After 20 years in service, the SIM card has been hacked

Sebastian Anthony explains a brilliant attack:

For the longest time, I thought that SIM cards were merely a piece of laminated memory that stored the data that your phone needs to connect to a cellular network (ICCID, Ki, etc.), along with enough space to store a few phone numbers. In actuality, the SIM card in your phone is actually a small computer, with memory, a processor, and even an operating system. As you can see in the diagram below, there is a chip beneath those gold contacts, and on that chip there is a processor, ROM (firmware that stores the OS and SIM apps), EEPROM (which stores your phone book, settings, patches), and RAM (for use by the SIM’s OS and apps). In the photo below of a disassembled SIM card, you can clearly see that this is quite a complex computer chip.

And, unfortunately, like any computer chip that runs an operating system and apps, a SIM card can be hacked. In this case, modern SIM cards run a very simple OS that loads up Java Card — a version of the Java virtual machine for smart cards (of which SIMs are a variety of). Java Card essentially runs small Java applets, and each applet is encapsulated and firewalled (sandboxed) by the Java VM, preventing sensitive data from leaking to other apps. Your phone interacts with these apps via the SIM Application Toolkit (STK) to display information on your screen, and to interact with the outside world. To load apps onto the SIM or to update them, hidden text messages are sent by the carrier, containing over-the-air (OTA) programming in binary form. These messages are signed with a cryptographic key, so that the SIM knows that these messages have originated from a trusted source.

Now, German security researcher Karsten Nohl has discovered a way of finding out that all-important cryptographic key. By sending his own OTA SMSes that aren’t signed with the correct key, he discovered that some phones pop up an error message that contains a cryptographic signature. Then, using rainbow tables (a list of plaintext keys/passwords and their encrypted equivalent), Nohl found he could discover the SIM card’s cryptographic key in about one minute. Once he had this key, he could send apps and viruses to the SIM card that can send premium text messages (racking up huge bills), re-route or record calls, collect location data — you name it, with access to the SIM, you can do just about anything.

Nohl estimates that more than 12 percent of mobile phones are vulnerable to the attack. The older DES encryption standard has since been replaced by its stronger cousin Triple DES. Verizon and AT&T say that they're not vulnerable, but if you have an older SIM card it would make sense to get it upgraded. Most carriers will do it for free.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

Facebook shuts down conservative page with over 600,000 likes

Facebook has directly targeted a set of pages devoted to, of all things, the Bill of Rights:

Over the past month or so, Facebook, at the direction of their owner and administration, have been systematically targeting, attacking, discriminating against, and flat out shutting down conservative pages on Facebook, as well as individual accounts... Mark Zuckerberg is an open Obama supporter and Liberal. He and Facebook are engaged in the same type of behavior as the IRS when it comes to harassing and targeting conservative, Christian, Tea Party, and Patriot groups. It is the same behavior that we have seen from the Department of Justice targeting and harassing the free press and reporters in this country...

In a separate, but ominously related bit of news, watch as Obama supporters sign away the Bill of Rights.

You don't have to be Kreskin to predict that nothing good will come of these developments.


Hat tip: Stacy.

A New Google Maps Debuts on an Invitation-Only Basis

I just received my invitation to try a new version of Google Maps and am very pleased thus far. Here's a quick look (click to enbiggaplode):

Initial take:

• The dramatically increased screen real estate devoted to the map is excellent.

• Search results for local businesses seem improved.

• The user interface and navigation are further streamlined and impressively easy to use.

In short, great job by Google's engineers in improving an already excellent product.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

Hey, Baby!

Via Wanda:

Writing in the U.K.'s Guardian, Cory Doctorow explains why everyone should care about the NSA and PRISM scandals. You got that Lindsey Graham, you pathetic fool?

Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere

Absolute brilliance from Kieran Healy.

London, 1772.

I have been asked by my superiors to give a brief demonstration of the surprising effectiveness of even the simplest techniques of the new-fangled Social Networke Analysis in the pursuit of those who would seek to undermine the liberty enjoyed by His Majesty’s subjects. This is in connection with the discussion of the role of “metadata” in certain recent events and the assurances of various respectable parties that the government was merely “sifting through this so-called metadata” and that the “information acquired does not include the content of any communications”. I will show how we can use this “metadata” to find key persons involved in terrorist groups operating within the Colonies at the present time. I shall also endeavour to show how these methods work in what might be called a relational manner.


