Facebook glitch exposes info of 6 Million users -

Facebook glitch exposes info of 6 Million users - 



Facebook says a glitch may have exposed portions of the personal contact information, such as email addresses or phone numbers, of roughly 6 million users.

In a statement posted Friday, the social network says the bug is tied to uploading contact lists or address books, which are used in creating friend recommendations.

"Because of the bug, some of the information used to make friend recommendations and reduce the number of invitations we send was inadvertently stored in association with people's contact information as part of their account on Facebook," reads a statement from Facebook Security. "As a result, if a person went to download an archive of their Facebook account through our Download Your Information (DYI) tool, they may have been provided with additional email addresses or telephone numbers for their contacts or people with whom they have some connection."

Facebook says the bug has been fixed, and no other personal or financial information was compromised. Also, the social network says they have found no proof the glitch is being used maliciously.

Although Facebook insists it will likely have little impact, the company apologized for the glitch. "It's still something we're upset and embarrassed by, and we'll work doubly hard to make sure nothing like this happens again."

Read more -

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/06/21/facebook-bug-personal-info/2447547/

'Sheep-eating' plant about to bloom - it uses its sharp spines to snare and trap sheep and slowly starve to death -

'Sheep-eating' plant about to bloom - it uses its sharp spines to snare and trap sheep and slowly starve to death - 



A South American plant with a 10ft (3m) tall flower spike is about to bloom in a Surrey glasshouse for the first time since it was planted 15 years ago.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) at Wisley said the Puya chilensis, a native of Chile, would bloom in the next few days and last about a week.

In the Andes it uses its sharp spines to snare and trap sheep and other animals, which slowly starve to death.

The animals then decay at the base of the plant, acting as a fertiliser.

The RHS feeds its specimen on liquid fertiliser.

The gardening charity said very few specimens of Puya chilensis were known to have flowered in the UK.

The National Botanic Garden of Wales waited 11 years for its plant to bloom, though clumps bloom every April in the open on Tresco in the Isles of Scilly.

The plant has bright greeny-yellow flowers on tall spikes above the razor-sharp spines.

"I'm really pleased that we've finally coaxed our Puya chilensis into flower," said horticulturalist Cara Smith.

"We keep it well fed with liquid fertiliser as feeding it on its natural diet might prove a bit problematic.

"It's growing in the arid section of our glasshouse with its deadly spines well out of reach of both children and sheep alike."

