The Little Hacker's Room

• guillermolisi: @hollman Nos alegramos que te guste ! Es para que recuerdes tu visita y que los demas sepan como recibimos a los miembros de otros LoCos
• siebrand: Will be contracting for !StatusNet from 15 Sept. on. Deliverable: Continued operation of StatusNet translation system at !translatewiki.net

(Video link) This TV commercial for the City of Toronto's e-waste program is funny. (Via thedailywh.at)

pandalovestoparty.tumblr.com: a tumblog devoted solely to photographs of pandas enjoying themselves at parties.

(via BB Submitterator, thanks Unicorn Breath)

In a Boing Boing comment thread around the launch of Google's new "Google Instant" search feature, BB reader Robert compiled a little alphabet ditty based on what typing in each letter of the alphabet yields in the way of suggestions. The results vary by country, and it seems also by state or region, and other more personal factors: say, cookies stored for your prior Google searches. Robert is in the USA. Enjoy.

A is for Amazon, to get all your books.
B is for Bank of America, which holds all your crooks.
C is for Craigslist, no services adult.
D is for Dictionary, to define your result.
E is for eBay, to spend all your cash.
F is for Facebook, web pages like trash.
G is for Gmail, world domination ambition.
H is for Hotmail, Gmail's competition.
I is for Ikea, for a lamp named Bljampäjese.
J is for Johns Hopkins, where they cure your disease.
K is for Kohl's, a store that's old-school.
L is for Lowe's, to buy your tool.
M is for MapQuest, for the place you go to.
N is for Netflix, to add to your queue.
O is for Orioles, a Baltimore obsession.
P is for Pandora, an audio digression.
Q is for QVC, for goods without esteem.
R is for Ravens, another Baltimore team.
S is for Sears, appliances and more.
T is for Target, a Wal-Mart like store.
U is for USPS, where mail you submit.
V is for Verizon, Steve Jobs should use it.
W is for Weather, for forests in flames.
X is for Xbox, a console for games.
Y is for Yahoo, a home page for Chrome.
Z is for Zillow, to value your home.

(Image: a page from the children's French-language alphabet book "Grand Alphabet Amusant," by E. Morel, ~1890; from Bibliodyssey)

• Google launches "Google Instant"
• Instant Elements: Tom Lehrer's "Elements Song," with Google ...

Via the BB Submitterator, reader Keith Irwin writes, Carlos Miller reports that there's a new TSA poster which seems to suggest that people who photograph airplanes are suspicious. The TSA blog has responded saying that 1) the poster isn't new and 2) the pictures on the poster just show general things which happen around airports and are not meant to cast photographers as terrorists. That their current group of posters includes pictures of a stewardess and a maintenance person probably backs up their story. Just in case, though, I fixed it to help us be alert of the real threat which photographers pose. TSA publishes new posters depicting photographers as terrorists

Individuals, shadowy criminal organizations, and nation states all now have the capacity to devastate modern societies through computer attacks.

It’s simply not true.

The author must not know the meaning of “devastate,” which is, according to the handiest Web dictionary, “to lay waste; render desolate.”

There is no such capacity—anywhere—to do such damage through computer attacks, and the capacity of some actors to produce some inconvenience, to cause some economic harm, and perhaps to cause physical damage or injury—none of that justifies such a stupidly phrased sentence.

It’s the first line of the abstract to “An e-SOS for Cyberspace” by Temple University law professor Duncan Hollis. Almost certainly, given the overblown premise, it calls for overblown reactions.

This concludes my review of the first sentence of another fear-mongering cybersecurity paper.

Ohio councilman Phil Davison screams and shoots eye daggers at the people he hopes will vote for him to be Stark County Treasurer.

The best part is the way he frequently pauses his artificial anger to read his script. The college that gave him a "masters degree in communication" ought to be stripped of its accreditation. Scary Stump Speech of the Day