M. Taylan Baysefer

An image displaying Android’s fragmented “orphans” is making its way around the web today. The graph tracks Android smartphones that today, are still “under contract” but got left behind in the dust when it came to updates (firmware update or maintenance). The chart was made after news that Nexus One owners would not be seeing an OS update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Here are some of the cold hard facts:

• 7 of the 18 Android phones never ran a current version of the OS.
• 12 of 18 only ran a current version of the OS for a matter of weeks or less.
• 10 of 18 were at least two major versions behind well within their two year contract period.
• 11 of 18 stopped getting any support updates less than a year after release.
• 13 of 18 stopped getting any support updates before they even stopped selling the device or very shortly thereafter.
• 15 of 18 don’t run Gingerbread, which shipped in December 2010.
• In a few weeks, when Ice Cream Sandwich comes out, every device on here will be another major version behind.
• At least 16 of 18 will almost certainly never get Ice Cream Sandwich.

According to the graph, the results are (supposedly) embarrassing to Android users and display the sad, cruel reality of how fragmentation continues to hurt consumers — especially Android consumers. Why is this being pointed out? Apparently, consumers are being screwed when they buy an Android device, app developers end up targeting older versions of Android in order to maximize market reach and security risks are sometimes never addressed from a manufacturer on older devices.

The solution? Well, it’s simple. Stop buying cheap, low-end Android devices that can barely run the outdated OS they’re being shipped with. If you buy a used G1, you really expect HTC to update it to Ice Cream Sandwich after 3 years? As consumers we have a voice and we let our wallets do the talking. Support the manufacturers that regularly update their devices and if you’re phone is nearing 2-years old, well — it might be time to upgrade. The mobile world moves quick. Technology moves fast. Google moves even faster. Remember, it’s not by any fault of Google’s nor their job to update your device to the latest firmware. It’s the manufacturer’s.

That is unless you buy a Nexus device.

[TheUnderstatement via Gizmodo]

Apple's lossless ALAC goes open source, it's like FLAC for iPods originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A flier circulating within the Occupy movement gives detailed instructions for defending yourself against tear-gas attacks, noting that it is "only for defense purposes" and warning "never incite violence."

Flier to OWS Protesters: "Defending Against Tear Gas" (via Beth Pratt)

Mobile app monetization and distribution network W3i is announcing the results of its tests to determine whether or not an iPhone’s MAC address can serve as a replacement to the UDID (the unique device identifier), which Apple is phasing out as a way for developers to track an app’s users.

According to W3i, developers can and should begin tracking the iPhone’s MAC address as a UDID alternative, as it has successfully seen Apple approve its own application where this is the case. Unfortunately, this advice is arguably premature. Apple may let slip a single app, but if a large number of iOS developers began doing the same (tracking the MAC addresses, that is), Apple may certainly change its position on the matter.

For background, in August, Erick reported how Apple sneaked a major change into iOS5: it was deprecating developer access to the UDID. The UDID, an alphanumeric string unique to each Apple device, has been used by mobile ad networks, game networks, analytics providers, developers and app testing systems like TestFlight. In some cases, developers used the UDID to verify whether users were accessing their app from a new device or as a way to track users across apps.

Since that change was revealed, companies have been scrambling to come up with workarounds. OpenFeint announced its UDID replacement OFUID. AppsFire proposed an open source solution called OpenUDID. And now W3i is suggesting developers use the iPhone’s MAC address – specifically the MAC address of the device’s Wi-Fi network interface.

The MAC address, also a unique identifier, is used for communications on a physical network segment. What W3i wanted to determine was whether or not that address could be reliably captured across multiple device types and with different configurations (e.g., airplane mode, Wi-Fi off or on, not in range, etc.)

Using its proprietary app, AppAllStar, which was submitted and approved on October 5th, W3i collected 78,662 MAC addresses from 10/5 to 10/22, representing 100% of the installs across iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices. The app was also resubmitted during that time (on Oct. 1oth) to correct some non-test related errors. In both cases, the company says it placed the code at a very high level while also naming the classes appropriately.

W3i, however, did find that 33 devices had a duplicated MAC address, which W3i thinks may indicate either jailbroken or knock-off devices. A subset of those had spoofed UDIDs as well. The data on where the duplicates were located is interesting. China and the Netherlands each had 9 duplicates, Italy had 5, Spain 3, Saudi Arabia 2, and Singapore, the U.S., Australia, Czech Republic and India each had 1.

