stanford-cs336/owt-sample · Datasets at Hugging Face

text stringlengths 0 105k
As far as cops are concerned, it’s the big fellas — rhinos, tigers and Cape buffalo like Capt. Bogo (Idris Elba) — who are responsible for maintaining law and order. Judy may be the first to benefit from the new mammal-inclusion initiative devised by Mayor Lionheart (J.K. Simmons), but Bogo isn’t ready to trust her with a real investigation, placing the rookie on parking-meter duty while he assigns everyone else key roles in a major missing-persons case. If Bogo’s behavior smacks of species-ism, that’s no accident: The “Zootopia” screenplay (on which the directors share credit with Phil Johnston and co-helmer Jared Bush) actually turns real-world racial sensitivity issues into something of a talking point — as when Judy notes that a bunny can call another bunny “cute,” but it’s not OK when another animal does it.

While raising the subject should help encourage kids to look past surface differences in one another, it’s a bit misleading, since the movie is less about race than gender, dredging up equality issues that might have been fresher in the days of “9 to 5” and “Working Girl”: Judy is treated differently because she’s a woman, bonding most easily with Bellwether (baby-voiced comedienne Jenny Slate), the woolly assistant mayor who serves as Lionheart’s glorified secretary, and Clawhauser (Nate Torrence), the police force’s effeminate cheetah receptionist.

What, then, do we make of the tenuous alliance between Judy and trickster fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), which — despite the obvious design similiarities — features none of the bloodthirsty tension shown between Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox in Disney’s half-forgotten/suppressed “Song of the South”? “Zootopia’s” relatively P.C. sensibility serves as a partial corrective to that shameful 1946 toon, offering a classic screwball-comedy relationship in which the natural rivals match wits, while she carries the added protection of a spray-based fox repellent. Getting no support from her police comrades, Judy enlists Nick in an investigation that leads her down the metaphorical rabbit hole and into the seedier side of “Zootopia,” from the Mystic Spring Oasis (a clothing-optional resort where animals frolic au naturel) to an ominous research facility housing predators that have “gone savage.”

The deeper they go, the more “Zootopia” comes to resemble such vintage noirs as “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential,” from its increasingly shadowy look to Michael Giacchino’s jazzy lounge-music score. Disney has been down this road before with “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” although this time, there’s not a single human character to be found, while the adult-skewing jokes (mostly references to other movies) aren’t nearly so inappropriate for kids. Genre-wise, the film couldn’t be farther from the terrain of “Frozen” and other Disney princess movies, though it plays directly to the studio’s strengths, behind the scenes (we may not see every corner of Zootopia, but we know it’s been mapped out and conceptualized) and on screen, where the endearingly designed ensemble gives the animators plenty to work with.

Judy Hopps’ bright-eyed, foot-thumping energy and Nick Wilde’s cool, half-lidded reluctance offer a perfect study in contrasts, crossing what both actors gave in the recording booth with characteristics of the two species in question. In Goodwin’s case, the actress’s guileless optimism comes through loud and clear, telegraphed through her two long bunny ears, which fold back in fear and shame, but otherwise stand expectantly tall in the face of each new challenge. As her wily fox foil, Nick models a fast-changing map of Bateman’s smirks and eye rolls, his slouchy posture a deceptive cover for his slippery potential.

