undefined – Page 93 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

New Voynich Manuscript reproduction uses new photos, looks great

An “authorized” reproduction of the legendary Voynich Manuscript is finally available in print form , published by Yale University from new photographs taken for the purpose. Yale’s Beinecke Library owns the document and has taken its sweet time putting out a decent art book. The quality is better than the popular “unauthorized” edition published last year; that one uses older scans widely available on the web, but I suppose was good enough to force the university’s hand. The first authorized copy of this mysterious, much-speculated-upon, one-of-a-kind, centuries-old puzzle. The Voynich Manuscript is produced from new photographs of the entire original and accompanied by expert essays that invite anyone to understand and explore the enigma. Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the “Voynich Manuscript,” the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript appears and disappears throughout history, from the library of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to a secret sale of books in 1903 by the Society of Jesus in Rome. The book’s language has eluded decipherment, and its elaborate illustrations remain as baffling as they are beautiful. For the first time, this facsimile, complete with elaborate folding sections, allows readers to explore this enigma in all its stunning detail, from its one-of-a-kind “Voynichese” text to its illustrations of otherworldly plants, unfamiliar constellations, and naked women swimming though fantastical tubes and green baths. The Voynich Manuscript [Amazon]

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New Voynich Manuscript reproduction uses new photos, looks great

Freeskiing. At night. On LED-covered skis.

Skier Mathieu Bijasson didn’t think it was insane enough to ski down the steepest faces of the French Alps during the day, so he rigged up some skis and poles with LED lighting and did it at night. The result is visually beautiful and teeth-clenchingly terrifying all at once. (more…)

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Freeskiing. At night. On LED-covered skis.

ReMarkable e-Ink sketching slate pitched at "paper people"

reMarkable ‘s 10.3″ tablet has an e-ink display with a paper-like texture, a digital pencil with 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, and promises to finally replace all that paper in your workspace. The pitch: read, write and sketch, all on one gadget . Unlike traditional paper, reMarkable connects to the digital world when you need it to. Your thoughts, whether they’re words or sketches, are instantly synced to reMarkable’s cloud service and made available on all your devices. Documents and ebooks are easily transferred for reading and reviewing with pen in hand. reMarkable connects to the internet for easy sharing and collaboration across devices. You can even take notes on one device and have it appear on a second device, in real time. It’s 10.2″ by 6.9″ and a quarter inch thick. It weighs less than a pound, and the 1872 x 1404 pixel display works out at 225 pixels per inch. It runs a Linux and has an ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, 512MB of RAM and WiFi. It claims a latency of 55ms and the demo video shows performance similar to the iPad Pro, which they say has 60ms latency. Wacom tablet hardware polls at

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ReMarkable e-Ink sketching slate pitched at "paper people"

Virginia State cops have blown a fortune on useless cellphone spying gear

Muckrock has been sending Freedom of Information requests to state police forces to find out how they’re using “cell-site simulators” (AKA IMSI catchers / Stingrays ), and they hit the motherlode with the Virginia State Police. (more…)

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Virginia State cops have blown a fortune on useless cellphone spying gear

Crooks can guess Visa card details in six seconds by querying lots of websites at once

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvjZGKwKvY In Does The Online Card Payment Landscape Unwittingly Facilitate Fraud? , a new paper in IEEE Security & Privacy , researchers from the University of Newcastle demonstrate a technique for guessing secruity details for credit-card numbers in six seconds — attackers spread their guesses out across many websites at once, so no website gets enough bad guesses to lock the card or trigger a fraud detection system. (more…)

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Crooks can guess Visa card details in six seconds by querying lots of websites at once

Man attempts to sharpen a dollar-store kitchen knife

Using Japanese sharpening stones of various grits and considerable prices, Junskitchen set out to try and make an edge of a $1 kitchen knife. The results are impressive—but how long will they last? [1,000 and 6,000] grits would be enough for a normal household knife. I used grits 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 8,000, and 12,000 in this video. The higher the number, the finer the sanding and the sharper the knife will be.

Two hackers are selling DDoS attacks from 400,000 IoT devices infected with the Mirai worm

The Mirai worm — first seen attacking security journalist Brian Krebs with 620gbps floods, then taking down Level 3, Dyn and other hardened, well-provisioned internet giants , then spreading to every developed nation on Earth (and being used to take down some of those less-developed nations ) despite being revealed as clumsy and amateurish (a situation remedied shortly after by hybridizing it with another IoT worm ) — is now bigger than ever, and you can rent time on it to punish journalists, knock countries offline, or take down chunks of the core internet. (more…)

Guy restores a century-old letterpress to perfect condition

Jimmy DiResta kept passing by a 1911 Chandler & Price letterpress sitting out in the rain. After buying it from the neglectful owner, he spent several years lovingly restoring it , eventually learning how to print with it. (more…)

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Guy restores a century-old letterpress to perfect condition

Office Depot techs accused of faking malware infections to meet sales targets

Seattle’s KIRO TV made undercover visits to Office Depot stores in Washington state and Oregon and asked the technicians working in the store’s “PC Health Check” to evaluate a working, uninfected PC; four out of six times, Office Depot technicians diagnosed nonexistent virus activity and prescribed $200 worth of service to get rid of it. (more…)

Metallica and The Roots play "Enter Sandman" on toy and classroom instruments

On The Tonight Show last night, Metallica, promoting their new album ” Hardwired…to Self-Destruct ,” played their old ditty “Enter Sandman” in an entirely new way. We’re off to never never land. James Hetfield – Vocals, Toy clarinet Jimmy Fallon – Vocals, Bass Drum, Casio Keyboard, Kazoo Lars Ulrich – Fisher Price Drum, Toy Cymbals Kirk Hammett – Melodica Robert Trujillo – Baby Electric Axe Questlove – Hand Clappers, Kazoo Kamal Gray – Xylophone James Poyser – Melodica Captain Kirk – Ukulele Tuba Gooding Jr. – Kazoo, Banana Shaker, Apple Shaker Mark Kelley – Kazoo Frank Knuckles – Bongos Black Thought – Tambourine, Brown Hat