The analysis in this report is based on information gathered by our field agent Mr David Hackett Fischer and published in an Appendix to his lengthy report to the government. As you may be aware, Mr Fischer is an expert and respected field Agent with a broad and deep knowledge of the colonies. I, on the other hand, have made my way from Ireland with just a little quantitative training—I placed several hundred rungs below the Senior Wrangler during my time at Cambridge—and I am presently employed as a junior analytical scribe at ye olde National Security Administration. Sorry, I mean the Royal Security Administration. And I should emphasize again that I know nothing of current affairs in the colonies. However, our current Eighteenth Century beta of PRISM has been used to collect and analyze information on more than two hundred and sixty persons (of varying degrees of suspicion) belonging variously to seven different organizations in the Boston area.

Rest assured that we only collected metadata on these people, and no actual conversations were recorded or meetings transcribed. All I know is whether someone was a member of an organization or not. Surely this is but a small encroachment on the freedom of the Crown’s subjects. I have been asked, on the basis of this poor information, to present some names for our field agents in the Colonies to work with. It seems an unlikely task...

...Rest assured that we only collected metadata on these people, and no actual conversations were recorded or meetings transcribed. All I know is whether someone was a member of an organization or not. Surely this is but a small encroachment on the freedom of the Crown’s subjects. I have been asked, on the basis of this poor information, to present some names for our field agents in the Colonies to work with. It seems an unlikely task.

If you want to follow along yourself, there is a secret repository containing the data and the appropriate commands for your portable analytical engine... Here is what the data look like.


...I cannot show you the whole Person by Person matrix, because I would have to kill you. I jest, I jest! It is just because it is rather large. But here is a little snippet of it. At this point in the eighteenth century, a 254x254 matrix is what we call ”Bigge Data”. I have an upcoming EDWARDx talk about it. You should come. Anyway:


...The analytical engine has arranged everyone neatly, picking out clusters of individuals and also showing both peripheral individuals and—more intriguingly—people who seem to bridge various groups in ways that might perhaps be relevant to national security...


...Look at that person right in the middle there. Zoom in if you wish. He seems to bridge several groups in an unusual (though perhaps not unique) way. His name is Paul Revere.


Once again, I remind you that I know nothing of Mr Revere, or his conversations, or his habits or beliefs, his writings (if he has any) or his personal life. All I know is this bit of metadata, based on membership in some organizations. And yet my analytical engine, on the basis of absolutely the most elementary of operations in Social Networke Analysis, seems to have picked him out of our 254 names as being of unusual interest...

Read the whole thing.


Hat tips: V and Postcardiness's Blog.

U.S. Tech Industry "Could Pay Stiff Price for PRISM"

Reports that U.S. tech giants are siphoning the private data of their users off to the federal government have vast implications not only for the nation's citizens, but ultimately for the global reach of the businesses themselves.

The NSA's PRISM program is drawing outrage for invading the privacy of U.S. citizens, but that's not the only cause for concern now that it's come to light. "Access to information by the U.S. government on any communications platform can kill sales outside of the U.S.," noted tech analyst Rob Enderle. "That's one of the reasons we can't sell a telecom switch in most countries, for instance."


Technology firms in the United States might be impacted adversely by the National Security Agency's controversial PRISM program.

Classified documents about the program leaked to The Washington Post and The Guardian indicate that major U.S. high-tech companies -- including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo and Skype (now owned by Microsoft) -- provide it data. This data is the major source of raw intelligence for the NSA's analytical reports, according to the agency.

The leaked documents indicate that 98 percent of the data collected by PRISM comes from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft... All three, along with other technology companies, have denied involvement.


"We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers," Joe Sullivan, chief security officer at Facebook, told TechNewsWorld... When the company receives requests for information about specific individuals, it scrutinizes them carefully and provides information "only to the extent required by law," he said.

That's pretty much the party line for all the companies named.

It's possible that tech companies may lose revenue as a consequence of their participation with PRISM.

