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| Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com. |
| New Trick Gives Snoops Easy Access to E-Mail |
| 2:03:54 am mst / 5 February 2001 found by paul / filed in security / source NY Times 146 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| A new more powerful form of "web bug" can be written using JavaScript, allowing people to read entire chains of e-mail correspondence without the previous authors' knowledge. |
| Yet another reason to use a plain vanilla text e-mail program. |
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| Moving the Earth's orbit |
| 10:10:38 am mst / 5 February 2001 found by paul / filed in science / source BBC News 70 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| As the sun increases in brightness over the next billion years or so, some university and NASA scientists are proposing a novel solution -- move the Earth's orbit farther away. They propose the "alarmingly simple" technique of using an asteroid and the "gravitational slingshot" effect to transfer energy between the Earth and Jupiter, thus altering our orbit. |
| Finally -- a practical solution to global warming! |
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| RSA cracked? |
| 10:35:27 am mst / 5 February 2001 found by paul / filed in cryptography / source Manila Bulletin 98 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| A Filipino "mathematics enthusiast" claims to have developed a method of cracking the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adelman) encryption system. Supposedly, using "three simple formulas" will "allow fast decoding of RSA encryption". (Link from Fark.) |
| The article is suspiciously light on details. |
| read 1 comment |
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| NAACP Owns Offensive Domain Name |
| 12:23:21 pm mst / 5 February 2001 found by diana / filed in internet / source Misc 143 hits / 0 comments / 1 e-mail |
| Fark pointed us towards this whois of an unmentionably racist domain name owned by the NAACP. (An old story in Wired explains the strategy behind anti-hate groups grabbing such domains.) |
| Better that it be in their hands than the KKK! |
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| Engineering students hang VW Beetle from Golden Gate Bridge |
| 2:46:25 pm mst / 5 February 2001 found by paul / filed in fun / source AP News 97 hits / 2 comments / 2 e-mails |
| In the fine tradition of elegant student pranks, "engineering students from the University of British Columbia tethered the hull of an old, red Volkswagen Beetle to the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge". A picture is available here. (Link from MetaFilter.) |
| We can't let these Canadians get away with this! Can MIT or CalTech students rise to the challenge? |
| read 2 comments |
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| Is that your PC--or an oven? |
| 3:26:44 pm mst / 5 February 2001 found by diana / filed in hardware / source ZDNet 64 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| A fairly detailed article on the emergence of heat as a concern for chip designers looking forward 10 years to 10GHz to 30GHz chips. |
| Unless chip design changes, such chips will "produce as much heat, for their proportional size, as a nuclear reactor." Toasty! |
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| Hunting the Wild Hacker |
| 4:47:31 pm mst / 5 February 2001 found by diana / filed in culture / source Salon 69 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Andrew Leonard studies the work ethic of hackers through the new book The Hacker Ethic and the sysadmin in the next cube. |
| Work is play indeed! |
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| Terrorists use steganography to hide plans online |
| 10:32:44 pm mst / 5 February 2001 found by paul / filed in cryptography / source USA Today 62 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| The US government claims that terrorist Osama Bin Laden is using public-key crytography and steganography to hide messages to his operatives within innocuous-appearing photographs and postings on pornographic and sports bulletin boards. |
| And of course, this is why the US government claims it needs key escrow. Whenever the government wants to argue against strong cryptography being made freely available to the public, they cite the threat posed by what Tim May calls the "Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse" (terrorists, drug dealers, money launderers, and child pornographers). |
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