Topics on my particular interests.
It’s getting ever more dangerous out there. No one can afford to ignore the modern world of fraud and theft anymore — educate yourselves and anyone else who will listen, because those who would steal your money are getting better at it all the time.
Watch out, those armadillos can be tough customers. 😉 (For those not in the know, there’s an inside joke here for a good portion of those who read this blog, as well as the obvious humor.)
This had better become required by law, and soon, if the government wants people to trust electronic voting machines. Every security expert who’s even glanced at them has been appalled at how easily they can be manipulated. Related and possibly-interesting note: a significant part of one of the Stainless Steel Rat books — written long …
Continue reading ‘“Researchers propose simple fix to thwart e-voting attack”’ »
There are three interesting things on this page: An “interactive brute force search space calculator” for passwords, which you can play with to get a good idea how easily a brute-force attack would find YOUR passwords. Some comments further down the page on mathematical entropy, and how it doesn’t affect password strength (despite common wisdom …
This is assuming, of course, that these aliens are exactly like us and send dumb, inflexible machines that will run out of power and can’t draw attention to themselves. And, for that matter, that they would want to draw attention to themselves. We’ll probably have some form of strong AI within a generation, and one …
Continue reading ‘“Mars, Moon, solar system could be littered with alien artifacts”’ »
A small excerpt from that excerpt: A few years ago, researchers quizzed more than thirty surgeons and surgical residents on their video-game habits […] Then they put all the surgeons through a laparoscopic surgery simulator, in which thin instruments akin to extremely long chopsticks are inserted into one or more small incisions through the skin …
Continue reading ‘“I Live in the Future and Here’s How it Works”’ »
I’ve had this vision for years of a machine that identifies mosquitoes in a house or around people in a backyard area at dusk, targets them, and ruthlessly burns them down with a precision blast from a small, high-powered laser. I’m generally a peaceful person, but I have no mercy toward fleas, ticks, and blood-suckers …
Continue reading ‘“Bill Gates drops $1m on laser-based malaria fighter”’ »
Sometimes Dilbert creator Scott Adams comes up with some really amusing blog posts. This one is one of them. Unfortunately it’s mostly amusing because it’s true. I can only hope that this is just the same relatively tiny group of vocal and stupid people that I see commenting everywhere. If not, our future may be …
A good and up-to-date overview of defensive measures you should be taking to preserve your privacy on the Internet. I use many of the add-ons mentioned there already, but at least one was new to me too. (Here’s part 2.)
I’ve been using GPG to sign my e-mail for years, and encrypt it when the recipient will accept such messages (which is very rarely). I find it ridiculous that essentially everyone out there is doing the equivalent of sending e-mail postcards that anyone and everyone with access to any system along their delivery path can …