While it doesn’t have quite the same breakout potential as the Mouse House’s past few hits, “Zootopia” has shrewdly established both an environment that could be further explored from countless other angles (in a spinoff TV series, perhaps) and an odd-couple chemistry between Nick and Judy that carries on even after Gazelle returns for her obligatory grand finale.<\|endoftext\|>The island of Taiwan, governed by the Republic of China (ROC), lies about 100 miles (161 kilometers) east of mainland China, across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan also administers a number of smaller islands known as the Kinmen archipelago, or Kinmen County. Great Kinmen Island and its neighbor islets are on the other side of the strait, in a harbor just east of the port city of Xiamen, practically surrounded by the People’s Republic of China (PRC)—in some places barely more than a mile apart. Back in the 1950s, the islands were heavily shelled during the two Taiwan Strait Crises—military clashes between the PRC and ROC. The small islands were heavily fortified against bombardment and invasion, with barricades placed on beaches, artillery emplaced on hillsides, massive tunnels dug to shelter troops, and concrete walls of loudspeakers built to blast propaganda across the water. Reuters reports that today, the island of fewer than 129,000 residents is “eyeing closer commercial ties with China,” wanting to pipe water from Xiamen, and “has plans to build a bridge and set up a glittering free trade zone with the city,” as China continues to seek unification with Taiwan under the “one country, two systems” model practiced in Hong Kong and Macau.<\|endoftext\|>BABBAGE is getting a little tired of all the hype surrounding the “internet of things” (IoT). To judge from some of the more breathless claims, the IoT would seem to be just around the corner. The worst offenders, no surprise, are those who expect to profit most from embedding sensors in anything and everything, and connecting them wirelessly via the internet to servers in the cloud.

The expectations are huge. Gartner, an IT consultancy in Connecticut, reckons some 26 billion devices will be connected to the internet by 2020. Another consultancy, ABI Research of New York, believes the number will be 30 billion, while Cisco Systems, a network-equipment firm in California, expects there to be no fewer than 50 billion. Cisco is so enamoured of the IoT that it has installed a “connections counter” on its website. On May 26th, the number of “things” connected to the internet was over 12.4 billion and counting.

A chart published recently by zdnet.com shows how overblown the buzz about the IoT has become. The trend line for Google searches for the term “internet of things” remained essentially flat until the middle of 2013. It started to climb steadily last autumn and then went through the roof in January 2014. The crescendo seems to have reached a peak with Google’s $3.2 billion acquisition in January of Nest Labs, a Silicon Valley start-up that makes internet-savvy thermostats and smoke/carbon monoxide detectors for the home. The IoT company was Google’s biggest investment since buying DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2007.

By some accounts, Google’s acquisition of Nest marks a tipping point. If true, there is going to be no end to the clamour, as start-ups and established IT firms hasten to jump aboard the IoT bandwagon. So, expect a flurry of announcements of ingenious new sensors that chirp data wirelessly to the internet about glucose level, printer ink, engine wear, library books, stray pets, ripening crops, you name it. Others rushing to join the burgeoning new field will devise ever better algorithms for extracting relevance from the flood of big data the billions of sensors will be spewing out at the edge of the internet.

Babbage thinks many of those charging into the market are going to be disappointed. As conceived today, the IoT is not the transformative disruption a lot of folk imagine. One thing it is most certainly not is another World Wide Web poised to change the way people live, work, learn, shop and play—at least, not as currently conceived. There are simply too many missing pieces to the puzzle.

Devising sensors and algorithms to handle the front- and back-ends of the IoT are the easy part. Unfortunately, few developers are tackling the really difficult bit in the middle—the myriad infrastructural gaps that lie between the sensors in things at the edge of the internet, and the data collection and analysis performed by servers in the cloud at the centre.

These unglamorous middleware issues of standards, interoperability, integration and data management—especially privacy and protection from malicious attack, along with product liability, intellectual-property rights and regulatory compliance—are going to take years to resolve. Only when they are will the IoT have any chance of transforming society in a meaningful way. That day is a long way off.

The vast majority of the billions of things connected to the internet on Cisco’s website, for instance, are not the toasters, refrigerators, thermostats, smoke detectors, pace-makers and insulin pumps that the IoT's true believers enthuse about. Almost exclusively, they are existing smartphones, tablets, computers and routers, plus a surprising number of industrial components used to beam performance statistics back to corporate headquarters. Without any hoopla, operators of power stations, passenger jets, railways, refineries, chemical plants, oil platforms and other industrial equipment have been doing this for ages. In the past, they have tended to rely on satellite links and proprietary networks to collect data for analysis. Lately, however, more and more have started to use the internet as a cheaper alternative.

