Wired
Investigative editor at Wired and author of Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground
PROFILE
Kevin Poulsen
Guest
FROM Kevin Poulsen
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
How Hackers Exploited Video Poker Slots Slot machines used to live on the margins of the gambling industry. One arm bandits sitting in the corners of casinos being played by old ladies. Not anymore. These days, the slots have been modernized by video game technology, and they bring in as much as 85 percent of gambling profits. And of course, no one wins against the slots. You might get an occasional jackpot, but in the long run, the fix is in. That is until two guys happened upon the holy grail of slot machine addicts: a bug in the most popular video poker machine in the country. And they raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars before getting caught.
To the Point
National Security, Government 'Spin' and the First Amendment Last Friday, the Associated Press learned that the Justice Department had obtained records for more than 20 separate telephone lines" for reporters' office phones, home phones and cell phones. Despite regulations that require negotiations to protect First Amendment rights, the records were seized in secret. Politicians of both parties have jumped to defend the free press, and President Obama has renewed talk of a reporters’ shield law . Attorney General Eric Holder justified the seizure because "it put the American people at risk and that is not hyperbole." Was it really a case of national security or "spin" to control a story about the CIA infiltrating al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula? Did the Obama administration intrude on a free press? Will the news media be able to protect the next "Deep Throat" in the digital age?
Recommended
Scheer Intelligence
The Biggest Threat to Free Speech No One Is Talking About FAIR co-founder Jeff Cohen dissects the midterm elections, the failures of the mainstream media and the future of the Democratic Party.
The Organist
The New World Where do speech balloons come from? How does time move from panel to panel? This week we explore the techniques of comic-book storytelling through Chris Reynolds’s graphic series, newly anthologized as The New World. Join us as we travel deep into the artist’s world to find the source of these bizarrely mundane comics’ depth and beauty.
LA Observed
Where the fire started, a checkered past The Woolsey Fire continues to rage at a little more than a third containment today. Areas in, and north and west of, Malibu are feeling the brunt of the impact. But across the Ventura County Line, headed past Point Mugu, and toward Oxnard, is a plot of land that has a lot of history. And controversy. With fires burning inside the grounds of the former Rocketdyne Field Lab, some folks who live nearby are worried.