Friday Falsidical Falsiloquence

Jimmy Hendrix had nothing like this girl
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Most of us are very cynical when it comes to stuff like this.

The White House announced today that the NSA will be shutting down the program responsible for the bulk collection of phone records by the end of tomorrow. 

The program will be immediately replace with a new, scaled back version as enumerated by the USA Freedom Act. 

"Under the Freedom Act, the NSA and law enforcement agencies can no longer collect telephone calling records in bulk in an effort to sniff out suspicious activity.

 Such records, known as "metadata," reveal which numbers Americans are calling and what time they place those calls, but not the content of the conversations. Instead analysts must now get a court order to ask telecommunications companies ... to enable monitoring of call records of specific people or groups for up to six months."

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Speaking of being cynical...

 The Intercept's Michael Massing takes a look at "How the Gates Foundation Reflects the Good and the Bad of 'Hacker Philanthropy."

 He writes, "Despite its impact, few book-length assessments of the foundation's work have appeared.

 Now Linsey McGoey, a sociologist at the University of Essex, is seeking to fill the gap. 'Just how efficient is Gates's philanthropic spending?' she asks in No Such Thing as a Free Gift. 

 'Are the billions he has spent on U.S. primary and secondary schools improving education outcomes? 

Are global health grants directed at the largest health killers?

 Is the Gates Foundation improving access to affordable medicines, or are patent rights taking priority over human rights?'

 As the title of her book suggests, McGoey answers all of these questions in the negative.

 The good the foundation has done, she believes, is far outweighed by the harm."

 Massing adds, "Bill and Melinda Gates answer to no electorate, board, or shareholders; they are accountable mainly to themselves. 

What's more, the many millions of dollars the foundation has bestowed on nonprofits and news organizations has led to a natural reluctance on their part to criticize it.

 There's even a name for it: the 'Bill Chill' effect."

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If your running a business that includes on_line transactions and you have a data base of customers information, you should really take the time to hire experts to see that hackers can't access your information.

VTech Hack Exposes Data On 4.8 Million Adults, 200,000 Kids

A hacker broke into the site of the popular toy company VTech and was able to easily get 4.8 million credentials, and 227k kids' identities using SQL injection.

 The company didn't find out about the breach until Motherboard told them.

 According to Have I Been Pwned, this is the fourth largest consumer data breach ever. 

"[Security specialist Troy Hunt] said that VTech doesn't use SSL web encryption anywhere, and transmits data such as passwords completely unprotected. 

... Hunt also found that the company's websites "leak extensive data" from their databases and APIs—so much that an attacker could get a lot of data about the parents or kids just by taking advantage of these flaws."

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A piece of the gold foam is light enough to float atop milk froth (Credit: Gustav Nyström and Raffaele Mezzenga/ETH Zurich)

Light as air gold foam?

Along with its use in jewelry, gold also has numerous applications in fields such as electronics and scientific research.

 It's a handy material, but – of course – it's also expensive.

 That's why researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a new way of making a small amount of gold go a long way. 

They've created a gold foam that looks much like solid gold, but is actually 98 parts air and two parts solid material (abstract). 

As an added bonus, the aerogel-type foam can also be made in non-gold colors such as dark red.

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The Hippies are back...well sort of...

Rolling Stone reports that an unusual new trend is popping up around the offices of Silicon Valley companies:

 taking tiny doses of LSD or other psychedelic drugs to increase productivity. 

 "A microdose is about a tenth of the normal dose – around 10 micrograms of LSD, or 0.2-0.5 grams of mushrooms." 

According to the article, the average user is a 20-something looking to improve their creativity and problem-solving skills. 

Some users report that the LSD alleviates other problems, like anxiety or cluster headaches. 

That said, it's important to note that such benefits are not supported by scientific research — yet.

We know where this will end...

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It's like he's not even trying.