As a result, it seems two quite separate IoTs are emerging, each with its own customers and characteristics. One, largely invisible to the outside world, is an industrial-grade network—which may, or may not, run over the internet. This enterprise-class IoT is progressing steadily and reaping real rewards. Jean-Louis Gassée, an Apple alumnus from the early days and a co-founder of BeOS (sought by Apple as a replacement for its Mac operating system), notes that the enterprise IoT is managed by IT professionals, who have the skill, training and culture—not to mention staff—to oversee the millions of unseen devices that control complicated and dangerous processes.

That is not the case with the consumer-based IoT, an extension of the promised smart home, which aims to serve the needs of private individuals. Lacking the end-to-end integration and expertise that supports the enterprise IoT, the consumer IoT is shaping up to become one of the biggest sources of frustration people have had to face in their dealings with technology. Indeed, some have already had a taste of the troubles in store.

Last year, for instance, the United States Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against TrendNet, a Californian marketer of home-security cameras that can be controlled over the internet, for failing to implement reasonable security measures. The company pitched its product under the trade-name “SecureView”, with the promise of helping to protect owners’ property from crime. Yet, hackers had no difficulty breaching TrendNet’s security, bypassing the login credentials of some 700 private users registered on the company’s website, and accessing their live video feeds. Some of the compromised feeds found their way onto the internet, displaying private areas of users’ homes and allowing unauthorised surveillance of infants sleeping, children playing, and adults going about their personal lives. That the exposure increased the chances of the victims being the targets of thieves, stalkers or paedophiles only fuelled public outrage.

More such incidents are bound to follow. When mechanical devices are controllable online there is always going to be a risk that control will fall into the wrong hands, notes Womble Carlyle, an American law firm with expertise in information technology. For instance, a refrigerator can be switched off remotely, causing food to spoil. A bath can be turned on and left running over a weekend, flooding the home and causing large utility bills. More seriously, an insulin pump can be sent into overdrive, or the brakes of a car disabled.

This is no idle speculation. Spanish researchers at a recent Black Hat security conference showed how easy it was to hack some of the embedded controllers in motor vehicles. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security in America has reported security holes in some 300 medical devices made by 40 companies that could be compromised by online tampering. These devices included surgical and anaesthesia equipment, ventilators, drug-infusion pumps, external defibrillators, patient monitors and various bits of laboratory gear.

Earlier this year, hackers were found to have penetrated the computer networks of a number of America’s top manufacturers of medical devices, including Medtronic, Boston Scientific and St Jude Medical. The break-ins originated in China, and seemed more concerned with stealing trade secrets than causing patient harm. Even so, the penetration showed just how vulnerable medical systems are to attack. Womble Carlyle is not the first to suggest a far more robust “internet of medical things” is needed.

The same goes for the rest of the consumer IoT. At present, this comprises little more than a handful of different types of sensors that can be controlled by a smartphone app, and used by owners to adjust the heating, turn on the lights, monitor security cameras or unlock the front door remotely. That is a far cry from an internet of things, in which all manner of devices communicate with one another in a collaborative and meaningful manner.

May be they never will. Evidence from the medical and corporate worlds suggests the security problems are such that solutions are more likely to come, not as interoperable systems able to exchange data freely with one another over a free and open internet, but as closed proprietary technologies in silos that are kept strictly separate for legal as well as privacy reasons.

Babbage hopes he is wrong, but he has seen no evidence to suggest otherwise. What is for sure, though, is that the internet the IoT is being built upon today is nothing like the benign and open internet that gave birth to the World Wide Web more than 20 years ago and allowed it to flourish so spectacularly.<\|endoftext\|>While collecting insertions into various orifices for our annual feature, we stumbled across a good number of truly awful penis-related mishaps. Culled from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's database of emergency room visits, here's a year's worth of self-abuse.

