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n2doc's JournalWhite House Website Includes Unique Non-Cookie Tracker, Conflicts With Privacy Policy
Yesterday, ProPublica reported on new research by a team at KU Leuven and Princeton on canvas fingerprinting. One of the most intrusive users of the technology is a company called AddThis, who by are employing it in “shadowing visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn.com.” Canvas fingerprinting allows sites to get even more identifying information than we had previously warned about with our Panopticlick fingerprinting experiment.
Canvas fingerprinting exploits the fact that different browsers have slightly different algorithms, parameters, and hardware for turning text into pictures on your screen (or more specifically, into an HTML 5 canvas object that the tracker can read1). According to the research by Gunes Acar, et al., AddThis draws a hidden image containing the unusual phrase “Cwm fjordbank glyphs vext quiz” and observed the way the pixels would turn out differently on different systems.
While YouPorn quickly removed AddThis after the report was published, the White House website still contains AddThis code. Some White House pages obviously include the AddThis button, such as the White House Blog, and a link to the AddThis privacy policy.
Other pages, like the White House’s own Privacy Policy, load javascript from AddThis, but do not otherwise indicate that AddThis is present. To pick the most ironic example, if you go to the page for the White House policy for third-party cookies, it loads the “addthis_widget.js.” This script, in turn, references “core143.js,” which has a “canvas” function and the tell-tale “Cwm fjordbank glyphs vext quiz” phrase.
more
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/white-house-website-includes-unique-non-cookie-tracker-despite-privacy-policy
This is what a three-story, $500K closet looks like
If you were ever wondering how to throw the perfect party in a closet, this Texas woman knows the secret: all it takes is a wonderful caterer, lots of champagne, a DJ ... oh, and a gigantic, three story, 3,000 square foot "she cave."
Theresa Roemer's closet, recently added to her Houston area home at a cost of about $500,000, is nothing short of amazing: a spiral staircase leads up through boutique style shelving showing off handbag upon handbag, jewels, perfume and shoes (OMG, shoes like nothing you have seen!).
The former Miss Texas United America's closet was featured in a new blog post by department store Neiman Marcus ... which theoretically could consider opening the giant closet as a new local retail department.
"It started years ago when I had a closet party and all the girls came over and they said, 'I just wish it was bigger,'" That's when the glamorous fundraiser realized size was key after all, "Since then it's just been getting bigger and bigger and bigger, it's like a 'she cave'." Roemer said.
At 3,000 square feet, her female version of the already famous "man-cave" is twice the size – if not larger – of many family homes.
more
http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/This-is-what-a-3-story-500K-closet-looks-like-5631395.php#photo-6614482
NASA's Fermi finds a 'transformer' pulsar
These artist's renderings show one model of pulsar J1023 before (top) and after (bottom) its radio beacon (green) vanished. Normally, the pulsar's wind staves off the companion's gas stream. When the stream surges, an accretion disk forms and gamma-ray particle jets (magenta) obscure the radio beam.
In late June 2013, an exceptional binary containing a rapidly spinning neutron star underwent a dramatic change in behavior never before observed. The pulsar's radio beacon vanished, while at the same time the system brightened fivefold in gamma rays, the most powerful form of light, according to measurements by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
"It's almost as if someone flipped a switch, morphing the system from a lower-energy state to a higher-energy one," said Benjamin Stappers, an astrophysicist at the University of Manchester, England, who led an international effort to understand this striking transformation. "The change appears to reflect an erratic interaction between the pulsar and its companion, one that allows us an opportunity to explore a rare transitional phase in the life of this binary."
A binary consists of two stars orbiting around their common center of mass. This system, known as AY Sextantis, is located about 4,400 light-years away in the constellation Sextans. It pairs a 1.7-millisecond pulsar named PSR J1023+0038 -- J1023 for short -- with a star containing about one-fifth the mass of the sun. The stars complete an orbit in only 4.8 hours, which places them so close together that the pulsar will gradually evaporate its companion.
When a massive star collapses and explodes as a supernova, its crushed core may survive as a compact remnant called a neutron star or pulsar, an object squeezing more mass than the sun's into a sphere no larger than Washington, D.C. Young isolated neutron stars rotate tens of times each second and generate beams of radio, visible light, X-rays and gamma rays that astronomers observe as pulses whenever the beams sweep past Earth. Pulsars also generate powerful outflows, or "winds," of high-energy particles moving near the speed of light. The power for all this comes from the pulsar's rapidly spinning magnetic field, and over time, as the pulsars wind down, these emissions fade.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140722120452.htm
U.S. Senate Sets $225 Million for Israel's Iron Dome in Emergency Bill
Source: NYT/Reuters
U.S. Senate Democrats included $225 million for Israel's Iron Dome rocket interception system in an emergency funding bill on Tuesday that also cut $1 billion from President Barack Obama's request for $3.7 billion to deal with thousands of undocumented child immigrants.
"Israel is an essential American ally and needs these assets to defend itself," said Maryland Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in a statement.
More than 600 people - most of them Palestinians - have been killed in the current conflict between Israel and militants in Gaza. On Tuesday, Israel pounded targets across the Gaza Strip, saying no ceasefire was near.
Israel said the Iron Dome has intercepted about a fifth of more than 2,000 rockets militants have fired at Israel during the current conflict.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/07/22/us/politics/22reuters-palestinians-israel-irondome-congress.html?_r=0
Jimmy Carter calls for end to fighting in Gaza
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has called for an end to the fighting and bombing in Gaza.
“Both sides must distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, and Israel must ensure that its use of force is proportionate in accordance with international humanitarian law. More immediately, all combat operations must stop, and Israeli troops should withdraw from Gaza,” Carter said in a statement released Tuesday.
So far, more than 600 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the fighting, according to reports. The Israeli death toll is estimated at 29, including two civilians.
Humantarian groups have also called for an end to the fighting, citing the civilian loss of life as well as deteriorating conditions in the area.
Carter also called on the international community to use a ceasefire agreement to ” advance the reunification of Palestine if there is to be sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The agreement must include implementation and international monitoring mechanisms.”
http://www.ajc.com/news/lifestyles/carter-calls-for-end-to-fighting-in-gaza/ngkdw/
Can this woman convince Elizabeth Warren to run for president?
By Nia-Malika Henderson
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has had a good, strong run of public appearances and headlines over the last several days, further driving the presidential buzz surrounding her.
She showed up in West Virginia July 14 to rally Democrats around long-shot Senate candidate Natalie Tennant, testing whether her brand of Northeastern liberalism could play in an increasingly conservative state. The standing-room-only crowd that cheered her fiery message suggested that she passed that test.
Known for taking the big banks to the woodshed in several Senate hearings, Warren also added to her greatest video hits on July 15 with a tough grilling of Federal Reserve Janet Yellen.
…
She The People reached out to Erica Sagrans, the 31-year old campaign manager for the Warren-in-waiting presidential campaign. Sagrans has never met Warren, who is not affiliated with the Ready for Warren group, but she could be one of the key people that could convince Warren to run for the White House.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/07/22/can-this-woman-convince-elizabeth-warren-to-run-for-president/
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