Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,515 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 54 of 152).

Abby Lee Kamp arrested in jewelery heists

Abby Lee Kamp has been arrested in the string of jewelry robberies.

Seems that Ms. Abigail Kamp has a history of arrests.

Authorities have arrested a young woman who officials say robbed $4 million in merchandise from six jewelry stores in Southern states — including a North Carolina incident just 6 days ago.

The woman and another person are believed to have stolen about $4 million in loot during armed robberies in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina, sources say.

The arrest of Abigail Lee Kemp comes just 5 days after a jewelry store was robbed in Mebane, near Burlington.

Source: Southern female jewelry store bandit suspected in 6 robberies is arrested, FBI says | WNCN

This tree in the Americas is so toxic, you can’t stand under it when it rains – ScienceAlert

Whoa.

In 1999, radiologist Nicola Strickland went on a holiday to the Caribbean island of Tobago, a tropical paradise complete with idyllic, deserted beaches. On her first morning there, she went foraging for shells and corals in the white sand, when the holiday quickly took a turn for the worse.

Scattered amongst the coconuts and mangoes on the beach, Strickland and her friend found some sweet-smelling green fruit that looked much like small crabapples. Both foolishly decided to take a bite, and within moments the pleasant, sweet taste was overwhelmed by a peppery, burning feeling and an excruciating tightness in the throat that gradually got so bad they could barely swallow.

Source: This tree in the Americas is so toxic, you can’t stand under it when it rains – ScienceAlert

No, you haven’t read this déjà vu story before – CNN.com

.. or, could it be a future memory?

We know the feeling (or at least 66% of us do). Déjà vu is the belief you’ve been here or done that before, when you know there’s absolutely no way you could have. The phrase déjà vu is French, meaning “already seen.”

But we know less about why we have the feeling. Is déjà vu evidence of a past life, an out of body experience or just a good old neural misfire?

Source: No, you haven’t read this déjà vu story before – CNN.com

New study on Otzi the Iceman reveals humanity’s intimate affair with one microbe – The Washington Post

Gut microbe research has provided a fascinating look at the migration patterns of ancient man.

Otzi the Iceman, a famously well-preserved Copper Age man found in the Alps in 1991, has given researchers a lot of insight into how our ancestors lived. The long-dead man’s clothing, tools, manner of death, and even tattoos have given us a peek at how life was 5,300 years ago – or how it was for Otzi, anyway.

Source: New study on Otzi the Iceman reveals humanity’s intimate affair with one microbe – The Washington Post

Time Warner Cable advises 320,000 customers of possible hack

Rut roh.

Time Warner Cable has sent notices to 320,000 of its customers throughout the U.S., advising them to change the password to their email account out of concern that someone may have gained unauthorized access to that information. The telecommunication company said it was notified of the vulnerability by the FBI, but there’s no evidence to suggest that there was an actual breach.

Source: Time Warner Cable advises 320,000 customers of possible hack

Great job available for a sharp DevOps admin

The company I work for is seeking a sharp sysadmin to fill an Infrastructure Engineer role in Raleigh. We need people who have experience with DevOps tools for managing large production environments (Chef, AWS, Git, Docker, Puppet, etc.).

Here’s the job description and a link for applying. Please share!

We are seeking an experienced, self-motivated, and passionate Infrastructure Engineer to join our team. Are you someone who loves to solve big problems and who doesn’t settle for the status quo? We believe in finding the right tool, hardware, or software for the job, we don’t care if it’s open source or proprietary.

If it makes our systems faster, more secure, and scalable we want to hear about it. Because we are an Agile company you won’t be working in a silo. We need you to have broad experience in system administration, network operations, some coding experience, build and release engineering, performance engineering and site operations. We don’t expect anyone to know everything, we just need people who are quick studies that aren’t afraid to jump in with both feet and learn by doing.

An entrepreneurial fast paced mentality is critical for success in this position: a passionate can-do attitude, exceptional communication skills, and the ability to collaborate while acting as a thought leader in your area of expertise will serve you well at Rally Software. Does this sound like a challenge you’re ready for?

Once hired, here’s what we’ll need you to do:
Continue reading →

Apple should kill the headphone jack – Tech Insider

Tech Insider columnist and apple fanboy Alex Heath advocates for Apple’s reported nixing of a headphone jack on it’s upcoming iPhone 7. Says Heath:

The audio jack in the iPhone is based on technology intended for telephone switchboards in the 19th century. It’s an ancient port, and while it’s a common standard now, its days are numbered.

Well, yeah. We’ve been using audio through analog wires for over a hundred years. Know what? We’ve pretty-much got it perfected. Is it the best audio available? Not anymore, but it’s cheap and ubiquitous. Don’t count out cheap and ubiquitous.