All descriptions are verbatim from ER admittance records:

PUT HIS WEDDING RING ON HIS PENIS , NOW CAN'T GET IT OFF

, NOW CAN'T GET IT OFF SITTING ON A TOILET AND DROPPED CIGARETTE ONTO PENIS

BLEEDING FROM PENIS, WAS DANCING AND RUBBING UP AGAINST SOMEONE REALLY ROUGH

STRUCK PENIS ON SPEAKER BOX

CUT PENIS ON GIRLFRIENDS BELLY BUTTON RING

WAS AT A WATER PARK AND RAN INTO A POLE , FOREHEAD AND PENIS CONTUSION

, FOREHEAD AND PENIS CONTUSION HAS BEEN WRAPPING TISSUES AROUND PENIS WHILE GOING TO THE BATHROOM;DYSURIA

WHILE GOING TO THE BATHROOM;DYSURIA WAS SEWING PANTS AND GOT NEEDLE STUCK IN PENIS

AND GOT NEEDLE STUCK IN PENIS GOLFING AND GOT TICK BITE TO PENIS

LACERATION PENIS WHEN GRABBED DURING BASKETBALL GAME

WHILE PUTTING ON PJ'S HE HIT HIS PENIS AGAINST THE WALL

WAS IN THE SHOWER WASHING HIS PENIS, HAD FORESKIN PULLED BACK, & GOT STARTLED, HE PULLED IT BACK FURTHER . PENILE FRENULUM TEAR

. PENILE FRENULUM TEAR WAS WALKING IN HOME AND FELL THROUGH THE FLOOR BOARDS STRUCK PENIS

LACERATION TO PENIS USING SHOT GLASS TO MASTURBATE

DEVELOPED A LESION TO PENIS AFTER WEARING SOMEONE ELSES PANTS

SHOT WITH BB GUN BY BRO TO THE GENITAL

BY BRO TO THE GENITAL HEMATOMA TO PENIS AFTER BUMPING INTO A POOL TABLE WHILE TRYING TO TAKE A SHOT

BURNT PENIS WITH BLOW DRYER

ON TREADMILL, FELL WITH PANTS GETTING CAUGHT & PULLED INTO TREADMILL, INJURY TO PENIS, PENILE SWELLING & PAIN, TENDERNESS; LACERATION OF PENIS

& PULLED INTO TREADMILL, INJURY TO PENIS, PENILE SWELLING & PAIN, TENDERNESS; LACERATION OF PENIS WALKING ON A TREADMILL AS IT WAS GOING VERY SLOWLY AND FELL OFF EDGE CAUGHT PENIS ON THE TREADS ABRASION PENIS

ABRASION PENIS DROPPED A 10LB WEIGHT ONTO PENIS

ONTO PENIS WAS JUMPING FROM ONE COUCH TO ANOTHER NOW PAIN TO PENIS.

NOW PAIN TO PENIS. SLIPPED OUT OF HIS CHAIR LAST NIGHT ONTO CARPET ATTEMPTING TO CATCH A BUG. PENIS ABRASION

LAST NIGHT ONTO CARPET ATTEMPTING TO CATCH A BUG. PENIS ABRASION FELL IN SHOWER DIRECTLY ONTO ERECT PENIS . HEARD CRACK TO SITE.

. HEARD CRACK TO SITE. RUNNING WITH ERECT PENIS AND FELL ONTO FLOOR SUSTAINING PENILE FRACTURE

AND FELL ONTO FLOOR SUSTAINING PENILE FRACTURE HEARD A POP TAKING OFF BOXERS . PENILE FRACTURE

. PENILE FRACTURE WAS SITTING ON COUCH @ HOME, WHEN SIBLING THREW A LARGE TOY TRUCK AT HIM HITTING PENIS . TRAUMA.

