Vupen | Hacking Is Profitable Business

National Public Radio—Vupen finds vulnerabilities in software, keeps them secret and sells them to government agencies—that’s intelligence agencies, militaries, law enforcements—specifically to be used for spying on computers and smartphones; breaking into the same devices that you and I use.

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Meet The Hackers Who Sell Spies The Tools To Crack Your PC (And Get Paid Six-Figure Fees) by Andy Greenberg

Instagram Sells For $1 Billion Even Though It Has No Revenue

National Public Radio—Two years ago, the photo sharing app Instagram didn’t exist. The company has fewer than two dozen employees and it has no profits and no revenue. That’s right. It brings in no money at all.

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Everybody Wants To Be A K-Pop Star

National Public Radio—All-girl and all-boy pop music groups from South Korea can earn millions. K-Pop is massively popular in Southeast Asia and spreading elsewhere, including the United States. One of the most successful groups popped up on CBS’s “Late Show” recently.

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These groups are often huge—Girls’ Generation includes nine members, Nine Muses confusingly includes eight—and to stoke the flames, South Korea’s suddenly in-demand pop factories are looking to the country’s youth.

Rob Schmitz Goes Inside Foxconn

http://www.marketplace.org/—Marketplace Shanghai Bureau Chief Rob Schmitz is only the second reporter ever to gain access to visit the factory floor at Apple’s Chinese producer Foxconn.

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Reporter’s Notebook: From both sides of the gates of Foxconn by Rob Schmitz

The first misconception I had about Foxconn’s Longhua facility in the city of Shenzhen was that I’ve always called it a ‘factory’—technically, it is. But after you enter the gates and walk around, you quickly realize that it’s also a city—240,000 people work here. Nearly 50,000 of them live on campus in shared dorm rooms. There’s a main drag lined on both sides with fast-food restaurants, banks, cafes, grocery stores, a wedding photo shop, and an automated library. There are basketball courts, tennis courts, a gym, two enormous swimming pools, and a bright green astroturf soccer stadium smack-dab in the middle of campus. There’s a radio station—Voice of Foxconn—and a television news station. Longhua even has its own fire department, located right on main street. This is not what comes to mind when you think “Chinese factory.” continue reading at marketplace.org

18-Year Old E.J. Delacruz Runs for City Council in Honolulu

khon2.com—“I'm tired of it, and I would like to get involved and make a difference and represent the people, like they should be represented. …For me I really want to get my generation involved, because it’s really going to be my generation that's paying for—whether it’s the mistakes, bills, whatever it is for the mistakes of our past generation.” ~E.J. Delacruz

Caine’s Arcade

cainesarcade.com—9-year old Caine Monroy spent his summer vacation building an elaborate DIY cardboard arcade in his dad’s used auto parts store.

Caine dreamed of the day he would have lots of customers visit his arcade, and he spent months preparing everything, perfecting the game design, making displays for the prizes, designing elaborate security systems, and hand labeling paper-lunch-gift-bags.

However, his dad’s autoparts store (located in an industrial part of East LA) gets almost zero foot traffic, so Caine’s chances of getting a customer were very small, and the few walk in customers that came through were always in too much of a hurry to get their auto part to play Caine’s Arcade. But Caine never gave up.

Video by Nirvan Mullick

93-year-old Rachel Veitch Has Driven Her Mercury Comet Caliente 567,000 Miles in 48 Years

Above: GrowingBolder.com did a video report about Rachel Veitch back in 2007, when the car only had 540,000 miles on the odometer.

National Public Radio—93-year-old Rachel Veitch has pampered her beloved 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente, a car she calls “The Chariot,” for nearly five decades and 567,000 miles.

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The “misty yellow” Chariot, which cost just under $3,300, still has her original engine. The air conditioner’s also original. Chariot has outlasted the “lifetime guarantees” on three sets of shocks, eight mufflers and 18 batteries.