Read more - 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-22967160

20 Signs That The Pharmaceutical Companies Are Running A 280 Billion Dollar Money Making Scam -

20 Signs That The Pharmaceutical Companies Are Running A 280 Billion Dollar Money Making Scam - 



If you could get 70 percent of Americans addicted to your drugs and rake in $280 billion a year in the process, would you do it?  If you could come up with a “pill for every problem” and charge Americans twice as much for those pills as people in other countries pay, would you do it?  If you could make more money than you ever dreamed possible by turning the American people into the most doped up people in the history of the planet, would you do it?  In America today, the number of people hooked on legal drugs absolutely dwarfs the number of people hooked on illegal drugs.  And sadly, the number of people killed by legal drugs absolutely dwarfs the number of people killed by illegal drugs.  But most Americans assume that if a drug is “legal” that it must be safe.  After all, the big pharmaceutical companies and the federal government would never allow us to take anything that would hurt us, right?  Sadly, the truth is that they don’t really care about us.  They don’t really care that prescription painkillers are some of the most addictive drugs on the entire planet and that they kill more Americans each year than heroin and cocaine combined.  They don’t care that antidepressants are turning tens of millions of Americans into zombies and can significantly increase the chance of suicide (just look at the warning label).  All the big pharmaceutical companies really care about is making as much money as they possibly can.  The following are 20 signs that the pharmaceutical companies are running a $280 billion money making scam…
#1 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug.  An astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.
#2 According to the CDC, approximately 9 out of every 10 Americans that are at least 60 years of age say that they have taken at least one prescription drug within the last month.
#3 The 11 largest pharmaceutical companies combined to rake inapproximately $85,000,000,000 in profits in 2012.
#4 During 2013, Americans will spend more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs.
#5 According to Alternet, last year “11 of the 12 new-to-market drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration were priced above $100,000 per-patient per-year”.
#6 The CDC says that spending on prescription drugs more than doubledbetween 1999 and 2008.
#7 Many prescription drugs cost about twice as much in the United States as they do in other countries.
#8 One study found that more than 20 percent of all American adults are taking at least one drug for “psychiatric” or “behavioral” disorders.
#9 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#10 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.
#11 A shocking Government Accountability Office report discovered thatapproximately one-third of all foster children in the United States are on at least one psychiatric drug.  In fact, the report found that many states seem to be doping up foster children as a matter of course.  Just check out these stunning statistics…
In Texas, foster children were 53 times more likely to be prescribed five or more psychiatric medications at the same time than non-foster children. In Massachusetts, they were 19 times more likely. In Michigan, the number was 15 times. It was 13 times in Oregon. And in Florida, foster children were nearly four times as likely to be given five or more psychotropic medications at the same time compared to non-foster children.
#12 In 2010, the average teen in the U.S. was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs.  Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.
#13 The total number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled between 1996 and 2005.
#14 All of those antidepressants don’t seem to be working too well.  The suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 rose by close to 30 percent between 1999 and 2010.  The number of Americans that are killed by suicide now exceeds the number of Americans that die as a result of car accidents.
#15 According to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 36 millionAmericans have abused prescription drugs at some point in their lives.
#16 A survey conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that more than 15 percent of all U.S. high school seniors abuse prescription drugs.
#17 According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.
#18 According to the Los Angeles Times, drug deaths (mostly caused by prescription drugs) are climbing at an astounding rate….
Drug fatalities more than doubled among teens and young adults between 2000 and 2008, years for which more detailed data are available. Deaths more than tripled among people aged 50 to 69, the Times analysis found. In terms of sheer numbers, the death toll is highest among people in their 40s.
#19 In the United States today, prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined.
#20 Each year, tens of billions of dollars is spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States alone.
The American people deserve better than that.  Every year, the United Statesspends more on health care than Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia combined.  In fact, if the U.S. health care system was a separate nation it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet.
For all the money that we spend, we should be the healthiest people in the world by a wide margin.  Instead, life expectancy is higher in dozens of other countries and we have very high rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes.  For much more on the colossal failure of our health care system, please see my previous article entitled “50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam“.
So what do you think about the pharmaceutical companies that are making billions of dollars by getting the American people addicted to their super-expensive legal drugs?

Read more - 

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/20-signs-that-the-pharmaceutical-companies-are-running-a-280-billion-money-making-scam

The largest full moon of 2013, a so-called "SuperMoon," will light up the night sky this weekend -

The largest full moon of 2013, a so-called "SuperMoon," will light up the night sky this weekend - 



The largest full moon of 2013, a so-called "supermoon," will light up the night sky this weekend. On Sunday, June 23, at 7 a.m. EDT, the moon will arrive at perigee -- the point in its orbit its orbit bringing it closest to Earth), a distance of 221,824 miles. Now the moon typically reaches perigee once each month (and on some occasions twice), with their respective distances to Earth varying by 3 percent. But Sunday's lunar perigee will be the moon's closest to Earth of 2013. And 32 minutes later, the moon will officially turn full.

The close timing of the moon's perigee and its full phase are what will bring about the biggest full moon of the year, a celestial event popularly defined by some as a "supermoon."You can watch a free webcast of 2013 supermoon full moon on SPACE.com on Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 June 24), courtesy of the skywatching website Slooh Space Camera.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57590418/supermoon-rises-in-weekend-night-sky/



SLOOH, an international team of astronomers tracking celestial phenomena, will have a high-definition live stream of this weekend’s supermoon originating from their observatory in the Canary Islands. The live stream begins on June 23 at 6 p.m. EDT, 9 p.m. PDT. The SLOOH live stream will include a live chat with astronomer Bob Berman and the SLOOH team and will also include different angles of the supermoon as well as close-up looks at the surface of the Moon.

