We analysed several authenticator apps after Twitter had stopped the SMS method for 2FA. We saw many scam apps looking almost the same. They all trick users to take out a yearly subscription for $40/year. We caught four that have near identical binaries. We also caught one app that sends every scanned QR code to the developer’s Google analytics account.

Liters of this petroleum-derived product, the colorless 2,4-dithiapentane liquid, are sourced for a few euros from Italy, Germany, or China, and then they end on your plates and refrigerators, in pasta, tartufata, oils, cheeses, and sausages, but also in expensive delicacies with a prostituted label "truffles."

If you find the smell of restaurants' truffle dishes foul, it does not mean that you do not like truffles; it could indicate that you have good taste and do not like petroleum on your plate. Unlike that intense gas-like smell, the aroma of real truffles is mild and complex.

Some will compare the difference between the natural flavor of truffles and the artificial truffle flavor with the difference between sex and sniffing dirty panties. Martha Stewart says: "Many studies have been done with truffle oil. It is fake, synthetic, and awful. Truffle oil should not be in anyone's kitchen." Bourdain was the most direct: "Let's say this once and for all. Truffle oil is not food at all."

ALEX GOLDMAN: So I get this call. It is a robot saying, "Your iCloud may be compromised."

BRITISH VOICE: We seriously recommend you to call us on 1-844-885-0011. We request you not to use your computer or other Mac devices before speaking to our certified technicians.

PJ: Okay.

ALEX GOLDMAN: And—and so I'm thinking to myself, "Hm. I don’t think my iCloud is compromised.”

PJ: Yeah.

ALEX GOLDMAN: So I called them back.

What follows is amazing and hilarious.

It’s called the Microsoft Tech Support scam, and it’s been around for years. Last week, Emsisoft and Bleeping Computer intercepted one of these scammers, and in addition to messing with him for a good three hours, we took detailed notes on how the Microsoft Tech Support scam works.

If you guessed “China,” you were wrong. The answer is Vietnam. The country’s appetite for rhino horn is so great that it now fetches up to $100,000/kg, making it worth more than its weight in gold. (Horns average around 1-3 kg each, depending on the species.)

When someone with an infected computer later visits any of a number e-commerce sites, including Expedia.com, Gap.com or the shoe-seller Finishline.com, the spyware on his or her machine throws up a large pop-up window that covers the entire browser with another browser window displaying the same site. Unsuspecting shoppers make purchases on that pop-up window they normally might.

But that second window "reflects the fruit of click fraud," says Edelman. To create that pop-up, TrafficSolar invisibly simulates a click on one of the ads it hosts through its deal with Google affiliates, an ad for the same site the user intended to visit.

This scam itself is a few years old now, but I had not personally received one of the calls until yesterday—the very day that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a major crackdown on such "boiler room" call center operations. The very day that six civil lawsuits were filed against the top practitioners. The very day on which I had just finished speaking with Ars IT reporter Jon Brodkin, who spent the morning on an FTC conference call about this exact issue. And here were the scammers on the other end of the line, in what could only be a cosmic coincidence.

Anti-piracy group BREIN is caught up in a huge copyright scandal in the Netherlands. A musician who composed a track for use at a local film festival later found it being used without permission in an anti-piracy campaign. He is now claiming at least a million euros for the unauthorized distribution of his work on DVDs. To make matters even worse, a board member of a royalty collection agency offered to to help the composer to recoup the money, but only if he received 33% of the loot.

To the end, Nim's largely prompted and cursory sign use seems never to have expressed anything particularly meaningful. Project Nim was a total bust: quixotic, constantly improvised, and badly managed. I'm not sure it should be called a project at all.

Yes, it would be wonderful to see propositional communication across a interspecies barrier. But that hasn't happened yet. This film should convince you of that.

And it should also convince you that the title of Herb Terrace's 1987 book Nim, A Chimpanzee Who Learned Sign Language is blatantly dishonest. I guess the publisher would not have gone with an honest one like "Nim, A Chimpanzee Who, Like Every Other Chimpanzee, Never Learned Sign Language".

Amazon’s biggest feature by far, has been their Free App Of The Day promotion. Publicly their terms say that they pay developers 20% of the asking price of an app, even when they give it away free. To both consumers and naive developers alike, this seems like a big chance to make something rare in the Android world: real money. But here’s the dirty secret Amazon don’t want you to know, they don’t pay developers a single cent.