What We Read Today 24 June 2014

Econintersect: Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.

Isis advance threatens Iraq’s very future, claims John Kerry (Martin Chulov, CNN) Kerry is in Baghdad promising “intense and sustained support” for Iraq. Are those fighting words?  Kerry also said:

“The very future of Iraq depends on choices that will be made in the next days and weeks. Not next week, not next month, but now.”

• A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane — And Nobody Knows What’s Causing It (Jared Keller, Policy Mic) Hat tip to Tom Hickey. A low-level frequency is producing an audible hum many places around the world. But only a few are hearing it. It causes pain, irritation, depression and anguish. In some cases suicides have resulted. Nobody has identified the exact source(s) but the sound(s) does(do) appear to be real and measurable.

• Apple’s Smartwatch Will Probably Fail (Rocco Pendola, TheStreet) Pendola says that this field of dreams should have been left planted with corn. He calls wearable technology a “phantom sector“.

• A Measurement Study of Google Play (Nicolas Viennot, Edward Garcia and Jason Nieh, Columbia University) A recent Columbia University study has shown that Android applications contain thousands of leaked secret authentication keys which can be used by malicious users to gain unauthorized access to server resources through Amazon Web Services and compromise user accounts on Facebook. The study concludes that Google’s Play Store has inadequate security, and was able to crawl their site using a hack crawler called PlayDrone.

• Iran rejects U.S. action in Iraq, ISIL tightens Syria border grip (Kamal Namaa, Reuters) There is an outstanding characteristic of this story and it should be a great embarrassment to Reuters: The six military photos. Obviously they are stiffly posed propaganda shots like the one below which is suitable to accompany a caption like: Members of the Iraqi security forces demonstrate how to present a maximal target to the enemy.

Today there are 11 articles discussed ‘behind the wall’.

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