John Reed’s Automated Cat Petting Machine

THE Automated Cat Petting Machine is a real thing. No. It’s not RoboSpinster. It’s John Reed’s work for his senior thesis film at Tyler in 1987. As he says, “The Cat Petter turned out to be far more interesting than the film”. Our tip would be to rename it the BBC DJ Recruiter and call the cops on the old stroker:

Anorak

Posted: 26th, November 2013 | In: Film, Technology | Comment

Woof To Wash: The Wonderful Dog-Operated Washing Machine

REASONS to love dogs: No. 342c – they can wash your clothes.

Anorak

Posted: 24th, November 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment

Your LG Smart TV Is Spying On You And Your Midget Fetish

GB.smartshare.lgtvsdp.com POST /ibs/v2.2/service/watchInformation.xml HTTP/1.1
Host: GB.ibis.lgappstv.com
Accept: */*
X-Device-Product:NETCAST 4.0
X-Device-Platform:NC4M
X-Device-Model:HE_DTV_NC4M_AFAAABAA
X-Device-Netcast-Platform-Version:0004.0002.0000
X-Device-Country:GB
X-Device-Country-Group:EU
X-Device-ID:2yxQ5kEhf45fjUD35G+E/xdq7xxWE2ghu0j4an9kbGoNcyWaSsoLgyk8JJoMtjRrYRsVS6mHKy/Zdd6nZp+Y+gK6DVqnbQeDqr16YgacdzKU80sCKwOAi1TwIQov/SlB
X-Authentication:YMu3V1dv8m8JD0ghrsmEToxONDI= cookie:JSESSIONID=3BB87277C55EED9489B6E6B2DEA7C9FD.node_sdpibis10; Path=/
Content-Length: 460
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
&chan_name=BBC TWO&device_src_idx=1&dtv_standard_type=2
&broadcast_type=2&device_platform_name=NETCAST 4.0_mtk5398&chan_code=251533454-72E0D0FB0A8A4C70E4E2D829523CA235&external_input_name=Antenna&chan_phy_no=&atsc_chan_maj_no=&atsc_chan_min_no=&chan_src_idx=1&chan_phy_no=&atsc_chan_maj_no=&atsc_chan_min_no=&chan_phy_no=47&atsc_chan_maj_no=2&atsc_chan_min_no=2&chan_src_idx=1&dvb_chan_nw_id=9018&dvb_chan_transf_id=4170&dvb_chan_svc_id=4287&watch_dvc_logging=0

This information appears to be sent back unencrypted and in the clear to LG every time you change channel, even if you have gone to the trouble of changing the setting above to switch collection of viewing information off.

It was at this point, I made an even more disturbing find within the packet data dumps.  I noticed filenames were being posted to LG’s servers and that these filenames were ones stored on my external USB hard drive.  To demonstrate this, I created a mock avi file and copied it to a USB stick.

This file didn’t really contain “midget porn” at all, I renamed it to make sure it had a unique filename that I could spot easily in the data and one that was unlikely to come from a broadcast source.

And sure enough, there is was…

I think it’s important to point out that the URL that the data is being POSTed to doesn’t in fact exist, you can see this from the HTTP 404 response in the next response from LG’s server after the ACK.

However, despite being missing at the moment, this collection URL could be implemented by LG on their server tomorrow, enabling them to start transparently collecting detailed information on what media files you have stored.

It would easily be possible to infer the presence of adult content or files that had been downloaded from file sharing sites. My wife was shocked to see our children’s names being transmitted in the name of a Christmas video file that we had watched from USB.

So what does LG have to say about this?  I approached them and asked them to comment on data collection, profiling of their customers, collection of usage information and mandatory embedded advertising on products that their customers had paid for.  Their response to this was as follows:

Good Morning

Thank you for your e-mail.

Further to our previous email to yourself, we have escalated the issues you reported to LG’s UK Head Office.

The advice we have been given is that unfortunately as you accepted the Terms and Conditions on your TV, your concerns would be best directed to the retailer.  We understand you feel you should have been made aware of these T’s and C’s at the point of sale, and for obvious reasons LG are unable to pass comment on their actions.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Kind Regards

Tom

LG Electronics UK Helpdesk

Anorak

Posted: 21st, November 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment

George Osborne’s £50m grant for better condoms

The team behind the wonder material graphene – developed at the University of Manchester in 2004 – has just got a big new commission: making condoms.

