Apple Store webcam “artist” raided by Secret Service

I suspect few among us can say we haven’t been a little bit naughty when visiting an Apple store: leaving an iPad logged into the Microsoft homepage, starting an inappropriate YouTube clip before leaving, or waiting until a local TV news presenter left the store mistakenly still signed in to Twitter and posting juvenile messages in their name. (OK, that only happened once, and it wasn’t me.)

But one New Yorker has managed to take such japery a step too far in Apple’s eyes, leading to a visit from the Secret Service.

Kyle McDonald created and installed an application that used the webcams on Apple store display models to take a photograph every minute. According to Mashable he had to return to reinstall the app every day as Apple resets its store computers every day.

McDonald then published the results to a blog with the indisputable title “People staring at computers” which is designed to inspire people to “think more about our computers and how we use them.”

That wasn’t enough to get him into trouble, however. Instead that came when he remotely triggered a feature in the app that displayed the images in full-screen on around 100 computers across two stores. Amazingly it appears customers had little response to this and didn’t alert store staff.

Unfortunately for McDonald, Apple noticed an unusual pattern of traffic between the stores and his servers. That led to the Secret Service visiting yesterday morning and confiscating his computer equipment.

McDonald hasn’t yet been criminally charged or received a civil complaint. He believes he hasn’t violated any laws, and notes that he asked permission from both security guards and customers to take photos. It appears he omitted to mention this would be through the webcams rather than with a handheld camera.

The Secret Service warrant related to section 1030 of title 18 of the US Code, which is the law on computer fraud.



We R Slytherins (Ke$ha parody)

Check out this entertaining parody of Ke$ha’s “We R Who We R” paying homage to Hogwarts’ evilest house: The Slytherin. Enjoy!

Please note that no house elves were harmed in the making of this video.

Thanks Dana!

[Youtube]

So he’s my father too? [Pic]

This t-shirt design is up for vote at Threadless, so if you’d like the site to offer it for sale, be sure to go and vote it up!

[Threadless]



Portal Turret Tattoo [Picture]

This is a turret from Portal. This specific one, for those of you who have played Portal 2, is the one who escaped the production line.

The life of a turret is simple. They are built, tested, put in a box, removed from the box, recycled, used as parts for a new turret. A never ending cycle. But one got away, and when you find him, he says, “I’m different”. He looks like all the others, but somehow, he ended up different.

The words in the background don’t really say anything, I told the artist to do whatever he wanted, it just had to be garbled and gibberish. Along with the little red hearts, the background was inspired by one of the walls of a rat’s den.

Done by Rich at Body Language in Columbus Ohio.

[Source | Via]

Batman: Year One Trailer [Video]

Having grown up on Batman: the Animated Series, I have to admit that the upcoming Batman: Year One is as exciting a release to me as The Dark Knight Rises. I just have a soft-spot for the Caped Crusader in ink and paint, I guess. If you haven’t heard about it yet, Year One is the DC Universe Animated Original Movie adaptation of the classic Frank Miller comic book story of the same name.

It’s being released directly to Blu-ray, DVD, OnDemand and for download on October 18. The voice casting is pretty great: Benjamin McKenzie as Bruce Wayne, Bryan Cranston as Jim Gordon, Eliza Dushku as Catwoman and Katee Sackhoff as Sarah Essen. Dushku also stars in a Catwoman short included with the film.

[MTV via G.TDW]

Nyan Cat Scarf [Pics]

If watching that Nyan Cat video from start to finish isn’t enough to make you vomit rainbows or drive you completely crazy, then here’s something you might want to add to your wardrobe:

I would never, ever wear that thing in public, but who knows, maybe some of you would.

[Nyan Cat Scarf – $34 @ Calgarycosplay.com]

Humans Matched by Chimprehension


A chimpanzee has thrown doubt on the idea that only human brains are specially adapted to process speech.

The appropriately-named Panzee, now aged 25, is able to make out 128 different spoken words, even when the words are distorted or incomplete.

Panzee was raised by humans since she was eight days old, and has always been spoken to as if she were human. As well as being able to recognize the 128 words and point to a corresponding symbol on a lexigram board, she appears to understand their meaning and can use the board to communicate.

A team from Georgia State University, where Panzee lives, decided this made her an ideal test subject for research into understanding of speech. They played a series of 48 words to Panzee and gave her four options to choose the right answer from. The testing involved distorting the words in two ways: making them very husky (noise-vocoded synthesis) and reducing them to just three tones (sine-wave synthesis.) The researchers also asked 32 humans to take the same tests.

Science magazine has an audio link of the two techniques being applied to the word apricot. Fortunately they used the American English pronunciation: the British English variant of “ape-ri-cot” might have caused more confusion!

In the noise-vocoded synthesis test, Panzee scored 55% correct (significantly above the 25% that would have been expected by simply guessing), while the humans as a group achieved a 70% success rate. In the sine-wave synthesis test, Panzee matched the 40% score of the humans.

What this means is open to dispute. The Georgia researchers believe there is no doubt over the theory that human speech recognition skills developed through a brain adaptation only came when chimps and humans went their separate evolutionary ways. However, other researchers argue the results aren’t conclusive, noting that only have a vocabulary of 128 words makes the task of distinguishing between them far easier.

(Image credit: Carolyn Richardson/Division of University Relations/Georgia State University, via Science)