"Access to information by the U.S. government on any communications platform can kill sales for that platform outside of the U.S.," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld. "That's one of the reasons we can't sell a telecom switch in most countries, for instance."

...Claims by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and other companies that they are not working with PRISM could be correct, because the program "can go right around tech companies and pull data from network providers like Verizon, and it's supported by U.S. domestic laws," Enderle said.

In fact, Google's Larry Page and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg have both adamantly denied any knowledge of the program.

The problem, according to Zero Hedge's Tyler Durden, is "they are all lying".

The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL; Apple; and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence...

...Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a lawyer representing a technology company...

...The slide, below, details different methods of data collection under the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 (which was renewed in December 2012). It clearly distinguishes Prism, which involves data collection from servers, as distinct from four different programs involving data collection from "fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past".


Essentially, the slide suggests that the NSA also collects some information under FAA702 from cable intercepts, but that process is distinct from Prism... Analysts are encouraged to use both techniques of data gathering...

"You Should Use Both." You know: just in case only one is insufficient to make a mockery of all personal rights and civil liberties.

Reporter Glenn Greenwald told CNN's Piers Morgan on Thursday that the Obama administration has bullied and intimidated journalists that had intended to go public with information about PRISM.

Greenwald jump-started Thursday’s discussion over civil liberties and government surveillance with a report late Wednesday night that detailed the NSA’s collection of data from millions of Americans’ phone records.

“It’s well past time that we have a debate about whether that’s the kind of country and world in which we want to live,” Greenwald said on CNN. “We haven’t had that debate because it’s all done in secrecy and the Obama administration has been very aggressive about bullying and threatening anybody who thinks about exposing it or writing about it or even doing journalism about it. It’s well past time that that come to an end.”

Durden probably summed it up best yesterday:

In retrospect, it is sad what a farce this country has become: artificial market, centrally-planned economy, pervasive spying on the people, a tax collector that target political enemies, an administration that openly lies under oath...

If we didn't know better we would say this was 1955 Stalingrad, although Stalingrad at the height of totalitarianism was for amateurs. This is next level sh**: "Firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities, is what drove a career intelligence officer to provide PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials to The Washington Post in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy. 'They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,' the officer said.

Compared to Obama, Nixon was an Eagle Scout.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

TIME MAGAZINE: Yes, Of Course There Will Be Google Glass Porn

Google Glass is the first truly mainstream attempt at wearable computing technology. The camera-equipped glasses pairs with an Android device via Bluetooth wireless and provides augmented reality to the wearer.

Time Magazine notes that the porn industry is already eyeing (get it?) Google Glass for its, uhm, unique applications.

Over at ZDNet, Violet Blue reports that adult app company MiKandi is busily working on Glass-friendly content. While it’s not entirely clear how the content will be presented, MiKandi co-founder Jennifer McEwen hinted to Blue that the wearable aspect of Google Glass might be used in the production of adult content:

"We’re experimenting with the features of Glass. From our initial use of the device, photo and video recording is more powerful than we expected... Obviously, Glass is perfect for shooting POV video, so we’re experimenting with that first. But what’s really interesting about Glass is that it’s not just a hands free camera. It can receive and send data, so there are a lot of interesting interactions that we want to explore."


"Being hands-free and hassle-free is a simple but big difference Glass has over other similar devices. It’s so easy and familiar to wear, that from a shooter’s perspective it feels like you’re recording with your own eyes. Because it feels so natural, you can forget about the technology and just be in the moment."

In the article, Blue recounts the systematic removal of adult content from Apple’s App Store and MiKandi’s quest to woo adult app creators over to the Android side. However, Blue wonders if Google might decide to prevent adult content from being available as Glass apps. Based on McEwen’s description of how MiKandi is exploring the various features of Google Glass, it might end up that even if adult content is banned from Glass apps, it sure won’t stop adult content creators from using Glass as a recording device.

The first person who comes up with the equivalent of an app that mimics "X-Ray Specs" from the old comic books is gonna make a trillion dollars.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

MIND-BOGGLING: A Day in the Life of the Internet - an Infographic

Interesting data from HostGator.