Read more - 

http://www.ibtimes.com/supermoon-live-stream-watch-years-biggest-full-moon-hd-weekend-video-1318093#

Mum begs doctors to help baby son who was born with a TAIL -

Mum begs doctors to help baby son who was born with a TAIL - 



A DEVASTATED mum in China is begging doctors to help her seven-month-old son - who has a three-inch TAIL sticking out of his back. Little Xiao Wei was born with spina bifida, which means his vertebrae didn't form properly. 

The result is a growth that protrudes out of the back of his spine and is STILL GROWING.

Xiao's mum Chen, from Guangdong province, revealed: "We have asked the surgeons to remove the tail but they tell us it is not that simple."

Surgeon Huang Chuanping explained: “The growth is quite well developed and now measures some 10 centimetres. 

“If we cut it off it will simply grow again. We need to repair the spinal canal first to stop it reoccurring."

Read more - 
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4979007/Baby-boy-born-with-a-TAIL.html#ixzz2WsCJ0yJR

Scientists use 3D printer to create microbatteries smaller than a single GRAIN of sand -

Scientists use 3D printer to create microbatteries smaller than a single GRAIN of sand - 



Batteries were constructed from interlaced stacks of tiny electrodes, which conduct electricity, smaller than the width of a human hair
The microbatteries can be used in devices too small for older batteries 
Researchers at Harvard and University of Illinois created electrochemically active ink for their custom 3D printer

The revolutionary technology behind 3D-printed car parts, food and guns can also be used to print batteries smaller than a grain of sand. 
Scientists have used a 3D printer to make linthium-ion microbatteries that can fit into tiny devices that had previously stumped engineers looking to power them for longer periods. 
The batteries were constructed from interlaced stacks of tiny battery electrodes, which conduct electricity, that are each smaller than the width of a single human hair. 

Scientists from Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported the results of their efforts in the journal Advanced Materials.
'Not only did we demonstrate for the first time that we can 3D-print a battery; we demonstrated it in the most rigorous way,' said the senior author of the study, Jennifer A Lewis, according to a press release by Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, where Lewis is a professor.

Many engineers have developed miniaturized electronic devices, such as miniscule medical implants, insect-like flying robots and audio and visual recorders that can fit on a pair of glasses.
The batteries normally used to power such gadgets were too large, so manufacturers would use ultra-thin films of solid materials to build the electrodes. But these didn't provide enough power.
Lewis and her colleagues realized they could pack more energy on a small scale if they could create stacks of interlaced, ultra-thin electrodes built from plane.
They knew 3D printing would allow them to precisely build the battery. The team expanded on the functional 'inks' the printer uses, designing some with useful chemical and electrical properties. 
The inks Lewis' group created had to function as electrochemically active materials, while also being capable of exiting a 3D printer's fine nozzle and hardening in its final form. 
The ink they developed for the anode part of the battery--or the 'negative' side in a Duracell--is made with nanoparticles of one lithium metal oxide compound. Ink for the cathode--the 'positive' side--was made from another compound.


Read more: - 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2344835/Scientists-use-3D-printer-create-microbatteries-smaller-single-GRAIN-sand-paving-way-high-powered-flying-robot-insects-mini-medical-implants.html

Government could use metadata to map your every move -

Government could use metadata to map your every move - 



f you tweet a picture from your living room using your smartphone, you’re sharing far more than your new hairdo or the color of the wallpaper. You’re potentially revealing the exact coordinates of your house to anyone on the Internet.

The GPS location information embedded in a digital photo is an example of so-called metadata, a once-obscure technical term that’s become one of Washington’s hottest new buzzwords.

The word first sprang from the lips of pundits and politicians earlier this month, after reports disclosed that the government has been secretly accessing the telephone metadata of Verizon customers, as well as online videos, emails, photos and other data collected by nine Internet companies. President Barack Obama hastened to reassure Americans that “nobody is listening to your phone calls,” while other government officials likened the collection of metadata to reading information on the outside of an envelope, which doesn’t require a warrant.

