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Face.com - Facial recognition web API

2012 Mar 30, 2:38

First tier of their service is free.  Supports age, gender, glasses, and mood as well as where the face is in an image all over a REST-ful web API.

PermalinkCommentsuri web url rest technical facial-recognition

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

Understanding Enhanced Protected Mode

2012 Mar 23, 1:18

Eric Lawrence describes the new security features of IE10.

PermalinkCommentstechnical ie10 security ie web-browser eric-lawrence

Why Did This Work?

2012 Mar 23, 7:05

Do we have a word or phrase to describe the following situation: You code up something complicated and it compiles and works on the first try. You then spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out what's actually broken because it shouldn't be this easy.

Or in meme form:

PermalinkCommentstechnical humor programming futurama

Recommendations for the Remediation of Bots in ISP Networks

2012 Mar 19, 3:11

recommendations on how Internet Service
   Providers can use various remediation techniques to manage the
   effects of malicious bot infestations on computers used by their
   subscribers.

Detection and notification recommendations.

PermalinkCommentstechnical isp ietf networking

Comedy Bang Bang preview and story.  Exciting!

2012 Mar 18, 1:57PermalinkCommentshumor comedy-bang-bang video ifc

(via Tron-Style Light Dance Performance by Wrecking Crew...

2012 Mar 15, 5:21


(via Tron-Style Light Dance Performance by Wrecking Crew Orchestra)

PermalinkCommentstron dance video music dubstep

European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout (falkvinge.net)

2012 Mar 15, 4:05

Hmmm

This rather embarrassing issue was pointed out to the committee, the fact that there were three votes too many, and that these three votes determined the outcome. When this was done, along with formally requesting a re-vote, that re-vote on the points in question was denied.”

PermalinkCommentscopyright legal europe law

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

Dark Patterns are UI patterns used to trick users into doing...

2012 Mar 12, 7:05


Dark Patterns are UI patterns used to trick users into doing things they’d otherwise rather not: buy traveler’s insurance, click on ads, etc.  Covers the anti-patterns and how we as technical folk can help stop this.

PermalinkCommentstechnical ui programming dark-pattern

A Dad’s Plea To Developers Of iPad Apps For Children (smashingmagazine.com)

2012 Mar 12, 7:02

Set of issues run into by children using iPad apps.  Should be generally appropriate though:

Designing apps for children is extremely hard. Not only is quality, age-appropriate content hard to create, but designing the flow and interaction of these apps is made more difficult because designers must refrain from implementing advanced gestures, which would only confuse and frustrate kids (and, by extension, their parents). Yet all apps can and should adhere to certain basics. Hopefully, the four guidelines discussed here can become fixtures of all children’s apps.

PermalinkCommentstechnical ui ipad design children programming

Privacy through Obscurity

2012 Mar 9, 3:30

With Facebook changing its privacy policy and settings so frequently and just generally the huge amount of social sites out there, for many of us it is far too late to ensure our name doesn't show up with unfortunate results in web searches. Information is too easily copyable and archive-able to make removing these results a viable option, so clearly the solution is to create more data.

Create fake profiles on Facebook using your name but with a different photo, different date of birth, and different hometown. Create enough doppelgangers to add noise to the search results for your name. And have them share embarrassing stories on their blogs. The goal is to ensure that the din of your alternates drowns out anything embarrassing showing up for you.

Although it will look suspicious if you're the only name on Google with such chaff. So clearly you must also do this for your friends and family. Really you'll be doing them a favor.

PermalinkCommentstechnical facebook stupid internet privacy

Photo

2012 Mar 7, 7:56




















PermalinkCommentshumor batman-and-robin tv animated-gif

(via Invisible Mercedes)

2012 Mar 5, 3:25


(via Invisible Mercedes)

PermalinkCommentscar invisibility video ad

Star Trek: TNG Season 8 illustration has us longing for more [Star Trek]

2012 Mar 5, 3:17

Fictional plot summaries of TNG S8 episodes.    Like:

  • Q’s back: he’s wearing scuba gear and needs Picard’s help dumping his girlfriend. Barclay accidentally locks himself outside the ship.
  • Geordie and Data nurse a space bird back to health, and are sad when they have to release it. Picard is trapped in a turbolift with a baby.
  • Starfleet sends a cantankerous admiral to boss around Picard during delicate peace talks. Data seems to have mastered bragging.
  • Riker’s ex-girlfriend arrives and dies, leaving behind a pile of glowing dust and a mystery. Picard is trapped on a turbolift with a horse.
  • A planet of suspicious docents abduct Riker for their museum of amazing men. Geordi and Data are too excited to sleep at their sleepover.
  • Picard is trapped inside a sentient turbolift. A clip show highlights the most memorable “Picard is trapped on a turbolift” moments.
PermalinkCommentshumor twitter tng tv

The Blowholes - Summerbaby (Pete & Pete Reunion 2-24-12) (by...

2012 Mar 2, 4:48


The Blowholes - Summerbaby (Pete & Pete Reunion 2-24-12) (by matt00092)

Via http://www.avclub.com/articles/inside-the-adventures-of-pete-and-pete-reunion,70177/

PermalinkCommentsmusic pete-and-pete video

Nightlinez - with Special Guests “Pete & Pete”...

2012 Mar 2, 4:46


Nightlinez - with Special Guests “Pete & Pete” (by manboobscomedy)

PermalinkCommentshumor pete-and-pete tv video

HTML5 Table Flipper Experiment

2012 Mar 2, 1:02

The goal of this experiment was to combine the flipping tables emoticons with the Threw It On The Ground video using shiny new HTML5-ish features and the end result is the table flipper flipping the Threw It On the Ground video.

The table flipper emoticon is CSS before content that changes on hover. Additionally on hover a CSS transform is applied to flip the video upside down several times and move it to the right and there's a CSS transition to animate the flipping. The only issue I ran into is that (at least on Windows) Flash doesn't like to have CSS transform rotations applied to it. So to get the most out of the flip experiment you must opt-in to HTML5 video on YouTube. And of course you must use a browser that supports the various things I just mentioned, like the latest Chrome (or not yet released IE10).

PermalinkCommentscss-transform flipping-tables css-transition html5-video technical threw-it-on-the-ground

A whole Richard Feynman Talks collection by Brian Norgard...

2012 Feb 29, 10:19


A whole Richard Feynman Talks collection by Brian Norgard contains wonderful videos like this.

PermalinkCommentsrichard-feynman video science

See http://boingboing.net/tag/TED2012 for Mark’s other TED...

2012 Feb 29, 10:17


See http://boingboing.net/tag/TED2012 for Mark’s other TED 2012 videos.

PermalinkCommentsted video boing-boing 3d-printer maker-bot
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