As far as cops are concerned, it’s the big fellas — rhinos, tigers and Cape buffalo like Capt. Bogo (Idris Elba) — who are responsible for maintaining law and order. Judy may be the first to benefit from the new mammal-inclusion initiative devised by Mayor Lionheart (J.K. Simmons), but Bogo isn’t ready to trust her with a real investigation, placing the rookie on parking-meter duty while he assigns everyone else key roles in a major missing-persons case. If Bogo’s behavior smacks of species-ism, that’s no accident: The “Zootopia” screenplay (on which the directors share credit with Phil Johnston and co-helmer Jared Bush) actually turns real-world racial sensitivity issues into something of a talking point — as when Judy notes that a bunny can call another bunny “cute,” but it’s not OK when another animal does it.

While raising the subject should help encourage kids to look past surface differences in one another, it’s a bit misleading, since the movie is less about race than gender, dredging up equality issues that might have been fresher in the days of “9 to 5” and “Working Girl”: Judy is treated differently because she’s a woman, bonding most easily with Bellwether (baby-voiced comedienne Jenny Slate), the woolly assistant mayor who serves as Lionheart’s glorified secretary, and Clawhauser (Nate Torrence), the police force’s effeminate cheetah receptionist.

What, then, do we make of the tenuous alliance between Judy and trickster fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), which — despite the obvious design similiarities — features none of the bloodthirsty tension shown between Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox in Disney’s half-forgotten/suppressed “Song of the South”? “Zootopia’s” relatively P.C. sensibility serves as a partial corrective to that shameful 1946 toon, offering a classic screwball-comedy relationship in which the natural rivals match wits, while she carries the added protection of a spray-based fox repellent. Getting no support from her police comrades, Judy enlists Nick in an investigation that leads her down the metaphorical rabbit hole and into the seedier side of “Zootopia,” from the Mystic Spring Oasis (a clothing-optional resort where animals frolic au naturel) to an ominous research facility housing predators that have “gone savage.”

The deeper they go, the more “Zootopia” comes to resemble such vintage noirs as “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential,” from its increasingly shadowy look to Michael Giacchino’s jazzy lounge-music score. Disney has been down this road before with “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” although this time, there’s not a single human character to be found, while the adult-skewing jokes (mostly references to other movies) aren’t nearly so inappropriate for kids. Genre-wise, the film couldn’t be farther from the terrain of “Frozen” and other Disney princess movies, though it plays directly to the studio’s strengths, behind the scenes (we may not see every corner of Zootopia, but we know it’s been mapped out and conceptualized) and on screen, where the endearingly designed ensemble gives the animators plenty to work with.

Judy Hopps’ bright-eyed, foot-thumping energy and Nick Wilde’s cool, half-lidded reluctance offer a perfect study in contrasts, crossing what both actors gave in the recording booth with characteristics of the two species in question. In Goodwin’s case, the actress’s guileless optimism comes through loud and clear, telegraphed through her two long bunny ears, which fold back in fear and shame, but otherwise stand expectantly tall in the face of each new challenge. As her wily fox foil, Nick models a fast-changing map of Bateman’s smirks and eye rolls, his slouchy posture a deceptive cover for his slippery potential.

