Geekly Update - 31 July 2013

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

"You're toast!" Since the earliest days of the Internet, geeks have taken delight in controlling ordinary household appliances remotely. Now it seems the gadgets are talking back. A Pittsburgh man's toaster sends a tweet that says "Toasting" and "Done Toasting". Too bad he can't download bread from the supermarket yet.

Chromecast is a new gadget from Google that lets you wirelessly beam content to an HDTV set from Netflix, YouTube, Google Play, and your Chrome browser. With a price tag of just $35, there's gonna be a whole lot of beamin' goin' on.

The cobbler’s child goes barefoot? The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), which captures everyone’s email for later analysis, says it cannot search its own internal email system to satisfy a reporter’s Freedom Of Information Act request.

An ISP tells how the NSA executes those secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants. Also interesting is the fact that if the subject of the feds’ interest turns out to be an encrypted Tor node, they will simply give up.

The Securities & Exchange Commission has filed fraud charges against Bitcoin investment entrepreneur Trendon T. Shavers, alleging that he ran a Ponzi scheme that promised investors returns of 7 per cent per week. What kind of investors trust a salesman who goes by the online handle “pirateat40”? Obviously, Jimmy Buffett fans.

Overconfident, introverted, and female persons are most likely to fall for phishing attacks, according to a study entitled "Keeping Up With the Joneses: Assessing Phishing Susceptibility in an E-mail Task.”

Jay Riley’s computer told him to turn himself in to police, so he did. The 21 year-old even brought his computer to the cops so they could search it for child p**n, at the suggestion of a fake “FBI warning” malware program.

Elite hacker Barnaby Jack died July 26, 2013, at the age of 36. Famous for his exploit that made ATMs spit cash, Jack died shortly before a conference presentation in which he was to show how to remotely force an implanted insulin pump to release a lethal dose. Jack’s cause of death was not reported. Maybe he was practicing his trick?