Based on these findings, W3i is now recommending that developers begin collecting and storing Wi-Fi MAC addresses with the associated UDID and modify the application logic to use both UDID and the Wi-Fi MAC address.

Of course, all this advice may be worthless in the long run. A test involving a single application is by no means definitive proof that this is something Apple would allow on a larger scale. After all, considering that the removal of developer access to the UDID was intended to better respect user privacy, simply allowing developers to switch to a second unique ID would violate the spirit of Apple’s decision, if not the actual terms.

Pretty much every item for sale on this 1907 ad for "open driving" accessories would make my life better today in 2011, and I don't even own a car. Sleeve protector, robes and apron, raw hide tire bands, and bullet lamps, yes please!

Accessories for Open Driving, 1907

Tech.pinions' Tim Bajarin has opined on why they feel Google and Microsoft hate Siri, citing some excellent sources. As the article states, Google's Andy Rubin told the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, "You shouldn't be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone." Likewise, Bajarin quotes Microsoft's Andy Lees saying it "isn't super useful."

The reasons he gives behind Microsoft and Google's dismissal comes down to two no-brainer answers: Jealously and knowing that Siri will develop into such a powerhouse that it will be a threat to business. And, you know what? He's right.

Bajarin points out that Siri is a front to some major databases including Yelp and Wolfram Alpha. And, just wait until Apple allows developers at Siri's API. The possibilities will be endless. Even now, like Remember the Milk has done, developers are figuring out ways to make Siri work for them. Siri's future paves the way for similar technology to be introduced across all Apple products. Tech.pinions sees Siri as "the gatekeeper to natural language searching" and urges Apple to acquire as many databases as it can to promote this. I think Apple should open the API to developers.

I also think it's more than gatekeeping.

I had the absolute thrilling experience Tuesday to watch someone be introduced to an Apple product for the first time. I was in a Verizon store starting the process of switching carriers, and the other woman in there was picking up her new iPhone 4S.

It was amazing to see her use Siri for the first time, as the salesman asked for hamburger joints, and Siri responded with several locations. He had her instruct Siri to call her spouse, which it did. She talked for a bit, then started playing with the other features. She called one of her children using FaceTime. I finished my business and left before she did, but watching her morph from skeptic to fan was brilliant. Apple's most likely gained another lifetime customer.

And a big chunk of it is that Siri makes an already easy-to-use device even easier. Right out of the package, you can press and hold a button and have Siri do so much for you. My grandmother, who had crippling arthritis by the end of her life, could have used Siri to enrich her life.

To circle back to Rubin's quote, you're not just communicating with your phone. You're using it as a bridge to be able to connect with people on the other side of the phone easier. Whoever possesses the technology and ability to do this will be the one to dominate the industry in the future, and right now, the ball is in Apple's court.

Why Google and Microsoft need to fear Siri originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Michael DeGusta has done an amazing job charting the fragmentation of Android by visualizing the history of operating system updates on Android smartphones for sale in the United States.

Compare this to iPhone updates (which DeGusta did), and it paints a telling picture.

Writes DeGusta:

I went back and found every Android phone shipped in the United States up through the middle of last year. I then tracked down every update that was released for each device – be it a major OS upgrade or a minor support patch – as well as prices and release & discontinuation dates. I compared these dates & versions to the currently shipping version of Android at the time. The resulting picture isn’t pretty – well, not for Android users.

Other than the original G1 and MyTouch, virtually all of the millions of phones represented by this chart are still under contract today.

If you thought that entitled you to some support, think again:

- 7 of the 18 Android phones never ran a current version of the OS.
- 12 of 18 only ran a current version of the OS for a matter of weeks or less.
- 10 of 18 were at least two major versions behind well within their two year contract period.
- 11 of 18 stopped getting any support updates less than a year after release.
- 13 of 18 stopped getting any support updates before they even stopped selling the device or very shortly thereafter.
- 15 of 18 don’t run Gingerbread, which shipped in December 2010.
- In a few weeks, when Ice Cream Sandwich comes out, every device on here will be another major version behind.
- At least 16 of 18 will almost certainly never get Ice Cream Sandwich.

I don’t want to steal the guy’s thunder by reblogging the whole thing, so go check out his chart and solid analysis of what’s going on DeGusta’s his Tumblr blog.

