Salon.com > Technology http://www.salon.com Wed, 22 May 2013 00:22:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Snapchat is secretly storing your photos http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/aspiring_sexters_take_note_snapchat_doesnt_delete_your_photos_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/aspiring_sexters_take_note_snapchat_doesnt_delete_your_photos_partner/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 21:47:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13305037 The Daily Dot

We all knew it was too good to be true. Snapchat, the photo-texting app designed to delete your pictures soon after they’re received, is supposed to be a completely safe way to send naughty pics to your significant other without consequences.

But for $300 to $500, you could retain any photos a person has sent you. Want your sexy snapchats back? Just call Richard Hickman, of Utah security firm Decipher Forensics, who says he can get back the photos in just six hours.

That’s because the photos remain stored deep inside Android smartphones—in a folder called RECEIVED_IMAGES_SNAPS. Rather than deleting the files, Snapchat actually just turns them into reusable data with a .NOMEDIA extension, which makes the photos invisible to most people. But do a bit of forensic research and voila! The pictures are viewable once again.

The photos can then be passed on to parents, lawyers, revenge-porn sites and the police.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/aspiring_sexters_take_note_snapchat_doesnt_delete_your_photos_partner/feed/ 0 Apple’s biggest sin: Popularity http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/apples_biggest_sin_popularity/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/apples_biggest_sin_popularity/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 20:47:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13304930 It's causing me heartburn to admit this out loud, but when I saw the first tweet reporting Rand Paul's declaration that Congress was bullying Apple and forcing it to sit through a "show trial" -- as if CEO Tim Cook was a member of the Bolshevik old guard about to be purged by Joseph Stalin on bogus conspiracy charges -- I found myself inclined to agree with the Kentucky senator.

I don't condone Apple's tax-avoidance schemes, but the company is hardly alone in taking advantage of loopholes in U.S and Irish tax law. The Wikipedia page that details the two key strategies employed by Apple, the Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich, lists 12 other major U.S. corporations that are pulling the same flim-flam. Among them are Apple's tech sector colleagues -- Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook and Adobe Systems -- along with General Electric, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Starbucks.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/apples_biggest_sin_popularity/feed/ 13 Facebook’s hate speech problem http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/facebooks_hate_speech_problem/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/facebooks_hate_speech_problem/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 20:39:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13304823 When three Chicago area teens were charged over the weekend with raping a 12-year-old girl -- and then posting a video of the assault on their Facebook pages -- it was a tale that was as revolting as it was entirely plausible. After all, you don't have to look far at all on Facebook to find images of women being degraded, or for groups devoted to laughing off violence against women. But a bold open letter to Facebook released on Tuesday is hoping to turn the tide.

In the letter, Jaclyn Friedman of Women, Action, & the Media, writer Soraya Chemaly and the Everyday Sexism Project's Laura Bates, along with dozens of other activists and groups, call on Facebook to "Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech" and train its moderators to recognize and remove it. It asks Facebook users to "contact advertisers whose ads on Facebook appear next to content that targets women for violence." It's an oft-made request. But maybe this time, it'll be heard.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/facebooks_hate_speech_problem/feed/ 29 Amazon set to launch fine-art gallery http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/amazon_set_to_launch_fine_arts_gallery_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/amazon_set_to_launch_fine_arts_gallery_partner/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 20:24:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13304653 Hyperallergic

 

This day may have been inevitable, but now it’s finally here. In its attempt to take over the world -- or at least everything that can be bought and sold in the world -- Amazon is launching an art gallery.

There aren’t many available details yet about the endeavor, but an email announcement for an informational event was forwarded to Hyperallergic. It reads:

This summer, Amazon is planning to launch a Fine Art Gallery where customers will be able to purchase original artwork offered by a select group of invited galleries via Amazon.com. You are cordially invited to a special event in New York where we will introduce the Amazon Art marketplace to New York galleries … We have received overwhelming support from the galleries that have already joined the platform, and we would love the opportunity to offer your gallery’s selection in the Amazon Art store.