A Day in The Life of The Internet via HostGator
Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

QOTW: UK Cable Company Hits Dead Man With Late Fees, Awesome Viral Complaint Letter Results

In the era of social networking, the power of the complaint letter can be mind-boggling:

This was the week when Virgin Media was forced to grovel publicly after a deceased man's family posted the firm's demand for a £10 "late payment" when his direct debit was denied because of his death.


The new bill clearly states that the direct debit was denied because the payer was deceased, but that didn't stop Virgin from tacking on the late fee. The man's son-in-law, Jim Boyden, posted a picture of the bill on Facebook, which has since gone viral, and had a few choice words for the telco:

I'm really sorry for my father-in-law not paying his bill last month, but what with him being dead and all, it's probably slipped his mind. Some people, eh?

You, however, are to be publicly commended for swooping in with all the sensitivity of a charging rhino and instantly fining him an extra ten pounds for having the unheard of nerve to be dead and therefore being unable to pay you (some people really have no idea of priorities do they? It's your profit first, THEN anything else. The cheek!).

Boyden added that whatever his father-in-law is up to in the afterlife, watching TV on his Virgin subscription probably wasn't on the list:

I might pay it if you can prove to me he's been watching any of your channels in heaven, but given that British Sky Broadcasting is beamed in directly from the clouds I think he's much more likely to be enjoying that. Your infernal cable pipes seem only to come up from the ground (same location as Hell - spooky coincidence) where I imagine you train people in the art of customer service.

I am bitterly disappointed in your attitude, probably automatically generated by machine and unchecked by any caring human heart. The only saving grace is that my father-in-law had an excellent sense of humour and is probably laughing his arse off about this as we type, giving you the Vs, waving ten pound notes around, planning to haunt you and enjoying the content of Sky TV.

Virgin has since apologised and refunded the charge.

Author Pete Blackshaw described this phenomenon in Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000. Virgin may want to buy a few copies for its front office.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech.

Ridding your Chrome browser of Flash

I've been running Chrome for a couple of weeks without Flash and the differences are exhilarating.

• Fewer "disappearing pages"

• Fewer "sick" pages

• Zero "Flash not responding" pages

• Fewer reboots due to memory leaks

Best of all, most video sites no longer require Flash to deliver video streams (using HTML 5, I suppose).

Ready to take the plunge? It's simple. In your Chrome address bar, type about:plugins. You'll see something like this:


Find the Adobe Flash Player section and click any of the Disable links you see. If you have a master Disable link (see arrow), just click that one. Now close your browser and restart it.

My guess is you'll soon be enjoying your surfing experience a great deal more. And, as an added bonus, your security posture will be vastly improved.

WHOA: Mobile Apps Business Expected to Be Double the Size of the Entire Movie Industry... This Year

I really had no idea that revenues from the mobile app business will hit about $25 billion this year -- roughly double the revenue of every movie theater in America.

...The global apps business is expected to make $25 billion in revenue this year, up 62% from a year ago, according to Gartner. To put that in perspective, movie theaters sold less than half that dollar amount at the box office in 2012.

And we have a ton of apps to choose from: Apple’s store now has about 800,000 apps, compared with 700,000 on Google GOOG -0.28% Play, 125,000 on Windows and 70,000 for Amazon.

Yes, business is booming. But it’s also unpredictable. About 63% of the apps used daily now differ from those used daily a year ago. Our attention span is so short these days – and the competition is so fierce – that we soon move on to the latest and greatest app.

On average, we only focus on about eight apps at a time. And we use these apps more than you might think: The average smartphone user spends two hours a day with apps, more than double the time spent two years earlier...

...Where did we find all this free time?

It’s hard to say exactly — if you look at the following graphic, the amount of time watching television and surfing the Web is flat in the past couple of years. Of course, we often have apps running in the background, like music-streaming apps, allowing us to multitask.

So consumption of apps is catching up to television viewing – some might say that’s a good thing, that apps are more productive than watching “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

...But, as the following graphic shows, productivity apps capture just 2% of our time. Rather, games are stealing the most of our attention...

...43% of our time is spent catapulting angry birds at pigs and fighting monsters...

Thinking about developing your own mobile app? Have at it, but recognize that the odds are long.


