Links July 2012

July 30, 2012 | etbe

The New York Times has an interesting article about “hacker hostels” [1]. I had an idea for similar things after watching a Japanese movie about Tokiwa-sÅ – a shared apartment for Manga artists which among others inspired the creator of Astro Boy [2].

The TED blog has an interesting interview with William Noel about open access to art and historical data [3]. Most of his talk concerns an Archimedes codex which has been recovered and published on the Internet. He advocates publishing all manner of art and historical data under a Creative Commons license.

The education system is often criticised for trying too hard to make children feel successful and not teaching them skills needed to be successful, it seems that the US military fails the same way in it’s war games [4].

Webroot.com published an interesting article last year about the first BIOS rootkit in the wild [5]. I really wish that they would design motherboards with a switch to enable BIOS writing which would default to “off”. I recently did a poll at a LUG meeting and found that only half the audience had updated the BIOS on most systems they owned, if the most technical people generally don’t need a dangerous feature then it should probably be disabled by default.

Matthew Wright wrote an interesting article about the costs of upgrading the electricity grid in Australia vs the costs of upgrading air-conditioners [6]. It seems that it would be a lot cheaper for the government to buy everyone a new air-conditioner than to upgrade the grid.

Owl City has a post of 10 Myths About Introverts [7]. That could probably be titled 10 Myths About Aspies and still be correct.

Susan Cain gave the most popular talk of TED 2012 about “The Power of Introverts”, here is an interesting interview about the talk and Introversion [8].

Links June 2012

June 30, 2012 | etbe

This Youtube video is an amusing satire of EULAs and copyright law as applied to uploading consciousness [1].

Washington’s Blog has an insightful article about the way that the lack of trust in the US is killing their economy [2]. It seems that as long as the 1% are allowed to get away with breaking the law the US economy won’t recover. It’s something we should all keep in mind at election time, let’s not be like the US.

AirBnB is an interesting service to allow people to rent a room or an apartment, a quick scan indicates that it’s a lot cheaper than hotels and offers many good locations [3]. It’s probably of most interest to the more social people though which is a down side for me.

Queensland’s highest court has ruled that “vilification of homosexuals is also vilification of bisexuals” because “an essential aspect of bisexuality is a sexual feeling of a person of the same sex, that is, homosexuality” [4]. Anyone who didn’t find that totally obvious could simply consult any dictionary or encyclopedia to find out. But the Australian legal system needed a 46 page ruling. We really need some sanity in the courts.

Father Gregory Boyle founded an organisation named Homeboy Industries with the purpose of providing jobs for people with criminal records [5]. It’s amazing the way he is helping people turn their lives around and it’s apparently a lot cheaper than sending them to jail.

Links May 2012

May 31, 2012 | etbe

Vijay Kumar gave an interesting TED talk about autonomous UAVs [1]. His research is based on helicopters with 4 sets of blades and his group has developed software to allow them to develop maps, fly in formation, and more.

Hadiyah wrote an interesting post about networking at TED 2012 [2]. It seems that giving every delegate the opportunity to have their bio posted is a good conference feature that others could copy.

Bruce Schneier wrote a good summary of the harm that post-911 airport security has caused [3].

Chris Neugebauer wrote an insightful post about the drinking culture in conferences, how it excludes people and distracts everyone from the educational purpose of the conference [4].

Matthew Wright wrote an informative article for Beyond Zero Emissions comparing current options for renewable power with the unproven plans for new nuclear and fossil fuel power plants [5].

The Free Universal Construction Kit is a set of design files to allow 3D printing of connectors between different types of construction kits (Lego, Fischer Technic, etc) [6].

Jay Bradner gave an interesting TED talk about the use of Open Source principles in cancer research [7]. He described his research into drugs which block cancer by converting certain types of cancer cell into normal cells and how he shared that research to allow the drugs to be developed for clinical use as fast as possible.