We reached out to Amazon for more information, but a public relations representative at the company replied, “We’re not able to comment at this time but stay tuned.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/amazon_set_to_launch_fine_arts_gallery_partner/feed/ 0 Twitter torches Dan Brown’s “Inferno” http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/dan_browns_inferno_spawns_viral_twitter_parody_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/dan_browns_inferno_spawns_viral_twitter_parody_partner/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 18:42:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13304719 The Daily DotDan Brown just published a new novel. It’s hard to miss, what with there being a tower of "Infernos" beside every supermarket checkout. Soon, your mom and co-workers will be asking you what you thought of the Big Twist at the end when Robert Langdon uncovers whichever conspiracy it is this time round. Then in 18 months, the whole cycle will begin anew when the inevitable Tom Hanks movie juggernaut rolls out.

While Dan Brown books are page-turners, they’re also littered with wordcount-boosting details, like the specific height of buildings or the exact make and model of Langdon’s current vehicle of choice. And let’s not even start on the bizarre mixed metaphors.

It’s pretty easy to make fun of Dan Brown. Just ask Telegraph columnist Michael Deacon, whose written-in-the-style-of-Dan-Brown "Inferno" review went viral last week. "Inferno" may have a ready-made readership of millions of "Da Vinci Code" fans, but it’s hard to deny that Brown’s writing style reads like a cross between a Wikipedia entry and the internal monologue of an art history professor.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/dan_browns_inferno_spawns_viral_twitter_parody_partner/feed/ 5 Looting in Oklahoma? http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/rampant_looting_after_oklahoma_tornado_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/rampant_looting_after_oklahoma_tornado_partner/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 18:26:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13304729 Looting. Almost immediately, the word creeps into the conversation.

It’s a word we need to be careful with.

Less than 24 hours after the tornado struck Moore, Okla., looting became part of the story. The word, and outrage about it, are all over Twitter. Most tweets don’t name the source for the rumor. Here’s the most trustworthy tweet I saw early this morning:

KFOR reporter says docs told her of looting at hospital damaged by the Moore Tornado. — Andy Carvin (@acarvin) May 20, 2013

The tweet is from Andy Carvin, NPR’s senior strategist. I saw it because it was retweeted by Rukmini Callimachi, a terrific AP staffer based in West Africa.

Which is to say, I trust Callimachi, who brought me this information from a source who also seems reputable. When you’re getting your news from Twitter, trust is everything. On the other hand, this also isn’t that much information. Trustworthy as Carvin seems, as best I can tell, he’s a guy who was watching TV or read somewhere about what was broadcast on TV, and he’s tweeting what another reporter said that someone told her.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/rampant_looting_after_oklahoma_tornado_partner/feed/ 2 Wikipedia cleans up its mess http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/wikipedia_cleans_up_its_mess/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/wikipedia_cleans_up_its_mess/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 16:31:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13304601 The wrath of Wikipedia has fallen hard on Robert Clark Young, aka "Qworty," the novelist/Wikipedia editor who took advantage of online anonymity to pursue vendettas against other writers with whom he had long been feuding. "Malicious editing in conflict of interest" is a venal Wikipedia sin, and Qworty's entire history of editing is now being scoured from top to bottom.

Qworty has been "blocked indefinitely" from editing for violating Wikipedia's policies on how to write biographies of living persons, " harassment and (frankly) repeatedly lying to the community." An investigation is also currently under way to determine whether Young was guilty of operating multiple "sock puppets" -- pseudonymous personas designed specifically to hide Young's true identity. The backlash has been so fierce that both Qworty's User page and Talk page have been "blanked as a courtesy," presumably to protect the pages from repeat vandalism by his angry editor colleagues.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/wikipedia_cleans_up_its_mess/feed/ 18 You are less beautiful than you think http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/you_are_less_beautiful_than_you_think_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/you_are_less_beautiful_than_you_think_partner/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 16:20:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13304570 Scientific American

In April 15, 2013, Dove launched a 3-minute video entitled “Dove Real Beauty Sketches.” The video achieved instant popularity and has been watched millions of times -- a successful viral campaign which has been widely talked about. In the video, a small group of women are asked to describe their faces to a person whom they cannot see. The person is a forensic artist who is there to draw pictures of the women based on their verbal descriptions. A curtain separates the artist and the women, and they never see each other. Before all this, each woman is asked to socialize with a stranger, who later separately describes the woman to the forensic artist. In the end, the women are shown the two drawings, one based on their own description, the other based on the stranger’s description. Much to their amazement and delight, the women realize that the drawings based on strangers’ descriptions depict much more beautiful women. The video ends: “You are more beautiful than you think.”

