When they went to the Moon, they received the same per diem compensation as they would have for being away from base in Bakersfield: eight dollars a day, before various deductions (like for accommodation, because the government was providing the bed in the spaceship).
Apollo 11’s Astronauts Received an $8 Per Diem for the Mission to the Moon
The astronauts of Apollo 11: Intrepid explorers. Inspirational heroes. Government employees.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
Stripe is running a web security capture the flag - a series of increasingly difficult web security exploit challenges. I've finished it and had a lot of fun. Working on a web browser I knew the theory of these various web based attacks, but this was my first chance to put theory into practice with:
Here's a blog post on the CTF behind the scenes setup which has many impressive features including phantom users that can be XSS/CSRF'ed.
I'll have another post on my difficulties and answers for the CTF levels after the contest is over on Wed, but if you're looking for hints, try out the CTF chatroom or the level specific CTF chatroom.
Gangnam Style looks like he’s riding a horse but actually its satire.
Also, the making of video: http://youtu.be/9HPiBJBCOq8
CGI for the IKEA catalog:
That couch catching your eye in the 2013 edition of IKEA’s new catalog may not be a couch at all. It is likely the entire living room was created by a graphic artist. In fact, much of the furniture and settings in the 324-page catalog are simply a collection of pixels and polygons arranged on a computer.
Brief history and scope of the Internet Archive.
Seized shirt!
For the feds, it’s not enough to simply seize domain names without warning or due process—they want to make sure everyone knows the website operators were breaking the law, even if that has yet to be proven in court. That’s why every domain that gets seized ends up redirecting to one of these dramatic warning pages, replete with the eagle-emblazoned badges of the federal agencies involved.
Meet Sarcastic Mars Rover, now on Twitter, doing a science all over your everything.
Meet your new twitter friend.
We believe Knight accidentally released the test software they used to verify that their market making software functioned properly, into NYSE’s live system.
I get chills breaking the build at work. I can’t imagine how much worse it would feel to deploy your test suite and destroy the company you work for.
The U.S. Census Bureau today released a new online service that makes key demographic, socio-economic and housing statistics more accessible than ever before. The Census Bureau’s first-ever public Application Programming Interface (API) allows developers to design Web and mobile apps to explore or learn more about America’s changing population and economy.
One persons quest to watch the Olympics online.
The location requirements (guessed at via IP address) are irritating. The requirement that you have a particular cable subscription to view video online seems like not network neutrality.
Also this related article:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/27/nbc-olympic-opening-ceremony/
Paul Scheer and Adam Scott trolling Comic ConYup…This Happened!
And the video:
Former FireFox developer on the switch to their continuous update cycle.
Oh no, Chrome is doing such-and-such; we’d better do something equivalent or we’ll fall behind! We thought we needed a rapid update process like Chrome. We were jealous of their rapid update capability, which let them deploy improvements to users continuously. We had to “catch up” with Chrome’s updating capability.
Dealing with servicing on IE for years had led me to some of the same thoughts when I heard FireFox was switching to continuous updates.
cnet:
Mp3 playing retainer transmits music through your teeth:
Bone conduction audio, retainers, and shiny hip-hop teeth grills aren’t new inventions, but tech hacker Aisen Caro Chacin had the clever idea to put them all together.
The Play-A-Grill MP3 player prototype fits in your mouth like a retainer, shines on the outside like a precious metal rap grill, and plays music through bone conduction through your teeth.
Oh man, this would have made puberty just a touch cooler. Maybe.
A veteran of the satirical trivia game series since its first heyday in the 1990s, Heinrich talks about Jack’s writing process, its long hiatus, and that short-lived live-action TV version.
But if Surface is aimed at the OEMs—telling them “we can do this just as well as you can, if we have to”—and setting them a challenge—”your tablets have to be at least this good”—then the limited availability isn’t necessarily such a big deal. As long as the OEMs heed the warning and raise their game, so that Redmond can be assured that bad hardware won’t jeopardized Windows 8’s success, Microsoft could safely keep Surface operating as a small-scale operation, playing the Nexus role without upsetting the PC market.
First Person Tutor is a game about *grading papers*, lock, stock, and two smoking inkwells
NICT Daedalus Cyber-attack alert system #DigInfo (by Diginfonews)
Someone has been watching too much Ghost in the Shell. I’d say someone has been watching too much Hackers but this actually looks cooler than their visualizations and also you can never watch too much of Hackers.