Christopher Priest wrote an epic blog post roasting everyone currently associated with the Arthur C. Clarke awards, he took particular care to flame Charles Stross who celebrated The Prestige of such a great flaming by releasing a t-shirt [8]. For a while I’ve been hoping that an author like Charles Stross would manage to make more money from t-shirt sales than from book sales, Charles is already publishing some of his work for free on the Internet and it would be good if he could publish it all for free.

Erich Schubert wrote an interesting post about the utility and evolution of Favebook likes [9].

Richard Hartmann wrote an interesting summary of the problems with Google products that annoy him the most [10].

Sam Varghese wrote an insightful article about the political situation in China [11]. The part about the downside of allowing poorly educated people to vote seems to apply to the US as well.

Sociological Images has an article about the increased rate of Autism diagnosis as social contagion [12]. People who get their children diagnosed encourage others with similar children to do the same.

Vivek wrote a great little post about setting up WPA on Debian [13]. It was much easier than expected once I followed that post. Of course I probably could have read the documentation for ifupdown, but who reads docs when Google is available?

Links April 2012

April 24, 2012 | etbe

Karen Tse gave an interesting TED talk about how to stop police torture as an investigative tool [1]. Mostly it’s about training and empowering public defenders.

Phil Plait gave an interesting TED talk about how to defend the Earth from asteroids [2].

Julian Baggini wrote an interesting article for the Financial Times about the persecution of Atheists in the US [3].

Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere gave an amusing TED talk about Improv events that he has run [4]. He is most famous for organising people to wear blue shirts and khaki pants in Best Buy, but he’s done lots of other funny things.

Paul Zak gave an interesting TED talk about trust, morality, and oxytocin [5]. One of the many interesting fact that he shared is that oxytocin levels can significantly increase when using social networking sites. So people who use Facebook etc are likely to be more trustworthy as well as more trusting.

The Occupy the Judge Rotenberg Center movement aims to stop the torture of Autistic children in the US [6], Anonymous is involved in that too.

Paul Lewis gave an insightful TED talk about the use of crowdsourced data in news reporting [7]. A lot of the analysis of “citizen journalism” is based on comparing bloggers with full-time paid journalists, but Paul describes how professional full-time journalistic work can be greatly assisted by random people filming and photographing things that seem noteworthy. Make sure your next phone has the best possible camera – phone cameras will never be great but the quality of the camera you have with you is what matters.

Sam Harris published an interesting interview with Tim Prowse who is a Baptist minister who faked belief for two years after becoming an atheist [8A]. He also references The Clergy Project – a support group for atheists who are current or former members of the clergy [8B].

Cracked has an insightful article about 6 things that rich people need to stop saying [9]. How do the 1% not understand these things?

Barack Obama and Nichelle Nichols (who played Lt Uhura in the original Star Treck) give the Vulcan Salute in the White-House [10].

Gabriel Arana wrote an insightful article about his experiences with the ex-gay movement [11]. The “therapist” who hurt him so much is still doing the same to other victims.

S#!T Ignorant People Say To Autistics is an interesting youtube video about ignorant and annoying people [12]. Strangely I’ve received little of that myself, I wonder whether women on the Autism Spectrum get a lot more of that than men.

At GManCaseFile an ex-FBI agent has written an informative post about how the TSA is failing [13].

The Nieder Family has an interesting article about how patents are being used to prevent the creation of assisted communication (AAC) devices for children [14]. Apparently the company that has the patents wants all AAC devices to be really expensive and profitable for them. This is yet another example of patents doing harm not good.

Renew Economy has an informative article by Giles Parkinson about the affect that solar power generation will have on power prices [15]. In short as solar systems produce power when it’s most needed (during the day and at the hottest time of the day for warm climates) it will dramatically reduce the auction price for wholesale power. That will hurt the business of the power companies and also allow lower prices on the retail market.

Links March 2012

March 22, 2012 | etbe

Washington’s Blog has an informative summary of recent articles about corporate psychopaths [1]. Including the fact that some banks deliberately hire psychopaths.

