December 2008
How I Hacked SSL With 200 Playstations
With the help of about 200 Sony Playstations, an international team of security researchers has devised a way to undermine one of the algorithms used to protect secure Web sites — a capability that the researchers said could be used to launch nearly undetectable phishing attacks. To accomplish that, the researchers said today that they had exploited a bug in the MD5 hashing algorithm used to...
WatchA simple, beautiful time-lapse video of four full seasons from photographer Eirik Solheim. With ambient sounds mixed in and seamless transitions, this quick video captures the ineffable passage of time. (via buzzfeed.com)
Microsoft's 'Pay As You Go' Business Model
Microsoft Corp. last week applied for a patent that spells out a “pay as you go” concept under which users would be charged for both the software they run and the computing horsepower they use. According to the patent application filed last week with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the “Metered Pay-As-You-Go Computing Experience” scheme would meter software use and...
Pirated Windows 7 Downloads Boom Online
Downloads of a new build of Microsoft Corp.’s upcoming Windows 7 operating system have soared in the past two days, with thousands of systems now pulling pirated copies from BitTorrent sites. Searches today on the Pirate Bay BitTorrent site, for example, returned multiple listings of Windows 7 Build 7000, which Microsoft identifies as a beta candidate in the file name. The torrent is a disk...
'Passive Houses' Offers Key To Super Efficiency
Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy efficiency standards like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines. The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of...
Cisco Plans To Muscle Into Home Electronics
Cisco Systems, the dominant provider of the digital pipes that run the Internet, is making a big play in digital entertainment. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January in Las Vegas, it plans to introduce a new line of products, including a digital stereo system that is meant to move music wirelessly around a house. That is the first small move in a long-term strategy to take on Apple, Sony and...
WatchBy age 3, Julian Kreusser was making “secret potions” out of food. He woke up early to scramble eggs while his parents slept. He invented “toasted olives” (green ones) for a neighborhood snack. For the record, they were a success. At age 4, he saw a cooking show on Oregon Public Broadcasting and thought, “I should be doing that.” He can’t reach the counter...
Zigtag Tries To Understand You
It was two years ago that we first heard of Zigtag, a service that promised to “transform how people search, save and share knowledge & information.” Now, after a nine-month private beta, this semantic tagging service has finally launched. But is Zigtag’s bookmarking tool intelligent enough for 2009 For those of you who don’t know, Zigtag is another entry in the social...
“Books are the pablum of media. The more soft, bland, trite, and simplistic the...”
– Michael Wolff, writing in his column about the decline of publishing and the role Oprah.
Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study... →
Teenagers Who Make Such Promises Are Just as Likely to Have Sex, and Less Likely to Use Protection, the Data Indicate.
iPhone v. BlackBerry: Side By Side, Two Week... →
With the Wi-Fi-equipped BlackBerry 8820 coming soon to an AT&T store near you, business folks around the country will be faced with the decision of switching to the trendy new iPhone or upgrading to a more iPhonesque version of their trusty CrackBerry. To determine whether the grass really is greener on the iPhone side of the fence, we have chronicled the experience of a venture capitalist
A Small Glass Of Wine Could Delay Dimentia →
Drinking a small glass of wine a day could delay the onset of dementia in women, a new study has suggested.
Auditorium →
Auditorium is a beautiful new puzzle game which involves manipulating streams of light, and which sounds as good as it looks.
The Isle That Rattled The World →
Tiny Iceland Created a Vast Bubble, Leaving Wreckage Everywhere When It Popped.
last.fm Best Of 2008 →
One Hot Ticket: The Obama Inauguration →
Ultrawideband Falls From Grace →
Amazon Have Announced Their Best Selling Products... →
(via getshust)
Coming Soon: A Hulu For Music?
Warner Music Group — now banned from YouTube following failed licensing negotiations — isn’t the only major record label tired of doing business with Google’s video-sharing site. A source familiar with the negotiations tells us that Warner and the three other majors — Sony BMG, EMI, and Universal Music Group — all think they could do better creating their own...
How Universal Makes Millions From YouTube
YouTube’s traffic machine may finally be turning into a cash machine. For the first time, there are signs that YouTube is driving significant revenue for itself and some of the video site’s partners. In an interview with CNET News this week, Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of Universal Music Group’s eLabs, said the largest of the top recording companies is bringing in...
