Friday, December 13, 2013

Deep Web - riveting docmentary idea

The definitive, behind-the-scenes account of the rise of the Deep Web; one of the most riveting and important stories of the decade.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

PaperKarma Control Your Mailbox, Stop Unwanted Paper Mail - Using Your Phone! #PK5K

Still get junk mail and unwanted direct to mail advertising? This app is one of the easiest ways to stop unsolicited mailings. Try it today! I've been using it for about 6 months and have greatly reduced our mail intake.
Click here to download the PaperKarma app for Android or iOS - https://bitly.com/19fJ4Yq


Friday, November 8, 2013

Siskel and Ebert defend Star Wars



http://www.youtube.com/v/Ky9-eIlHzAE?version=3&autohide=1&feature=share&showinfo=1&attribution_tag=TS75nuG1VsvHcU6DlpcIBw&autoplay=1&autohide=1

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable according to this Cornell paper

original Cornell article link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243

From I-Programmer:
Written by Mike James   
Wednesday, 06 November 2013 08:00
original article link: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/181-algorithms/6571-flaw-in-bitcoin-algorithm.html

Now in a new paper, Ittay Eyal and Emin Gun Sirer of Cornell have noticed that there is a strategy whereby a group of miners can receive more Bitcoins if they work together.
Currently miners do organize themselves into pools but these are more like betting syndicates. The miners simply agree to work together and share the Bitcoins that they earn. This smooths out the statistical fluctuations in a miner's earnings.
However, if any pool notices that there is an advantage to be had from deviating from the standard behavior then the system falls apart - and this is what the researchers have found. The profitable deviation isn't obvious, but it is easy to implement. When a miner finds the solution to a block the idea is that this is announced at once. This is noticed by the other miners who then move on to the next block and regard the previously current block as solved. Now consider what happens if a mining pool decides not to announce that it has solved a block. That pool is the only group of miners that knows to move on to the next block. The other, honest, miners waste their time trying to solve a block that has already been solved.


Ittay Eyal, Emin Gun Sirer

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

RowboatCop: Origins



http://www.youtube.com/v/K0J2WDC1GIc?autohide=1&version=3&attribution_tag=y0wY9rqO5xpoOtJDGXQTDw&autohide=1&showinfo=1&feature=share&autoplay=1

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Brewing Beer with Robots



http://www.youtube.com/v/P4wzOA7NB_M?autohide=1&version=3&showinfo=1&attribution_tag=IaxW12EB4wTTFHs0Con6kw&autoplay=1&autohide=1&feature=share

SpinRite never quits! A heralding story in the making

I hear Steve Gibson's stories every week on Security Now (http://twit.tv/sn) and agree with them, since I've been a user for many years now. All the "SpinRite saves the day" proclamations have been true and I've been on the saving end of a dozen or so, similarly self titled hard drive stories. 



Today is just another in the making... but taking a while longer than most, hence the post at 4% mark of the marathon. Can't blame me for trying to be optimistic at and estimated 390 remaining. 



Here are some screen shots of the never waivering efforts of the magical hard drive potion available at http://www.grc.com/spinrite



Enjoy! And pass this on to any friend, family member or professional that has had a seemingly "lost cause" story on a hard drive. One bout of this powerful program will brighten anyone's pessimistic ponderings over the spinning (or static) data storage units. 


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Travel back in time with this new BBM for iOS app! #BTTF #BBM

If you need to communicate with friends, family or business associates from 2006 - this is the application for you! Feel like Doc and Marty from Back to the Future and download today for iOS with the following link - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bbm/id690046600?mt=8


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Golden Eagle and Deer Story By Jason G. Goldman

 For the original full length story, click here - http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2013/09/25/golden-eagle-versus-deer-eagle-wins-photos/


On December 15, 2011, conservation biologist Linda L. Kerley was conducting a routine check of a camera trap that had been placed in a small forest in eastern Russia. She regularly visited each of her cameras to swap out memory cards and batteries. But it was different this time when she came upon a deer carcass just a few meters away from the camera. Something “felt wrong about it,” she said in a prepared statement. “There were no large carnivore tracks in the snow, and it looked like the deer had been running and then just stopped and died.”