Only five of the top 250 app publishers in the Apple Store are "virgins", the rest are reported to be veteran development shops. Electronic Arts, for instance, has dozens of bestselling apps and a marketing budget to match.

But a single good idea -- likes Tetris or Angry Birds, for instance -- can change the game. In truth, it's never been easier to write a software bestseller.

How Search Works: Fighting Spam

Google has introduced a new portal that attempts to clarify how their monumentally successful search engine actually works under the covers. One of the more interesting aspects of their presentation relates to the search engine's "War on Spam" -- bogus content of little or no value that is intended to deceive the search engine to generate traffic (and ad revenue).


It would appear that one of the more recent "innovations" in spam is hacking reputable sites for the purpose of influencing search-engine optimization (SEO) scores. Along with "Watering Hole Attacks," the trend of exploiting legitimate sites to effect malicious ends is certainly an ominous development.

Extremely valuable product review...

If you're in the market for Veet for Men Hair Removal Gel, this particular review may come in handy.

After having been told my danglies looked like an elderly rastafarian I decided to take the plunge and buy some of this as previous shaving attempts had only been mildly successful and I nearly put my back out trying to reach the more difficult bits. Being a bit of a romantic I thought I would do the deed on the missus's birthday as a bit of a treat.

I ordered it well in advance and working in the North Sea I considered myself a bit above some of the characters writing the previous reviews and wrote them off as soft office types... oh my fellow sufferers how wrong I was. I waited until the other half was tucked up in bed and after giving some vague hints about a special surprise I went down to the bathroom. Initially all went well and I applied the gel and stood waiting for something to happen. I didn't have long to wait.

At first there was a gentle warmth which in a matter of seconds was replaced by an intense burning and a feeling I can only describe as like being given a barbed wire wedgie by two people intent on hitting the ceiling with my head. Religion hadn't featured much in my life until that night but I suddenly became willing to convert to any religion to stop the violent burning around the turd tunnel and what seemed like the destruction of the meat and two veg.

Struggling to not bite through my bottom lip I tried to wash the gel of in the sink and only succeeded in blocking the plughole with a mat of hair. Through the haze of tears I struggled out of the bathroom across the hall into the kitchen by this time walking was not really possible and I crawled the final yard to the fridge in the hope of some form of cold relief. I yanked the freezer drawer out and found a tub of ice cream, tore the lid of and positioned it under me. The relief was fantastic but only temporary as it melted fairly quickly and the fiery stabbing soon returned.

Due to the shape of the ice cream tub I hadn't managed to give the starfish any treatment and I groped around in the drawer for something else as I was sure my vision was going to fail fairly soon.I grabbed a bag of what I later found out was frozen sprouts and tore it open trying to be quiet as I did so. I took a handful of them and tried in vain to clench some between the cheeks of my arse. This was not doing the trick as some of the gel had found it's way up the chutney channel and it felt like the space shuttle was running it's engines behind me.

This was probably and hopefully the only time in my life I was going to wish there was a gay snowman in the kitchen which should give you some idea of the depths I was willing to sink to in order to ease the pain. The only solution my pain crazed mind could come up with was to gently ease one of the sprouts where no veg had gone before.

Unfortunately, alerted by the strange grunts coming from the kitchen the other half chose that moment to come and investigate and was greeted by the sight of me, arse in the air, strawberry ice cream dripping from my bell end pushing a sprout up my arse while muttering..." Ooooh that feels good ". Understandably this was a shock to her and she let out a scream and as I hadn't heard her come in it caused an involuntary spasm of shock in myself which resulted in the sprout being ejected at quite some speed in her direction....

So to sum it up Veet removes hair, dignity and self respect...:)

Hat tip: @BritHume.

HOBBY LOBBY COUPONS: Show Your Support for the First Amendment

Michelle Malkin, among others, is encouraging Americans to support Hobby Lobby in its fight against Obamacare's unconstitutional abrogation of the First Amendment (see "Hobby Lobby Won't Violate Faith over Abortion Drugs").

It's going to be a long, expensive fight against Obamacare, and the company can use your help.

If you'd like to show your support with your pocket book, visit Hobby Lobby's coupon page for online and in-store deals.


Hat tip: BB.

