Long before absurd, cringe-worthy lip-synch videos were breaking YouTube counters and rocketing Korean pop stars to global superstardom, they found a home on the fringes of the Internet at sites like Newgrounds.com. And their stars? Heavyset computer store employees with a webcam and a dream.

The most famous of those dubbed-over entries is, of course, “Numa Numa,” the webcam video of then-19-year-old Gary Brolsma singing and dancing to Romanian pop song "Dragostea Din Tei." Arguably the Internet's first truly viral video, that epic display of enthusiasm for obscure Eastern European pop music turns 10 on Saturday, Dec. 6.

On the off chance that you’ve spent the last decade without an Internet connection, Brolsma’s performance—which the New York Times described as “earnest but painful”—was basically what amounted to Web video perfection. Over the course of 98 seconds, he mouths the words of the ridiculously catchy song, mixing in a bevy of facial expressions usually reserved for the privacy of the bathroom while throwing his hands up in the air in a way that can only be described as amazing.

Not long after uploading it to Newgrounds—then a reasonably popular home for games and flash movies—Brolsma was a viral sensation. Viewed more than 700 million times in the years since its pre-YouTube posting, it's clear that in addition to being one the first, it's also the rarest type of viral video: one with staying power.

And for good reason—it's still hilarious, even a decade later.

According to a recent CNET interview, Brolsma's life has changed little since his moment in the sun, save for the occasional picture request. As for his plans for the anniversary? He's apparently considering recording another, updated version. To which I say: Please. The Internet needs you, Gary.

Whenever a company or public figure accidentally tweets something dumb or scandalous, it's not just unfortunate. It's kind of inconceivable. How do these mistakes happen on accounts run by dedicated social media teams? Human error is a powerful thing, but it wasn't going to trip Mitt Romney up. As many as 22 staffers screened posts for his social media accounts during his 2012 presidential campaign. Which, just, yikes.

With the midterms over, former Romney campaign aides seem to be feeling like 2012 is firmly in the past, and they're ready to talk about it. Daniel Kreiss, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, published a paper Friday about Twitter and the 2012 presidential election. And the Romney staffers he interviewed were clearly impacted by the, um, level of social media oversight. Caitlin Checkett, the campaign’s digital integration director, told Kreiss:

So whether it was a tweet, Facebook post, blog post, photo—anything you could imagine—it had to be sent around to everyone for approval. Towards the end of the campaign that was 22 individuals who had to approve it. ... The downfall of that of course is as fast as we are moving it can take a little bit of time to get that approval to happen.

Though someone in the campaign apparently didn't have qualms about artificially inflating Romney's number of Twitter followers, concerns about controlling releases and minimizing mistakes meant the Romney campaign often put out stodgy press releases instead of more engaging forms of content.

So you get into the cycle where a press release is sent to us, it is something that we can add to the site, you can pull a Facebook message from that, some Twitter copy, and you don’t have to go through the approval process because it was already approved. So I felt like that was a huge problem because of course people don’t want to go to your website and read press releases and we knew that.

As The Hill points out, the Romney social media team did well when it practiced its strategy carefully before big events like the debates. But Obama's social media team was often quicker to respond to things and more creative. After the loss, the GOP started putting a bigger emphasis on improving its digital strategies. As Romney’s digital director Zac Moffatt told Kreiss, the campaign had “the best tweets ever written by 17 people. ... It was the best they all could agree on every single time.”

Revelations about the NSA have led to a broader awareness that government agencies often demand backdoors in encryption. Google and Apple even added security in their new mobile operating systems that makes it impossible for them to decrypt user data. That way they can't be compelled to hand anything over to law enforcement.

Needless to say, government agencies are not happy about this. FBI Director James Comey feels that providing true, uncompromised encryption to consumers means, “marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves above the law.” But on Thursday, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced a bill called the Secure Data Act that would generally prohibit government agencies from demanding backdoors in software or hardware. He said in a statement:

Strong encryption and sound computer security is the best way to keep Americans’ data safe from hackers and foreign threats. It is the best way to protect our constitutional rights at a time when a person’s whole life can often be found on his or her smartphone. ... This bill sends a message to leaders of those agencies to stop recklessly pushing for new ways to vacuum up Americans’ private information, and instead put that effort into rebuilding public trust.

Bills aimed at curtailing surveillance have failed to pass in the Senate this month (also most of the time), and the Secure Data Act will probably face the same uphill battle. As Ars Technica points out, an amendment similar to the Secure Data Act passed the House in June, but never became a bill.

