Month: March 2016

Six people have been charged in what prosecutors say was a scheme to hack Connecticut state lottery terminals so they produced more winning tickets and fewer losing ones.

At least two of the suspects have been charged with felonies, including first-degree larceny, first-degree computer crimes, and rigging a game, according to an article published by The Hartford Courant. The suspects allegedly owned or worked at retail stores that produced winning tickets in numbers that were much higher than the state average. Of tickets generated at one liquor store, for instance, 76 percent were instant winners in one sample and 59 percent in another sample. The state-wide average, meanwhile, was just 24 percent. After manipulating the terminals, the suspects cashed the tickets and took the proceeds, prosecutors alleged.

The charges come several months after lottery officials suspended a game called the 5 Card Cash after they noticed it was generating more winning tickets than its parameters should have allowed. The game remains suspended. Investigators say more arrests may be made in the future. Almost a year ago, prosecutors in Iowa presented evidence indicating the former head of computer security for the state's lottery association tampered with lottery computers prior to buying a ticket that won a $14.3 million jackpot.

The site of King Arthur and Guinevere's grave. The grave was brought into the abbey just a few years after the place burned down and the monks were desperate for money to rebuild. (credit: Tom Ordelman)

Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset, England, is the legendary resting place of King Arthur and Guinevere, and for centuries people have visited to see the grave of the mythical fifth-century King of the Britons and his bride. But the reality behind the abbey's claim to fame had little to do with early monarchy. It was mostly about economics.

Archaeology magazine's Jason Urbanus reports on new findings from University of Reading archaeologist Roberta Gilchrist, who heads up the Glastonbury Archaeological Archive Project, an intensive reexamination of 75 years' worth of excavations and discoveries from Glastonbury Abbey, many of which have been stored for decades without any scientific analysis. Gilchrist and her colleagues have found evidence that occupation of the Glastonbury site may indeed date back to the purported year of Arthur's reign in the fifth century, but not due to any mystical connection with the king.

We know for certain that Glastonbury was a thriving community in the seventh century, where Saxon villagers created large furnaces to melt down and recycle Roman glass. Gilchrist's project has confirmed that the glassworks predated the abbey, possibly by centuries, and was one of the largest glass production facilities in England at the time.

Alcatraz prison. (credit: Krystian Olszanski)

Prison phone companies have convinced a court to halt new rate caps on inmate calling for the second time this month.

The first stay was issued March 7 and prevented the FCC from implementing new rate caps of 11¢ to 22¢ per minute on both interstate and intrastate calls from prisons. But the stay—which remains in place while the prison phone companies' lawsuit against the FCC is still pending—did not disturb an earlier "interim" cap of 21¢ to 25¢ per minute that applied only to interstate calls, those that cross state lines. The order also didn't specifically object to the FCC changing its definition of "inmate calling service" to include both interstate and intrastate calls.

Seizing on this ambiguity, the FCC decided that it could impose the interim caps on both interstate and intrastate calls. But prison phone companies Securus Technologies, Global Tel*Link (GTL), and Telmate all asked the federal appeals court to stop the caps from being applied to intrastate calls. Securus Technologies CEO Richard Smith argued that confusion about the rate caps could cause "chaos and confusion" in prisons, threatening security.

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo. (credit: Google+)

In 2008, Microsoft bid almost $45 billion in an attempt to buy Yahoo. That deal fell through, but with Yahoo putting itself on the chopping block and planning to divest its core Internet business, the software giant is once again expressing an interest. This time, the plan is not to buy the whole company but instead to offer financing to the private equity firms that are currently considering bids, according to Kara Swisher at Recode.

Yahoo's market cap is about $32.5 billion, but a hefty portion of this number is made up of investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. Without these investments, the core Yahoo business is valued at between $6 billion and $8 billion. According to Swisher's sources, the Yahoo board wants $10 billion, an amount it seems unlikely to get.

Activist Yahoo shareholder Starboard Value has criticized the sale process, calling it "too slow" and "fraught with conflicts of interest," and it is trying to have the board replaced. Putative buyers have been critical of the board, with Swisher writing that those she has spoken to have called the process a farce. An unrealistically high valuation is sure to fuel this incredulity.