While it doesn’t have quite the same breakout potential as the Mouse House’s past few hits, “Zootopia” has shrewdly established both an environment that could be further explored from countless other angles (in a spinoff TV series, perhaps) and an odd-couple chemistry between Nick and Judy that carries on even after Gazelle returns for her obligatory grand finale.<|endoftext|>The island of Taiwan, governed by the Republic of China (ROC), lies about 100 miles (161 kilometers) east of mainland China, across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan also administers a number of smaller islands known as the Kinmen archipelago, or Kinmen County. Great Kinmen Island and its neighbor islets are on the other side of the strait, in a harbor just east of the port city of Xiamen, practically surrounded by the People’s Republic of China (PRC)—in some places barely more than a mile apart. Back in the 1950s, the islands were heavily shelled during the two Taiwan Strait Crises—military clashes between the PRC and ROC. The small islands were heavily fortified against bombardment and invasion, with barricades placed on beaches, artillery emplaced on hillsides, massive tunnels dug to shelter troops, and concrete walls of loudspeakers built to blast propaganda across the water. Reuters reports that today, the island of fewer than 129,000 residents is “eyeing closer commercial ties with China,” wanting to pipe water from Xiamen, and “has plans to build a bridge and set up a glittering free trade zone with the city,” as China continues to seek unification with Taiwan under the “one country, two systems” model practiced in Hong Kong and Macau.<|endoftext|>BABBAGE is getting a little tired of all the hype surrounding the “internet of things” (IoT). To judge from some of the more breathless claims, the IoT would seem to be just around the corner. The worst offenders, no surprise, are those who expect to profit most from embedding sensors in anything and everything, and connecting them wirelessly via the internet to servers in the cloud.

The expectations are huge. Gartner, an IT consultancy in Connecticut, reckons some 26 billion devices will be connected to the internet by 2020. Another consultancy, ABI Research of New York, believes the number will be 30 billion, while Cisco Systems, a network-equipment firm in California, expects there to be no fewer than 50 billion. Cisco is so enamoured of the IoT that it has installed a “connections counter” on its website. On May 26th, the number of “things” connected to the internet was over 12.4 billion and counting.

A chart published recently by zdnet.com shows how overblown the buzz about the IoT has become. The trend line for Google searches for the term “internet of things” remained essentially flat until the middle of 2013. It started to climb steadily last autumn and then went through the roof in January 2014. The crescendo seems to have reached a peak with Google’s $3.2 billion acquisition in January of Nest Labs, a Silicon Valley start-up that makes internet-savvy thermostats and smoke/carbon monoxide detectors for the home. The IoT company was Google’s biggest investment since buying DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2007.

By some accounts, Google’s acquisition of Nest marks a tipping point. If true, there is going to be no end to the clamour, as start-ups and established IT firms hasten to jump aboard the IoT bandwagon. So, expect a flurry of announcements of ingenious new sensors that chirp data wirelessly to the internet about glucose level, printer ink, engine wear, library books, stray pets, ripening crops, you name it. Others rushing to join the burgeoning new field will devise ever better algorithms for extracting relevance from the flood of big data the billions of sensors will be spewing out at the edge of the internet.

Babbage thinks many of those charging into the market are going to be disappointed. As conceived today, the IoT is not the transformative disruption a lot of folk imagine. One thing it is most certainly not is another World Wide Web poised to change the way people live, work, learn, shop and play—at least, not as currently conceived. There are simply too many missing pieces to the puzzle.

Devising sensors and algorithms to handle the front- and back-ends of the IoT are the easy part. Unfortunately, few developers are tackling the really difficult bit in the middle—the myriad infrastructural gaps that lie between the sensors in things at the edge of the internet, and the data collection and analysis performed by servers in the cloud at the centre.

These unglamorous middleware issues of standards, interoperability, integration and data management—especially privacy and protection from malicious attack, along with product liability, intellectual-property rights and regulatory compliance—are going to take years to resolve. Only when they are will the IoT have any chance of transforming society in a meaningful way. That day is a long way off.

The vast majority of the billions of things connected to the internet on Cisco’s website, for instance, are not the toasters, refrigerators, thermostats, smoke detectors, pace-makers and insulin pumps that the IoT's true believers enthuse about. Almost exclusively, they are existing smartphones, tablets, computers and routers, plus a surprising number of industrial components used to beam performance statistics back to corporate headquarters. Without any hoopla, operators of power stations, passenger jets, railways, refineries, chemical plants, oil platforms and other industrial equipment have been doing this for ages. In the past, they have tended to rely on satellite links and proprietary networks to collect data for analysis. Lately, however, more and more have started to use the internet as a cheaper alternative.