Graphene is strong, light, nearly transparent, and an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, qualities that have got it dubbed a supermaterial and tipped for use in airplane wings, internet cables and foldable computers. Chancellor George Osborne is a vocal fan, putting £50m into the department making it in 2011 and trumpeting the superthin layers of carbon as a bright new hope for British industry.

But that’s not all graphene is good for … some of the team working on it at Manchester have just landed a deal to make condoms out of it. 

Anna Leach

Posted: 20th, November 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

Twitter Is Not A Good Pace For David Cameron – 10 Great First Responses To Dave’s Tweets

HOW’S David Cameron getting along on Twitter. Well, you dip your toe in the effluent and it comes up yellow…

Anorak

Posted: 20th, November 2013 | In: Politicians, Technology | Comment (1)

Jack Vale’s Social Media Experiment

JACK Vale has a Social Media Experiment. You might have seen it on the end of pier with the fortune teller or at the psychic’s show:

Anorak

Posted: 19th, November 2013 | In: Technology | Comments (2)

The Twitter Interview For Your Next Job

HMM, given the way that I eff and blind on Twitter this isn’t going to be good news for me next time I go out to look for a job:

Employers could use new personality profiling software on jobseekers’ tweets to see if they are right for a role.

IBM developers believe they can successfully assess a person’s psychological traits by analysing the 140 characters they use on Twitter.

The software scans the most recent tweets, be it hundreds or thousands, to develop a personality profile.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 19th, November 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment

Flashback: Dr Harb Hayre’s Tattletale Machine

FLASHBACK to March 18, 1975:

Dr. Harb Hayre, a professor of electric engineering at the University of Houston on March 18, 1975, checks the write out of his tattletale machine. The device can analyze the voice and tell more about a person than words alone. Properly applied, says the professor, the machine could: detect a drunk driver; tell who is lying and who is telling the truth; determine if a pilot is to tired to fly; tell the precise condition of a mental patient; or, determine if a person is under the influence of drugs. (AP Photo/EFK)

Anorak

Posted: 19th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment

Locate The Best Qulity Marijuana With Denver’s Nasal Ranger

TO Denver, Colorado, where the city’s police Nasal Ranger is investigating the smell of marijuana. The Denver Post reports:

“Ben Siller looked ridiculous on a recent afternoon, standing on a downtown Denver street corner with a giant device clamped to his face sniffing the air for odorous evidence of marijuana.”

Yep. He does. But one day, when marijuana is legal everywhere, Mr Siller could be a ‘nose’, just like those wine buffs who can identify a blend of grapes with a sniff, a swirl, a gurgle and a spit. One sniff, and Mr Siller will be able to tell consumers just what’s in the blend. WAft a sample under Nasal Ranger et voila!, you need never buy oregano and henna again.

Amber Frost has facts about Colorado smells:

In a city of around 634,000 people, there were 98 smell complaints in 2010, seven involved weed. In 2012, there were 288 complaints, with sixteen having to do with marihuana. While that’s an increase overall, complaints about pot actually decreasedby about 1.5%, and this was all prior to the legalization of pot for recreational use. In 2013 (up until September 20th), they recorded 85 complaints, eleven of which were attributed to marijuana, a slight increase since 2010, but the city isn’t exactly being hot-boxed.

How does Nasal Ranger work? Because any weed hounds needs one to find the good stuff:

Anorak

Posted: 18th, November 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment

Johny Ive: The World’s Most Famous Designer And Reluctant Knight

LEANDER Kahney is talking about the world’s most famous designer, Essex-boy and graduate of Newcastle Polytechnic done very good,  Johny Ive. British writer Kahney has profiled the Apple legend in Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products. Here are a few extracts:

Phil Gray, who was his first boss after he graduated from design school, met him at the Olympics in London. “When I asked Sir Jony what was it like being a knight of the realm, he replied, ‘You know what? Out in San Francisco it means absolutely nothing. But back in Britain it is a burden.’”

At 25, he was headhunted by Apple.

“I remember very clearly Steve announcing that our goal is not just to make money but to make great products,” Ive later recalled. “The decisions you make based on that philosophy are fundamentally different from the ones we had been making at Apple… We were on the same wavelength. I suddenly understood why I loved the company.”

