How the 8.5” x 11” Piece of Paper Got Its Size
Why do we use a paper size that is so unfriendly for the basic task of reading? According to a very interesting post by Paul Stanley, the rough dimensions of office paper evolved to accommodate handwriting and typewriters with monospaced fonts, both of which rendered many fewer characters per line. “Typewriters,” he explains, “produced 10 or 12 characters per inch: so on (say) 8.5 inch wide paper, with 1 inch margins, you had 6.5 inches of type, giving … around 65 to 78 characters.” This, he says, is “pretty close to ideal.”
Read more. [Image: Picsfive/Shutterstock]
An analysis of leaked PIN numbers.
… nearly 11% of the 3.4 million passwords are 1234 !!!
A howto on making your video game accessible to those with disabilities (blind, color blind, deaf, etc)
The AbleGamers Foundation has created a 48-page document it hopes will serve as a how-to guide for game developers and publishers on how to create more accessible games. The in-depth guide by the disability non-profit covers in great detail how to make games available to those with varying degrees of mobility, hearing, visual and cognitive issues.
Level 4 and level 6 of the Stripe CTF had solutions around XSS.
> Registered Users
<%= user[:username] %>
(password: <%= user[:password] %>, last active <%= last_active %>)
The level 4 web application lets you transfer karma to another user and in doing so you are also forced to expose your password to that user. The main user page displays a list of users who have transfered karma to you along with their password. The password is not HTML encoded so we can inject HTML into that user's browser. For instance, we could create an account with the following HTML as the password which will result in XSS with that HTML:
Code review red flags in this case included lack of encoding when using user controlled content to create HTML content, storing passwords in plain text in the database, and displaying passwords generally. By design the web app shows users passwords which is a very bad idea.
...
def self.safe_insert(table, key_values)
key_values.each do |key, value|
# Just in case people try to exfiltrate
# level07-password-holder's password
if value.kind_of?(String) &&
(value.include?('"') || value.include?("'"))
raise "Value has unsafe characters"
end
end
conn[table].insert(key_values)
endThis web app does a much better job than the level 4 app with HTML injection. They use encoding whenever creating HTML using user controlled data, however they don't use encoding when injecting JSON data into script (see post_data initialization above). This JSON data is the last five most recent messages sent on the app so we get to inject script directly. However, the system also ensures that no strings we write contains single or double quotes so we can't get out of the string in the JSON data directly. As it turns out, HTML lets you jump out of a script block using no matter where you are in script. For instance, in the middle of a value in some JSON data we can jump out of script. But we still want to run script, so we can jump right back in. So the frame so far for the message we're going to post is the following:
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]
dnsxss tool helps you inject via DNS
…what it does is, essentially, respond to DNS requests for CNAME, MX, TXT, and NS records with Javascript code. … how about SQL injection?
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.
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.
Winterton, a senior entomologist at the California Department of Food and Agriculture, has seen a lot of bugs. But he hadn’t seen this species before.
There’s no off switch when you’re the senior entomologist. If you’re browsing the web you find your way to Flickr photos of insects or start correcting Wikipedia articles on insects.
“tl;dr I just made a tool to transform any javascript code into an equivalent sequence of ()[]{}!+ characters. You can try it here, or grab it from github or npm. Keep on reading if you want to know how it works.”
JavaScript has some crazy implicit casts.
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.
Paul Scheer and Adam Scott trolling Comic ConYup…This Happened!
And the video:
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