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theatlantic: 'Please Contact Us': It's Been a Tough Week for...

2013 Oct 11, 9:25


theatlantic:

'Please Contact Us': It's Been a Tough Week for the Nobel Prize's Twitter Feed

Tales of temporary rejection from an organization not used to being ignored.

Read more.

PermalinkCommentshumor nobelprize twitter

Windows Store on Windows 8 Fun For Independent Developers

2013 Jun 24, 1:00
Having worked on Windows 8 I'm not in a neutral position to review aspects of it, however I'll say from a high level I love taking the following various positives from smart phone apps and app stores and applying it to the desktop:
  • Independent developers can easily publish apps.
  • One trusted place for a user to find apps.
  • User can trust apps are limited to a declared set of capabilities.
  • One common and easy way for users to buy and try apps.
  • Easy mechanism for independent developers to collect revenue.
Relieving the independent developer of software development overhead, in this case Windows taking care of distribution and sales infrastructure is wonderful for me with my third party developer hat on. This combined with my new found fun of developing in JavaScript and the new Windows Runtime APIs means I've been implementing and finishing various ideas I've had - some for fun and some for productivity on my Surface. Development notes to follow.
PermalinkCommentsstore technical windows windows-store

wilwheaton: owlturdcomix: Thoughts I have instead of smart...

2013 May 13, 2:31




wilwheaton:

owlturdcomix:

Thoughts I have instead of smart thoughts.

http://i.imgur.com/b9h1rc5.png

Owl Turd is rapidly becoming one of my favourite webcomics.

This may have been a Serial Experiments Lain episode synopsis.

PermalinkCommentshumor map

Super Mario World “Completed” in Under 3 Minutes by Corrupting the RAM | minimaxir

2013 Apr 3, 4:46

This is essentially an AV exploit against Super Mario World that results in running the end game code. Watch the video. “…there’s a glitch that’s been known for a while, where Yoshi can end up in the “I have an item in my mouth” state, but not actually have an item in his mouth. When he spits out this nothingness, the game crashes. …That address did not contain code, and so the system crashed. But wait a second. What if, by some sheer coincidence, that address did contain code? The specific address dropped him in somewhere amongst various data for the game’s internal random number generator, and the random number generator can be manipulated in a TAS. Could the game be coerced into running arbitrary code?…”

PermalinkCommentshumor game hack mario

Why Your Links Should Never Say “Click Here” - UX Movement

2012 Jun 25, 1:06

I’ve been following this advice for many years now to the extent that I find myself rewriting text to make linking my nouns easier and shorter.

The one I wasn’t following that seems obvious only after I read it is to keep links towards the end of your text to allow users to follow the link once they’re done reading.

links at the end of the sentence allow users to take action faster

PermalinkCommentsweb technical ux html

“Hey Pass Me a Beer” in the same vein as the...

2012 Jun 21, 2:55


“Hey Pass Me a Beer” in the same vein as the HIGH-FIVE! montages.

PermalinkCommentshumor video beer

NICT Daedalus Cyber-attack alert system #DigInfo (by...

2012 Jun 20, 3:23


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.

PermalinkCommentstechnical network visualization hack security

Crypto breakthrough shows Flame was designed by world-class scientists | Ars Technica

2012 Jun 7, 9:12

So this is another Stuxnet by Israel/US?

The analysis reinforces theories that researchers from Kaspersky Lab, CrySyS Lab, and Symantec published almost two weeks ago. Namely, Flame could only have been developed with the backing of a wealthy nation-state. … “It’s not a garden-variety collision attack, or just an implementation of previous MD5 collisions papers—which would be difficult enough,” Matthew Green, a professor specializing in cryptography in the computer science department at Johns Hopkins University, told Ars. “There were mathematicians doing new science to make Flame work.”

PermalinkCommentstechnical security web internet md5 cryptography flame

Matter Anti-Matter: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

2012 Jun 7, 3:07

ensignau:

The conversation surrounding how to liberate HBO from its cable partners and create the entertainment utopia viewers have long desired has been fascinating.