The idea is quite appealing. Perhaps too many women are unhappy with their looks. It would be a big relief if we all suddenly realized, like Christian Andersen’s ugly duckling, that we are in fact beautiful.

However, what Dove is suggesting is not actually true. The evidence from psychological research suggests instead that we tend to think of our appearance in ways that are more flattering than are warranted. This seems to be part of a broader human tendency to see ourselves through rose-colored glasses. Most of us think that we are better than we actually are -- not just physically, but in every way.

The most direct evidence that the Dove commercial is misleading comes from the work of Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago and Erin Whitchurch of the University of Virginia. In a series of studies, Epley and Whitchurch showed that we see ourselves as better looking than we actually are. The researchers took pictures of study participants and, using a computerized procedure, produced more attractive and less attractive versions of those pictures. Participants were told that they would be presented with a series of images including their original picture and images modified from that picture. They were then asked to identify the unmodified picture. They tended to select an attractively enhanced one.

Epley and Whitchurch showed that people display this bias for themselves but not for strangers. The same morphing procedure was applied to a picture of a stranger, whom the study participant met three weeks earlier during an unrelated study. Participants tended to select the unmodified picture of the stranger.

People tend to say that an attractively enhanced picture is their own, but Epley and Whitchurch wanted to be sure that people truly believe what they say. People recognize objects more quickly when those objects match their mental representations. Therefore, if people truly believe that an attractively enhanced picture is their own, they should recognize that picture more quickly, which is exactly what the researchers found.

Inflated perceptions of one’s physical appearance is a manifestation of a general phenomenon psychologists call “self-enhancement.” Researchers have shown that people overestimate the likelihood that they would engage in a desirable behavior but are remarkably accurate when predicting the behavior of a stranger. For example, people overestimate the amount of money they would donate to charity while accurately predicting others’ donations. Similarly, people overestimate their likelihood to vote in an upcoming presidential election, while accurately predicting others’ likelihood to vote.

Most people believe that they are above average, a statistical impossibility. The above average effects, as they are called, are common. For example, 93 percent of drivers rate themselves as better than the median driver. Of college professors, 94 percent say that they do above-average work. People are unrealistically optimistic about their own health risks compared with those of other people. For example, people think that they are less susceptible to the flu than others. Stock pickers think the stocks they buy are more likely to end up winners than those of the average investor. If you think that self-enhancement biases exist in other people and they do not apply to you, you are not alone. Most people state that they are more likely than others to provide accurate self-assessments.

Why do we have positively enhanced self-views? The adaptive nature of self-enhancement might be the answer. Conveying the information that one has desirable characteristics is beneficial in a social environment. People may try to deceive others about their characteristics, but deception has two main disadvantages. First, it is cognitively taxing because the deceiver has to hold two conflicting representations of reality in mind: the true state of affairs and the deception. The resulting cognitive load reduces performance in other cognitive functions. Second, people are good at detecting deception and they show strong negative emotional reactions toward deceivers. Since in self-enhancement people truly believe that they have desirable characteristics, they can promote themselves without having to lie. Self-enhancement also boosts confidence. Researchers have shown that confidence plays a role in determining whom people choose as leaders and romantic partners. Confident people are believed more and their advice is more likely to be followed.

Dove’s premise is wrong. But thinking we are more beautiful than we really are may not be such a bad thing.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/you_are_less_beautiful_than_you_think_partner/feed/ 20 Should wunderkinds be allowed to drop out of high school? http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/should_wunderkinds_be_allowed_to_drop_out_of_high_school_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/should_wunderkinds_be_allowed_to_drop_out_of_high_school_ap/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 15:06:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13304504 NEW YORK (AP) — Thomas Sohmers, 17, of Hudson, Mass., has been working at a research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since he was 13, developing projects ranging from augmented reality eyewear to laser communications systems. This spring, his mom, Penny Mills, let him drop out of 11th grade. She says she "could see how much of the work he was doing at school wasn't relevant to what he wanted to learn."