Anu Partanen wrote an insightful article for The Atlantic about the difference between Finnish and American education systems [2]. It seems that Finland has achieved great educational success by aiming for equality with no private schools and giving the teachers and principals enough responsibility to do the job properly.

Ramona Pierson gave an interesting TED talk about how she recovered from being run over by a drunk driver with the help of the residents of a senior citizens home [3].

Quyen Nguyen gave a very interesting TED talk about the use of fluorescent dyes in cancer surgery [4]. They can make cancer glow one color and nerves glow with a different color which makes it a much easier task to remove ALL the cancer without cutting the smaller nerves.

James Fallows wrote an interesting article for The Atlantic about the experience of having his wife’s Gmail account cracked [5]. She stored EVERYTHING in her Gmail account so this was a lot worse for her than for the typical Geek who doesn’t use such accounts for storing much. James describes what the attacker did, how they did it, and what needed to be done to recover. When running a mail server it’s worth considering what you would do to help a user who was attacked in that way.

Charles Stross has written an interesting blog post trying to predict some future psychological and social changes [6].

Matthew Wright of Beyond Zero Emissions has written an informative article about how solar panels on home roofs save everyone money [7].

Mikko Hypponen gave an interesting TED talk about different types of online attack and how they can affect us [8]. Among other things he describes how online attacks can result in people dying.

Scott Rickard gave an interesting TED talk about using maths to create SONAR pings without repitition and also the worst music ever created [9]. I found it entertaining to watch Michael Lindel (the director of chamber music for the New York Symphony) play the music, he obviously didn’t enjoy that performance.

Sheena Iyengar gave an interesting TED talk about the way people make choices [10]. It’s useful for anyone who is going to prepare a set of options for someone else to choose from.

ASD Aid is a project that uses Lego to encourage kids on the Autism Spectrum to socialise [11]. They have training manuals for using Lego in therapy. Unfortunately they have not been supported by the Lego corporation.

Bilal Bomani gave an interesting and informative TED talk about NASA research into renewable aviation fuel [12]. The most interesting thing to me was the way that they were aiming for a sustainable lifecycle that didn’t use resources that coule be used for food and which required minimal input once it was started.

Alain de Botton gave an interesting TED talk about Atheism 2.0 [13]. He suggests that we adopt some ideas from religious organisations including lectures (sermons), celebrations, and rituals. It’s interesting to think of a technology conference as a pilgrimage.

Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche from Moto restaurant in Chicago gave an interesting talk about some of the unusual foods that they have produced [14]. If I visit the US again I will try and go to Chicago to eat there!

Links February 2012

February 16, 2012 | etbe

Sociological Images has an interesting article about the attempts to apply the word “Camping” to OWS and framing the issues [1].

Lester Macgurdy wrote an insightful article about “the snake”, a new technique for OWS protesters to beat riot police [2].

Ron Barassi suggests that “Australia Day” be celebrated on the 27th of May to commemorate the day in 1967 when the Australian constitution was amended to not be racist [3]. The current “Australia Day” is often referred to as “Invasion Day”. IMHO Ron deserves another “Best and Fairest” award.

Stefon Harris gave an entertaining TED talk about improv Jazz music titled “There Are No Mistakes on the Bandstand” [4]. It seems that his concepts can apply to some extent to many collaborative projects.

John Robb wrote an interesting article about the future of drone (UAV) warfare [5]. He suggests that having one person control each drone is a temporary thing and that the future is to have a cloud of cheap autonomous drones taking strategic control from one person. His comparison of Starcraft players to future drone fighters is interesting.

The OWS movement is branching out into other related areas, OccupyYourHomes.org is one of the latest ones [6]. When banks try to forclose on homes without good cause the OWS people are protesting.

Cory Doctorow wrote an important article for The Guardian about corporations using the Youtube ContentID system to pirate works that other people have uploaded [7].

