There is a vine that is capable of contorting the size, shape, color, orientation, and vein patterns of its leaves to match nearby foliage. It’s able to match not just one or two other species, but a whole host of them. Nobody has any clue how it knows what neighboring plants look like .
Tag: forum-shortname
Official haircuts of North Korea
There are 28 official state-approved haircuts in North Korea, and there is renewed emphasis on the official coiffure parameters under its new leader, Kim Jong Un. Ironically, Kim’s own haircut is not on the official list.
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Official haircuts of North Korea
Zuckerberg phones Obama to complain about NSA spying
The day after a Snowden leak revealed that the NSA builds fake versions of Facebook and uses them to seed malicious software in attacks intended to hijack “millions” of computers, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg telephoned President Obama to complain about the NSA’s undermining of the Internet’s integrity. As many have pointed out, it would have been nice to hear Zuckerberg taking the Internet’s side before his own stock portfolio was directly affected, but better late than never. Zuckerberg’s post on his conversation excoriates the US government for its Internet sabotage campaign, and calls on the USG to “be the champion for the internet, not a threat.” Curiously, Zuckerberg calls for “transparency” into the NSA’s attacks on the Internet, but stops short of calling for an end to government-sponsored attacks against the net. In the end, though, Zuckerberg calls on companies to do a better job of securing themselves and their users against intrusive spying. It’s not clear how that will work for Facebook, though: its business model is predicated on tricking, cajoling, and siphoning personal data out of its users and warehousing it forever in a neat package that governments are unlikely to ignore. I’m told that 90% of US divorce proceedings today include Facebook data; this is a microcosm of the wider reality when you make it your business to stockpile the evidentiary chain of every human being’s actions. The internet works because most people and companies do the same. We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world. This is why I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government. The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they’re doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst. I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform. So it’s up to us — all of us — to build the internet we want. Together, we can build a space that is greater and a more important part of the world than anything we have today, but is also safe and secure. I’m committed to seeing this happen, and you can count on Facebook to do our part. As the world becomes more complex and governments everywhere struggle, trust in the internet is more important today than ever. ( Image: Mark Zuckerberg Facebook SXSWi 2008 Keynote , a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from deneyterrio’s photostream )
Samsung Galaxy back-door allows for over-the-air filesystem access
Developers from the Replicant project (a free Android offshoot) have documented a serious software back-door in Samsung’s Android phones , which “provides remote access to the data stored on the device.” They believe it is “likely” that the backdoor could provide “over-the-air remote control” to “access the phone’s file system.” At issue is Samsung’s proprietary IPC protocol, used in its modems. This protocol implements a set of commands called “RFS commands.” The Replicant team says that it can’t find “any particular legitimacy nor relevant use-case” for adding these commands, but adds that “it is possible that these were added for legitimate purposes, without the intent of doing harm by providing a back-door. Nevertheless, the result is the same and it allows the modem to access the phone’s storage.” The Replicant site includes proof-of-concept sourcecode for a program that will access the file-system over the modem. Replicant has created a replacement for the relevant Samsung software that does not allow for back-door access. Samsung Galaxy devices running proprietary Android versions come with a back-door that provides remote access to the data stored on the device. In particular, the proprietary software that is in charge of handling the communications with the modem, using the Samsung IPC protocol, implements a class of requests known as RFS commands, that allows the modem to perform remote I/O operations on the phone’s storage. As the modem is running proprietary software, it is likely that it offers over-the-air remote control, that could then be used to issue the incriminated RFS messages and access the phone’s file system. …The incriminated RFS messages of the Samsung IPC protocol were not found to have any particular legitimacy nor relevant use-case. However, it is possible that these were added for legitimate purposes, without the intent of doing harm by providing a back-door. Nevertheless, the result is the same and it allows the modem to access the phone’s storage. However, some RFS messages of the Samsung IPC protocol are legitimate (IPC_RFS_NV_READ_ITEM and IPC_RFS_NV_WRITE_ITEM) as they target a very precise file, known as the modem’s NV data. There should be no particular security concern about these as both the proprietary implementation and its free software replacement strictly limit actions to that particular file. Samsung Galaxy Back-door
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Samsung Galaxy back-door allows for over-the-air filesystem access
Delhi police lost password for complaints portal in 2006, haven’t checked it since