But privacy experts warn that to those who know how to mine it, metadata discloses much more about us and our daily lives than the content of our communications.

So what is metadata? Simply put, it’s data about data. An early example is the Dewey Decimal System card catalogs that libraries use to organize books by title, author, genre and other information. In the digital age, metadata is coded into our electronic transmissions.

“Metadata is information about what communications you send and receive, who you talk to, where you are when you talk to them, the lengths of your conversations, what kind of device you were using and potentially other information, like the subject line of your emails,” said Peter Eckersley, the technology projects director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group.

Powerful computer algorithms can analyze the metadata to expose patterns and to profile individuals and their associates, Eckersley said.

“Metadata is the perfect place to start if you want to troll through millions of people’s communications to find patterns and to single out smaller groups for closer scrutiny,” he said. “It will tell you which groups of people go to political meetings together, which groups of people go to church together, which groups of people go to nightclubs together or sleep with each other.”

Metadata records of search terms and webpage visits also can reveal a log of your thoughts by documenting what you’ve been reading and researching, Eckersley said.

“That’s certainly enough to know if you’re pregnant or not, what diseases you have, whether you’re looking for a new job, whether you’re trying to figure out if the NSA is watching you or not,” he said, referring to the National Security Agency. Such information provides “a deeply intimate window into a person’s psyche,” he added.

The more Americans rely on their smartphones and the Internet, the more metadata is generated

Metadata with GPS locations, for example, can trace a teenage girl to an abortion clinic or a patient to a psychiatrist’s office, said Karen Reilly, the development director for The Tor Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit that produces technology to provide online anonymity and circumvent censorship.

Metadata can even identify a likely gun owner, she said.

“Never mind background checks, if you bring your cellphone to the gun range you probably have a gun,” Reilly said.

“People don’t realize all the information that they’re giving out,” she said. “You can try to secure it – you can use some tech tools, you can try to be a black hole online – but if you try to live your life the way people are expecting it, it’s really difficult to control the amount of data that you’re leaking all over the place.”

A former senior official of the National Security Agency said the government’s massive collection of metadata allowed the agency to construct “maps” of an individual’s daily movements, social connections, travel habits and other personal information.

“This is blanket. There is no constraint. No probable cause. No reasonable suspicion,” said Thomas Drake, who worked unsuccessfully for years to report privacy violations and massive waste at the agency to his superiors and Congress.

Metadata “is more useful than (the) content” of a telephone call, email or Internet search, Drake said in an interview. “It gets you a map over time. I get to map movements, connections, communities of interest. It’s also a tracking mechanism.”

The NSA “can easily associate” a phone number with an identity, he added. “All location information comes from a (cellular) tower. There are tower records. They are doing this every single day. It’s basically a data tap on metadata, and I can build a profile (of an individual) instantly.”

The agency has programs that also can mine the metadata of emails and other electronic information, Drake said.

With advances in data storage, he continued, the NSA is able to maintain massive amounts of metadata for as long as it wants. “This stuff is trivial to store,” he said.

Drake added that U.S. telecommunications companies are prohibited from publicly disclosing arrangements with the NSA and are protected under the Patriot Act from lawsuits. “They literally have the protection of the U.S. government from any, any lawsuit. The United States is literally turning into a surveillance state,” he said. “This is the new normal.”

At a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill, FBI Director Robert Mueller said metadata obtained under Section 215 of the Patriot Act had helped authorities “connect the dots” in investigations that had prevented 10 or 12 terrorist plots in recent years. Mueller defended the collection of metadata, saying there were plenty of safeguards in place that protect Americans’ privacy. He warned against restricting or ending the program.

“What concerns me is you never know which dot is going to be key,” Mueller said. “What you want is as many dots as we can (get). If you close down a program like this, you are removing dots from the playing field.”