As a result, it seems two quite separate IoTs are emerging, each with its own customers and characteristics. One, largely invisible to the outside world, is an industrial-grade network—which may, or may not, run over the internet. This enterprise-class IoT is progressing steadily and reaping real rewards. Jean-Louis Gassée, an Apple alumnus from the early days and a co-founder of BeOS (sought by Apple as a replacement for its Mac operating system), notes that the enterprise IoT is managed by IT professionals, who have the skill, training and culture—not to mention staff—to oversee the millions of unseen devices that control complicated and dangerous processes.

That is not the case with the consumer-based IoT, an extension of the promised smart home, which aims to serve the needs of private individuals. Lacking the end-to-end integration and expertise that supports the enterprise IoT, the consumer IoT is shaping up to become one of the biggest sources of frustration people have had to face in their dealings with technology. Indeed, some have already had a taste of the troubles in store.

Last year, for instance, the United States Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against TrendNet, a Californian marketer of home-security cameras that can be controlled over the internet, for failing to implement reasonable security measures. The company pitched its product under the trade-name “SecureView”, with the promise of helping to protect owners’ property from crime. Yet, hackers had no difficulty breaching TrendNet’s security, bypassing the login credentials of some 700 private users registered on the company’s website, and accessing their live video feeds. Some of the compromised feeds found their way onto the internet, displaying private areas of users’ homes and allowing unauthorised surveillance of infants sleeping, children playing, and adults going about their personal lives. That the exposure increased the chances of the victims being the targets of thieves, stalkers or paedophiles only fuelled public outrage.

More such incidents are bound to follow. When mechanical devices are controllable online there is always going to be a risk that control will fall into the wrong hands, notes Womble Carlyle, an American law firm with expertise in information technology. For instance, a refrigerator can be switched off remotely, causing food to spoil. A bath can be turned on and left running over a weekend, flooding the home and causing large utility bills. More seriously, an insulin pump can be sent into overdrive, or the brakes of a car disabled.

This is no idle speculation. Spanish researchers at a recent Black Hat security conference showed how easy it was to hack some of the embedded controllers in motor vehicles. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security in America has reported security holes in some 300 medical devices made by 40 companies that could be compromised by online tampering. These devices included surgical and anaesthesia equipment, ventilators, drug-infusion pumps, external defibrillators, patient monitors and various bits of laboratory gear.

Earlier this year, hackers were found to have penetrated the computer networks of a number of America’s top manufacturers of medical devices, including Medtronic, Boston Scientific and St Jude Medical. The break-ins originated in China, and seemed more concerned with stealing trade secrets than causing patient harm. Even so, the penetration showed just how vulnerable medical systems are to attack. Womble Carlyle is not the first to suggest a far more robust “internet of medical things” is needed.

The same goes for the rest of the consumer IoT. At present, this comprises little more than a handful of different types of sensors that can be controlled by a smartphone app, and used by owners to adjust the heating, turn on the lights, monitor security cameras or unlock the front door remotely. That is a far cry from an internet of things, in which all manner of devices communicate with one another in a collaborative and meaningful manner.

May be they never will. Evidence from the medical and corporate worlds suggests the security problems are such that solutions are more likely to come, not as interoperable systems able to exchange data freely with one another over a free and open internet, but as closed proprietary technologies in silos that are kept strictly separate for legal as well as privacy reasons.

Babbage hopes he is wrong, but he has seen no evidence to suggest otherwise. What is for sure, though, is that the internet the IoT is being built upon today is nothing like the benign and open internet that gave birth to the World Wide Web more than 20 years ago and allowed it to flourish so spectacularly.<|endoftext|>While collecting insertions into various orifices for our annual feature, we stumbled across a good number of truly awful penis-related mishaps. Culled from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's database of emergency room visits, here's a year's worth of self-abuse.

