Diebold Drops Out Of North Carolina... Again. It hasn't been a good couple of weeks for voting machine maker Diebold. After getting kicked out of one Florida county and all of California, the company has announced that it's withdrawing from North Carolina, as it cannot meet the election integrity standards in place by state law. The main complaint from Diebold is that it can't hand over all the source code, because not all of it belongs to them. In fact, Diebold claims that no vendors could possibly comply with the law, though the one remaining candidate in North Carolina, Election Systems & Software, doesn't seem to have a problem with it. Even more amusing is that Diebold has offered to help the state rewrite the law so that "all vendors will be able to comply with the state election law," which made the EFF crack: "Funny. I didn't realize that the purpose of election integrity laws was to ensure that an equipment vendor could do business with the state." Of course, don't count Diebold completely out yet. Remember they were dropping out of North Carolina a month ago too -- only to get certified anyway. What's really scary is that Diebold still doesn't seem to recognize why there's so much concern about their equipment. Instead of making jokes and trying to rewrite laws, maybe they should focus on building better voting equipment that isn't easily hacked, adding in a verifiable paper audit as a backup, and then letting people really attack the security so that everyone feels more comfortable that any election using their equipment is as fair as possible. If they really believe in their ability to make accurate and secure equipment, why would they possibly keep avoiding those things?

[Techdirt]

The apparent easy hackabilit of Diebold machines should give anyone pause. Why in the world are we permitting the voting process to be guided by rivate companies that want to keep their inner workings hidden? If we can not see the software to make sure hacks are fixed, then we should just do it the same way Canada does - fill out paper ballots.  5:13:23 AM    

Glass shape 'affects drink size'. People are more likely to pour extra alcohol into short, wide glasses than tall, narrow glasses, a study says. [BBC News | Health | World Edition]

Is this because a short, wide glass is less likely to be spilled by a drunk? Here, the students said that they thought the tall ones held more, so they compensated by putting more in the shor ones. Weird.  5:09:17 AM    

Studying the fate of drugs in wastewater. Acetaminophen is the most widely used pain reliever in the United States, and a study of 139 streams by the US Geological Survey found that it was one of the most frequently detected man-made chemicals. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have found that the drug readily reacts in chlorine disinfection to form at least 11 new products, at least two of which are known to be toxic. [EurekAlert! - Biology]

The presence of pharmaceuticals in our environment will become a much more question over the next few years. People will be getting drugs in ways that we do ot expect. And these drugs will also be altered in ways that are hard to predict.  5:06:16 AM