4-Eared Cat Breeds Legion of Fans

(NEWSER) - A Florida man has been arrested on charges of possessing child pornography, but he claims the cat did it, reports WPBF-TV. Keith Griffin told police that his feline companion would habitually mash the keys on his keyboard while he was away from his computer, causing strange things to appear. More than 1,000 images of child pornography were found on his computer. More»

British paper turns Bush into laughing-out-loud stock

(NEWSER) - By now you’ve probably encountered “LOLcats,” the photos of cats with superimposed text designed to make people “laugh out loud,” as the kids say. Now, the fine folks at the Guardian have turned some highlights from President Bush’s visit to Beijing into “LOLBushes” ... and dragged daughter Barbara and Henry Kissinger into the fray. Click the link below to see what England thinks of the Commander in Chief. More»

Animals + semiliterate captions = unstoppable online phenomenon

(NEWSER) - From humble origins—a photo of a hungry feline—the website "I Can Haz Cheezburger" has grown into a hot destination, seeding the Web with "LOLcats" and appalling grammar and spelling. The Journal tracks down founder Eric Nakagawa, who was out of work when inspiration struck and says the site now generates "more than enough to pay my bills." More»

Man arrested after neighbors report screeching, smelling 'awful meat'

(NEWSER) - Disgusted cops in Bakersfield say they've arrested a man on suspicion of cooking and eating cats. Jason Louis Wilmer was charged with animal cruelty and using a pet or domesticated animal for food after neighbors heard cats screeching at his house and called police, AP reports. "I heard a cat cry. It was a weird cry, real loud," a neighbor told KBAK-TV . He said he went outside to peer into Wilmert's backyard, where he saw "a little burner going" and smelled "awful meat." A search of the home turned up evidence that indicated Wilmert "had the intent to use a cat for food," investigators say. "I've never seen anything like this," said a sheriff's spokesman. More»

Small but significant number of cases vulnerable

(NEWSER) - Oops. Now that millions of people have downloaded encrypted information like credit card and bank account numbers onto the Internet, a team of mathematicians and cryptographers have located a crucial flaw in online encryption. The flaw concerns the way the system generates random numbers to create a code critical to protecting digital information. In the system, randomly-generated prime numbers are used to create a public "key," which is used in a formula to encrypt information. The original, randomly generated numbers are kept secret. But in a small but significant number of cases, the random-number key generation system failed to work properly. The researchers found in certain cases that numbers were not truly random, making it possible to determine the secret keys used to generate the public key. The problem can only be fixed by software and Internet operations, not consumers. More»