All descriptions are verbatim from ER admittance records:

PUT HIS WEDDING RING ON HIS PENIS , NOW CAN'T GET IT OFF

, NOW CAN'T GET IT OFF SITTING ON A TOILET AND DROPPED CIGARETTE ONTO PENIS

BLEEDING FROM PENIS, WAS DANCING AND RUBBING UP AGAINST SOMEONE REALLY ROUGH

STRUCK PENIS ON SPEAKER BOX

CUT PENIS ON GIRLFRIENDS BELLY BUTTON RING

WAS AT A WATER PARK AND RAN INTO A POLE , FOREHEAD AND PENIS CONTUSION

, FOREHEAD AND PENIS CONTUSION HAS BEEN WRAPPING TISSUES AROUND PENIS WHILE GOING TO THE BATHROOM;DYSURIA

WHILE GOING TO THE BATHROOM;DYSURIA WAS SEWING PANTS AND GOT NEEDLE STUCK IN PENIS

AND GOT NEEDLE STUCK IN PENIS GOLFING AND GOT TICK BITE TO PENIS

LACERATION PENIS WHEN GRABBED DURING BASKETBALL GAME

WHILE PUTTING ON PJ'S HE HIT HIS PENIS AGAINST THE WALL

WAS IN THE SHOWER WASHING HIS PENIS, HAD FORESKIN PULLED BACK, & GOT STARTLED, HE PULLED IT BACK FURTHER . PENILE FRENULUM TEAR

. PENILE FRENULUM TEAR WAS WALKING IN HOME AND FELL THROUGH THE FLOOR BOARDS STRUCK PENIS

LACERATION TO PENIS USING SHOT GLASS TO MASTURBATE

DEVELOPED A LESION TO PENIS AFTER WEARING SOMEONE ELSES PANTS

SHOT WITH BB GUN BY BRO TO THE GENITAL

BY BRO TO THE GENITAL HEMATOMA TO PENIS AFTER BUMPING INTO A POOL TABLE WHILE TRYING TO TAKE A SHOT

BURNT PENIS WITH BLOW DRYER

ON TREADMILL, FELL WITH PANTS GETTING CAUGHT & PULLED INTO TREADMILL, INJURY TO PENIS, PENILE SWELLING & PAIN, TENDERNESS; LACERATION OF PENIS

& PULLED INTO TREADMILL, INJURY TO PENIS, PENILE SWELLING & PAIN, TENDERNESS; LACERATION OF PENIS WALKING ON A TREADMILL AS IT WAS GOING VERY SLOWLY AND FELL OFF EDGE CAUGHT PENIS ON THE TREADS ABRASION PENIS

ABRASION PENIS DROPPED A 10LB WEIGHT ONTO PENIS

ONTO PENIS WAS JUMPING FROM ONE COUCH TO ANOTHER NOW PAIN TO PENIS.

NOW PAIN TO PENIS. SLIPPED OUT OF HIS CHAIR LAST NIGHT ONTO CARPET ATTEMPTING TO CATCH A BUG. PENIS ABRASION

LAST NIGHT ONTO CARPET ATTEMPTING TO CATCH A BUG. PENIS ABRASION FELL IN SHOWER DIRECTLY ONTO ERECT PENIS . HEARD CRACK TO SITE.

. HEARD CRACK TO SITE. RUNNING WITH ERECT PENIS AND FELL ONTO FLOOR SUSTAINING PENILE FRACTURE

AND FELL ONTO FLOOR SUSTAINING PENILE FRACTURE HEARD A POP TAKING OFF BOXERS . PENILE FRACTURE

. PENILE FRACTURE WAS SITTING ON COUCH @ HOME, WHEN SIBLING THREW A LARGE TOY TRUCK AT HIM HITTING PENIS . TRAUMA.