Tag: measure

How the New York Public Library made ebooks open, and thus one trillion times better

Leonard Richardson isn’t just the author of Constellation Games , one of the best debut novels I ever read and certainly one of the best books I read in 2013; he’s also an extremely talented free/open source server-software developer who has been working for the New York Public Library on a software project that liberates every part of the electronic book lending system from any kind of proprietary lock-in, and, in the process, made reading library ebooks one trillion times better. (more…)

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How the New York Public Library made ebooks open, and thus one trillion times better

Why are these children "sieg heiling" the American flag?

In this 1915 photo, the children appear to be raising their arms in a siege heil salute of the American flag. Actually, this gesture was part of the Pledge of Allegiance ritual for decades. Then, um, Hitler happened. From Smithsonian : Originally known as the Bellamy Salute, the gesture came to be in the 1890s, when the Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis J. Bellamy. The Christian socialist minister was recruited to write a patriotic pledge to the American flag as part of magazine mogul Daniel Sharp Ford’s quest to get the flag into public schools. At the time… Bellamy and his boss both agreed that the Civil War had divided American loyalties and that the flag might be able to bridge those gaps. His campaign centered around the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the new world. He published his new Pledge as part of a unified Columbus Day ceremony program in September 1892 in the pages of the Youth’s Companion, a popular children’s magazine with a circulation of 500,000. “At a signal from the Principal,” Bellamy wrote, “the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute—right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, ‘I pledge allegiance to my Flag…’” Then in the 1930s, Hitler reportedly saw Italian Fascists doing a similar gesture, likely based on an ancient Roman custom, and adopted it for the Nazi party.

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Why are these children "sieg heiling" the American flag?

Generate your own random fantasy maps

Martin O’Leary not only made a cool fantasy map generator , he’s giving away the source code and has described the process at a high enough level for an idiot like me to partly understand how it works. I wanted to make maps that look like something you’d find at the back of one of the cheap paperback fantasy novels of my youth. I always had a fascination with these imagined worlds, which were often much more interesting than whatever luke-warm sub-Tolkien tale they were attached to. At the same time, I wanted to play with terrain generation with a physical basis. There are loads of articles on the internet which describe terrain generation, and they almost all use some variation on a fractal noise approach, either directly (by adding layers of noise functions), or indirectly (e.g. through midpoint displacement). These methods produce lots of fine detail, but the large-scale structure always looks a bit off. Features are attached in random ways, with no thought to the processes which form landscapes. I wanted to try something a little bit different. It’s an odd feeling to look at these instantly-generated, detailed maps and realize that they represent nothing. I feel like I’m being wasteful pressing the “Generate high resolution map.” The Uncharted Atlas is a twitterbot that posts a new map every hour.

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Generate your own random fantasy maps

Mystery magic spells, etched on gold, unearthed in Serbia

Buried nearly 2,000 years ago in Serbia, rolls of gold and silver etched with “magic spells” are baffling archaologists. Reuters reports on a “Middle Eastern mystery” unearthed at the site of an ancient Roman city. “We read the names of a few demons, that are connected to the territory of modern-day Syria,” archaeologist Ilija Dankovic said at the dig, as more skeletons from the 4th century A.D. were being uncovered. The fragile, golden and silver scrolls – which once unrolled look like rectangles of foil similar in size to a sweet wrapper – may never be fully understood. They are the first such items discovered in Serbia but resemble amulets of “binding magic” found in other countries, Dankovic said. Very Pazuzu , isn’t it?

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Mystery magic spells, etched on gold, unearthed in Serbia

American Bar Association votes to DRM the law, put it behind a EULA

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, “I just got back from the big debate on is free law like free beer that has been brewing for months at the American Bar Association over the question of who gets to read public safety codes and on what terms.” (more…)

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American Bar Association votes to DRM the law, put it behind a EULA

Return of Dieselgate: 3 more hidden programs found in VW Audi/Porsche firmware

The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag says that US investigators have discovered three more hidden cheat apps in a Volkswagen product line: these ones were discovered in 3-liter Audi diesels. (more…)

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Return of Dieselgate: 3 more hidden programs found in VW Audi/Porsche firmware

Electronic temporary tattoo measures how drunk you are

University of California San Diego nanoengineers developed a flexible, wearable sensor that measures the blood alcohol level of its wearer and transmits the info to a mobile device. From UCSD News : The device consists of a temporary tattoo—which sticks to the skin, induces sweat and electrochemically detects the alcohol level—and a portable flexible electronic circuit board, which is connected to the tattoo by a magnet and can communicate the information to a mobile device via Bluetooth. The device could be integrated with a car’s alcohol ignition interlocks, or friends could use it to check up on each other before handing over the car keys, he added. “When you’re out at a party or at a bar, this sensor could send alerts to your phone to let you know how much you’ve been drinking,” said Jayoung Kim, a materials science and engineering PhD student. ” Noninvasive Alcohol Monitoring Using a Wearable Tattoo-Based Iontophoretic-Biosensing System ” (ACS Sensors)

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Electronic temporary tattoo measures how drunk you are

Proof-of-concept ransomware for smart thermostats demoed at Defcon

Last week, Andrew Tierney and Ken Munro from Pen Test Partners demoed their proof-of-concept ransomware for smart thermostats, which relies on users being tricked into downloading malware that then roots the device and locks the user out while displaying a demand for one bitcoin. (more…)

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Proof-of-concept ransomware for smart thermostats demoed at Defcon

Vast collection of Amiga games, demos and software uploaded to Internet Archive

The world’s first psychedelic computer enters the universal library. And it all runs in the browser, meaning you’ll never have to hunt for Workbench disk images again.

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Vast collection of Amiga games, demos and software uploaded to Internet Archive

1 billion computer monitors vulnerable to undetectable firmware attacks

A team led by Ang Cui ( previously ) — the guy who showed how he could take over your LAN by sending a print-job to your printer — have presented research at Defcon, showing that malware on your computer can poison your monitor’s firmware, creating nearly undetectable malware implants that can trick users by displaying fake information, and spy on the information being sent to the screen. (more…)

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1 billion computer monitors vulnerable to undetectable firmware attacks