Category: News

The Darwin Award this week has to go to a Connecticut man who called 911 with questions regarding the legality of growing pot on his property. His answer was delivered personally by the police department.

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Internet vigilante group Anonymous turned its sights on security firm HBGary on Sunday evening in an attempt to “teach [HBGary] a lesson you’ll never forget.” The firm had been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to unmask members of Anonymous following the group’s pro-WikiLeaks attacks on financial services companies, and was prepared to release its findings next week.

HBGary had been collecting information about Anonymous members after the group’s DDoS attacks on companies perceived to be anti-WikiLeaks. The firm had targeted a number of senior Anonymous members, including a US-based member going by the name of Owen, as well as another member known as Q. In addition to working with the FBI (for a fee, of course), HBGary’s CEO Aaron Barr was preparing to release the findings this month at a security conference in San Francisco.

Anonymous, however, felt that HBGary’s findings were “nonsense” and immediately retaliated—but this time with something other than a DDoS attack. Instead, Anonymous compromised the company’s website, gained access to the documents that HBGary had collected on its members, and published more than 60,000 of HBGary’s e-mails to BitTorrent. They also vandalized Barr’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts with harsh messages and personal data about Barr, such as his social security number and home address.

The marathon runner Stefaan Engels has set a new world record by completing his 365th marathon of 365 days.

The 49 year old from Belgium finished his final race in Barcelona, Spain on Saturday after running 15,000km (9,569 miles) across seven countries in a year. His ‘marathon of marathons’ started in Belgium last year and means that he sets a new record for the number of marathons run in a row. The previous record holder was 65 year old Akinori Kusuda of Japan, who ran 52 consecutive marathons in 2009.

More than 111 million people tuned into Super Bowl XLV Sunday night, making it the most-watched program in TV history.

106.5 million watched 2010’s Super Bowl.

Fox became the first network to exceed 100 million viewers for a night in primetime, according to fast-national ratings released Monday by Nielsen Media Research.

FOX Sports’ broadcast of Super Bowl XLV averaged 111 million viewers and is the most-watched television program in U.S. history, obliterating the prior record of 106.5 set last year during Super Bowl XLIV by 4.5 million viewers and the 106.0 million for the series finale of M*A*S*H, which held the viewership record from 1983 to 2010.

A planned trip by Bush to speak at the Switzerland-based United Israel Appeal later this week has been canceled after several human rights groups called for Swiss authorities to arrest Bush and investigate him for authorizing torture. Bush has traveled widely since leaving office, but not to Europe, where there is a strong tradition of international prosecutions.

It’s easy to get cynical about dating. How many times have you heard a cute, smart, single guy or girl spout some stupid platitude like, “there are no cute, single straight/gay guys/girls in this city?” I’ll be honest — I’ve not just heard it, I’ve said it. And it’s stupid. There are thousands.

So with Valentine’s Day approaching, I decided to suck it up and embrace a more positive dating attitude. What if, instead of bemoaning the state of the world, whining to my friends, and abusing my vibrator, I just went on a bunch of dates?