By Paul Thomson :: 1:14 AM
The mayor of the city of Toronto, Canada, Rob Ford, is no stranger to controversy. Earlier this week, he skipped out on a city council meeting to place election magnets on cars in parking lots. He’s been known to make racist gaffes. He’s often the butt of jokes and scorn from the local press.
However, the latest installment in Ford’s saga could bring the most earth shattering news of all. Two reputable news outlets, the Toronto Star, and Gawker, were apparently both approached by someone in Toronto the claims to have a video of Ford inhaling crack cocaine from a pipe. The person who approached the news outlets to tip them off provided the photo seen above.
Reporters from both outlets have viewed the video, and independently, both believe that the video, which they were not given, does indeed show Ford inhaling the drug. The creator of the video is seeking substantial payment from the press to release it. Neither Gawker nor the Toronto Star will pay the asking price for the footage.
It is not known at this time if additional press outlets have been offered the opportunity to purchase the video.
By Paul Thomson :: 11:27 PM
Earlier tonight, Georgia Institute of Technology, in cooperation with online education company Udacity and AT&T announced the availability of an online open Master’s degree in computer science that could cost students as little as $7000.
The school is billing the new program as a Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC. AT&T has offered to financially back a portion of the pilot program, which will begin in the next academic year.
“Georgia Tech’s vision is to define the technological research university of the 21st century,” said Rafael Bras, Vice President for academic affairs at the school. “We will explore technologies and instructional approaches that will improve our role as a leading provider of the best and most effective education in the state of Georgia, the nation and the world.”
Courses that make up the new computer science curriculum will be available free of charge via Udacity’s website, however only students granted admission to Georgia Tech will receive academic credit. Students who are seeking a degree at the end of their coursework will be charged tuition based either on individual courses taken, or on the entire degree program.
Georgia Tech and Udacity will also arrange for a separate credential for students who successfully complete courses but do not qualify for full graduate-level standing.
By Paul Thomson :: 5:31 PM
It’s been a tumultuous couple of months for the Rutger’s men’s basketball team, and it looks like they’re still in the middle of a wild ride.
After their former coach, Mike Rice, was fired for hurling insults and basketballs at players, the school has been touting its new basketball coach, Eddie Jordan, who took over on April 23. The school refers to Jordan as a Rutgers graduate, who earned a degree in health and physical education in 1977.
However, no one bothered to check with Rutgers’ registrar. It turns out that Jordan did not earn enough credits to graduate from Rutgers, and does not have a college degree.
Sports news website Deadspin broke the news earlier today, and has a copy of Jordan’s transcript from his time at Rutgers, showing that he clearly did not have enough credits to graduate.
For now, it appears that the University is sidestepping the issue of Jordan’s degree. It provided this statement to Deadspin: “Eddie Jordan was inducted into the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 2004 and he has been a part of the Rutgers family since 1977. His athletic skills and leadership and his professional accomplishments have been a source of pride for Rutgers for more than three decades. We are excited to have him as our men’s basketball coach and we look forward to many winning seasons.”
Regulations set forth by the NCAA generally require that coaching staff have bachelor’s degrees. The school has yet to make any other formal statement about the revelation of Jordan’s degree news.
The screenshot below shows the page on the Rutgers Athletics website that refers to Jordan’s degree status. The sentence about his 1977 degree is highlighted in yellow.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 3:42 PM
Many Google Drive cloud storage users had a brief moment of panic this afternoon when the file list for their stored documents would not load.
Users took to Twitter and Facebook to complain that they had “lost” their files in Google’s cloud storage service. In reality, the files were never gone, but they did not display properly in the Google Drive file list for a short time around 3:00 PM Eastern time this afternoon.
Google has not yet addressed the issue, although it appears that the service is again functioning normally for most users. On Google’s status page, the status of Google Drive is noted as orange, which generally means there is some sort of service disruption.
If you have the direct URL to your cloud document, you can still access it that way until it appears again in your list of Google Drive documents. Google’s mobile application for smartphones does not appear to be suffering from this issue.
By Gilbert Falso :: 3:14 PM
A Utah-based company has developed a data forensics tool that allows photos from the temporary photo sharing app Snapchat to be resurrected from a user’s smartphone.
The company, Decipher Forensics, has found that while the popular mobile application prevents users from seeing photos they receive after a sent amount of time, the images are not truly deleted from the device.
Research conducted by Decipher in coordination with Utah Valley University verifies that Snapchat simply alters the file extension of the photo that has been shared, which prevents the application from viewing it. The file itself remains on the phone. There is no way to prevent someone from removing the file from the phone and looking at it on a computer.
“This type of information can be very valuable in any investigation, especially one involving exploitation of a minor,” explained Decipher researcher Richard Hickman. “This research will help law enforcement officials retrieve what has been believed to be unrecoverable.”
Privacy experts have long been warning Snapchat users about the dangers of the application, especially for sharing risque or illegal images. Ray DeLong, a security consultant from RTD Communications says, “we’ve been telling people for a while now that once something is posted or sent through the Internet, it can never be truly deleted. It almost always exists out there somewhere, and with the right tools, someone can bring that file back.”
Right now, Decipher’s Snapchat recovery tool only works on Android devices. The company says it is currently building a tool to retrieve photos from the iPhone as well.