September is coming soon. Not soon enough as it’s also the month of my birthday. Yes, I’m a lovely Libra. That’s why I’m so balanced. Actually no, that’s the meditation I do in the mornings. Another thing September is likely to bring us is a new iPhone 5 and the rumors and speculation about that are already flying. Calm down though: There are a few Things We Already Know: © Continue reading
technology
29 posts
I didn’t get a cell phone until 2004, when I was a freshman in college. I have pretty much broken, lost or somehow damaged nearly every phone that has had the misfortune of belonging to me. If there is some kind of Toy Story shenanigans going on at the T-Mobile store, my name is whispered in hushed tones by hot pink flip phones who fear to be purchased by me. My alternative theory is that the things that I say or text with my cell phones are so inane that they all commit suicide rather than be owned by me for a period of longer than six months. Continue reading
Google+ is a new social networking site. Yes, new social networking sites come out every other week. Yes, no-one cares. Yes, Google has tried to get into the social networking field before, and failed. This might be different. Most social networking sites are intended to be additional to whatever social networks you already use. Hell, many even have buttons to share stuff from them to Facebook or Twitter.
Google+ is different. The message of Google+ is that it does everything Facebook does, and more, but also lets you control your privacy and sharing better than Facebook. The goal of Google+ is nothing short of consigning Facebook to the dustbin of history, alongside MySpace. Continue reading
Today Apple began selling unlocked iPhone 4 phones in the Apple Store. I’m not an industry insider and certainly no fan-boy but that’s not going to stop me from shooting my mouth off about this. Lance Ulanoff over at pcmag.com took a very strong stance that Apple will NOT do this and his reason is simply: “Apple isn’t stupid.“ Well I beg to differ and we now know just how wrong he was.
Eli Pariser makes a great case for why the Internet, as we know it today, is not the information free-for all that we all believe it to be. Editors, the gatekeepers of the past, have been replaced by algorithms that have been designed to tailor Google search results and Facebook News Feeds to your tastes and interests, while leaving out ideas that are uncomfortable but important. Great video from TED2011. Comment.
There are iPhone ringtones that are designed to help bird watchers identify the calls and songs of birds they hear out in the field. While it may seem like merely good intentions for birdwatchers seeking to lure birds for the perfect photo by playing birdsong on their phones, there’s a twist to the story that is worthy of real concern.
Forget hashbangs.
With the advent of smartphones with cameras and barcode scanners come QR as advertisement. I noticed this billboard for a local (and annoying) restaurant go up last month:
That square in the middle is a QR code, if you scan it from the street with your phone, it will reveal a special (or whatever information they choose to encode in it).
This isn’t new technology, but its emergence as an advertising tool – especially as an advertising tool that many people can use – is somewhat new.
You can turn pretty much anything made of content into one of these little codes:
Check this little guy out! A group of scientists at Osaka University designed him to make realilistic human expressions in an attempt to study human social development between parents and children. There’s some scientist who is totally marking off a graph being really pissed off that he can’t find a suitable control model for his experiments because some babies are happier than others, and dreaming up this little abomination. They tried using robots in the past, but the robots didn’t work “in a natural way” and therefore the parents didn’t interact properly with them. Video of them in action:
I don’t know about you, but look at those eyes. I’d totally name him “Shifty.” He needs some servos adjusted, stat!
Here he is, without the “realilistic” skin! :
Look! The full range of emotions!:
I hope they never show this infographic to “parents” in the study:
Totally creepy, but I think it could be viable. For all of those people out there who are stuck in their phones updating facebook and think that social interaction in over 140 characters is taxing- there’s a companion for you! The maternal/paternal instinct in humans is huge! Make this thing Wi-fi, be able to download a playlist from iTunes and have a wireless charging platform (it already looks like it’s an Apple product) and make a billion dollars! Isn’t a new “Chucky” movie in production?
Note:
Here’s resident IT security expert bens and his analysis of the Gawker hack. He also has some tips for how protect yourself when stuff like this happens….
Gawker media got hacked, and in the hack Gawker’s master password file was stolen. What does this mean to you? Well, if you have linked any e-mail address that has any sort of real-world relevence to you to your Gawker account, you should change your password immediately. The same goes for your passwords. There’s a concept called “password entropy.” That is, if you use a login/password for one website and its compromised, you might use a similar login/pass on another site.
Change your passwords, and make sure they’re dissimilar from other passwords you’ve used.
Insofar as the “hack,” it looks like a script kiddie was looking for notoritety. From the released info, it appears that simple measures like having mildly secure passwords were not adhered to. Does it surprise me that between the Gawker Media Network there are machines running potentially inseucre software? No.
What is surprising is that even the site owner is using an eight character-long numeric password. Hey Nick, “24862486” might be a really easy password to remember, but dude, you’re running a media company with a huge online presence. You couldn’t tell me that a password like “N1ck$$d3nt0n$$$$$” isn’t a much better password that would be pretty easy to remember (its your name, with vowels as numbers, a couple non-alphanumeric characters, and its nice and long.)
A lot of brute-force methods won’t try to brute-force non alphanumerics, so signs like “$” and “!” and even more esoteric characters can slow down a brute force attack. However, if the password file is stolen it’s only a matter of time for it to be decrypted and all passwords revealed.
So what should you do? I know most of you are not technical users. The main thing you have to worry about is someone reading that your email address/password linked to Gawker is the same email account/password linked to your bank account.
So, change your bank password. Change your email password. Use multiple e-mail accounts so that if one is hacked, potentially you can compartmentalize the damage. If your bank statements go to your Gmail account, but you use a Hotmail account only for web forum passwords; you’re going to be much less exposed to risk if there’s a security leak.
Use strong passwords. Don’t rely on your password to remain secure. Change it every couple of months. Keep your software updated. If there’s a popup when you start your computer telling you that there’s a “critical software update” … download and install it! No computer system is 100% secure, but there’s a lot you can do to minimize damage.
Oh, and Gawker… who’s running your security policies? I’m not doing anything next week. Send me an email and lets run a pen. test. Were you guys running any IDS? You’re probably on the phone to the FBI right now and getting the run-around. You guys have my email address already!