Read more -

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194505/government-could-use-metadata.html#.UcRdBaKKqgI

World's Largest Bitcoin Exchange Suspends US Dollar Withdrawals - due to unusually high demand -

World's Largest Bitcoin Exchange Suspends US Dollar Withdrawals - due to unusually high demand - 



The Tokyo-based exchange, which handles around 70% of all global Bitcoin transactions and 80% of those in the US, said it has experienced unusually high volumes of deposits and withdrawals recently, which "made it difficult for our bank to process the transactions smoothly and within a timely manner," causing delays for its customers.

Customers are able to continue trading in any other currency and Mt. Gox hasn't suspended deposits in US dollars, so users can put cash in, but are unable to convert their Bitcoins into dollars to withdraw it.

Must Read: What is Bitcoin and how does it work?

The move will doubtless go down badly with customers, especially as Mt. Gox is currently being sued by CoinLab, another Bitcoin exchange, for $75m (£48m) on allegations that it had failed to deliver on a deal that would see Mt. Gox offload much of its US customer base to the Seattle-based CoinLab.

The exchange said in a statement this week: "We are currently making improvements to process withdrawals of United States Dollar denominations, and as a result are temporarily suspending cash withdrawals of USD for the next two weeks. 

"Please be reassured that USD deposits and transfers to Mt. Gox will remain unaffected, as will deposits and withdrawals in other currencies, and we will be resuming USD withdrawals once the process is completed."

Speculation among users now points towards the one-way suspension being implemented because Mt. Gox has run low on cash, but the exchange has refused to comment on this.

Read more - 

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/481616/20130621/mt-gox-bitcoin-exchange-suspends-dollar-withdrawals.htm

Skynet rising: Google acquires 512-qubit quantum computer; NSA surveillance to be turned over to AI machines -

Skynet rising: Google acquires 512-qubit quantum computer; NSA surveillance to be turned over to AI machines - 



Most people don't know about the existence of quantum computers. Almost no one understands how they work, but theories include bizarre-sounding explanations like, "they reach into alternate universes to derive the correct answers to highly complex computational problems."

Quantum computers are not made of simple transistors and logic gates like the CPU on your PC. They don't even function in ways that seem rational to a typical computing engineer. Almost magically, quantum computers take logarithmic problems and transform them into "flat" computations whose answers seem to appear from an alternate dimension.

For example, a mathematical problem that might have 2 to the power of n possible solutions -- where n is a large number like 1024 -- might take a traditional computer longer than the age of the universe to solve. A quantum computer, on the other hand, might solve the same problem in mere minutes because it quite literally operates across multiple dimensions simultaneously.


The ultimate code breakers

If you know anything about encryption, you probably also realize that quantum computers are the secret KEY to unlocking all encrypted files. As I wrote about last year here on Natural News, once quantum computers go into widespread use by the NSA, the CIA, Google, etc., there will be no more secrets kept from the government. All your files -- even encrypted files -- will be easily opened and read.

Until now, most people believed this day was far away. Quantum computing is an "impractical pipe dream," we've been told by scowling scientists and "flat Earth" computer engineers. "It's not possible to build a 512-qubit quantum computer that actually works," they insisted.

Don't tell that to Eric Ladizinsky, co-founder and chief scientist of a company called D-Wave. Because Ladizinsky's team has already built a 512-qubit quantum computer. And they're already selling them to wealthy corporations, too.


DARPS, Northrup Grumman and Goldman Sachs

Read more -

http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.html

Human organs ‘could be grown in animals within a year’ -

Human organs ‘could be grown in animals within a year’ - 



Japanese scientists are expected to be granted approval to grow human organs in animals and then harvest them for transplant within the next year

A panel of scientists and legal experts appointed by the government has drawn up a recommendation that will form the basis of new guidelines for Japan’s world-leading embryonic research.

There is widespread support in Japan for research that has raised red flags in other countries. Scientists plan to introduce a human stem cell into the embryo of an animal – most likely a pig – to create what is termed a “chimeric embryo” that can be implanted into an animal’s womb.

That will then grow into a perfect human organ, a kidney or even a heart, as the host animal matures.

When the adult creature is slaughtered, the organ will then be harvested and transplanted into a human with a malfunctioning organ.

Read more - 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10132347/Human-organs-could-be-grown-in-animals-within-a-year.html