Matt Taibbi’s description of Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” will never die [8]. It has spawned many other creative descriptions of the evil and greed of Goldman Sachs and even Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs describes his company as having “burned down the Reichstag, shot the Archduke Ferdinand and fired on Fort Sumter” – he was trying to use satire, but I don’t think that Goldman Sachs people would act differently to Fritz Thyssen.

Keith Packard wrote an interesting article about the Calypso CalDAV system which he uses with Android [9]. He makes lots of good points about how to improve calendaring and contacts on Android, unfortunately I lack time to fiddle with such things at the moment so I’ll stick with Google in spite of the risks.

Asheesh Laroia wrote a great article about the problems with short (32bit) GPG keys [10]. It seems that creating keys with matching ID numbers isn’t particularly difficult and that GPG doesn’t handle them as well as we would like giving the possibility of at best annoying DoS attacks and at worse security problems due to using the wrong key.

Sociological Images has an interesting article about when game show audiences are trustworthy [11]. It seems that French people don’t want an undeserving person to win so they will intentionally advocate the wrong answer if the contestant should know it.

Paul Wayper gave a great lecture titled “SE Linux for Everyone” [12]. He covers the basics of SE Linux in a user-friendly way and explains some simple solutions to common problems which don’t involve compromising system security.

Paul Tassi wrote an insightful article for Forbes about piracy [13]. His conclusion is that the media companies should make it cheaper and easier to be a customer and not spend insane amounts of money on low quality products.

The Reid Report has an interesting article about Ron Paul’s racism [14]. Ron Paul is generally well regarded outside the US because he wants the US government to stop meddling in the affairs of other countries, but while he’s less bad than other US politicians in terms of foreign policy that doesn’t make him a good person.

Anonymous hacked some mailboxes belonging to a neo-Nazi group and found links to Ron Paul [15]. I’ve always been suspicious of the way Ron Paul wanted to avoid anti-racism legislation on supposed Libertarian principles.

The Reid Report has an interesting summary of Ron Paul news plus some criticism of Glenn Greenwald and others who associate with him [16].

Links January 2012

January 26, 2012 | etbe

Cops in Tennessee routinely steal cash from citizens [1]. They are ordered to do so and in some cases their salary is paid from the cash that they take. So they have a good reason to imagine that any large sum of money is drug money and take it.

David Frum wrote an insightful article for NY Mag about the problems with the US Republican Party [2].

TreeHugger.com has an interesting article about eco-friendly features on some modern cruise ships [3].

Dan Walsh describes how to get the RSA SecureID PAM module working on a SE Linux system [4]. It’s interesting that RSA was telling everyone to turn off SE Linux and shipping a program that was falsely marked as needing an executable stack and which uses netstat instead of /dev/urandom for entropy. Really the only way RSA could do worse could be to fall victim to an Advanced Persistent Attack… :-#

The Long Now has an interesting summary of a presentation about archive.org [5]. I never realised the range of things that archive.org stores, I will have to explore that if I find some spare time!

Jonah Lehrer wrote a detailed and informative article about the way that American high school students receive head injuries playing football[6]. He suggests that it might eventually be the end of the game as we know it.

FranÃ§ois Marier wrote an informative article about optimising PNG files [7], optipng is apparently the best option at the moment but it doesn’t do everything you might want.

Helen Keeble wrote an interesting review of Twilight [8]. The most noteworthy thing about it IMHO is that she tries to understand teenage girls who like the books and movies. Trying to understand young people is quite rare.

Jon Masters wrote a critique of the concept of citizen journalism and described how he has two subscriptions to the NYT as a way of donating to support quality journalism [9]. The only comment on his post indicates a desire for biased news (such as Fox) which shows the reason why most US media is failing at journalism.