An Austrian student has kicked off a movement that pits EU privacy rules against Facebook's data collection practices. Max Schrems requested a copy of the data Facebook had collected on him (which Facebook is required to provide under EU law) and found himself with more than 1,000 pages of data that demonstrated several clear breaches of EU privacy laws. Kim Cameron has a good writeup on the ensuing complaints that Schrems filed:

Max is a 24 year old law student from Vienna with a flair for the interview and plenty of smarts about both technology and legal issues. In Europe there is a requirement that entities with data about individuals make it available to them if they request it. That’s how Max ended up with a personalized CD from Facebook that he printed out on a stack of paper more than a thousand pages thick (see image below). Analysing it, he came to the conclusion that Facebook is engineered to break many of the requirements of European data protection. He argues that the record Facebook provided him finds them to be in flagrante delicto.

The logical next step was a series of 22 lucid and well-reasoned complaints that he submitted to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (Facebook states that European users have a relationship with the Irish Facebook subsidiary). This was followed by another perfectly executed move: setting up a web site called Europe versus Facebook that does everything right in terms using web technology to mount a campaign against a commercial enterprise that depends on its public relations to succeed.

Europe versus Facebook, which seems eventually to have become an organization, then opened its own YouTube channel. As part of the documentation, they publicised the procedure Max used to get his personal CD. Somehow this recipe found its way to reddit where it ended up on a couple of top ten lists. So many people applied for their own CDs that Facebook had to send out an email indicating it was unable to comply with the requirement that it provide the information within a 40 day period.

You know the lame new iPhone 4S? The one that almost every tech writer called "disappointing," or "not a real upgrade." The iPhone that "only" added a great-seeming new camera, a way faster brain and a startlingly clever AI assistant? Well, Apple shifted four million of them in three days. To put that in perspective, the ...

Would you like to create a custom Google Map of all the wonderful cities that you have visited so far. Or maybe an annotated map that offers easy driving directions to the wedding venue? Or maybe you have customers in different parts of the world and you would like to display testimonials on one Google Map.

These are just some of the many scenarios where you may want to build your own maps. Let’s now look at some of the best online tools that make it easy for us to create custom maps in the browser without requiring any programming knowledge.

How to Make Custom Google Maps

One of the easiest way to create custom maps is through the Google Maps website itself. Open maps.google.com and click Create Map under My Places (see screenshot). Next search for a place, or drop a placemark manually, and save it to your custom map. Repeat until you have added all the places to the Google Map.

You can later change the style of individual pins, add rich-text descriptions, photos and videos to a location – these will show up when someone clicks the location pin.

The same “My Places” option in Google Maps can be used for creating a directions map. In that case, choose the “Draw a Line” tool and move it along the desired route. Double-click to finish the drawing. Here’s a nice video tutorial that will guide you through the process of creating custom maps with Google Maps.

Create More Accurate Route Maps

If you have a smartphone, you may also use GPS recording apps like My Tracks (Android) that log your location at different times and then create a complete route from these different points. Drive to the starting point and hit the record track button on your phone. Once you have reached the destination, stop recording and the app will export the route as a Google Map.

The other option for drawing direction maps is QuikMaps. It basically converts Google Maps into a whiteboard and you can scribble routes on the map just like you draw freehand on any canvas. Once you have sketched the route, export it as a KML file which can be imported into Google Maps or Google Earth for easy publishing.

Create Google Maps from Excel Sheets

One slight disadvantage with the Google Maps tool is that they do not let you enter places in bulk. Yes, there are options to import KML and geoRSS files but how do you create these files in the first place?

Enter BatchGeo – an online tool that can import location data from a spreadsheet table and marks those address on a Google Map. You can copy-paste postal addresses or the latitude and longitude coordinates and BatchGeo will map them all after decoding. It’s useful tool but you cannot export the map with the free account.

Add Animation to your Google Maps

You may see flight tracking maps where multiple airplane images seem to move along different paths on a single Google map. If you would like to have something similar for your own Google Map, check out Animaps.

With Animaps, you can quickly create animated markers that move along a pre-defined route over the map. You can have multiple markers on the same map and their respective playback speed can be controlled as well.

Custom Google Maps for Advanced Users

Advanced users can create customized Google Maps by simply changing a few parameters in the maps URL. The Static Maps API has a complete list of parameters supported by Google Maps along with a few examples. The big advantage with static Image Maps is that you can modify them pretty quickly and they are easy to embed as they they do not rely on IFRAMES or JavaScript.

Also, if you would like to create personalized Google Maps that look very different from the standard maps and have custom data, follow these code samples in JavaScript.

Related: Record a Movie of Google Earth

This story, How to Create your own Google Maps, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on October 17, 2011 under Google Maps, Internet.

