"Less than 12 hours after the U.S. launched a virtual embassy for Iran, the Iranian government blocked access to the website, directing visitors to a government page proclaiming the site illegal. The White House condemned the move, calling Iran's internet policies 'an electronic curtain of surveillance and censorship around its people.'"

"A Panavision PSR 35 mm motion picture camera used by George Lucas to film Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hopewas was sold for $625,000 surpassing all expectations and setting new world record. The camera package included a Panaspeed motor, matte box, follow focus, a Moy geared head, Italian-made Elemack camera dolly and lens and two 1000 ft. magazines. True Star Wars fans will be delighted to know the camera is still functional and has been completely restored."

"The first man-made craft to do so is now entering a 'cosmic purgatory' between solar systems and entering an interstellar space of the Milky Way Galaxy. With much anticipation, Voyager 1 is now 'in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system. Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back.' After three decades the spacecraft is still operating and apparently has enough power and fuel to continue to do so until 2020. The first big piece of news? 'We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity. We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us. We are evidently traveling in completely new territory. Scientists had suggested previously that there might be a stagnation layer, but we weren't sure it existed until now.' This process could take months to years to completely leave the outer shell but already scientists are receiving valuable information."
"Antivirus firm Sophos acquired a passel of USB sticks lost by commuters on trains in the Greater Sydney metro area at an auction organized by the Rail Corporation New South Wales. The company analyzed 50 USB sticks and found that not a single one was encrypted and 33 of them were infected with at least one type of malware."

"Jailbreaking is a way to break off from the limitations imposed by the mobile vendor to download additional applications and themes etc. which aren't available otherwise. It provides root access to the device by use of custom kernels. It is common with the iDevices and has been rendered legal by the efforts of EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) in July 2010. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is nowdetermined to make Jailbreaking legal for all the consumer electric goods. They have asked the US copyright office to declare it legal to jailbreak all the devices like smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles etc. no matter who the vendor is. The aim behind this plead is tochange the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits such an access to the user."

"...A Microsoft vice president announced that the Windows 8 beta would begin in late February 2012. The beta will be feature-complete and will allow developers to begin listing their apps in the Store. The timing of the beta is curious, and ultimately quite telling. ... The first public build of Windows 8 ... emerged in mid-September 2011; by the time the beta rolls around, it will have been ruminating for more than five months. If we follow the timeline forward — it took 10 months for Windows 7 to go from beta to public release — then it'spossible that Windows 8 might arrive just in time for Black Friday 2012, or perhaps not in 2012 at all. Will its late arrival affect its chances of cutting out a swath of the tablet market from Apple and Android? Or will Windows 8 be different enough that it will do well, no matter when it arrives?"In related news, an anonymous reader notes that IDC predicts Windows 8 will be irrelevant to the traditional PC market.

"The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the MythBusters accidentally sent a cannon ball hurtling through Dublinthis afternoon, punching through a home, bouncing across a six-lane road, and ultimately coming to a rest inside a now-demolished Toyota minivan. Amazingly, there were no injuries. The ball was fired from a home-made cannon at the Alameda County Sheriff's Department bomb range, and was intended to strike a water target. Instead the ball missed the water, punched through a cinder-block wall, and skipped off the hill behind. Prior to today, the MythBusters had been shooting episodes at the bomb range for over seven years without major incident. It is not clear whether Savage/Hyneman or Belleci/Imahara/Byron were conducting the experiment."
Consequences of parking like an idiot:
Los Angeles has become the first major US city to declare that corporations are not people, and that money is not free speech.
TIL that near Chernobyl there's a fungus that feeds on radiation
Please donate to the Internet Archive
Los Angeles votes unanimously for an end to "corporate personhood." This is the first major city to deny corporations constitutional rights and using money as a form of free speech since corporations used the 14th Amendment (meant for freed slaves) as a loophole for more rights.
Spend one night. I dare you.
TIL that Switzerland is the only country in the world that requires all of its citizens to have 24/7 access to a bunker. 
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