Luis von Ahn gave an interesting TED talk about crowd-sourced translation [10]. He starts by describing CAPTCHAs and the way that his company ReCAPTCHA provides the CAPTCHA service while also using people’s time to digitise books. Then he describes his online translation service and language education system DuoLingo which allows people to learn a second language for free while translating text between languages [11]. One of the benefits of this is that people don’t have to pay to learn a new language and thus poor people can learn other languages – great for people in developing countries that want to learn first-world languages! DuoLingo is in a beta phase at the moment but they are taking some volunteers.

Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful article for the Publishers Weekly titles “Copyrights vs Human Rights” [12] which is primarily about SOPA.

Naomi Wolf wrote an insightful article for The Guardian about the “Occupy” movement, among other things the highest levels of the US government are using the DHS as part of the crackdown [13]. Naomi’s claim is that the right-wing and government attacks on the Occupy movement are due to the fact that they want to reform the political process and prevent corruption.

John Bohannon gave an interesting and entertaining TED talk about using dance as part of a presentation [14]. He gave an example of using dancerts to illustrate some concepts related to physics and then spoke about the waste of PowerPoint.

Joe Sabia gave an amusing and inspiring TED talk about the technology of storytelling [15]. He gave the presentation with live actions on his iPad to match his words, a difficult task to perform successfully.

Thomas Koch wrote an informative post about some of the issues related to binary distribution of software [16]. I think the problem is evenm worse than Thomas describes.

Links December 2011

December 31, 2011 | etbe

Barry Ritholtz wrote an insightful post quoting Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig, who warns that the nationâ€™s biggest banks are putting the U.S. capitalist society at risk [1]. Big banks oppose capitalism.

Glenn Greenwald has written an insightful article for Salon about the modern definition of American excellence being the killing of supposedly bad people without any due process [2].

Mazuma Mobile buys used mobile phones [3]. They can send a post-pack to ship your old mobile to them. This is good for the environment and also saves some money.

Sam Varghese has written an informative article about the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement that will probably end up benefiting US corporations at the expense of Australian citizens [4].

Cory Doctorow has written an informative article for The Guardian about the BBC DRM plans[5]. He received information that was denied in a FOI request which shows how poor the BBC case is and how bad the Ofcom oversight is.

Sam Harris has written an insightful blog post about self-defense [6]. He also has many other posts that are worth reading.

Aparna Roa gave an interesting TED presentation about her robotic art [7].

Links November 2011

November 30, 2011 | etbe

Forbes has an interesting article about crowd-sourcing by criminals and law enforcement [1].

Ulissescastr0 made a Youtube video showing how to install SE Linux on Debian/Etch [2]. Probably no-one is using Etch nowadays so this video is outdated, but it’s a good way of teaching people. It would be good if someone made a similar video showing how to do SE Linux things on Squeeze.

I discovered the above SE Linux video through Explow which provides a neat interface to multiple searches and information sources [3]. I don’t think I will be using Explow much in future as I could get the same result through Google video search. They also have a news portal but there are other sites for that. But it does seem that Explow would be useful for newbies.

Eric Michael Johnson wrote an interesting article about the inherent bias in Psychological research based in the US [4]. People who live in urban environments think differently in some ways to people who live in different environments or who have different lifestyles. Therefore generalising from university students in the US to the entire human race is likely to get incorrect results. This is something to consider the next time you are tempted to generalise to the wider population from your own friends, colleagues, etc.

The Daily Kos has a scary article about the TSA having a woman detained for reciting part of the US constitution [5]. The US will remain on my list of countries to avoid for the forseeable future.

Vorlon has written an informative article about the use of hardening options when building Debian packages [6]. It’s now even easier to do this, so every package that simultaneously deals with data of differing levels of integrity or sensitivity should be built this way.

Bunker Roy gave an interesting TED talk about his Barefoot College that teaches useful skills to people in rural parts of India who don’t have a traditional school education [7]. His talk really shows up some of the arrogance in the people who run traditional education.

