Snipped from the Department of Homeland Security press release:

Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Michael J. Garcia, and Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel of the FBI’s Cyber Division announced today the first criminal enforcement action targeting individuals committing copyright infringement on peerto- peer (P2P) networks using cutting edge file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent.
This morning, agents of the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants across the United States against leading members of a technologically sophisticated P2P network known as Elite Torrents. Employing technology known as BitTorrent, the Elite Torrents network attracted more than 133,000 members and, in the last four months, allegedly facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 titles – including movies and software – which were downloaded 2.1 million times.

Wow, the homeland feels so much more secure now.

Gizmodo rumors that a handle-less Segway is in the works. I think we all know where this leads…

Google Maps exposes some hooks so that web developers can integrate them into their applications. For instance, here’s one that displays housing classifieds from Craig’s List on a map. But Chicagocrime.org’s takes the cake. It maps where crimes take place in Chicago. You can filter by date, time, district, and type of crime. So if you want to know where to find a prostitute or a drug dealer, or more accurately, where they get arrested, just filter it.

This is a single sleeve that you wear that tells you that someone is text messaging you. It communicates with you by changing the pattern of pleats in the cloth. You then brush them a certain way to reply with, and I quote, “i call you back”. Yes, it’s stupid, but also might be dangerous. It looks remarkably similar to those more protective sleeves that are used to train attack dogs. There’s no mention on whether it comes with a rabies vaccine.

Engadget has a blurb claiming that Apple has announced that iTunes 4.9 will have one-click subcriptions and iPod syncs to podcasts without the need for 3rd party apps. While that functionality will be nice, this could mean the end of some free podcasts.

Zip-Linq is a company that specializes in retractable cables. It looks like they have everything from phone, pda, iPod chargers, USB, ethernet, etc. It looks like a good idea. Has anyone used them?

Want to fool a biometric scanner, without resorting to the vegetable peeler method? Here’s how.

Need a GBA you can hide in your mouth? The Nintendo Micro is 4″ x 2″ x 0.7″