We could all argue until we were blue in the face on the merits of each platform’s update system, but there’s one place where iOS just has them all beat hands down: timing. If your device is going to support a big new update, you’ll pretty much always know as soon as said update is announced — and in most cases, the instant one compatible device gets the update, all compatible devices get the update.

Just 5 days after its official launch, iOS 5 is already up and running on 1 out of every 3 compatible devices.

While it’d be easy to throw these numbers up against those of Android (40% of Android devices used in the last 2 weeks are running either Gingerbread or Honeycomb, the latest builds for mobile phones/tablets respectively), the comparison would be Apples and Oranges: these numbers only include iOS 5 compatible devices (iPad 1/2, iPhone 3GS/4, iPod Touch 3rd/4th gen), where as Google’s running numbers potentially cover handsets reaching all the way back to the original T-Mobile G1.

These numbers come from the guys at Localytics, whose mobile analytics SDK is integrated into many thousands of iOS apps with a sample size they say is in the range of “tens of millions of devices.”

The breakdown:

• 36% of iPad 2s observed are already running iOS 5
• 35% of iPhone 4s
• 33% of original iPads
• 27% of iPhone 3GS
• 23% of iPod Touch 3rd-gen
• 17% of iPod Touch 4th-gen

These numbers do not include the iPhone 4S, as that device ships with iOS 5 out of the box. Having a wildcard sitting at 100% would skew the average a bit.

I see at least two take-aways here, at first glance: A) iPod Touch owners need to plug in their damned handsets more often, and B) While iOS handset owners seem to update absurdly fast, the requirement for backwards compatibility/legacy support isn’t going anywhere.

Apple fans hypnotized by their shiny new iPhones and mobile operating systems owe thanks, in part, to the work of jailbreakers, whom Apple once said would destroy their business model. Now the blockbuster iOS 5 incorporates some of the great hacks introduced by jailbreakers.

Is Sprint 3G and 4G Data Traffic Routing Through the Department of Defense? originally appeared on AndroidGuys.

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Illo: Rob Beschizza. Photo: Frederic Poirot

Author William Gibson discusses Victorians, John Shirley and the early days of his career. A longer version of this interview appeared in the 197th issue of Paris Review

INTERVIEWER

Do you think fiction should be predictive?

GIBSON

No, I don’t. Or not particularly. The record of futurism in science fiction is actually quite shabby, it seems to me. Used bookstores are full of visionary texts we’ve never heard of, usually for perfectly good reasons.

INTERVIEWER

You’ve written that science fiction is never about the future, that it is always instead a treatment of the present.

GIBSON

There are dedicated futurists who feel very seriously that they are extrapolating a future history. My position is that you can’t do that without having the present to stand on. Nobody can know the real future. And novels set in imaginary futures are necessarily about the moment in which they are written. As soon as a work is complete, it will begin to acquire a patina of anachronism. I know that from the moment I add the final period, the text is moving steadily forward into the real future.

There was an effort in the seventies to lose the usage science fiction and champion speculative fiction. Of course, all fiction is speculative, and all history, too—endlessly subject to revision. Particularly given all of the emerging technology today, in a hundred years the long span of human history will look fabulously different from the version we have now. If things go on the way they’re going, and technology keeps emerging, we’ll eventually have a near-total sorting of humanity’s attic.

In my lifetime I’ve been able to watch completely different narratives of history emerge. The history now of what World War II was about and how it actually took place is radically different from the history I was taught in elementary school. If you read the Victorians writing about themselves, they’re describing something that never existed. The Victorians didn’t think of themselves as sexually repressed, and they didn’t think of themselves as racist. They didn’t think of themselves as colonialists. They thought of themselves as the crown of creation.

Of course, we might be Victorians, too.

INTERVIEWER

The Victorians invented science fiction.

GIBSON

I think the popular perception that we’re a lot like the Victorians is in large part correct. One way is that we’re all constantly in a state of ongoing technoshock, without really being aware of it—it’s just become where we live. The Victorians were the first people to experience that, and I think it made them crazy in new ways. We’re still riding that wave of craziness. We’ve gotten so used to emergent technologies that we get anxious if we haven’t had one in a while.

But if you read the accounts of people who rode steam trains for the first time, for instance, they went a little crazy. They’d traveled fifteen miles an hour, and when they were writing the accounts afterward they struggled to describe that unthinkable speed and what this linear velocity does to a perspective as you’re looking forward. There was even a Victorian medical complaint called “railway spine.”

