"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" face masks and emoticons →
To celebrate the latest installment of Star Wars, starting today we are rolling out ten new Skype emoticons based on some of your favorite characters and icons. Characters like BB-8, Captain Phasma, Kylo Ren, Chewbacca, and an adorable porg — Chewie's newest pal to board the Millennium Falcon — are landing in your chats in time for the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
The greatest feature I never knew I needed from Skype:
How Facebook Figures Out Everyone You've Ever Met →
Connections like these seem inexplicable if you assume Facebook only knows what you've told it about yourself. They're less mysterious if you know about the other file Facebook keeps on you — one that you can't see or control.
Behind the Facebook profile you've built for yourself is another one, a shadow profile, built from the inboxes and smartphones of other Facebook users. Contact information you've never given the network gets associated with your account, making it easier for Facebook to more completely map your social connections.
Security Breach and Spilled Secrets Have Shaken the N.S.A. to Its Core →
Fifteen months into a wide-ranging investigation by the agency's counterintelligence arm and the F.B.I., officials still do not know whether the N.S.A. is the victim of a brilliantly executed hack, with Russia as the most likely perpetrator, an insider's leak, or both. Three employees have been arrested since 2015 for taking classified files, but there is fear that one or more leakers may still be in place. And there is broad agreement that the damage from the Shadow Brokers already far exceeds the harm to American intelligence done by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who fled with four laptops of classified material in 2013.
Mr. Snowden's cascade of disclosures to journalists and his defiant public stance drew far more media coverage than this new breach. But Mr. Snowden released code words, while the Shadow Brokers have released the actual code.
Do we really understand the Second Amendment anymore? →
We largely lack the framework to ask what gun ownership is for or to decide as a society whether it truly aligns with the good.
System Shock: How A Cloud Leak Exposed Accenture's Business →
A folder in the bucket titled "Secure Store" contains not only configuration files for the Identity API, but also a plaintext document containing the master access key for Accenture's account with Amazon Web Service's Key Management Service, exposing an unknown number of credentials to malicious use.
Yeah, no one ever thought twice before writing that one down, much less exposing it to the Internet?
Singing with another woman's lungs →
This fall, renowned soprano Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick will inhale deeply, filling her new transplanted lungs with air, and sing. Performing alongside her will be Esperanza Tufani. Tufani's mother was the donor for Tillemann-Dick's lungs.
The tree houses are a part of Microsoft's "outdoor districts" which are connected to buildings around its Redmond campus.
Less crazy than Google's moveable tent campus proposal, but not by much.
(via The Verge)
This One-Liner Has Been Voted The Funniest Joke At The Edinburgh Fringe →
Some good ones in the list.
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Plumbing discovery reveals the rise and fall of the Roman Empire →
Because it was so expensive, the city's plumbing system is a good proxy for Rome's fortunes.