My time in the 11th circle of hell, otherwise known as trying to get customer service from the cable company

The terms customer service and cable company go together about as well as Robb Stark and Cersei Lannister. Which, if you don't watch Game of Thrones, means they go together like the Bears and the Packers.

After more than 15 years of utilizing the fine, upstanding services of my cable provider, the latest outage debacle drove me over the edge. It was the final straw. It broke the camel's back. It was the end of the line. The final nail in the coffin. And other metaphors that indicate just how pissed off I was.

Here's what transpired:

Sunday 9:00am - All cable services go out. Every box in the Blog-Bunker™ is suddenly unable to connect. I initiate a web-chat with a representative on the well-designed support website (that's sarcasm - finding customer support is roughly akin to a Where's Waldo). The rep indicates that indeed, there is an outage in the area.

Sunday 9:00pm - Still assuming the neighborhood is experiencing an outage, all of the cable boxes remain dead.

Monday 6:00pm - Return from work. Cable is still out. Now questioning whether this is a neighborhood outage. I ask a neighbor if they are experiencing any issues. Nope. There's been no outage at all on our street. The web-chat representative "feedback" was completely bogus.

Monday 8:30pm - After at least four separate calls to, and web chats with, customer service -- and several escalations with "managers" -- the fastest anyone can get to our neighborhood is... wait for it... eight (8) days from now. I believe cable repair service at Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad was faster. We put in our request, with the oh-so-fine-grained repair window of sometime, eight days from now. Despite several threats to cancel service, no earlier date was offered.

Monday 8:55pm - After ruminating on the conversations with "customer service", I've decided I've had enough. After more than 15 years of various debacles, this is finally the last straw. I decide that I no longer deserve the luxurious, 12-star customer service offered by the cable company.

Monday 9:03pm - I call the customer cancellation line. After a short delay; I am told that... wait for it... canceling service can only be accomplished prior to 8:30pm or after 9:00am. Can I put a name in a queue to be called on my cell when they open in the morning? The rep almost laughs in my face. Aren't government-regulated monopolies super?

Tuesday 12:18pm - I enter the "service downgrade" queue for my area.

Tuesday 12:25am - I get an agent, who tells me that her phone system is acting up and she can't access my information because she's in the wrong region of the country to service the account. Perfect. She says they've been having phone system routing problems -- do tell? -- and she will transfer me to the correct queue.

Tuesday 12:28am - The new rep, who I believe is speaking into a diving mask, says that she can't perform any transactions at the moment. The systems, it would seem, are down, and she is unable to make changes. I will have to call back. Is there an estimated time that the systems will be back up? I'll give you one guess and "yes" isn't it.

Tuesday 07:05pm - I enter the cancellation queue; and, as you might expect, they're not going to make it easy to cancel services.

Tuesday 07:29pm - After 15 minutes, I am able to convince the very nice customer retention specialist that I really do want to quit the cable service. Amazingly, they can schedule the home visit and shutdown this coming SUNDAY within a 1-HOUR WINDOW.

Stunning. They can show up within a 1-hour window on a Sunday to turn the service off. To fix something? Not so much.

I did a quick, back-of-the-napkin estimate and discovered that I've probably spent about $36,000 with the company over the last 15 or so years. So the lifetime value of a typical customer is significant.

In fact, the company should call their "customer service" area the "customer annoyance" department, because I missed out on the actual "service" part and they seem to treat customers as a bother than anything else.

I'm interested in your opinions. Am I the one being unreasonable here?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *The most terrifying aspect of this debacle? There's at least a tiny bit of competition when it comes to television services. You can opt for DirecTV or Dish Network. You can get a broadband Internet connection and try Roku or a similar, IP-based service. Some lucky consumers even have two cable providers.

Now I ask you: can you imagine the customer service you'll get from the government-run healthcare system after Obamacare takes hold? Imagine the DMV the Social Security Office, only without the peppy and motivated employees. Faceless, nameless bureaucrats will be providing "customer service" and, thanks to civil service and public sector unions, firing a bad employee will require an Act of Congress.

When Obamacare is finished rolling out, there won't be any insurance companies left. A company forced to cover a pre-existing condition is somewhat akin to a home insurer having to cover a house after it's been set afire. Whatever you may call it, it's not insurance.