In the design studio:

Ive has the only private office. The front wall and door are made of glass, with stainless steel fittings, just like the ones in Apple’s shops. Except for a small shelf system, the office is bare with plain white walls, featuring no pictures of his family or design awards; just a desk, chair and lamp.

Ive is Apple’s soul:

Just before he died on October 5, 2011, Jobs revealed the degree to which he had empowered Ive inside the company. “He has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me,” Jobs said. “There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That’s the way I set it up.”

Said Ive:

“Our goal isn’t to make money. Our goal absolutely at Apple is not to make money. This may sound a little flippant, but it’s the truth. Our goal and what gets us excited is to try to make great products. We trust that if we are successful, people will like them, and if we are operationally competent, we will make revenue, but we are very clear about our goal.”

Well, I bought an Ive original. Then I bought another. And another…

Do Ive’s products match /reflect his changing of style? For hat Apple do next, wonder about Johny’s state of mind? He’s middle-aged; he’ll be thinking slim and knowing.

Lead Photo: In this file photo taken March 19, 1999, Jonathan Ive, left, Apple’s vice president of design, and Jon Rubinstein, Apple’s senior vice president of engineering, pose behind five iMac personal computers, at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. Apple CEO Steve Jobs may be the company’s most recognizable personality, but much of its cachet comes from its clean, friendly-looking designs, the product of its head designer, Jonathan Ive.

Anorak

Posted: 17th, November 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment

Bad Translations: Fingers Ready For The Pony Game

BAN this sick filth:

Spotter

Anorak

Posted: 16th, November 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

Tesco Sold Clay iPad To Kent Baker (Then Police Arrested Him For Fraud)

“I COUDN’T believe it when I saw what was inside the box. Maddie was devastated,” says Colin Marsh, who paid £470 for at Tesco in Whitstable, Kent. “I took it back to Tesco, but they said they couldn’t give me a refund and would need to carry out an investigation. Two days later, I got a call at about 8pm from the police asking if I could come down to the station to answer some questions. I just thought they wanted to know what had happened, but the next thing I know I’m being bundled into a cell. I was in there for three hours. It was then they told me the iPad had been activated in my name. I just thought ‘how can that possibly be?’ It didn’t make any sense.

Anorak

Posted: 16th, November 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment

Tesco Stars In An Unusual C-Word Conversation On Twitter

That’s how it began. And then it got weird.

Anorak

Posted: 14th, November 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment

Desperate Tweeting – Kellogs: Tony The Tigers Remembers The Grrrrrreat War

THE Twitter account for @KelloggsUK has message from a tame feline who want vulnerable kids to eat lots of sugar and salt for breakfast. All it takes is a retweet:

Anorak

Posted: 11th, November 2013 | In: Reviews, Technology, The Consumer | Comment

How Long Before Facebook Goes The Way Of MySpace? Ask The Teens

SO. Here’s an interesting little question. We’ve had several waves of social media sites already and none of them has really lasted more than a few years. Friends Get Divorced did ferociously well until it was passed by MySpace, which itself was rather pushed out of the way by Bebo which was then in turn flattened by Facebook. And we could think that Facebook will now rule the roost forever because it’s just so darn big: or we might think that we’re just waiting for the cool kids to find somewhere else to go.

Over at The Guardian they’ve found just the one line which makes it possible that it will be the latter:

Facebook made a startling admission in its earnings announcement this month: it was seeing a “decrease in daily users, specifically among teens”. In other words, teenagers are still on Facebook; they’re just not using it as much as they did. It was a landmark statement, since teens are the demographic who often point the rest of us towards the next big thing.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 11th, November 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment

Flashback To 1967: African Schoolteacher Sanderson Chirambo And His Man-Powered Aircraft “Limba IV”

FLASHBACK: African schoolteacher Sanderson Chirambo is with his man-powered aircraft “Limba IV” on the road at Glenara Estates African School, 10 miles from Salisbury, Rhodesia on March 15, 1967, before his attempt to become the first man to fly successfully a man-powered aircraft. His machine  – a  bicycle fitted with a 12 foot aluminium wing and tailplane – failed to leave the ground. After the attempt Sanderson shook his head sadly and said: ““It’’s the same problem I’’ve faced all along. It’’s much to heavy.”

