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Hackers Publish German Minister’s Fingerprint

01/04/2008

They’ll probably be arrested now as terrorists!

Wired: To demonstrate why using fingerprints to secure passports is a bad idea, the German hacker group Chaos Computer Club has published what it says is the fingerprint of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s interior minister.

According to CCC, the print of Schauble’s index finger was lifted from a water glass that he used during a panel discussion that he participated in last year at a German university. CCC published the print on a piece of plastic inside 4,000 copies of its magazine Die Datenschleuder that readers can use to impersonate the minister to biometric readers.

Several years ago the CCC published a guide to lifting and reproducing fingerprints.

I Heart The Internets

30/03/2008

Quoted from Foot.ie, and in turn from the Pats forum, and probably from somewhere else in turn. The original thread is here. Edited for clarity.

A guy in Canada is selling his 1991 Nissan Skyline, when some dude shows up and asks to take it for a test drive, leaving his drivers licence as insurance. He doesn’t come back, clearly stealing the car, and the police check the licence and it’s fake.Guy is obviously bummed out, and posts on a car forum with some pictures of the car, asking people to keep an eye out for it.

Incredibly, someone spots the car at a local mall, chases after them, takes a photo of the thief, and posts it on Photobucket.

As more people join the witchhunt, someone finds him and follows him back to his house where he parks the car and goes inside. They upload the location to Google Maps.

From his home address, they manage to track down his Facebook profile! From that they get his real name and work location.

Several of the forum members drive to the guy’s house at 2:30am and eventually manage to box the car in, calling the cops who come and arrest him. Full footage is filmed of his arrest and uploaded to YouTube:

The rightful owner picks his car up, checks inside and finds 22 dollars and the guys wigger hat, which he promptly puts up for sale on eBay!

Penetrating Wagner’s Ring

30/03/2008

Probably best if you just follow this link and I say no more.

(Thanks Graham.)

Aurland Lookout, Norway

27/03/2008

Another bloody place I’ve to visit. This list is getting long.

Turn off fluorescents when you leave a room

27/03/2008

I’ve ofter wondered about this. Turns out it’s a bit of an old wives tale.

Turns out, however, that power surge is so brief that its energy draw doesn’t amount to much: the equivalent of a few seconds or so of normal operation, according to U.S. Department of Energy estimates. In other words, from a strict energy-conservation standpoint, it’s almost always beneficial to shut off fluorescents when leaving the roomâ€”the start-up energy is offset by the power saved in even the briefest outages.