I have seen the future of health care: it's like cable customer service, only with your family's life at stake.

Wonderful: Facebook moves into online gambling

I didn't think running an electronic gambling establishment (even for other countries) was legal in the U.S., but what do I know?

Facebook has launched a bingo game that uses real money, only for users over age 18, in the UK. The "Bingo & Slots Friendzy" app has 90 slot machine and bingo games that take real money, not Facebook Credits.

The move could be a money maker for the company as Facebook takes 30% of the revenue. UK-based Gamesys, the app developer, will take the other 70% of revenue. Certainly it seems a positive move given all the negative attention the company has recieved.

In true Facebook fashion, activity on the app will appear in users' timelines, but Facebook's age-gating and geo-location technology will restrict those posts from appearing to underage users and those outside the UK.

Kewl! And maybe the app will automatically update the player's status to read, "I've got a serious gambling problem... please arrange an intervention for me!"

"Savor their sweet tears of despair"

Whoa. Reason asks the provocative question: "Do 3D Printers Make Prohibitions Impossible?"

The Web thingies are buzzing with news that a 3D printer — sort of a first-generation Star Trek replicator — was used to make a gun that actually goes bang when you pull the trigger. Aside from the sheer cool factor, the development makes it clear that a wide range of bans, restrictions and prohibitions are becoming increasingly unenforcable.

From ExtremeTech:

An American gunsmith has become the first person to construct and shoot a pistol partly made out of plastic, 3D-printed parts. The creator, user HaveBlue from the AR-15 forum, has reportedly fired 200 rounds with his part-plastic pistol without any sign of wear and tear.

HaveBlue’s custom creation is a .22-caliber pistol, formed from a 3D-printed AR-15 (M16) lower receiver, and a normal, commercial upper. In other words, the main body of the gun is plastic, while the chamber — where the bullets are actually struck — is solid metal.

The lower receiver was created using a fairly old school Stratasys 3D printer, using a normal plastic resin. HaveBlue estimates that it cost around $30 of resin to create the lower receiver, but “Makerbots and the other low cost printers exploding onto the market would bring the cost down to perhaps $10.” Commercial, off-the-shelf assault rifle lower receivers are a lot more expensive. ...

...HaveBlue's schematic, which he used on what's considered a relatively low-tech StrataSys 3D printer in these fast-moving times, are available at Thingiverse.

Scientists at the University of Glasgow have used a relatively low-cost system to synthesize chemical compounds, with the intention of developing the means to create custom drugs. That may well mean the end of the orphan drug problem around the word, and very real price drops on pharmaceuticals... From the BBC:

Researchers have used a £1,250 system to create a range of organic compounds and inorganic clusters - some of which are used to create cancer treatments... Longer term, the scientists say the process could be used to make customised medicines.

They predict the technique will be used by pharmaceutical firms within five years, and by the public within 20...

[The process] also holds out potential for evading yet another class of legal prohibitions on recreational drugs.

Think of it — a world of plenty, with easy localized manufacture of almost anything you might need. It's a world in which "that should be illegal" becomes a punch line.

The next time your control freak friends start in on their latest litany of should-be-banneds, tell them that their arguments are now irrelevant. Tell them why. And savor their sweet tears of despair.

To paraphrase Nicholas Negroponte, we are seeing the convergence of the "atom business" (physical intellectual property) with the "bit business" (virtual I.P.).

And virtual I.P. is exceedingly difficult to protect, as the RIAA found out.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com/Money.

Freelancer's Fast 50 Reveals Fastest Growing Tech Jobs

Interesting data from a roll-up of 190,000 tech job listings, with some observations after the table.