The Delhi police lost the password for a portal that hosted complaints that had been passed on by the Central Vigilance Commission after an initial vetting. 667 complaints had been judged serious enough to be passed onto the police since the password was lost in 2006, but none have been acted upon, because no one had the password. Now they have the password. Presumably, the 667 unserved complainants believed the police to be either too slow or incompetent to have gotten back to them. Each Delhi government department under the CVC, including the MCD, DDA and several investigating agencies, have a chief vigilance officer to look into complaints. If a complaint reaches the CVC, either it tackles it independently or it sends it to the concerned department. In 2006, a portal monitored by the CVC was created, putting the complaints it sent to departments online. Each department could access the portal with a password. Complaints regarding the Delhi Police were also sent to the portal. Every year, the CVC holds meetings with government departments to take stock of the complaints with them. Sources said that since 2006, the CVC had got no feedback on complaints pending with the police. Vigilance complaints pile up as Delhi Police doesn’t know password [Shalini Narayan/Indian Express] ( via BBC News )
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Delhi police lost password for complaints portal in 2006, haven’t checked it since
TSA agents demand bag-search to look for "Bitcoins"
Davi Barker was flying from Manchester, NH when, he says, he was stopped by two men who identified themselves as “managers” for the TSA, who claimed they had seen Bitcoins in his baggage and wanted to be sure he wasn’t transporting more than $10,000 worth. When he asked them what they thought a Bitcoin looked like, they allegedly said that it looked like a coin or a medallion. ( via Hacker News )
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TSA agents demand bag-search to look for "Bitcoins"
Work to begin on 180-mile "Nicaragua Canal" to rival Panama
Wired’s Greg Miller takes a look at the huge risks involved in digging enormous, container-ship size canals . There are many lingering questions. How HKND–apparently the only company to submit a bid–managed to land the deal, isn’t clear, leaving many Nicaraguans frustrated by their government’s lack of transparency. … Exactly where the money to build the canal will come from is another mystery, as is the role, if any, the Chinese government will play. Wang Jing has denied that the government is involved in the project, as have government officials. But some analysts suspect otherwise. … Nor has any assessment of the environmental impacts of the project.
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Work to begin on 180-mile "Nicaragua Canal" to rival Panama
Unedited silent footage of Nagasaki bombing
From preparing the bomb to dropping it—the explosion is a few seconds after 8:40. [ Video Link ] This silent film shows the final preparation and loading of the “Fat Man” bomb into “Bockscar,” the plane which dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. It then shows the Nagasaki explosion from the window of an observation plane. This footage comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory. I have not edited it in any way from what they gave me except to improve the contrast a little — it is basically “raw.” I have annotated it with some notes on the bombing and what you can see — feel free to disable it if you don’t want it. I suggest leaving them on. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a video benefit from YouTube annotations! [via Nuclear Secrecy and MeFi ]
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Unedited silent footage of Nagasaki bombing
An octopus can flow through any hole that will fit its beak
Please enjoy this awesome GIF of an octopus oozing through a small hole.
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An octopus can flow through any hole that will fit its beak
Creating a font from a classic comic
Creating a font from a classic comic Typographer Nate Piekos describes how he created a 21st-century typeface from a 1980 issue of Elfquest —just in time to begin lettering the comic series’ conclusive installment. I remember asking my mother to get me the collected Elfquest trade paperbacks for Christmas one year. Weeks went by, and being a nosy kid, I stumbled upon them, concealed in the back of a closet just before the big holiday. Giddy with anticipation, I told no one. I bided my time … Wendy and Richard Pini’s epic tales got me through junior high and beyond. I carted those trade paperbacks with me when I left my mom’s house, went to design school, started a career in comics, got married … and moved a half dozen times in between. Fast-forward to just a few months ago. Editor Sierra Hahn told me new Elfquest comics were coming to Dark Horse and asked if I was interested in not only designing Wendy’s hand-lettering font, but if I’d also like to take on the lettering duties of the whole series! I couldn’t reply fast enough. Of course I was interested! It was one of those surreal full-circle moments when I get to work with some of my comic book heroes. I immediately broke out those faded, dog-eared Elfquest collections for reference, and they sat on my desk the entire time I worked on Wendy’s typeface. I’ve designed hundreds of fonts, but designing the definitive typeface of Wendy’s classic hand lettering was a pretty big deal to me. It had to capture the essence of the original Elfquest , it had to be top-notch software, and it had to be special. Wendy Pini’s lettering from Issue #9 of Elfquest Here’s how I did it Wendy picked out what she considered her best hand lettering-a selection of pages from Elfquest #9. And Dark Horse provided me with high resolution scans of all the pages. My first task was to study the letters in Photoshop, make an intimate analysis of the style as a whole, and choose the characters I thought were most representative. Every hand letterer brings unique qualities to the page. Some are slight, others overt, like the wiggle on the bottom of Wendy’s L’s! Idiosyncratic letterforms help establish the series’ distinctive voice Once I had enough characters picked out to work with, I brought the art into Adobe Illustrator and began creating vector objects of each character. Many typographers would autotrace these, but I always create the objects point