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Category Archives: computers
Tiny Watcher: keep your Windows clean
The way Tiny Watcher works is pretty simple: basically, it starts by taking a snapshot of important parts of your Windows system; then it tracks changes (every time you log in, or whenever you want to). When a change is detected, you are notified. Continue reading
Posted in security, syndicated
Tagged bookmark, freeware, monitoring, software, syndicated, System, windows
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Spammers Using Soft Hyphen To Hide Malicious URLs
Trailrunner7 writes with this excerpt from ThreatPost illustrating the ongoing Spy-vs.-Spy battle between spammers and the rest of us: “Spammers have jumped on the little-used soft hyphen (or SHY character) to fool URL filtering devices. According to r… Continue reading
Searching For Backdoors From Rogue IT Staff
WHiTe VaMPiRe writes “When IT staff are terminated under duress, there is often justification for a complete infrastructure audit to reduce future risk to a company. Here is an exploration of the steps necessary to maintain security.” Of course the fir… Continue reading
Your Password Should Be At Least 12 Random Characters Long to Be Safe [Security]
According to a study at Georgia Tech Research Institute, your password should be at least 12 random characters long (and include letters, numbers, and symbols) if you want to consider yourself safe from brute force password hacks. From M… Continue reading
Taking Photos In Public Places Is Not A Crime
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has a piece in Popular Mechanics about the growing trend of cops bullying photographers who take pictures in public places, and why officials who believe such photography is against the law are mistaken.
I believe there i… Continue reading
Photog detained by cops and BP security guard in Texas
A freelance photographer who was taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man claiming to be with the Department of Homeland Security, according to nonprofit news org ProPublica. The photogr… Continue reading
OnLive Latency Tested
The Digital Foundry blog has done an analysis of recently launched cloud gaming service OnLive, measuring latency across several different games. Quoting:
“In a best-case scenario, we counted 10 frames delay between button and response on-screen, givin… Continue reading
Crack the Code in Cyber Command’s Logo
The U.S. Military’s new “Cyber Command” logo contains a hidden code. Noah Shachtman at Wired News says, “Help us crack it!”
Related reading today: Bruce Schneier says “The Threat of Cyberwar Has Been Grossly Exaggerated.”
Posted in design, security, syndicated, technology
Tagged Art and Design, syndicated, war
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Use a Single-Use Code to Securely Sign into Windows Live [Windows Live]
If you find yourself at a remote computer, or unsure of your net connection, you can sign into Live.com, Hotmail, and other Windows Live services using a single-use code, which Microsoft will send via … Continue reading
Posted in security, syndicated
Tagged Hotmail, Live.com, Passwords, syndicated, Windows Live
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Command line tricks for smart geeks
This article collects together a number of useful linux command-line tricks from Linux Format. Everyone knows the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything is “42″, but for the first time we can reveal the question. It … Continue reading
The State of Solid State Hard Drives
Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror has put up a post on his experience with his latest SSD. Sounds promising! Intel was the only game in town for about a year, but fortunately for us consumers, the competition finally caught … Continue reading
Forty-Three of The Best Free Windows Enhancements That You Should Know About
This post on Freewaregenius lists a number of useful Windows utilities that will make your Windows desktop even better. Check out the rest of their site for other useful freeware programs. When I first thought of this post, I more … Continue reading
The Model MHDD – Manual Hard Drive Destroyer
When you need to make sure your data is truly destroyed, use one of these. Government specifications require that in an emergency situation a hard drive needs to be destroyed so that a person or persons can not spin the … Continue reading
Posted in computers, security
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Binary Beat
Listen to the beat of a binary counter! Binary Beat from Niklas Roy on Vimeo. This is an experiment, where I count one byte up – from 00000000 to 11111111. Decimal spoken, this is from 0 to 255. I have … Continue reading
Posted in audio, computers, math, programming
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Mother Earth Mother Board
Published in Wired in 1996, this is still an excellent article written by Neal Stephenson, who travels across the globe to document how undersea communications cable are laid. While the article is very long (56 pages), it makes for fascinating … Continue reading
Posted in networking, technology
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Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?
Wired has a fascinating story about two AI researchers, both of whom committed suicide. In 1991, Singh went to MIT to study artificial intelligence with his idol and soon attracted notice for his passion and mental stamina. Word was that … Continue reading
Posted in computers, history, robotics
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Magic-1 Homebrew CPU
Here’s another impressive homebrew computer. It was built with more than 200 ICs, and has similar capabilities to the original 8086 processor. It was recently demoed running a port of Minix 2. Magic-1 is a completely homebuilt minicomputer. It doesn’t … Continue reading
Posted in computers, diy, electronics
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Visualizing Fitts’s Law
Particletree has an informative article on Fitt’s Law, an important guideline in user-interface design. Published in 1954, Fitts’s Law is an effective method of modeling the relationship of a very specific, yet common situation in interface design. That situation involves … Continue reading
Posted in computers, design, programming
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