On Monday, Thomas and his mom learned that he is in esteemed company as a high-school dropout with a knack for computers: David Karp, 26, sold Tumblr, the online blogging forum he created, to Yahoo for $1.1 billion.

Examples of tech geniuses who lack college degrees are well-known — Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg among them. But Karp left high school after his freshman year, with his mother's blessing, at the tender age of 14.

Critics say dropping out of school to pursue a dream is a terrible idea. Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford Law School who teaches and advises startup companies, says it's like "buying a lottery ticket — that's how good your odds are here. More likely than not, you will become unemployed. For every success, there are 100,000 failures."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/should_wunderkinds_be_allowed_to_drop_out_of_high_school_ap/feed/ 6 Don’t cry climate-change wolf http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/dont_cry_climate_change_wolf/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/dont_cry_climate_change_wolf/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 00:15:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13304065 As soon as pictures and videos of the devastation in Moore, Oklahoma, started to spread through social media networks, so too did the angry and anguished tweets about climate change.

[embedtweet id="336595951336685568"]

It's an understandable reaction. We don't know for sure yet, but Monday's tornado may turn out to be the worst ever on record. In the larger context of a world in which extreme weather events appear to be increasing in frequency and intensity, it's natural to look for a culprit when confronted with unthinkable carnage.

In the New Yorker, Amy Davidson reflected the same urge, while being careful not to make a direct connection between climate change and tornadoes.

Every extreme weather event these days provokes questions about climate change; that is because, as Elizabeth Kolbert notes in this week’s Comment, the climate has changed extremely. Tornadoes, as it happens, have been an area of some controversy: two years ago saw a spike, but then last year a low. We’ll see; it will be for scientists to sort out how currents and temperatures and other factors fed into this storm. Climate change means, more than all the lines on charts always going in one direction, that the weather rhythms we think we know by heart, and that we’ve built our cities and lives around, are all out of sync.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/21/dont_cry_climate_change_wolf/feed/ 113 Apple uses foreign companies to avoid billions in taxes http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/apple_uses_foreign_companies_to_avoid_billions_in_taxes_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/apple_uses_foreign_companies_to_avoid_billions_in_taxes_ap/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 21:26:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13303882 WASHINGTON - Apple Inc. employs a group of affiliate companies located outside the United States to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes, a Senate investigation has found.

The world's most valuable company is holding overseas some $102 billion of its $145 billion in cash, and an Irish subsidiary that earned $22 billion in 2011 paid only $10 million in taxes, according to the report issued Monday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The strategies Apple uses are legal, and many other multinational corporations use similar tax techniques to avoid paying U.S. income taxes on profits they reap overseas. But Apple uses a unique twist, the report found. The company's tactics raise questions about loopholes in the U.S. tax code, lawmakers say.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/apple_uses_foreign_companies_to_avoid_billions_in_taxes_ap/feed/ 9 Gitmo hunger striker launches Twitter campaign http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/gitmo_hunger_striker_launches_twitter_campaign/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/gitmo_hunger_striker_launches_twitter_campaign/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 19:43:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13303706 It is a tragic state of affairs when more than 100 men starve themselves, some close to death, in protest of human rights abrogations -- and Twitter is needed to gain them attention. But here we are, more than 100 days into the Guantanamo Bay hunger strike, and one starving detainee is turning -- through his attorneys -- to social media.

Shaker Aamer, a Saudi citizen and former British resident, has been held without charge in the camp for 11 years. The British government has vowed to pursue his release, but currently, Aamer continues to be incarcerated and is on hunger strike. He has lost a quarter of his body weight. Wired reported Monday that Aamer is "is hoping that Twitter can help him." Via Spencer Ackerman:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/gitmo_hunger_striker_launches_twitter_campaign/feed/ 0 How to screw up Tumblr http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/how_to_screw_up_tumblr/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/how_to_screw_up_tumblr/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 16:25:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13303457 In her announcement of Yahoo's purchase of Tumblr for $1.1 billion, CEO Marissa Mayer promised "We won't screw this up." Rhetorically, that's almost always a bad move. For a CEO, not screwing something up should be the default position, the operating assumption. The possibility of failure need not, and should not, ever be voiced. As soon as you make a promise like that explicit, you sow more doubt and uncertainty into an already fertile territory of fear.

