- Thomas Hühn, Myths about /dev/urandom“But the problem runs even deeper: people don’t like to be stopped in their ways. They will devise workarounds, concoct bizarre machinations to just get it running. People who don’t know anything about cryptography. Normal people.
Why not patching out the call to random()? Why not having some guy in a web forum tell you how to use some strange ioctl to increase the entropy counter? Why not switch off ssl altogether?
In the end you just educate your users to do foolish things that compromise your system’s security without you ever knowing about it.”
A great podcast on the excellent The Long Winters song.
This song gets me every time I hear it.
It is an Andrew W.K kind of day
littleBits puts the power of electronics in the hands of everyone. Make your own electronic creations with no soldering, wiring, or programming required.
I’ve never heard of this company before, but I saw a promoted tweet for their brick adaptor that allows you to connect their electronic building blocks onto regular lego bricks. Very cool.
I have no idea yet what I would want to with all of this, but I’m glad to know it is out there.
For most of us, Siri is merely a momentary diversion. But for some, it’s more. My son’s practice conversation with Siri is translating into more facility with actual humans. Yesterday I had the longest conversation with him that I’ve ever had. Admittedly, it was about different species of turtles and whether I preferred the red-eared slider to the diamond-backed terrapin. This might not have been my choice of topic, but it was back and forth, and it followed a logical trajectory. I can promise you that for most of my beautiful son’s 13 years of existence, that has not been the case.
Mr. Mark said he envisions assistants whose help is also visual. “For example, the assistant would be able to track eye movements and help the autistic learn to look you in the eye when talking,” he said. “See, that’s the wonderful thing about technology being able to help with some of these behaviors,” he added. “Getting results requires a lot of repetition. Humans are not patient. Machines are very, very patient.”
It is fun watching kids talk to Siri. I never thought though that it could be a helpful for things other than setting timers or getting directions.
7. Eat a jelly donut - QNX-based food inspection systems detect dangerous contaminants and can even spot items with missing ingredients, such as jelly donuts that have no jelly.
“And everyone has, at some point, met a man like Chanac: those lucky individuals who continually fail upward, who are fired for incompetence or for some abuse of power and instantly find a better job. We ordinary mortals would have wound up in jail or on the street! But these chosen ones rise higher—in politics, business, or even at a sleepy provincial high school.”
—Francine Prose, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932