Justin Hall-Tipping gave an interesting TED talk about ways of solving the world energy problems [8]. He started with explaining the problems and why they need to be urgently solved and then described in detail some of the research that his group has done to solve the problems. This includes flexible photo-voltaic cells, infra-red vision to save on lighting, and a way of using carbon nano-tubes to control the thermal properties of windows.

Links October 2011

October 31, 2011 | etbe

Ron has written an interesting blog post about the US as a “lottery economy” [1]. Most people won’t win the lottery (literally or metaphorically) so they remain destined for poverty.

Tim Connors wrote an informative summary of the issues relating to traffic light timing and pedestrians/cyclists [2]. I have walked between Southgate and the Crown Casino area many times and have experienced the problem he describes many times.

Scientific American has an interesting article about a new global marketplace for scientific research [3]. The concept is that instead of buying a wide range of research equipment (and hiring people to run it) you can outsource non-core research for a lower cost.

Svante PÃ¤Ã¤bo gave an interesting TED talk about his work analysing human DNA to determine prehistoric human migration patterns [4]. Among other things he determined that 2.5% of the DNA from modern people outside Africa came from the Neandertals.

Lisa wrote an informative article about Emotional Support Animals (as opposed to Service Animals such as guide dogs) for disabled people [5]. It seems that the US law is quite similar to Australian law in that “reasonable accommodations” have to be made for disabled people which includes allowing pets in rental properties – even if such pets aren’t officially ESAs.

Beyond Zero Emissions has an interesting article about electricity prices which explains how wind power forces prices down [6]. This should offset the new “carbon tax”.

Problogger has an article listing some of the ways that infographics can be used on the web [7]. This can be for blog posts or just for your personal understanding.

Petter Reinholdtsen wrote a handy post about ripping DVDs which also explains how to do it when the DVD has errors [8], I haven’t yet ripped a DVD but this one is worth noting for when I do.

Miriam has written about the “Fantastic Park” ICT training for 8-12yo kids [9]. It’s run in Spain (and all the links are in Spanish – but Google Translation works well) and is a camp to teach children about computers and robotics using Lego Wedo among other things. We need to have more of these things in other countries.

The Atlantic Cities has an interesting article comparing grid and cul-de-sac based urban designs [10]. Apparently the cul-de-sac design forces an increase in car use and therefore an increase in fatal accidents while also decreasing the health benefits of walking. Having lived in both grid and cul-de-sac based urban areas I have personally experienced the benefits of the grid based layout.

Sarah Chayes wrote an interesting LA Times article about governments being taken over by corruption [11]. She argues that arbitrary criminal government leads to an increase in religious fundamentelism.

Michael Lewis has an insightful article in Vanity Fair about the bankruptcy of US states and cities [12].

Ben Goldacre gave an interesting TED talk about bad medical science [13]. He starts with the quackery that is published in tabloid newspapers and then moves on to deliberate scientific fraud by medical companies.

Geoff Mulgan gave an interesting TED talk about the Studio Schools in the UK which are based around group project work [14]. The main thing I took from this is that the best method of teaching varies by subject and by student. So instead of having a monolithic education department controlling everything we should have schools aimed at particular career paths and learning methods.

Sophos has an interesting article about the motion sensors of smart phones being used to transcribe keyboard input based on vibration [15]. This attack could be launched by convincing a target to install a trojan application on their phone. It’s probably best to regard your phone with suspicion nowadays.

Simon Josefsson wrote a good article explaining how to use a GPG smart-card to authenticate ssh sessions with particular reference to running backups over ssh [16].

CÃ¹ran wrote a good article explaining how to use all the screen space when playing DVDs on a wide screen display with mplayer [17].

Charles Stross has an informative blog post about Wall St Journal circulation fraud [18]. Apparently the WSJ was faking readership numbers to get more money from advertisers, this should lead to law suits and more problems for Rupert Murdoch. Is everything associated with Wall St corrupt?

etbe – Russell Coker

Linux, politics, and other interesting things

Category Archives: Links