The resulting analyses of the numbers has pretty much shown that the amount people are willing to pay is not nearly enough to…

PermalinkCommentstv economics youtube video internet web

Changing Windows Live IDs

2012 Jun 6, 2:54

Use of my old Hotmail account has really snuck up on me as I end up caring more and more about all of the services with which it is associated. The last straw is Windows 8 login, but previous straws include Xbox, Zune, SkyDrive, and my Windows 7 Phone. I like the features and sync'ing associated with the Windows Live ID, but I don't like my old, spam filled, hotmail email address on the Live ID account.

A coworker told me about creating a Live ID from a custom domain, which sounded like just the ticket for me. Following the instructions above I was able to create a new deletethis.net Live ID but the next step of actually using this new Live ID was much more difficult. My first hope was there would be some way to link my new and old Live IDs so as to make them interchangeable. As it turns out there is a way to link Live IDs but all that does is make it easy to switch between accounts on Live Mail, SkyDrive and some other webpages.

Instead one must change over each service or start over depending on the service:

Xbox
In the Xbox 360 system menu you can change the Live ID associated with your gamertag. This worked fine for me and I got an email telling me about the transfer of my Microsoft Points.
Zune
There's no way to do this for the Zune specifically, however changing over your Xbox account also transfers over all your Zune purchased content. I don't have a Zune Pass so I can't confirm that, but all of my previously purchased television shows transferred over successfully.
Windows 7 Phone
To change the main Live ID associated with your phone, reset your phone to factory default and start over. All purchased applications are lost. Had I purchased any applications I would have been pissed, but instead I was just irritated that I had to reset my phone.
Mail
I don't use my Hotmail account for anything and it only sits and collects spam. Accordingly I didn't attempt switching this over.
SkyDrive
I didn't have much in my SkyDrive account. I downloaded all files as a zip and then manually uploaded them to the new account.
PermalinkCommentshotmail domain win8 skydrive technical windows live-id

Get Set: A Jet To Replace Needles For Injections : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

2012 May 27, 7:18

Star Trek’s hypospray apparently already existed and has been patented since 1960.

PermalinkCommentsstar-trek science medicine injection video npr

paulftompkins: So! Here is the trailer for a web series I’ll be...

2012 May 6, 7:31


paulftompkins:

So! Here is the trailer for a web series I’ll be hosting, where I chat with cool people over actual alcoholic drinks. We’ve shot a dozen of these so far and I am grateful to have been asked to host them.  I got to have interesting conversations with strangers and friends alike.

It goes live on Monday 5/7!

Internet terms!

PermalinkCommentshumor paul-f-tompkins interview youtube video

IAmA NASA Astronaut who recently returned to Earth and I am new to reddit (reddit.com)

2012 Mar 23, 2:08

Astronaut endorses destroying the moon!

The best exchange on the IAmA:

Ghostshirts it’s been a dream for a long time now, do you think that we’ll actually be able to blow up the moon in our lifetime?

RonGaran I truly believe that we can accomplish anything we set our minds on. We only need the will to do it

PermalinkCommentshumor nasa astronaut moon

Alternate IPv4 Forms - URI Host Syntax Notes

2012 Mar 14, 4:30

By the URI RFC there is only one way to represent a particular IPv4 address in the host of a URI. This is the standard dotted decimal notation of four bytes in decimal with no leading zeroes delimited by periods. And no leading zeros are allowed which means there's only one textual representation of a particular IPv4 address.

However as discussed in the URI RFC, there are other forms of IPv4 addresses that although not officially allowed are generally accepted. Many implementations used inet_aton to parse the address from the URI which accepts more than just dotted decimal. Instead of dotted decimal, each dot delimited part can be in decimal, octal (if preceded by a '0') or hex (if preceded by '0x' or '0X'). And that's each section individually - they don't have to match. And there need not be 4 parts: there can be between 1 and 4 (inclusive). In case of less than 4, the last part in the string represents all of the left over bytes, not just one.