Emergent technologies were irreversibly altering their landscape. Bleak House is a quintessential Victorian text, but it is also probably the best steam-punk landscape that will ever be. Dickens really nailed it, especially in those proto-Ballardian passages in which everything in nature has been damaged by heavy industry. But there were relatively few voices like Dickens then. Most people thought the progress of industry was all very exciting. Only a few were saying, Hang on, we think the birds are dying.

++++++++++++++++++

INTERVIEWER

You wrote your first story for a class, didn’t you?

GIBSON

A woman named Susan Wood had come to UBC as an assistant professor. We were the same age, and I met her while reconnoitering the local science-fiction culture. In my final year she was teaching a science-fiction course. I had become really lazy and thought, I won’t have to read anything if I take her course. No matter what she assigns, I’ve read all the stuff. I’ll just turn up and bullshit brilliantly, and she’ll give me a mark just for doing that. But when I said, “Well, you know, we know one another. Do I really have to write you a paper for this class?” She said, “No, but I think you should write a short story and give me that instead.” I think she probably saw through whatever cover I had erected over my secret plan to become a science-fiction writer.

I went ahead and did it, but it was incredibly painful. It was the hardest thing I did in my senior year, writing this little short story. She said, “That’s good. You should sell it now.” And I said, “No.” And she said, “Yeah, you should sell it.” I went and found the most obscure magazine that paid the least amount of money. It was called Unearth. I submitted it to them, and they bought it and gave me twenty-seven dollars. I felt an enormous sense of relief. At least nobody will ever see it, I thought. That was “Fragments of a Hologram Rose.”

INTERVIEWER

How did you meet John Shirley?

GIBSON

Shirley was the only one of us who was seriously punk. I’d gone to a science-fiction convention in Vancouver, and there I encountered this eccentrically dressed young man my age who seemed to be wearing prison pajamas. He was an extremely outgoing person, and he introduced himself to me: “I’m a singer in a punk band, but my day job is writing science fiction.” I said, “You know, I write a little science fiction myself.” And he said, “Published anything?” And I said, “Oh, not really. This one story in this utterly obscure magazine.” He said, “Well, send me some of your stuff, I’ll give you a critique.”

As soon as he got home he sent me a draft of a short story he had written perhaps an hour beforehand: “This is my new genius short story.” I read it—it was about someone who discovers there are things that live in bars, things that look like drunks and prostitutes but are actually something else—and I saw, as I thought at the time, its flaws. I sat down to write him a critique, but it would have been so much work to critique it that instead I took his story and rewrote it. It was really quick and painless. I sent it back to him, saying, “I hope this won’t piss you off, but it was actually much easier for me to rewrite this than to do a critique.” The next thing I get back is a note—“I sold it!” He had sold it to this hardcover horror anthology. I was like, Oh, shit. Now my name is on this weird story.

People kept doing that to me, and it’s really good that they did. I’d give various friends stuff to read, and they’d say, “What are you going to do with this?” And I’d say, “Nothing, it’s not nearly there yet.” Then they’d Xerox it and submit it on my behalf, to places I would have been terrified to submit to. It seemed unseemly to me to force this unfinished stuff on the world at large.

INTERVIEWER

Do you still consider that work unfinished?

GIBSON

I had a very limited tool kit when I began writing. I didn’t know how to handle transitions, so I used abrupt breaks, the literary equivalent of jump cuts. I didn’t have any sense of how to pace anything. But I had read and ad- mired Ballard and Burroughs, and I thought of them as very powerful effect pedals. You get to a certain place in the story and you just step on the Ballard.

INTERVIEWER

What was the effect?

GIBSON

A more genuine kind of future shock. I wanted the reader to feel constantly somewhat disoriented and in a foreign place, because I assumed that to be the highest pleasure in reading stories set in imaginary futures. But I’d also read novels where the future-weirdness quotient overwhelmed me and simply became boring, so I tried to make sure my early fiction worked as relatively solid genre pieces. Which I still believe is harder to do. When I started Neuromancer, for instance, I wanted to have an absolutely familiar, utterly well-worn armature of pulp plot running throughout the whole thing. It’s the caper plot that carries the reader through.

INTERVIEWER

What do you think of Neuromancer today?

GIBSON

When I look at Neuromancer I see a Soap Box Derby car. I felt, writing it, like I had two-by-fours and an old bicycle wheel and I’m supposed to build something that will catch a Ferrari. This is not going to fly, I thought. But I tried to do it anyway, and I produced this garage artifact, which, amazingly, is still running to this day.