FREELANCER FAST 50 (FASTEST MOVERS)

Rank	Category	Q2 2012	Q1 2012	Growth
1	Word	1594	728	118.96%
2	Web Scraping	3232	2025	59.60%
3	Objective C	1809	1140	58.68%
4	User Interface / IA	1756	1234	42.30%
5	Mobile Phone	5709	4209	35.64%
6	iPhone	5112	3926	30.21%
7	iPad	2308	1826	26.40%
8	C Programming	2501	2068	20.94%
9	Android	3444	2859	20.46%
10	HTML5	2108	1763	19.57%
11	PDF	1647	1385	18.92%
12	Virtual Assistant	3770	3202	17.74%
13	jQuery / Prototype	2247	1927	16.61%
14	Data Processing	21274	18331	16.05%
15	Excel	22947	20282	13.14%
16	Software Architecture	5095	4530	12.47%
17	Shopping Carts	2647	2370	11.69%
18	Telemarketing	1104	999	10.51%
19	Banner Design	1810	1672	8.25%
20	Technical Writing	2250	2119	6.18%
21	Copy Typing	2835	2709	4.65%
22	Logo Design	5768	5569	3.57%
23	Linux	1270	1239	2.50%
24	Magento	1752	1723	1.68%
25	Social Networking	5308	5250	1.10%
26	Website Design	23098	22945	0.67%
27	Data Entry	30943	30805	0.45%
28	Illustrator	2096	2103	-0.33%
29	HTML	22281	22533	-1.12%
30	Twitter	2184	2213	-1.31%
31	Flash	2522	2594	-2.78%
32	PHP	29381	30254	-2.89%
33	Article Submission	2681	2792	-3.98%
34	Proofreading	1377	1447	-4.84%
35	Internet Marketing	13848	14667	-5.58%
36	AJAX	3709	3978	-6.76%
37	Report Writing	1220	1313	-7.08%
38	SEO	9397	10133	-7.26%
39	C++ Programming	1921	2074	-7.38%
40	Link Building	6529	7120	-8.30%
41	C# Programming	1935	2122	-8.81%
42	Article Rewriting	6298	6941	-9.26%
43	Blog	3581	4086	-12.36%
44	Customer Support	1022	1171	-12.72%
45	Facebook	6510	7537	-13.63%
46	Articles	11282	13064	-13.64%
47	Academic Writing	3579	4219	-15.17%
48	eBay	1042	1284	-18.85%
49	Classifieds Posting	661	826	-19.98%
50	.NET	2919	4748	-38.52%

Mobile and user experience (UX) is hotter than a firecracker.

In what may be an anomaly, Microsoft's .NET stack fell off a cliff this quarter.

Open standards, with HTML 5, Javascript and the ubiquitous jQuery, continue to dominate.

Chart: What your social networking usage says about your politics

Spotted at The Big Picture:

I have no idea what to make of this chart, other than the appearance that electronic commerce is powered -- in large part -- by conservatives.

Keeping your online identity safe now that every tweet in history is going to be saved in the National Archives

Theresa Payton, writing at Infosec Island, has some solid advice for Twitter users.

We have mentioned before that Twitter will send every tweet to the National Archives and the Library of Congress, so watch what you tweet.

...New tools are popping up and they can unleash a treasure trove of data in moments.  For the 140 million and growing user base that tweets over 400 million tweets per day this might be a little more than alarming.

...In the early days, people were tweeting, uploading pictures with geocodes, doing location check ins.  Many felt like they were just sharing all this information with a small group of people.

But these tweets leave behind clues that tell bad guys, potential employers, people you might date, people you might want to forget a lot about you.

What you may not realize is, that all Twitter accounts are searchable.  To test it on yourself and loved ones, try a tool like Topsy  http://topsy.com/

Tips to Stay Safe:

1.  Tweet about a location AFTER you leave

2.  Think about the tweets you do, do they show a pattern of behavior that puts you in the best light for those that don’t know you?  do they provide patterns that you would not want a bad guy to see?

3.  If you post photos make sure geocodes are turned off unless you like someone tracking your digital tracks.

RESOURCES:

Here are a few of the Twitter search tools out there:

• Check out the tool Topsy at http://topsy.com

• You can search for links that have been posted using Backtweets: http://backtweets.com

• If you want to look for local tweeps that leave their location information turned on, check out Nearby Tweets: http://nearbytweets.com

• If you want to see what tweets are the most popular, try searching on Tweetmeme: http://tweetmeme.com

• Anyone that wants to track tweets by a specific location, including one on a Google Map, try Areaface: http://www.areaface.com

In general, disclose as little about yourself online as you possibly can. And a little misinformation always helps too.