Kerley, who works with the Zoological Society of London, and her colleague Jonathan C. Slaght of the Wildlife Conservation Society study tigers. Together, the two zoological organizations have been working together to monitor Amur tigers, also known as Siberian tigers (Panthera tigris altaica), for almost twenty years. As part of their work on the world’s largest cat, the researchers placed camera traps throughout the Lazovsky State Nature Reserve in Russia’s Far East. Whenever an animal passed in front of one of the cameras, an infrared sensor activated and caused the camera to snap a photo.
Given the lack of prints in the snow it was clear that, whatever killed the deer, it wasn’t a tiger. She would have to wait until she could look at the photos stored on the memory card to see if they held any answers.




This is some amazing imagery and an awesoem write up. Good work

Friday, September 6, 2013

I want this Dragon

I would be happy if any of my friends bought it and shipped it to me and I would not complain if they delivered in  person… On horseback… In medieval wardrobe.
http://cuartosdolls.diary.ru/p191055293.htm?oam#more1%23g




Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks on iTunes now for streaming


Looking to listen to hesitation marks now, before the official release? Good, because Trent released it streaming to iTunes a week before the official release date. Click the following link to get it - http://ninein.ch/NINHMStream

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

1993 - 2013 and the Internet we live with

Created by Abi Jones - http://jonesabi.com/ - my new favorite comic relief addiction :)

Original comic here - http://www.dearfuture.com/120/


Friday, July 12, 2013

Friday, July 5, 2013

NSA key a backdoor to ALL Microsoft Windows OS since 95

All the recent NSA talk around the water cooler, but this isn't surprising, or anything new for that matter. NSA has had a backdoor to all Microsoft OS since Windows 95

Surprised? Shouldn't be. It's the NSA - they have access to all electronic communications, they store it all and study it all. Here is an excerpt from a CNN article in 1999

(CNN) - Microsoft operating systems have a backdoor entrance for the National Security Agency, a cryptography expert said Friday, but the software giant denied the report and other experts differed on it.
The chief scientist at an Internet security company said Microsoft built in a "key" for the nation's most powerful intelligence agency to the cryptographic standard used in Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT4 and Windows2000.
To use cryptographic applications in Windows, users must load its cryptography architecture in a standard called CryptoAPI.
A year ago, researchers discovered there were two keys, or digital signatures, that allowed the loading of CryptoAPI -- Microsoft had one but the identity of the other keyholder was a mystery.
Andrew Fernandes of Ontario-based Cryptonym Corp. and his colleagues now say the NSA holds the second key because they found that a recent service pack for Windows NT failed to cloak the second key, revealing it as "_NSAKEY."
"In the data security profession, those three initials only mean one thing: National Security Agency," Fernandes said.
Microsoft denied that the key belongs to the NSA, saying instead that the "_NSAKEY" label simply means the cryptography architecture meets the NSA's standards for export.
"These reports are completely false," said Microsoft spokesman Dan Leach.
"The key does not allow any other party to start or stop cryptographic services on anyone's computers.
"So no, the government cannot spy on your computer using Microsoft software. We don't intentionally leave backdoors. Microsoft has consistently opposed key escrow because we feel it is no good for the consumer, for Microsoft and no good for the government."
Fernandes said the NSA key would allow the intelligence agency to load services on users' machines without their authorization, an option it more likely would use against a corporation than an individual.
Fernandes posted a "fix" to the key on his Web site Friday, along with a press release announcing his report on the second key. The NSA failed to return comment on the key.
The alleged NSA key came to light just days after Microsoft squelched a breach to its Web-based e-mail service, Hotmail.

 CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Facebook reveals privacy breach... again. Again, "inadvertant"

Geez... imagine that. What are the chances? LoLz - it just happens over and over again. The FB follies

Here is a good chronicled list to start - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook#Privacy_concerns - but it really doesn't concern me, since I'm an open/public blogger anyways. It concerns me that people who think they're protected or think that it doesn't matter still participate. That's the sad part... those under the guise of a Facebook parenting structure.


