Chad's News

American citizen Adam Gadahn has been charged with treason. He is not, however, in the custody of any authorities, so there’s a big reward for his capture.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
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This is a video of a depth charge explosion. They’ve certainly gotten a lot more powerful than they were in those old World War II movies. The black dust is from a sunken WWII barge filled with 10 tons of explosives.

http://www.youtube.com/…
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The BBC recently performed a computer security experiment. They created a virtual Windows XP Home system encased within a highly-protected XP Pro system, thus enabling them to monitor all internet traffic coming in to the XP Home “machine.” Then they connected it to the internet. The first attack occurred within seconds, and there was never a period longer than 15 minutes without an attack of some sort. Note that they didn’t surf or otherwise use the internet; rather, they simply connected the machine to the internet and let it sit idle. This is a good reminder why it’s important to use firewalls and keep Windows updated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/…
(via slashdot)

I’ve heard various ways of dealing with telemarketers, but this one is definitely the funniest. Warning: some of the language is NSFW.

http://joshualowry.vox.com/…
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In an update to Tuesday’s article on the pending acquisition of YouTube by Google, the web site of Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation—utube.com—crashed due to excessive traffic. Apparently a large number of people heard about YouTube for the first time and typed in “utube”. Oops. This is also why top-level web pages shouldn’t be bandwidth intensive.

http://money.cnn.com/…
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UPDATE: Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corp. has now sued YouTube.

I hear similar predictions of doom every time eBay raises its rates, but the article seems to think that it’s serious this time.

http://redherring.com/…

This week’s big news is North Korea setting off a nuke Google’s decision to purchase YouTube, a highly popular video site. Internet analysts, as well as anyone with an iota of common sense, have been predicting the implosion of YouTube. A vast majority of the content uploaded to YouTube is copyrighted, and the internet community has been holding its breath, waiting to see who would file the first lawsuit of the many that are expected. But we may all be disappointed. YouTube announced a deal with multiple music labels to provide music videos and other content free of charge—so it will no longer be necessary to upload pirated copies. In addition, Google must have some plan to avoid the lawsuits. Why else would they pay $1.65 billion just to take on a huge liability?

http://arstechnica.com/…

Let’s discuss sending large attachments via email. It’s very easy, in these days of broadband internet access, to forget that some people still have dial-up—in which case they have to wait and wait for their email to download, all the while hoping the connection stays up and doesn’t time out. It’s just plain annoying. (I once received a spam email with an 11MB attachment. It would’ve taken me over an hour to download, and I finally dealt with it by just deleting the mail spool file on my server.) Alternatively, sometimes an email server is configured to reject attachments above a certain size, in which case it’s not possible to send the attachment. There is a better way…

I resolve this matter by uploading the file to my web site and sending an email with a link. For those who don’t have personal domains, the linked article lists free services that let you upload a large file for others to download.

http://www.komando.com/…

UPDATE: Kim Komando has locked down this particular article, so here is an alternate link that gives the same information. (Thanks to Josh.)

Yes, the Nobel prizes were awarded this week, but the real news is the Ig Nobel awards.

http://arstechnica.com/…

Kim Komando, America’s hottest looking geek, has provided detailed information about the various recalls related to Sony’s defective laptop batteries. While the odds of your battery catching fire are low, it’s probably a good idea to participate in the recall if you qualify.

http://www.komando.com/…

Think you want a hybrid? This article discusses the “new” diesel. Apparently diesel engines are more efficient than regular gasoline engines, but they’ve historically been much dirtier, to the point of failing emissions requirements.

http://money.cnn.com/…
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You never know when this might come in handy…

http://wired.com/…
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