Mayer was trying to be hip, trying to reassure Tumbler's young userbase in the same language that the blogging service's founder and CEO, David Karp, uses to communicates with his audience. Karp signed off his announcement of the deal with a gleeful "Fuck yeah." But note the difference: Karp exuded confidence while Mayer projected massive corporate low self-esteem.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/how_to_screw_up_tumblr/feed/ 9 Yahoo shells out $1.1 billion for Tumblr http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/yahoo_shells_out_1_1_billion_for_tumblr_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/yahoo_shells_out_1_1_billion_for_tumblr_ap/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 14:49:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13303350 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Yahoo is buying online blogging forum Tumblr for $1.1 billion as CEO Marissa Mayer tries to rejuvenate an Internet icon that had fallen behind the times.

The deal announced Monday represents Mayer's boldest move yet since she left Google 10 months ago to lead Yahoo's latest comeback attempt. It marks Yahoo's most expensive acquisition since the Sunnyvale, Calif., company bought online search engine Overture a decade ago for $1.3 billion in cash and stock.

Yahoo is paying all cash for Tumblr, dipping into some of its remaining stash from a $7.6 billion windfall reaped last year from selling about half of its stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba Holdings Group. Taking over Tumblr will devour about one-fifth of the $5.4 billion in cash that Yahoo had in its accounts at the end of March.

While hailing Tumblr as fount of creativity that attracts 300 million visitors per month, Yahoo pledged "not to screw it up." David Karp, a high school dropout who started Tumblr six years ago, will remain in control of the service in an effort to retain the same "irreverence, wit and commitment to empower creators," Yahoo said.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/yahoo_shells_out_1_1_billion_for_tumblr_ap/feed/ 2 Chinese hackers resume attacks against U.S. http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/chinese_hackers_resume_attacks_against_u_s/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/chinese_hackers_resume_attacks_against_u_s/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 13:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13303292 It had been three months since regular cyberattacks aimed at gaining information from U.S. companies and government agencies were traced to the Chinese military. Some commentators thought that the naming in the U.S. media of the PLA unit linked to a spate of attacks (including against the AP and the New York Times) had pushed the Chinese hackers into inaction. However, according to the Times Monday, "Unit 61398, whose well-guarded 12-story white headquarters on the edges of Shanghai became the symbol of Chinese cyberpower, is back in business, according to American officials and security companies."

Chinese officials have continuously denied that their military is connected to cyberattacks against the U.S., while the White House has warned China against continued data theft attacks.

Via the Times:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/chinese_hackers_resume_attacks_against_u_s/feed/ 0 Must-see morning clip: Facial recognition software identifies “faceprints” http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/must_see_morning_clip_facial_recognition_software_identifies_faceprints/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/must_see_morning_clip_facial_recognition_software_identifies_faceprints/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 13:15:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13303304 Law enforcement agencies are exploring facial recognition software, which can identify even a partially hidden face in a crowd, with technology that can maps a face and create something as unique as a fingerprint: a faceprint.

But "while government has all kinds of restrictions," on this type of software, says facial recognition software pioneer Joseph Atick, "big business is free to do this kind of surveillance."

There are "no rules for commercial companies," he says.

From CBS:

"What's unique about face recognition is the fact that you can do it surreptitiously, from a distance, and continually," explains Joseph Atick, one of the pioneers in developing facial recognition. Two decades ago, as a young scientist, he helped make the technology work. Now it gives him pause. "Big Brother is no longer big government; Big Brother is big business."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/20/must_see_morning_clip_facial_recognition_software_identifies_faceprints/feed/ 4 Facebook “like” on trial in Virginia http://www.salon.com/2013/05/19/facebook_like_on_trial_in_virginia_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/19/facebook_like_on_trial_in_virginia_partner/#comments Sun, 19 May 2013 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13302067 The Daily DotWhen the founders first drafted the Bill of Rights, they never could have imagined that a single click of a mouse would one day demand protection under the First Amendment.

