society

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28 Aug 2015 - money.cnn.com - Ashley Madison promotes itself as the go-to website for infidelity (Avid Life Media owns the Ashley Madison website. Noel Biderman @noelbiderman 'THE KING OF INFIDELITY' President at Avid Life Media Inc. Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Ashley Madison Agency)
- Information containing Biderman's emails is released on August 20, but the file becomes corrupted so it can't be fully accessed by the public.
- Two Canadian law firms say on August 20 that they have filed a $760 million suit against Avid Life Media. The lead plaintiff is described as a "disabled widower" who briefly joined the site after the death of his wife but never met anybody in person. 7. - Information containing Biderman's emails is released on August 20, but the file becomes corrupted so it can't be fully accessed by the public.
- Two Canadian law firms say on August 20 that they have filed a $760 million suit against Avid Life Media. The lead plaintiff is described as a "disabled widower" who briefly joined the site after the death of his wife but never met anybody in person.
- The stolen database of people who used Ashley Madison makes its way to the Web on August 19, making it easily searchable on several websites.  read more »

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Antarctica's floating ice shelves are thinning at an accelerating rate. Many of Antarctica's ice shelves are huge. The one protruding into the Ross Sea is the size of France. They form where glacier ice running off the continent protrudes across water. At a certain point, the ice lifts off the seabed and floats. Eventually, as these shelves continue to push outwards, their fronts will calve, forming icebergs.  read more »

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For Bustos, now 30, it all started in 2012, where he gave free haircuts to needy children at a local barbershop. "It made such a strong positive impact on me that I decided to bring it back home to NYC," said Bustos. Calling him "angel", Ray said, "When someone comes along and gives you something you never get… it makes me wanna cry."  read more »

*update 11 Aug 2015*
money.cnn - It's a relatively simple hack. And while researchers only tested one type of device, it raises serious questions about how dangerous it is to use them at all - Cars can be hacked by their tiny, plug-in insurance discount trackers The latest way to remotely hack a car? By tapping into one of those plug-in tracking devices from insurance companies. In some cases, hackers can send a text message -- and disable a car's brakes, according to research presented by computer security experts on Monday. It's a relatively simple hack. And while researchers only tested one type of device, it raises serious questions about how dangerous it is to use them at all.  read more »

A data leak has resulted in around a million dollars worth of Woolworths gift cards needing to be cancelled. When Jason Wang checked the balance on his gift cards he found some had already been spent in Sydney stores.

*update* 11 August 2015
WashingtonPost - By breaking into the wire services, some of Wall Street's most vital and unnoticed information hubs, investigators said the hackers and traders were able to defraud investors on a massive scale while leaving no public trace, a worrying development for the increasingly intricate networks that keep the financial world online. With advance details on financial performance and corporate mergers from dozens of companies — including Bank of America, Boeing, Ford Motor, Home Depot, defense contractor Northrop Grumman and Smith & Wesson — the team made rapid and lucrative trades from shared brokerage accounts, funneling the money through shell companies and offshore bank accounts in Estonia and Macau... the sophisticated hacks targeted not just people's identities, but corporate intelligence, targeting a core vulnerability of the financial system in one of the digital age's most sprawling insider-trading schemes, and some hackers and traders were even aided by former broker-dealers. “The traders were market-savvy, using equities and options … to maximize their profits”, ...pocketed more than $100 million from illicit trades.

*update* 4 August 2015  read more »

*update* July 1, 2015 ABC News: Homeless Man Who Returned Found Money Donates Reward A homeless man who made headline and defied stereotypes when he walked into a police station to return thousands in cash he had found continues to amaze. He has now donated the thousands of dollars raised for him by people who were moved by his initial act to a homeless shelter. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the homeless man was tracked down by Constable Alex Bérubé of the West Shore RCMP. “After hearing this story and seeing how this case touched so many people, I took a personal interest in finding this man, looking for him everywhere while on and off shift. It's not easy tracking down a person of no fixed address and no phone, but I kept trying because I needed to tell him about how the community had rallied together to help him,” said Bérubé. (to be continued)

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*update* Aug 16, 2015
7News - The FAA said the air traffic control center in Washington, DC was having computer problems which caused some flights to be delayed & grounded at east coast airports. Computer issues at an air traffic control center caused serious delays along the east coast, grounding and delaying flights, including some at Logan Airport. The FAA said the air traffic control center in Washington, DC was having computer problems. The issue has since been fixed, but flights are still catching up from the delays. Andrew Robinson was supposed to have a layover in Baltimore before heading home to Chicago, only to find the flight canceled after being delayed multiple times.

"We stood in line for about three hours, tried to get a connecting flight and ended up finagling something to Milwaukee in the morning," said Robinson. Other travelers told 7News they were planning on booking hotels and flying out Sunday. Lisa Grant, whose flight to Baltimore was canceled, said she was giving up on flying this weekend. "I'm not one that likes to fly. So knowing that there were problems, we should have drove and that's what we're going to go, drive back home."

A day after flights were canceled or delayed at BWI due to a computer glitch, things are back to normal. Flights are operating normally at BWI-Marshall but passenger volume is very heavy in the wake of yesterday's FAA computer issues. — BWI Marshall Airport (@BWI_Airport) August 16, 2015 Officials say that passenger volume is very heavy, however, as ...

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