Websites Could Get Film-Style Ratings
The kind of ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the Internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has said. Burnham told The Daily Telegraph newspaper, published on Saturday, that the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new...
Saying Yes, WaMu Built Empire On Shaky Loans →
On a financial landscape littered with wreckage, WaMu, a Seattle-based bank that opened branches at a clip worthy of a fast-food chain, stands out as a singularly brazen case of lax lending. By the first half of this year, the value of its bad loans had reached $11.5 billion, nearly tripling from $4.2 billion a year earlier.
Glassdoor.com Lists Naughtiest And Nicest C.E.O.’s... →
Glassdoor.com, a site that lets employees anonymously review their employers and share salary information, is out with a list of the naughtiest and nicest chief executives of 2008, based on those reviews.
Wired: Top Technology Breakthroughs Of 2008 →
Disneyland For Dudes: Playing With Backhoes, ATVs,... →
Think of it as a testosterone-soaked sandbox: a German amusement park where, instead of standing in line to ride on roller coasters, you get to play with big, loud machines. For 219 euros (about $280), patrons can spend the day operating 29-ton Liebherr backhoes and 32-ton Komatsu front-end loaders, off-roading through the woods in a Mercedes-built Unimog, peeling out in a Suzuki SUV, and slinging...
Vote For Your Favorite Tumblr Blog →
WatchThe Bird & The Bee - Love Letter To Japan
Amazon Has "Best Holiday" Ever
Amazon Inc. called its 2008 holiday shopping season “its best ever,” even as other data showed retail sales shrinking at a sharp clip. The Seattle-based online retailer said on Friday orders came in at a record clip in the run-up to the holidays. The buying culminated on Dec. 15, when Amazon said it received more than 6.3 million orders worldwide, or a record 72.9 items a second....
The iPhone Is Coming To Wal-Mart This Sunday
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Friday it will begin selling Apple’s iPhone 3G starting Sunday, but not at the dramatic discount some had expected. The retailer said it would sell the eight-gigabyte iPhone 3G for $197 and the 16 GB model for $297. Prices are for phones with a new two-year service agreement with AT&T (T) or with a qualified upgrade, the retailer said in a brief statement...
Yeah! Windows XP Available Through May 2009
OEM system builders selling computers with installed copies of Windows XP, originally slated to stop shipping on January 31, 2009, have just gotten a little breathing room. Microsoft has extended the deadline to ship licenses for XP through May 30st, 2009. What that means is that customers shopping for computers will have a little bit longer to get their hands on an XP machine if they’re...
Cloud Computing Looms Larger On Corporate Horizon →
Blogs Find Favor As Buying Guides →
While the rise of blog readership in recent years is no secret, the power of blogs to influence what people buy is less established. But as a recent study reveals, that power is significant - so much that a majority of blog readers say blogs are useful when they make purchases.
Cloud Platforms Of The Future: Hadoop And... →
Without a doubt, the cloud and all its forms and meanings were big news in 2008. Besides the huge growth of Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine, we saw Salesforce launch Force.com, a true platform-as-a-service. My picks for the most interesting software of 2008 are Hadoop and Eucalyptus.
Where To Find Cool Japan Gadgets
One of the annoying things about living in Japan is all those emails from friends back home asking for this or that wacky gadget. Well, now you can simply refer them to the Japan Trend Shop. Fancy a silicone jellyfish aquarium, butt-shaping cushion or a mirror that also measures the strength of UV-rays? How about a pedometer that lets you know how much taxi fare you’ve saved by walking? The items...
Mint Brings Personal Finance To The iPhone
Mint.com released a new and free iPhone application early Monday. Similar to PageOnce’s mobile efforts, Mint’s lets you monitor your credit card and bank accounts from your phone. It also throws in things like your monthly budget, incoming cash flow and expenses, along with any investment accounts you have synced up to Mint.com. For security, Mint seems to have taken a page from...
Graffiti Artist Star On YouTube Busted
The graffiti artist who gained notoriety on YouTube with his daredevil tagging exploits pleaded guilty today to nearly three dozen felony vandalism counts and was released from jail after serving time since last May, prosecutors said. Cyrus Yazdani, one of Los Angeles’ most prolific taggers, who is known in the tagging world as “Buket,” admitted to 32 counts with the special...