Anorak

Posted: 11th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment

Video Dating In 1957 At The Radio and Television Fair

ON August 21 1957, visitors to the Radio and Television Fair watched the effect of their words on a TV telephone set up in Frankfurt, West Germany. Phones used for calls were linked to four TV sets and two cameras so each person can see a picture of himself and the person he is talking to. The AP reported: “There is no telling what effect the TV telephone will have on what people say and how they do it when they call.”

We wonder…

Anorak

Posted: 10th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, Technology, The Consumer | Comment

Belarus Dash Cam Records Speeding Horse And Cart Running Into Car

MEANWHILE in Belarus… dash cams are recording the unusual:

Anorak

Posted: 10th, November 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

Video Game Violence: Preparing To Be Bad On Mortal Combat vs. DC Universe

DOES playing violent videos games make you violent?

Christian Happ and his colleagues recruited 60 students (20 men) with varied video gaming experience and had them spend 15 minutes playing the violent and bloody beat-em-up game Mortal Combat vs. DC Universe on the Playstation 3. Some of the participants played the morally good character Superman, while the others played the Joker, the baddie from Batman. Apart from that, the game experience was the same for all participants – their time was spent in hand-to-hand combat against a variety of other computer-controlled game characters.

Another twist to the experiment was that before the game began half the participants read a bogus Wikipedia article about their character, designed to encourage them to empathise with him. For those playing Superman, the article said how he’d come from a loving family. The Joker article described how he’d suffered abuse in his childhood.

Anorak

Posted: 10th, November 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment

“Roka-Kinne Third-Dimensional Television Debuts In 1953

Third-Dimensional Television 1953:

This is third-dimensional television, as transmitted in a test by the North West German radio television studio in Berlin on Nov. 9, 1953. Two images are transmitted, as in all true 3-D processes. They are blended into one picture through the use of special polarized glasses, lying in front of the television set. At left is a mask with which to cover the screen for a more clear-cut, called “Roka-Kinne,” was developed by Robert Karst of Berlin (27 Gneisenau St.) He says standard transmitters and receivers are used.

It never did catch on.

Anorak

Posted: 9th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment

Blind From Birth: Tommy Edison And Austin Seraphin Explain What It’s Like

TOMMY Edison, who has been blind since birth, talks about what it was like growing up without sight.

Anorak

Posted: 9th, November 2013 | In: Technology | Comment

What’s The Worst Part About Working At Google? The People Are Too Smart And Talented

WHAT’S  the worst part about working at Google ? That question was posed to readers of Business Insider. Some answers err on the creepy side of Norman Bates’ slippers. A selection now follow:

Anonymous

When it’s standard to be awesome, and the work isn’t particularly tough to begin with, it’s hard to differentiate…

Some people end up losing their drive by working at Google. They get accustomed to not trying their hardest, but still having an awesome day-to-day life.

Some caveats: Many Googlers are clearly among the brightest in the world in their field, and they’re able to run full stride in their work. If you take your career into your own hands, you can find a role that challenges and stretches you as much as any other job in the world.

Anorak

Posted: 4th, November 2013 | In: Money, Reviews, Technology | Comment

Deliberate Planned Obsolescence In Apple’s iPhones? New York Times Spreads Conspiracy Theory

DOES Apple lace its products with deliberate planned obsolescence? Err, no, despite the claims there isn’t any deliberate planned obsolescence in Apple’s iPhones. So much so that it’s really rather amazing that the New York Times published a piece even suggesting that there is.

Apple could be deliberately making your iPhone slower when a new model comes out, an influential tech columnist has claimed.

Catherine Rampell, who writes in the New York Times, said that Apple could be engineering the new operating system so it only works properly with the newest version of the product.

She added her iPhone 4 became a lot slower when she downloaded iOS 7 – and that the only solution seemed to be to buy the iPhone 5.

Rampell accused Apple of having run out of ideas so was trying to ‘brainwash’ its customers into buying the new iPhone 5S and 5C because they look nice.

Rampell’s claims are likely fuel conspiracy theorists who have long held that Apple engages in ‘planned obsolescence’, a term which has been around since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Tim Worstall

Posted: 4th, November 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment