American Drug War - The Last White Hope (in case you missed it on Showtime) Includes footage of and interviews with gang members, narcs, prisoners (like Tommy Chong), and other folks on the front lines of the drug war including Freeway Ricky Ross (infamous for starting the crack epidemic) and DEA Agent Celerino Castillo who both wound up working for the CIA.
posted on Apr 4, 2008 - View this thread

Crack Is Whack (nsfw)
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

The US Sentencing Commission has recommended that Federal sentencing guidelines be reduced for crimes involving crack cocaine -- and is now deliberating making the new guidelines retroactive for prisoners already incarcerated. [WaPo] If taken into effect, about 3,800 inmates could be released by this time next year.
posted on Nov 12, 2007 - View this thread

NSA@home is a fast FPGA-based SHA-1 and MD5 bruteforce cracker. Based on HDTV equipment from eBay, "It is capable of searching the full 8-character keyspace (from a 64-character set) in about a day in the current configuration for 800 hashes concurrently." Previous well-publicized brute-force attacks include the EFF breaking DES in 56 hours and 1.6TB of md5 hashes you can search online.
posted on Sep 4, 2007 - View this thread

Upgraded your install of WordPress to 2.1.1 in the last few days? You'll want to upgrade again to 2.1.2 real quick-like. Seems somebody gained access to the server hosting the download file, added some bad code, and now your barn doors are wide open.
posted on Mar 5, 2007 - View this thread

An interview with 'muslix64' , who got fed up when his new television refused to play HDDVDs, because of DRM problems. So he cracked the HDDVD DRM. Then, for good measure, he cracked Blu-Ray too. The first HD movies are already appearing on a Torrent near you.
posted on Jan 25, 2007 - View this thread

Whitney Houston is selling all her stuff. Now you can buy a portable sauna packed into two flight cases.
posted on Jan 2, 2007 - View this thread

An official comic book adaptation of the 9/11 commission report is due to hit bookstores this month. The U.S. Army seeks an Arabic-speaking comic book creator. Meanwhile, an Israeli blogger suspects a Kuwaiti company of misusing Marvel and DC comics. These are just the latest incidents in a long-running history of using comic books for propaganda purposes, ranging from Mussolini and Hitler to Captain America vs. the Nazi-affiliated Red Skull to anticommunist comics for Catholic parochial schools to a phony Black Panther comic book created by COINTELPRO to a comic book of the American invasion of Grenada. However, my favorite site of comic book propaganda tends to focus on more innocuous domestic issues such as bicycle safety, USDA nutrition standards, and fighting crack cocaine. (OK, that last issue isn't so innocuous, but comic book propaganda about health & safety issues still generally blows.)
posted on Aug 4, 2006 - View this thread

Your iPod is Doomed!
Or it can be, it can also be Zelda'ed if you prefer! ipodlinux.org has ported Linux to the iPod (for Linux, Windows and Mac) and, once its installed, you can load up all kinds of good stuff including the aforementioned Doom, as well as the entire Wiki or use your iPod as a Gameboy! And all without screwing up your existing music files (though there are no guarantees).
posted on Jun 21, 2006 - View this thread

JAPAN IS SO COOOOOL AND SO KAWAII . . .! Is the highlight of this website a hair product or a marketing campaign gone horribly, hilariously wrong? Feel the Manga power and judge for yourself!
posted on May 10, 2005 - View this thread

Tired? Need a boost? Everything you ever wanted to know about one of America's favourite energy boosters. This website contains 25 pages covering the history, uses (both legitimate and illegitimate), and biological characteristics of cocaine and the coca plant. An interesting read for those with time to kill (like me). Possibly NSFW.
posted on Dec 17, 2004 - View this thread

"We wanted to be the store that your mother didn't want you to go to." Cult band leader Dale Lawrence covers the RIAA shutdown of an Indianapolis record store, Berry's Music, for "Selling DJ mix-CDs.". Lawrence has written about mashups for a few years now. Is he also a deejay?
posted on Jul 28, 2004 - View this thread

Staking out the high moral ground, a bill would punish those wearing low-riding jeans. It seems that Representative Derrick D. T. Shepherd of Louisiana, a Democrat no less, wants to outlaw low slung pants. Plumbers beware, and stock up on Butt-Crack Caulk! Really, don't they have anything better to legislate besides fashion or holidays?
posted on Apr 23, 2004 - View this thread

The Girl Who Played Dead "Her name, like most of her life, is forgotten, but her one defining moment is carved into memory: She is the girl who played dead. That moment came in a South Dallas crack house, where she'd been hanging out with four other teen-agers 'in the game,' dabbling in the margins of the drug trade. Her survival was the closest thing to a miracle at a time when it seemed like we were witnessing a final surge into apocalyptic violence on the streets of Dallas."
posted on Nov 29, 2003 - View this thread

You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub
Look mami I got the X if you into taking drugs
I'm into having sex, I ain't into making love
So come give me a hug if you into to getting rubbed

Lyrics from crack dealer/rapper 50 Cent's "song" "In Da Club", this week's most popular single according to Billboard.
posted on Feb 27, 2003 - View this thread

Jeb Bush's daughter found with crack cocaine, did rehab employees hide it? As this transcript of a 911 call indicates, Noelle Bush received special treatment that kept her in rehab and out of jail, at the same time her father opposes the Florida Right-to-Treatment Initiative, which encourages handling non-violent drug offenses with treatment rather than incarcertation. Strangely enough, the 911 transcipt indicates that Noelle Bush's rehab center was primarily targeted to drug-addicted women with children, which begs the question of why the childless Noelle Bush was in there in the first place. The hypocrisy of this branch of the Bush clan does not cease to amaze me
posted on Sep 22, 2002 - View this thread

Orlando police find crack cocaine on Gov. Bush's daughter Knowing that W struggled as an alcoholic and with cocaine, and seeing his daughters hit the headlines with their excesses, I wondered if there was a genetic pre-disposition toward addiction. Apparently, this theory is not new.
posted on Sep 10, 2002 - View this thread

Pimps and Gangs Subtracted From Math Test
"Rufus is a pimp for three girls. If the price is $65 per trick, how many tricks per day must each girl turn to support Rufus' $800 per day crack habit?" So reads a math test from a now suspended Canadian teacher, apparently modeled after this joke.
posted on Jun 14, 2002 - View this thread

Deputy Dawg Cracking cases with his service glock, crackhead Bucks County Barney Fife is the new face of law enforcement
posted on May 26, 2001 - View this thread

My grandma likes to cook, sew, and smoke a lot of crack. This tiny article intrigues me, not for the cocaine information, but rather the cliffhanger of an ending sentence... Apparantly that part wasn't as newsworthy.
posted on Oct 13, 2000 - View this thread

Cash for birth control - if you're a junkie. Came across an ad for this organization while riding a train that serves a number of low income Chicago projects. I'm hard pressed to figure out what this is about. On first glance, it seems to be an effort to help drug addicted mothers avoid unwanted pregnancies. However, upon further reflection, it takes on the guise of a frightening genetic engineering program.
posted on Jun 11, 2000 - View this thread

If you had problems reaching MetaFilter over the weekend, this is why. Some script kiddies launched some gnarly smurf attacks against the regional ISP that provides bandwidth for this site. Oh well, it gave me time to code. I've added lots of little enhancements (like user pages, a working search engine), but still have to get the archives working and expand the preferences page.
posted on Jan 19, 2000 - View this thread