harlem Shake news: 13 high school kids from Brownsville, PA, south of Pittsburgh, have been suspended for creating their own edition of the video meme sweeping the nation. Before you get righteous about free speech, etc, just watch the thing. Not every Harlem Shake video has to be this creepy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj0gAMNdbtg
The creators of the video, for the record, seem quite pleased with themselves. "We all were suspended for this," they wrote on YouTube. "Made the news too! View and tell everyone! It's hilarious. Did in about 5 mins tho! Haha #TeamHarlemSuspension."
Though some commenters used the video to decry the
Monopoly Makes Grave Error, Adds Cat Piece to Game
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/06/2013
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After an intense period of Facebook voting, the people have chosen. And they've chosen terribly. Monopoly, for the first time ever, decided to let the silly people have a say in how the game is played, letting them trade one piece for another. So the schlubby, wrinkled-pants-wearing cat-lady Monopoly fans of the world chimed in and replaced the almighty IRON with a whiny, irritable CAT. Here's the cat being unveiled on the TODAY Show, looking super creepy.
And here are some sample Facebook comments from all the hard-core Monopoly fans following this.
The Beginning of the End? US Postal Service Will Stop Delivering Saturday Mail
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/06/2013
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat...nor weekends. That'll be the new motto of the US Postal Services beginning in August, when they start cutting all Saturday mail delivery. (Packages, which are apparently in demand compared to letters, will keep on keeping on.) The measure, which will be announced later today, is supposed to save $2 billion a year.
Potential roadblock: Despite getting no federal funding, USPS is controlled by Congress, which has repeatedly refused to grant it permission to cut Saturday mail. So either they've engineering some way around that, or this is a massive bluff. For the record: The postal
Seth Williams Taking on Mark Zuckerberg in Battle Over Snitching
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/04/2013
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who's in hot water with New Jersey Democrats for hosting a fundraiser for Chris Christie, is now pissing off one prominent PA Dem too. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams is publicly calling for Facebook to remove posts he says qualify as witness intimidation.
A 20-year-old Kensington man was charged in December with using the social networking site to threaten a woman who was testifying against his friends in a case involving straw purchases of firearms. The site has so far refused to remove posts Freddie Henriquez wrote declaring that he wanted to "kill rats," Williams said. He
John Kerry’s Twitter Handle is Laughing at You
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/04/2013
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To let us know when he's tweeting for himself, and when a generic State Department staffer is doing it, newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry will be signing his personal tweets "JK," the very same acronym young folks may or may not still use to denote a comment made in jest.
#SecKerry will start tweeting from @statedept. Tweets from him will have his initials -JK
— StateDept (@StateDept) February 4, 2013
In other words, everything the Dept. tweets will sound serious, and everything Kerry will tweet will sound sarcastic, aloof, and inappropriate. I took the liberty of adding a "JK" to some
Chinese Hackers Now Infiltrating Wall Street Journal Too
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood 2/01/2013
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A couple days ago, the New York Times featured a truly weird and fascinating report about a bunch of Chinese hackers who were in their system, monitoring their China coverage. Turns out they've got their sights set on the Wall Street Journal too. And as with the Times' investigation, its the Journal itself that's breaking the news.
Though it doesn't appear that journalists' information is being deleted or altered, it's possible that Chinese authorities are hacking in order to figure out who certain unnamed sources might be. "Chinese authorities in the past have penalized Chinese nationals who have passed information to