It's worth noting, though, that the Secure Data Act doesn't actually prohibit backdoors—it just prohibits agencies from mandating them. There are a lot of other types of pressure government groups could still use to influence the creation of backdoors, even if they couldn't flat-out demand them.

Here's the wording in the bill: "No agency may mandate that a manufacturer, developer, or seller of covered products design or alter the security functions in its product or service to allow the surveillance of any user of such product or service, or to allow the physical search of such product, by any agency."

Sony Pictures suffered a brutal cyber-attack on Nov. 24. The hackers, who call themselves #GOP, for Guardians of the Peace, leaked 3,800 employee Social Security numbers, plus salaries, layoff plans, tons of username/password combinations, and some not-yet-released Sony Pictures movies. It was rough.

Sony Pictures is working with cybersecurity company Mandiant and the FBI to control the damage and investigate the hack. And out of the rubble, a theory started circulating: What if North Korea hacked the company in retaliation for it making the upcoming comedy The Interview, which makes fun of the country and its leader, Kim Jong-un? The idea has been gaining traction. North Korea is weird and vindictive, and was really mad about that movie. It totally would do this, right? Actually, maybe not. Experts have doubts.

In a blog post on North Korea Tech titled “Did North Korea Hack Sony? Probably Not,” Martyn Williams outlines his reasons for being skeptical of the theory. He explains that though North Korea is thought to have instigated various cyber-attacks on South Korea—including one major hack that took out broadcast TV and ATM networks for a while in 2013—the country is usually covert about what it’s doing.

In this case the hackers made demands, identified themselves as #GOP, and took over Twitter accounts to criticize Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton. North Korea has never done things like that before. Williams also points out that the country has also never publicly attacked an institution it was mad at even though, “many organizations have angered it in the past.”

If the hacking theory seems flawed to you simply because most North Koreans don’t even have access to a cellphone or computer, much less the Internet ... that is a very reasonable point! But the country definitely has some hacking clout, even if it’s not super-sophisticated about it.

Frank Cilluffo, the co-director of the Cyber Center for National and Economic Security at George Washington University, testified before Congress that North Korea’s cyber-attack prowess “poses an important ‘wild card’ threat, not only to the United States but also to the region and broader international stability.” And a 2009 U.S. Forces Korea report showed that North Korea regularly succeeds in infiltrating United States networks. It seems like the country has at least a few hundred if not a few thousand hackers working on intelligence-gathering and good old scams.

An anonymous North Korean diplomat in New York told the Voice of America broadcast network on Thursday that the accusation was “another fabrication targeting the country.” He added, “My country publicly declared that it would follow international norms banning hacking and piracy.”

Lucas Zaichkowsky, a security expert at Resolution1, told CBC News, “State-sponsored attackers don’t create cool names for themselves like Guardians of Peace and promote their activity to the public.”

Tommy Stiansen, the chief techonology officer for cyber investigation firm Norse, told Bloomberg Politics that he is going to Sony and the FBI with IP address evidence that the attack could have come from a former Sony employee in Japan who was fired in May. “The only reason people are talking about North Korea is that North Korea spoke out against Sony” and The Interview, he said. “I am convinced that this is an inside job. The group, Guardians of Peace, nobody has never heard of them. I cannot find a drop of information on them. I would say if we can’t find anything on them, they don’t exist and they’re certainly not tied to any particular government.”

A U.S. national security source told Reuters on Thursday that in spite of doubts and the country’s own denial, North Korea is still one of a few suspects U.S. law enforcement is investigating related to the hack. Right now it seems that no one knows for sure what happened. Jaime Blasco, director of AlienVault Labs, told Mashable, “This kind of data can be easily manipulated. ... I wouldn’t bet on anything at this point.”

Martyn Williams of North Korea Tech still feels that the country is an unlikely culprit. “It still doesn’t seem to fit the regular MO of the North Koreans or any other nation state for that matter,” he told Slate in an email. “Why draw all this attention to the hack, why leak the information in a very public way, why come up with a name for the group. It all just draws attention.”

The story below has no particular symbolic significance. It is just a local news item about an overturned truck that spilled its payload, tying up traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway. This happens sometimes when trucks drive on roads.

Here is a picture of the truck.

Previously in Slate:

• Don't Mourn the Passing of the New York Times Chess Column
• The New York Times Kills Its Only Environment Blog
• Newspaper Asks Journalists to Deliver the Paper After They're Done Writing It
  

Google has been reaching out to kids with programs like its Maker Camp and Made w/ Code initiative for teen girls. Now the company says it's taking the next step by developing versions of its most popular services for kids 12 and under.

