Wired – DC Introduces First Transgender Character in Mainstream Comics
Wait you mean “Horny Biker Slut” and the McGooch Sisters weren’t mainstream?
In Batgirl #19, on sale today in both print and digital formats, the character Alysia Yeoh will reveal that she is a transwoman in a conversation with her roommate, Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl). Taking care to distinguish Yeoh’s sexual orientation from her gender identity, Batgirl writer Gail Simone noted that the character is also bisexual.
Yeah so, I think we all realize that Batgirl is getting a new love interest. I predict this story line will not last long, seems a little too edgy for DC.
BBC – Bitcoin Value Halved Due to Panic Selling
As I understand it MtGox, the exchange which handles 80% of Bitcoin to Dollar conversions has been DDoSed a numbere of times in order to slow or stop trading. This drives the value down and the attackers then stop their attack and but Bitcoins at the reduced price. Yesterday the exchange was slow again so people assumed it was under attack again and began panic selling. Instead Bitcoin has grown so much that the exchange couldn’t handle the number of new orders (20,000?) so it slowed – Basically a self inflicted DDoS caused by lack of adequate infrastructure. The same thing used to happen to Google when it was starting out
Related – One of the bigger mining pools can’t keep up with it’s financial obligations (can’t convert the mined Bitcoins to cash, so it is shutting down. Bye Bye Free Electronic Money)
Also Related – Surprisingly People Are Stealing Bitcoins
but still, this attack is rather basic and should not be possible on a site at the level of Mt. Gox. I can only imagine how people with larger amounts would feel if clicking on a link emptied their account $10k+...
This is a serious loss for me, and unless this is handled correctly this can also badly affect the community. I know they are super busy as they are backlogged with over 10,000 account verifications - I can only hope this gets handled appropriately. Does anyone have any advice how to go about contacting mtgox, they are so busy they don't even realize someone has a specialized phishing operation running to rob their customers!
via Hacker News
Gizmodo – Video of San Diego Cops Arresting a Man for Recording Them
They claim it could be converted into a weapon. That’s one way around the First Amendment I guess.
Endgadget – Hacker Claims He Can Remotely Hijack Airplanes Using an Android App
The hack was demoed at this year's Hack In The Box conference in Amsterdam, where Teso showed how the app -- called PlaneSploit -- can seek out targets from the ground by infiltrating radio broadcasts between aircraft and air traffic control, and then use a second communication system to send malicious messages to that could "take full control of the plane"
Schneier on Security – Elite Panic
Excerpt from an Interview with the author of “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster”
Elites tend to believe in a venal, selfish, and essentially monstrous version of human nature, which I sometimes think is their own human nature. I mean, people don't become incredibly wealthy and powerful by being angelic, necessarily. They believe that only their power keeps the rest of us in line and that when it somehow shrinks away, our seething violence will rise to the surface -- that was very clear in Katrina. Timothy Garton Ash and Maureen Dowd and all these other people immediately jumped on the bandwagon and started writing commentaries based on the assumption that the rumors of mass violence during Katrina were true. A lot of people have never understood that the rumors were dispelled and that those things didn't actually happen; it's tragic.
There is a link to the full interview at Schneier’s site. I haven’t read or listened to the whole thing yet but to my quick skim it looks interesting.
In the Amazon reviews at least a couple people are kind of upset over her views on government disaster response.
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