Even so, I got to the end of it, and I didn’t care what it meant, I didn’t even know if it made any sense as a narrative. I didn’t have this huge feeling of, Wow, I just wrote a novel! I didn’t think it might win an award. I just thought, Phew! Now I can figure out how to write an actual novel.

PREVIOUSLY: William Gibson Interview

[Video Link] This police helicopter has gee-whiz visioning technology that makes it easy for the pilot to pinpoint a moron who flashed him with a green laser.

Laughing Squid: Man Aiming a Laser Pointer a Police Helicopter Is Quickly Arrested

Researchers at a German university have published a paper detailing a security exploit of the Mifare DESfire MF3ICD40, a widely used RFID smart card. The exploit, which uses an approach previously used to break other wireless crypto systems, demonstrates that even the relatively strong encryption algorithms used in "touchless" smart cards can be broken with a small investment of time and equipment—exposing the shared crypto key and the data stored on them.

The exploit was revealed by researchers David Oswald and Christof Paar at the recent Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES) in Nara, Japan. The attack uses a templated “side-channel” attack on the card's crypto, an approach first described in a paper by Suresh Chari, Josyula Rao, and Pankaj Rohatgi of IBM's Watson Research Center in 2002. It requires the attacker to have the card itself, an RFID reader, and a radio probe. Using differential power analysis, data is collected from radio frequency energy that leaks out of the card (its “side channels”). Through this process, Oswald and Paar were able to retrieve the entire 112-bit secret key from the MF3ICD40, which uses Triple DES encryption.

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I have a confession: I didn't actually know a whole lot about Richard Feynman. Well, okay, I knew a bit about his role at Los Alamos from a history class, and I knew a little about his outsized personality and love for playing pranks, but I hadn't actually read or watched any of his lectures, ...

In the new issue of Wired, Peter Savodnik wrote a great story about the very strange Russian shortwave station UVB-76. Known as the Buzzer because of the buzz patterns it transmits, UVB-76 is most likely a "numbers station" that governments use to transmit secret info to operatives around the world. The article reminded me of the piece I wrote about Numbers Stations for the old bOING bOING Digital webzine back in 1999. Fascinating stuff and I love that the mystery continues! From Wired:

The amplitude and pitch of the buzzing sometimes shifted, and the intervals between tones would fluctuate. Every hour, on the hour, the station would buzz twice, quickly. None of the upheavals that had enveloped Russia in the last decade of the cold war and the first two decades of the post-cold-war era—Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika, the end of the Afghan war, the Soviet implosion, the end of price controls, Boris Yeltsin, the bombing of parliament, the first Chechen war, the oligarchs, the financial crisis, the second Chechen war, the rise of Putinism—had ever kept UVB-76, as the station’s call sign ran, from its inscrutable purpose. During that time, its broadcast came to transfix a small cadre of shortwave radio enthusiasts, who tuned in and documented nearly every signal it transmitted. Although the Buzzer (as they nicknamed it) had always been an unknown quantity, it was also a reassuring constant, droning on with a dark, metronome-like regularity.

But on June 5, 2010, the buzzing ceased. No announcements, no explanations. Only silence.

The following day, the broadcast resumed as if nothing had happened. For the rest of June and July, UVB-76 behaved more or less as it always had. There were some short-lived perturbations—including bits of what sounded like Morse code—but nothing dramatic. In mid-August, the buzzing stopped again. It resumed, stopped again, started again. Then on August 25, at 10:13 am, UVB-76 went entirely haywire. First there was silence, then a series of knocks and shuffles that made it sound like someone was in the room. Before this day, all the beeping, buzzing, codes, and numbers had hinted at an evil force hovering on the airwaves. Now it seemed as though the wizard were suddenly about to reveal himself. For the first week of September, transmission was interrupted frequently, usually with what sounded like recorded snippets of “Dance of the Little Swans” from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

Dorrit Moussaieff, the first lady of Iceland, made a dramatic gesture over the weekend by joining a group of demonstrators hit by the debt crisis.

As the Icelandic president and MPs came under fire from angry protesters on Saturday, on their traditional walk to mass marking the opening of the parliamentary session, the President’s wife broke away to join the protest. Protesters, demanding that the government does more to help struggling households, had lined the streets in central Reykjavik pelting politicians with eggs and yogurt.

More at Storyful. The action happens in this video, at the three-minute mark.