But that's exactly the argument that was made this week by attorneys in Virginia federal appeals court, where judges are set to revisit the issue of whether or not a Facebook like qualifies as protected speech.

The three-judge panel heard oral arguments and is poised to deliver a ruling on the case of six former employees of the Hampton, Va., sheriff's department who say they were fired for liking their boss's political rival on Facebook during a 2009 campaign. Along with attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and Facebook itself, the fired employees' lawyers are attempting to reverse a lower court ruling that argued Facebook likes are not substantive enough to be protected by the First Amendment.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/19/facebook_like_on_trial_in_virginia_partner/feed/ 6 Top 5 investigative videos of the week: Nailing a dictator http://www.salon.com/2013/05/19/top_5_investigative_videos_of_the_week_nailing_a_dictator_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/19/top_5_investigative_videos_of_the_week_nailing_a_dictator_partner/#comments Sun, 19 May 2013 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13302172 This week’s top video picks include naked citizens and how to nail a dictator (though, unfortunately, not in the same film).

For a first look at more stories like these, please take a moment to subscribe to The I Files, your carefully curated and lovingly updated one-stop news source. We thoroughly scour YouTube for the best videos so you don’t have to. Subscribing is totally free and takes just two clicks.

And just so you know, while you are watching the first video, “Naked Citizens,” The I Files would never bareback with Big Brother.

“Naked Citizens,” ORF (Austrian Public Broadcasting)

There is one surveillance camera for every 14 people in London, giving it the dubious distinction of being the most monitored city in the world. In the wake of the images of the Boston Marathon bombers captured by fixed cameras, such video surveillance might be considered a social good. But as “Naked Citizens” asks, in the name of security, are we losing our most basic freedoms?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/19/top_5_investigative_videos_of_the_week_nailing_a_dictator_partner/feed/ 0 Can playing Dots on your iPhone make you smarter? http://www.salon.com/2013/05/18/can_playing_dots_on_your_iphone_make_you_smarter_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/18/can_playing_dots_on_your_iphone_make_you_smarter_partner/#comments Sat, 18 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13301928 Pacific StandardI have an addiction. It’s not to drugs or alcohol, jumping out of airplanes, or even sex. My addiction is to a grid of 36 dots—and to making them disappear as quickly as possible.

If you own an iPhone or have a friend who does, you’ve probably heard some version of this admission before. The grid is Dots, a super-addictive iOS game released by New York tech incubator Betaworks just over two weeks ago. Dots was downloaded one million times in the first few days after its release, becoming the top app in eight different countries; users completed 25 million rounds in the first week. After just two weeks, users had racked up more than 100 million rounds. That adds up to 190 years of gameplay.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/18/can_playing_dots_on_your_iphone_make_you_smarter_partner/feed/ 3 Print your own gardening accessories http://www.salon.com/2013/05/18/accessorize_your_home_garden_with_3d_printed_gear_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/18/accessorize_your_home_garden_with_3d_printed_gear_partner/#comments Sat, 18 May 2013 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13301630 Modern FarmerWhen 3D printers first came out, they were priced for tech sultans; the home hobbyist didn’t have a shot. But prices have dipped, putting these devices just within splurging range. Now you, too, can crank out simple farm and garden devices in your basement.

Keep in mind: These are early days. 3D printer ideas will grow increasingly sophisticated and interesting as more armchair inventors get involved. But the projects below can be replicated and tinkered with right now, using your home 3D printer. Consider them a taste of what’s to come.

1) Encouragement Eggs

Sometimes hens need a little gentle encouragement to get laying; surrounding them with fake eggs can get results. Texan Paul Waak came up with this design to goose his Cuckoo Marans into productivity. His wife says encouragement eggs have doubled their output (though Waak thinks the increase was more modest). This design was customized to the size and shape of a Maran egg, but you can always tweak it to your chickens’ specs.

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