Month: December 2022

Enlarge / An American ISAF solider from team Apache of Task Force Geronimo, 4th Platoon Delaware of the United States Army, collects biometric information from an Afghan villager in the village of Mans Kalay in Sabari, Khost district on August 4, 2012. (credit: Jose Cabezas/Getty Images)

When a German security researcher, Matthias Marx, found a United States military device for sale on eBay—an instrument previously used to identify wanted individuals and known terrorists during the War in Afghanistan—Marx gambled a little and placed a low bid of $68.

He probably didn’t expect to win, since he offered less than half the seller’s asking price, $149.95. But win he did, and after that, he had an even bigger surprise coming, The New York Times reported. When the device arrived with a memory card still inside, Marx was shocked to realize he had unwittingly purchased the names, nationalities, photographs, fingerprints, and iris scans of 2,632 people whose biometric data had allegedly been scanned by US military.

The device allegedly stored not just personal identifiable information (PII) of seemingly suspicious persons, but also of US military members, people in Afghanistan who worked with the government, and ordinary people temporarily detained at military checkpoints. Most of the data came from residents of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Enlarge / An American ISAF solider from team Apache of Task Force Geronimo, 4th Platoon Delaware of the United States Army, collects biometric information from an Afghan villager in the village of Mans Kalay in Sabari, Khost district on August 4, 2012. (credit: Jose Cabezas/Getty Images)

When a German security researcher, Matthias Marx, found a United States military device for sale on eBay—an instrument previously used to identify wanted individuals and known terrorists during the War in Afghanistan—Marx gambled a little and placed a low bid of $68.

He probably didn’t expect to win, since he offered less than half the seller’s asking price, $149.95. But win he did, and after that, he had an even bigger surprise coming, The New York Times reported. When the device arrived with a memory card still inside, Marx was shocked to realize he had unwittingly purchased the names, nationalities, photographs, fingerprints, and iris scans of 2,632 people whose biometric data had allegedly been scanned by US military.

The device allegedly stored not just personal identifiable information (PII) of seemingly suspicious persons, but also of US military members, people in Afghanistan who worked with the government, and ordinary people temporarily detained at military checkpoints. Most of the data came from residents of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Enlarge / Notepad, now with tabs. (credit: Microsoft)

Notepad is one of the very oldest Windows apps, and up until Windows 11 came out, it was one of the least-changed. It remains a barebones text editor, but it has learned some new tricks in Windows 11, picking up dark mode support, a customizable font, and a multilevel undo function. (A developer also managed to port Doom to Notepad recently, technically qualifying it as "a gaming platform.")

Another new Notepad feature is apparently being tested within Microsoft—a screenshot from an unnamed Microsoft employee shows a new tabbed user interface for the app, a feature that Microsoft also recently added to the venerable Windows Explorer. The screenshot was deleted shortly after it was posted (hilariously, it has a giant "confidential" banner running across the top of it), but it's been preserved by outlets like Windows Central that caught it before it was taken down.

Microsoft may or may not ever release this tabbed Notepad—these kinds of features often end up making their way into the public builds of Windows eventually, but even things available in Windows Insider builds of the OS don't always end up in the release version that rolls out to all PCs.

Enlarge / Notepad, now with tabs. (credit: Microsoft)

Notepad is one of the very oldest Windows apps, and up until Windows 11 came out, it was one of the least-changed. It remains a barebones text editor, but it has learned some new tricks in Windows 11, picking up dark mode support, a customizable font, and a multilevel undo function. (A developer also managed to port Doom to Notepad recently, technically qualifying it as "a gaming platform.")

Another new Notepad feature is apparently being tested within Microsoft—a screenshot from an unnamed Microsoft employee shows a new tabbed user interface for the app, a feature that Microsoft also recently added to the venerable Windows Explorer. The screenshot was deleted shortly after it was posted (hilariously, it has a giant "confidential" banner running across the top of it), but it's been preserved by outlets like Windows Central that caught it before it was taken down.

Microsoft may or may not ever release this tabbed Notepad—these kinds of features often end up making their way into the public builds of Windows eventually, but even things available in Windows Insider builds of the OS don't always end up in the release version that rolls out to all PCs.

Enlarge / Engineers have tried to corral a mud volcano in Indonesia that has covered more than 1,700 acres with mud (credit: Eka Dharma/AFP via Getty Images)

Rice farmers living in Sidoarjo Regency, Indonesia, awoke to a strange sight on May 29, 2006. The ground had ruptured overnight and was spewing out steam.

In the following weeks, water, boiling-hot mud and natural gas were added to the mixture. When the eruption intensified, mud started to spread over the fields. Alarmed residents evacuated, hoping to wait out the eruption safely.

The mud onslaught forced tens of thousands of people to relocate from their homes. (credit: Mochammad Risyal Hidayat/AFP via Getty Images)

Except that it didn’t stop. Weeks passed, and the spreading mud engulfed entire villages. In a frantic race against time, the Indonesian government began to build levees to contain the mud and stop the spread. When the mud overtopped these levees, they built new ones behind the first set. The government eventually succeeded in stopping the mud’s advance, but not before the flows had wiped out a dozen villages and forced 60,000 people to relocate.