January 2012
2 posts
Jan 21st
“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, and yet it is...”
– Blaise Pascal
Jan 6th
November 2011
8 posts
Nov 28th
Neil Degrasse Tyson on faster-than-light neutrinos
bluengreen7: What are your thoughts on the reports of neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light?
neiltyson: Three options:
1) Mistake in the data
VERY DISTANT 2) New particle traveling backwards through time. No need to modify relativity.
EVEN MORE DISTANT 3) Need to modify Relativity.
Nov 14th
Nov 11th
Nov 7th
Amazon War Story #1: Jeff Bezos →
People like Jeff are better regarded as hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in human affairs.
Nov 7th
“Remember: sometimes the people who are not on the same page as you have simply...”
– Not on the Same Page
Nov 4th
How to Break XML Encrypttion →
We show that an ad­versa­ry can de­crypt a ci­pher­text by per­for­ming only 14 re­quests per plain­text byte on aver­a­ge. This poses a se­rious and truly prac­tical se­cu­ri­ty thre­at on all cur­rent­ly used im­ple­men­ta­ti­ons of XML En­cryp­ti­on. In a sense the at­tack can be seen as a ge­ne­ra­liza­t­i­on of pad­ding ora­cle at­tacks (Vau­den­ay, Eu­ro­crypt 2002). It ex­ploits a subt­le...
Nov 1st
“the old is dying and the new cannot be born”
– Antonio Gramsci
Nov 1st
October 2011
2 posts
“By the way, nice sig; mind if I steal it? :P > > A: Yes. > >...”
– Someone’s sig. !
Oct 9th
The security impact of a new cryptographic library... →
AES-128, RSA-2048, etc. are widely accepted standards. Obviously infeasible to break by best attacks in literature. Implementations are available in public cryptographic libraries such as OpenSSL. Common security practice is to use those implementations. But cryptography is still a disaster! Complete failures of confidentiality and integrity We have designed+implemented a new...
Oct 4th
September 2011
1 post
I Know Where You are and What You are Sharing:... →
In this paper, we show how to exploit real-time communication applications to determine the IP address of a targeted user. We focus our study on Skype, although other realtime communication applications may have similar privacy issues. We first design a scheme that calls an identified targeted user inconspicuously to find his IP address, which can be done even if he is behind a NAT. By calling the...
Sep 23rd
August 2011
2 posts
“To farishte poochhenge mehshar mein paakbaazon se Gunah kyoon na kare, kya...”
– Aziz Mian, “Milegi Sheikh Ko Jannat”
Aug 16th
Aug 12th
July 2011
3 posts
“defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool NO;...”
– Disable Lion’s New Window Animation (via)
Jul 27th
Jul 10th
Jul 8th
June 2011
1 post
Jun 7th
April 2011
3 posts
“I lay down in the empty street and parked My feet against the gutter’s...”
– Advice from The Experts by Bill Knott
Apr 26th
“after the carnival suddenly mysteriously burnt down they stirred the...”
– Bill Knott
Apr 21st
Slow Reading: The affirmation of authorial intent →
(…) we are utterly preoccupied with deciding what the sentences we read and hear MEAN to us. Even more than that, we are preoccupied with deciding whether WE agree or disagree with what we take the sentences to mean, whether WE approve or disapprove. And, because we are so preoccupied. we generally do not pause to take note of what the sentences we read actually SAY. This rush to...
Apr 18th
March 2011
5 posts
Mar 25th
“There are things I have done There’s a place I have gone There’s...”
– This Night - by Black Lab
Mar 24th
8 notes
“Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, is all we will ever have – and...”
– Philip Appleman
Mar 24th
FF4 Panorama shortcut
Ctrl-Shift-e (⌘-Shift-e) for Mac
Mar 24th
Turn Off Spaces Animation in OS X
If you find the animated transition between Spaces on OS X unnecessary, you can switch it off like so: defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock To revert the change, swap that YES for a NO.
Mar 9th
November 2010
1 post
Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your...
“So now I know that there’s another life in my body that can’t outlive me but can kill me, it’s the perfect moment to gratefully acknowledge that I’m a product of a cosmic design? Who thinks up these arguments? Actually it’s an insulting question: ‘I hear you’re dying. Well wouldn’t it be a good time to get rid of your beliefs?’ Try it on...
Nov 17th
8 notes
October 2010
5 posts
““Hello, wo…” “ACCESS DENIED - world does not accept...”
– /. comment on a story about a programming language specifically for security. Context “Everything in Fabric is an ‘object’ labeled with a set of policies on how and by whom data can be accessed and what operations can be performed on it.”
Oct 26th
Oct 20th
Macnamara Fallacy
The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is ok as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can’t be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can’t be measured easily really isn’t important. This is blindness. The forth step is to say that...
Oct 14th
“Ek fakir bheek maangne ke liye masjid ke baahar baitha tha Sab namaazi aankh...”
Oct 2nd
9 notes
“If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to...”
– SUPERSTAR Rajinikanth!: The biggest movie star you’ve probably never heard of. - By Grady Hendrix - Slate Magazine
Oct 1st
8 notes
August 2010
1 post
Proofs, Proofs, Who Needs Proofs? →
I have recently spoken to a number of reporters, as you might expect Some were from the on-line media and some from the print media. Both types of reporters asked good questions and in general we had an interesting discussion. But one or two asked a question that I really had trouble answering. The question was not an obvious ones like: what is polynomial time, or what is NP. The question...
Aug 21st
11 notes
June 2010
1 post
Solitude and Leadership →
My title must seem like a contradiction. What can solitude have to do with leadership? Solitude means being alone, and leadership necessitates the presence of others—the people you’re leading. (…) But it seems to me that solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may...
Jun 9th
April 2010
2 posts
"Caprica" →
Can a machine accumulate enough information about your patterns of communication to create an effective digital doppelgänger? Could we use the data left behind on Google’s servers and our own hard disks to effectively replace ourselves with an artificial intelligence born and bred of our online conversations and quirks? What might it be like to have a conversation with a past representation...
Apr 19th
9 notes
Apr 16th
March 2010
5 posts
Breaking Provably Secure Systems →
Mar 18th
VMWare Guest to Host Escape Story (pdf) →
Presented at Black Hat USA 2009
Mar 17th
13 notes
“To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the...”
– Buddhist proverb
Mar 13th
14 notes
Security Assessment of the IPv4 →
This document contains a security assessment of the IETF specifications of the Internet Protocol version 4, and of a number of mechanisms and policies in use by popular IPv4 implementations.
Mar 6th
14 notes
WatchWatch
TED: Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory
Mar 6th
February 2010
4 posts
Feb 24th
10 notes
Feb 22nd
6 notes
WatchWatch
David Blaine: How I held my breath for 17 min
Feb 8th
The Rules of Beeping: Exchanging Messages Via... →
This article explores the practice of “beeping” or “missed calling” between mobile phone users, or calling a number and hanging up before the mobile’s owner can pick up the call. Most beeps are requests to call back immediately, but they can also send a pre-negotiated instrumental message such as “pick me up now” or a relational sign, such as...
Feb 2nd
January 2010
2 posts
"India's model of reflective patriotism" →
“All around the world, rising prosperity and rising patriotism go hand in hand. But what sort of patriotism is India’s going to be? “
Jan 28th
5 notes
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent...”
– Not Darwin
Jan 6th
December 2009
2 posts
Dec 8th
Dec 6th