Published: June 22, 2013 at 10:31 AM
PALO ALTO, Calif., June 22 (UPI) -- Facebook said it has notified regulators in Europe, the United States and Canada of a glitch that inappropriately revealed 6 million users' contact information.
Facebook said it became aware of the glitch last week and immediately shut down the feature that was causing the problem.
The glitch allowed users access to email addresses and telephone numbers of Facebook participants through a feature that recommends other members as potential friends within their system.
The email addresses and telephone numbers of 6 million members were temporarily exposed to other members who were downloading address book information, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
Facebook said the damage was "likely to be minimal since any email address or phone number that was shared was shared with people who already had some of that contact information anyway, or who had some connection to one another."
"It's still something we're upset and embarrassed by, and we'll work doubly hard to make sure nothing like this happens again," Facebook said in a statement.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Freed From a Glacier's Hold, Ancient Moss Grows Again

for the entire story, click here:
Freed From a Glacier's Hold, Ancient Moss Grows Again

Roff Smith

for National Geographic

Published May 28, 2013

In one of nature's more astonishing never-say-die stories, clumps of frozen mosses that were entombed beneath an advancing glacier more than 400 years ago have revived.

The glacier is now retreating, exposing the mosses to air and sunlight for the first time in centuries, and they are growing green and healthy once more. (Read about "The Big Thaw" in National Geographic magazine.)

The discovery was made by a team of researchers from the University of Alberta who were conducting a biodiversity study of mosses and vascular plants in an area around the retreating Teardrop Glacier in the central mountains of Canada's remote Ellesmere Island (map).

"As we walked up to the edge of the glacier, we could see patches of mosses that seemed to be coming out from underneath the ice," recalled project leader Catherine La Farge.

"They were blackened, but there were also tints of green in there as well. As I looked more closely I thought, 'Oh my gosh, what's this? Either this has somehow managed to retain a vestige of its original color or it's just started to grow again after centuries under the ice.' The thought of that just blew my mind."

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Washington state man bulldozes neighbors' homes!

Video. A man angry with his neighbours got in his bulldozer and went on a rampage in Washington state on Friday10 May 2013. Authorities say four homes have been damaged and power supplies for thousands have been affected. No-one is thought to have been injured in the tirade, for which the 54-year-old man has been charged with malicious mischief



Friday, May 10, 2013

Pets may help cut risk of heart disease | Business Standard

Pets may help cut risk of heart disease | Business Standard



Press Trust of India | Washington May 10, 2013 Last Updated at 13:55 IST
Pets may help cut risk of heart disease

Good news for pet owners! Having a pet, particularly a dog, may lower your risk of heart disease, according to new research.

"Pet ownership, particularly dog ownership, is probably associated with a decreased risk of heart disease," said Glenn N Levine, professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas in a scientific statement released by the American Heart Association.

Levine also chaired the committee that reviewed previous studies of the influence of pets and wrote the statement.

Pet ownership is probably associated with a reduction in heart disease risk factors and increased survival among patients. But the studies aren't definitive and do not necessarily prove that owning a pet directly causes a reduction in heart disease risk.

"It may be simply that healthier people are the ones that have pets, not that having a pet actually leads to or causes reduction in cardiovascular risk," Levine said.

Dog ownership in particular may help reduce cardiovascular risk. People with dogs may engage in more physical activity because they walk them, the study suggested.

In a study of more than 5,200 adults, dog owners engaged in more walking and physical activity than non-dog owners, and were 54 per cent more likely to get the recommended level of physical activity.

Owning pets may be associated with lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and a lower incidence of obesity.

Pets can have a positive effect on the body's reactions to stress.

"In essence, data suggest that there probably is an association between pet ownership and decreased cardiovascular risk," Levine said.

"What's less clear is whether the act of adopting or acquiring a pet could lead to a reduction in cardiovascular risk in those with pre-existing disease. Further research, including better quality studies, is needed to more definitively answer this question," Levine said.

Even with a likely link, people shouldn't adopt, rescue or buy a pet solely to reduce cardiovascular risk, Levine said.

The study was published in the journal Circulation.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Monday, March 25, 2013

Sergio Garcia climbs a tree to hit one-handed second shot

Showing the poise and confidence of a seasoned tree climber... Sergio Garcia with the one handed tree climb shot reminds us quickly of the mental fortitude needed in golf to troubleshoot and find your way out of unwanted strokes. #AnythingToSavePar