Then Mr. Heath hints at why Apple might consider this move:

The main downside of Lightning-equipped headphones right now is price. Apple recently started selling a $800 pair of Lightning headphones from Audeze in its store, which only the most serious audiophile would even consider buying. Only a few companies have committed to Lightning so far, and their headphones generally run for at least $200.

Eight hundred bucks for a pair of headphones and $200 for the cheapies. Meanwhile, standard phono-jack phones are so cheap that they’re practically given away.

Oh, and there’s also this:

Lightning is also a proprietary connector that Apple owns…

Do you see where this is going? “Cheap and ubiquitous” is the last thing Apple wants. Apple can’t claim to be saving space by its switch from a phono plug to Lightning. What it really wants is to get the millions of Apple-loving drones out there used to shelling out $100+ for Apple-proprietary accessories that could otherwise be had for mere dollars through the wonders of mass-market standardization.

I once railed against Microsoft’s “embrace and extend” way of sabotaging standards. Apple has taken a play from the Redmond playbook. Apple’s refusal to play nice with the rest of the world rubs this advocate of open source and open standards the wrong way.

Remember the collective outrage when Apple removed the optical CD drive in the Mac? Or how about when Apple chose to not let the iPhone’s browser support Adobe Flash, the horrible and insecure web standard that was nearly ubiquitous at the time and basically extinct now?

They were all big changes that may have caused inconvenience and raised eyebrows at the time. But looking back, they seem like obvious steps forward.

Source: Apple should kill the headphone jack – Tech Insider

Forecasts from Winter Folklore | State Climate Office of North Carolina

How often do flakes follow thunder? The scientists at the State Climate Office ran the numbers. Science!

Along with a diverse variety of frozen precipitation, it’s not unusual to see a thunderstorm during the winter in North Carolina. At some point, that gave rise to the proverb that if you hear thunder during the winter, it will snow in 7 to 10 days. It makes some sense considering that weather systems generally take about a week to move across the country, so a strong cold front that produces thunderstorms is likely to be followed by another system within the next 10 days. But here in North Carolina, where snow is never a guarantee, how often is thunder followed by flakes?

Source: Winter Outlook 2013-14: Forecasts from Winter Folklore | State Climate Office of North Carolina

Confederate graves, Gov. Aycock marker vandalized at Oakwood Cemetery | News & Observer

Remember when I wrote about how the Confederate Memorial doesn’t belong on the State Capitol grounds? I suggested the memorial be moved to the Oakwood Cemetery, where it and the ideals behind it could be retired forever.

The only place racism belongs is in the cemetery. Racism deserves to be buried.

Sadly,  some misguilded individual doesn’t know the difference between a monument to racism celebrated with a position on public grounds and a monument on private grounds marking the graves of people who lived in those times.

This person has vandalized someone’s final resting place. This is shameful and disrespectful and off-limits. Let the racists rest in peace along with the misguided ideals by which they lived. Let everyone see that the legacy of racism ends in the cold damp earth of a cemetery.

Speak about out our contiuning to celebratie these legacies on public grounds while advocating that the proper place for these legacies is six feet under.

 

Vandals spray-painted anti-racist graffiti on nine monuments inside Raleigh’s Historic Oakwood Cemetery, mostly damaging the graves of high-ranking officers in the Confederate Army but also defacing the stone of North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock, whose racial views in the early 1900s have found increasing criticism.

The attack caused roughly $20,000 in damage on Wednesday night and is thought to be the first of its kind on private property, said Robin Simonton, executive director at Oakwood. Cemetery officials reported the crime to Raleigh police during the weekend, hoping to spare further destruction during the holidays.

Source: Confederate graves, Gov. Aycock marker vandalized at Oakwood Cemetery | News & Observer

The Rise and Fall of AIM, the Breakthrough AOL Never Wanted

This is a fascinating interview with the founders of AOL Instant Messenger, a trailblazing messaging tool that had its spectacular rise and fall under the largely-clueless leadership of AOL.

When we think about the spectacular collapses of once untouchable Internet properties, companies like MySpace and Pets.com come to mind. The rise and fall of AOL Instant Messenger rivals them all. Once the dominant force in digital messaging and a source of innovations other companies spun off into billions of dollars of businesses, AIM is now mostly dormant. Mashable sat down with three of the early engineers of the program to learn about its origins, why AOL never quite embraced the concept of a free messaging service, getting hacked by Microsoft and the features that never quite made it to users.

Source: The Rise and Fall of AIM, the Breakthrough AOL Never Wanted