by point. The time invested is hours versus seconds, but the results are far superior. Obviously, there are a lot of characters on your keyboard that don’t show up very often, or at all, in comic book lettering. But it’s important to me that a finished font contain these th ings-brackets, a plus sign, accents, etc. It’s a matter of craftsmanship and pride in the end product. You could drive a fancy car just fine without a paint job, but it just wouldn’t seem finished, would it? Many of these lesser-used characters were missing from Wendy’s samples, but the Pinis gave me permission to invent the missing pieces, mimicking Wendy’s style. In the end, I think I did a pretty seamless job. Piekos traces and adjusts the letterforms manually, avoiding use of automated tools available in applications such as Adobe Illustrator At least two versions of each letter were created, so later on, when I moved the project over to Fontlab, I could program Open Type autoligatures for any instance when two of the same letter appeared side by side. (Think of the two o’s in the word book.) The autoligatures swap one letter out so that they’re slightly different in appearance, creating a more organic look. The art contained fewer samples of bold and italic lettering, which are used less often than regular text, so I needed to search a larger number of Wendy’s art pages to get what I needed. I repeated the same process of checking off my top choices of which letters to create as point-bypoint vectors. Characters that I couldn’t find in the art were once again designed from scratch, simulating Wendy’s style. Over the course of about a week, I had re-created or simulated everything I needed. I decided the italic style would be created by slanting the regular characters in Fontlab, so I took some measurements of Wendy’s natural italic slant. You may imagine some very technical equation for figuring this out, or even some preprogrammed action in Illustrator, and those things probably exist, but taking the simplest approach, I just back-slanted some samples of Wendy’s italic letters with Illustrator’s Shear tool until they were nearly vertical. This gave me a measurement of 30°-35°. I made a note for later and moved on to tidying up the vectors that I’d made. As my work progressed, I’d send regular previews to Sierra and the Pinis, getting feedback and making adjustments. The Pinis decided to dial back the degree of slant on both the italic and bold italic sets-we ended up at a 24° slant-and reduce the weight of the bold italic a bit. Here are the samples I submitted to the Pinis for final approval before moving everything over to Fontlab. A font finally becomes a working piece of software once it’s been programmed. This happens in Fontlab or similar software, and it’s when things begin to get very technical, but don’t worry—I’m just going to hit the highlights! Careful adjustment of distances between specific pairs of letters — kerning — is a time-consuming process essential to a high-quality typeface. The most important process at this stage is kerning (how any two characters fit together). Imagine a letter T next to an A They have to scoot together to look right within a word. Over the last decade, I’ve assembled a proprietary list of over eleven thousand kerning pairs that I check and adjust for every font I create. The process can take anywhere from hours to days and is the true measure of a professionally made font. Each typeface also needs to be cleaned up one final time, spaced, and hinted (the process of making characters render properly onscreen), and the Open Type autoligatures must be programmed. After much work, the software was saved as installable font files and approved by the Pinis. As I remember it, we made barely any changes at this point. (Always good news!) The font Richard and Wendy decided to call “Elfquest” was finished, and it was about to get a trial by fire! The completed typeface Dark Horse was going to print the Final Quest Special issue that the Pinis had already completed. But first it needed to be relettered with the new font to match the style of upcoming issues. So within a day or two of finishing, I was hard at work using the new typeface and developing a style guide that evoked those classic tales I grew up with while bringing a fresh, uniform aesthetic to the series’ lettering. If the lettering didn’t really jump out at you in this comic, I’ll take that as a compliment. When comic lettering is done well, by a letterer with a love of typography and graphic design, it’s unobtrusive to the reader and complements the art. When it’s done poorly, it’s a distraction, and worse yet, it makes your reading experience difficult. It’s a serious business to me. That said, if you did enjoy the lettering in Elfquest: The Final Quest half as much as I enjoyed designing it … well … I guess we both have my mom to thank! ✦ Issue #1 of Elfquest: TFQ is available now from Dark Horse Comics. See more of Nate’s work at Blambot.com . A panel from Elfquest typeset … in Elfquest ✦ Nate Piekos graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Design from Rhode Island College in 1998. Since founding Blambot, he has created some of the industry’s most popular fonts and has used them to letter comic books for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Oni Press, and Dark Horse Comics, as well as dozens of independent publishers. In 2001 he became type designer to Harvey Award Winner, Mike “Madman” Allred, and has had his designs licensed by such companies as Microsoft, Six Flags Amusement Parks, New Yorker Magazine, The Gap, and many more. Nate’s work has not only been utilized in comics, but in video games, on television, and in feature films as well. When not designing, Nate is committed to a regular fitness routine, reads voraciously, writes and illustrates webcomics, and is a dedicated musician. He’s married and lives in New England. COMMENTS AND DISCUSSION Previously in Typography Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto
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Creating a font from a classic comic