A casino got hacked through an internet-connected fish tank
From Hacker News: "Nicole Eagan, the CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, told attendees at an event in London how cybercriminals hacked an unnamed casino through its Internet-connected thermometer in an aquarium in the lobby of the casino. According to what Eagan claimed, the hackers exploited a vulnerability in the thermostat to get a foothold in the network. Once there, they managed to access the casino's high-roller database of gamblers and pulled it back across the network, out the thermostat, and up to the cloud. "There's a lot of internet-of-things devices, everything from thermostats, refrigeration systems, HVAC systems, to people who bring in their Alexa devices into the offices," Eagan told the attendees at the conference. "There's just a lot of IoT. It expands the attack surface, and most of this isn't covered by traditional defenses."
Octegenarian nuns left their retirement home and moved back into their abandoned convent
From the BBC: "Three Austrian nuns in their 80s have run away from the retirement home where they were placed and gone back to their former convent. Sister Bernadette, 88, Sister Regina, 86, and Sister Rita, 82, are the last three nuns at the Kloster Goldenstein convent in Elsbethen, just outside Salzburg. They regained access with the help of former students and a locksmith. Church authorities are not happy - but the nuns are. The three nuns have spent much of their lives at Schloss Goldenstein, a castle which has been a convent and a private girls' school since 1877. Sister Bernadette attended the school herself, arriving as a teenager in 1948. Sister Regina arrived at the convent in 1958, and Sister Rita four years later. All three went on to work at the school as teachers for many years. Sister Regina was headmistress. But the numbers of nuns dwindled. In 2022, the building was taken over by the Archdiocese of Salzburg. The community was officially dissolved at the beginning of 2024."
A truck driver spent 21 years building a scale-model of New York City in his basement
From Gothamist: "Hobbyist Joseph Macken has spent two decades building a scale model of New York City in his basement. The intricate model features what Macken says are hundreds of thousands buildings, landmarks and geographic elements across the five boroughs and their surroundings, including bridges, airports, the Hudson and East rivers, New York Harbor, Central Park, One World Trade Center and the original World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building. The work consists of 350 handmade sections that are pieced together and can be taken apart and moved. Macken, a 63-year-old truck driver who has no formal carpentry or engineering training, said he dreamed of replicating the Queens Museum’s famous Panorama after an elementary school trip when he was a kid. He embarked on the endeavor in 2004, armed with little more than balsa wood, Elmer’s glue and Styrofoam."
Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.
Archaeologists have found mummies that are 10,000 years older than those in Egypt
From Nautilus: "Few burial practices are as elaborate and well known as those of Ancient Egypt. The mummification process employed by that desert culture from about 4000 to 945 B.C. has inspired literature, cinema, and Halloween costumes for generations. Indigenous Chinchorro people living in what is now northern Chile mummified their dead up to 2,000 years before the earliest recorded purposeful mummies of Ancient Egypt. But now, we have discovered that mummies were on the scene even earlier than that. Researchers have documented evidence of human remains that were smoke-dried and tightly bound in crouched postures and that are between 12,000 and 4,000 years old across southern Asia. The international team of scientists recorded 54 instances of mummification in a variety of hunter-gatherer cultures spread across Southeastern Asia (which includes southern China). They reported their findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
In the late 1800s there was a floating church that brought worship services to sailors
From Boing Boing: "In the mid-19th century, the Seamen's Church Institute began bringing floating chapels to sailors who couldn't leave their work to attend church services on land. One such vessel was the Floating Church of the Redeemer, built by the Institute's Philadelphia branch. While no photographs exist of this floating church, surviving drawings depict a whimsical, fairytale-like structure. However, according to souirces, the church faced several practical challenges: congregants experienced seasickness, the pastor struggled to maintain balance during services as the vessel rocked on the waves, and the church even sank once. These difficulties proved insurmountable. After 10 years of service, the Floating Church of the Redeemer was sold and relocated to Camden, New Jersey."
Unless you've seen one it's hard to wrap your head around just how huge a moose is
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as "serendipity engines," such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg's Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis's Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton's The Browser, Clive Thompson's Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy's Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova's The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com