For example the following are all equivalent:

192.168.1.1
Standard dotted decimal form
0300.0250.01.01
Octal
0xC0.0XA8.0x1.0X1
Hex
192.168.257
Fewer parts
0300.0XA8.257
All of the above

The bread and butter of URI related security issues is when one part of the system disagrees with another about the interpretation of the URI. So this non-standard, non-normal form syntax has been been a great source of security issues in the past. Its mostly well known now (CreateUri normalizes these non-normal forms to dotted decimal), but occasionally a good tool for bypassing naive URI blocking systems.

PermalinkCommentsurl inet_aton uri technical host programming ipv4

Glitch Helperator

2012 Feb 29, 3:05

I've been working on the Glitch Helperator. It is a collection of tools and things I've put together for Glitch. It has a few features that I haven't seen elsewhere including:

Favorite Streets
A notebook in which you can save information about interesting streets and later use it to find your way back to them.
Birthday
Find out how old your Glitch is and the date of your next birthday in Glitch time or Earth time.
API Update History
A history of changes to the streets, skills and achievements of Glitch noting when new ones are added and when existing ones are changed.
It also has an interactive skill tree, find nearest feature tool, and achievement display. If you play Glitch, check it out.
PermalinkCommentsglitch tool glitch-helperator game

Super Mario Bloco em Santa! (by only4crap) Also, great...

2012 Feb 28, 7:20


Super Mario Bloco em Santa! (by only4crap)

Also, great BoingBoing comment:

beemohCollapse

The slow pace of the initial march and the placards makes it look more like an Occupy World 1-1 protest march.

PermalinkCommentshumor video-game mario music video

Why I Like Glitch

2012 Feb 17, 4:00

Sarah and I have been enjoying Glitch for a while now. Reviews are usually positive although occasionally biting (but mostly accurate).

I enjoy Glitch as a game of exploration: exploring the game's lands with hidden and secret rooms, and exploring the games skills and game mechanics. The issue with my enjoyment coming from exploration is that after I've explored all streets and learned all skills I've got nothing left to do. But I've found that even after that I can have fun writing client side JavaScript against Glitch's web APIs making tools (I work on the Glitch Helperator) for use in Glitch. And on a semi-regular basis they add new features reviving my interest in the game itself.

PermalinkCommentsvideo-game glitch glitch-helperator me project game

Swiss government keeps downloading legal after piracy study

2011 Dec 4, 2:28

“One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. … The overall conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn’t have to change.” Wow, that sounds like almost reasonable and understandable copyright law.

PermalinkCommentstechnical political swiss copyright law legal

Features of image type input tags in HTML

2011 Nov 21, 11:00

A bug came up the other day involving markup containing <input type="image" src="http://example.com/.... I knew that "image" was a valid input type but it wasn't until that moment that I realized I didn't know what it did. Looking it up I found that it displays the specified image and when the user clicks on the image, the form is submitted with an additional two name value pairs: the x and y positions of the point at which the user clicked the image.

Take for example the following HTML:

<form action="http://example.com/">
<input type="image" name="foo" src="http://deletethis.net/dave/images/davebefore.jpg">
</form>
If the user clicks on the image, the browser will submit the form with a URI like the following:http://example.com/?foo.x=145&foo.y=124.

This seemed like an incredibly specific feature to be built directly into the language when this could instead be done with javascript. I looked a bit further and saw that its been in HTML since at least HTML2, which of course makes much more sense. Javascript barely existed at that point and sending off the user's click location in a form may have been the only way to do something interesting with that action.

PermalinkCommentsuri technical form history html

A shuffled deck of cards is unique in all human history (matthewweathers.com)

2011 Nov 17, 1:01

Possible combinations to shuffle a deck of cards is 8.0658X1067 compared to the number of times a deck of cards has been shuffled thus far in history 1.546X1023

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