As USA TODAY reports, vice president of engineering Pavni Diwanji is leading efforts to customize Google services for kids and create tools for parents. Since it's hard to keep kids away from technology and the Internet anyway, it seems like a smart idea for the company whose name is synonymous with Internet search to cater to kids and make an effort to provide them a safe online environment.

But Diwanji anticipates pushback when Google launches these kid-friendly versions (though there's no set timing for that release yet). "We expect this to be controversial, but the simple truth is kids already have the technology in schools and at home," Diwanji, who is a mother of two daughters, told USA TODAY.

Diwanji says that the company's main motivation to focus on services for kids comes from the fact that many employees are having children. Apparently Google isn't ruled by 20-somethings anymore. At Google's headquarters there's even a "Kids Studio" where employees' children can hang out and play with prototypes.

Criticism for the upcoming kids releases could come from how Google chooses to implement ads in the services, or from a sense that it's inappropriate to start trying to create brand loyalty or market to kids at young age. As USA TODAY points out, the Federal Trade Commission has fined 20 companies in the last 15 years for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

And kids are already so inundated with media that's it's unclear whether adding more options is productive. As Annie Murphy Paul reported in an August Slate piece, "One thousand: That’s approximately the number of instructional hours required of U.S. middle school and high school students each year. Four thousand: That’s approximately the number of hours of digital media content U.S. youths aged 8 to 18 absorb each year."

But Diwanji says that Google's goal is to make high-quality services that encourage kids to interact and create, not just consume, while also facilitating safety and oversight. "We want kids to be happy and creating on Google, but at the same time we also want parents in the loop and parents being able to supervise the kids," she said.

In June 2013, L.A. schools approved a contract to allow Apple and Pearson to provide iPads loaded with educational software to local classrooms. By October 2013, students were regularly hacking the tablets to play games and browse the Web.

But in October 2014, L.A. schools superintendent John Deasy resigned amid accusations that he didn’t disclose close relationships with Apple and Pearson executives. As if things weren’t already looking bad for the $1.3 billion project, the FBI is now investigating it.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, school officials gave 20 boxes’ worth of documents related to the iPad initiative to the FBI, per a grand jury subpoena. The investigation is mainly looking at talks and evaluations that went on before bidding started for the L.A. school district’s iPad contract. The subpoena calls for “score sheets; complete notepads, notebooks and binders; reports; contracts; agreements; consent forms; files; notices; agenda; meetings notes and minutes; instructions; accounting records” and other records.

The investigation seems to be looking for inappropriate relationships and dealings that might have influenced the bidding process. “We’re not going to use the original iPad contract anymore,” said Ramon C. Cortines, the current school superintendent. “There have been too many innuendos, rumors, etc.” He says the plan to suspend the contract was agreed upon before the FBI search.

The iPad program has been mired in controversy since its conception, with critics pointing out its huge cost and dubious contribution to daily learning. Before the 2014–2015 school year even began, Deasy had suspended the contract with Apple and Pearson to potentially redo the bidding process. Now it seems like the contract is really dead. Again. But for real this time.

Interpreting the textual Rorschach test known as CAPTCHA is a time-honored tradition for Internet users. For years, we have cocked our heads like confused parrots, puzzling over the skewed letter-number combinations. Back in 2012, Slate predicted the death of the much-reviled authentication technology. Software companies created artificial intelligence capable of breaking it. Its days seemed to be numbered. But like a resilient phoenix, CAPTCHA has risen again. And this time it isn’t so bad.

On Wednesday, Google’s Online Security Blog announced an upgrade to the old CAPTCHA. Called “No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA,” the new technology uses an “Advanced Risk Analysis backend” that monitors user engagement before, during, and after the CAPTCHA process. (reCAPTCHA is simply a version of the original software application in which user input helped computer programs to digitize books.) Nonmobile users simply click a box that reads “I’m not a robot,” and the new API does its thing. (Somewhere, a spam-bot is crying digital tears.) Google doesn’t go into the nitty-gritty of how the risk analysis tools work, but it seems pretty confident about the new approach.

To rescue mobile users from fumbling around with phone keyboards, Google developed something reminiscent of childhood matching games. Users will be given an image and asked to match it to a series of different images. For example, you may see a rubber duck. Underneath it you’ll see five photos of rubber ducks, and four photos of former Vice President Dan Quayle. Simply tap on the ducks, and you’re done. (Google’s blog used turkeys and kittens to illustrate this.) Fun! Once you’ve finished and clean up, you can have butter cookies and apple juice.

But user beware: The old CAPTCHA isn’t yet dead. If the new version cannot determine whether the user is human, it’s back to the jumbled text you know and love. It seems as long as spam-bots roam the Internet, we will have to keep proving our humanity.

Google explains the new process more in the video below.