How your smartphone’s battery life can be used to invade your privacy

2018-04-19T05:02:44+00:00August 5th, 2015|Tags: , , , , , |

How your smartphone’s battery life can be used to invade your privacy

if a user visits a website in Chrome’s private browsing mode using a VPN, the website should not be able to link them to a subsequent visit with private browsing and the VPN off. But the researchers warn that that may no longer work: “Users who try to revisit a website with a new identity may use browsers’ private mode or clear cookies and other client side identifiers. When consecutive visits are made within a short interval, the website can link users’ new and old identities by exploiting battery level and charge/discharge times. The website can then reinstantiate users’ cookies and other client side identifiers, a method known as respawning.”

Worse still, on some platforms, the researchers found that it is possible to determine the maximum battery capacity »

2015-02-26T23:34:17+00:00February 26th, 2015|Tags: , , |

There will not be a Singularity. I think that artificial intelligence is a bad metaphor. It is not the right way to talk about what is happening. So, I like to use the terms “cognition” and “computation”. Cognition is something that happens in brains, physical, biological brains. Computation is a thing that happens with software strings on electronic tracks that are inscribed out of silicon and put on fibre board. They are not the same thing, and saying that makes the same mistake as in earlier times, when people said that human thought was like a steam engine. The idea comes from metaphysical problems: Is mathematics thinking? If a machine can do mathematics, is it thinking? If a machine can play chess, is it thinking? There are a lot of things that machines can do, that algorithms can do, that »

2018-03-27T08:15:42+00:00February 17th, 2015|Tags: , |

This is such a good way of looking at how technology develops.

Solidarity against online harassment | The Tor Blog

2014-12-12T17:29:42+00:00December 12th, 2014|Tags: , , |

Solidarity against online harassment | The Tor Blog

We write tools to provide online freedom but we don’t endorse online or offline abuse. Similarly, in the offline world, we support freedom of speech but we oppose the abuse and harassment of women and others. We know that online harassment is one small piece of the larger struggle that women, people of color, and others face against sexism, racism, homophobia and other bigotry.

Communities that builds things can sometimes forget that their actions in creating the tool are not justified by the goals of the tool. It’s important the process of building tools for freedom of expression be informed by the same philosophical goals it’s aiming to empower other people to have. I’m happy to sign this, and I hope it will help tor, as well as the rest of the »

2018-03-27T08:22:53+00:00December 6th, 2014|Tags: , , |

prostheticknowledge:

Messing around with 3D video

Short video from graphics researcher Oliver Kreylos demonstrates what watching a Kinect-powered 3D video with a real-time 3D capture of yourself would currently look like – video embedded below:

A “recursive” video of sorts, showing a recording of myself watching a previously-made recording of myself building a C-60 Buckminsterfullerene using the Nanotech Construction Kit. Both recordings were done in the 3-Kinect 3D video capture space in IDAV’s VR lab, using a head-tracked Oculus Rift DK1 and a tracked input device (both times).

More Here

This is what I imagine robots like Asimo see when they are “looking”. Even though I’m sure that’s totally wrong.

2014-09-29T06:25:58+00:00September 29th, 2014|Tags: , |

Ibrahima Sarr, a Senegalese coder, led the translation of Firefox into Fulah, which is spoken by 20m people from Senegal to Nigeria. “Crash” became hookii (a cow falling over but not dying); “timeout” became a honaama (your fish has got away). “Aspect ratio” became jeendondiral, a rebuke from elders when a fishing net is wrongly woven. In Malawi’s Chichewa language, which has 10m speakers, “cached pages” became mfutso wa tsamba, or bits of leftover food. The windowless houses of the 440,000 speakers of Zapotec, a family of indigenous languages in Mexico, meant that computer “windows” became “eyes”.

Localizing an operating system for a language with no high-tech vocabulary – Boing Boing (via slantback)

your cow fell over but isn’t dying.

(via roomthily)

Localization is such a fascinating problem.

2014-09-26T16:28:40+00:00September 26th, 2014|Tags: |

[Computer science] is not really about computers — and it’s not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes…and geometry isn’t really about using surveying instruments. Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don’t really understand it very well, it’s very easy to confuse the essence of what you’re doing with the tools that you use.

Hal Abelson

(via scienceisbeauty)

Take note.

Permission to Touch

2014-09-11T18:39:52+00:00September 11th, 2014|Tags: , , , , , |

Permission to Touch

lonelysandwich:

All the tech giants want to touch your body. The end game of course is to touch your brain but the way they get there is by starting on the outside and politely inching their way closer and closer. First, 18” from your face. Then, into your pants pocket. Then…

Well, then, Google tried to put itself on your face like a bad kiss on a bad first date. Amateur move, Google, you dork. You should have been more subtle, more gentle. Look at how Apple played it. Apple gently touched your wrist first. That feels nice. We do not feel invaded. We’ll take this slow and see what happens next.

It’s funny ‘cause it’s true.

2018-03-27T08:46:15+00:00April 7th, 2014|Tags: , |

fastcodesign:

This Xbox Controller Can Sense Your Boredom, Make A Game More Violent

Heart rate, temperature, respiration, and perspiration: These are our autonomous functions—our core physiological processes—that signal stress or arousal and can betray our otherwise cool exteriors. Stanford researcherGregory Kovacs is reading these signals through a modified Xbox game controller. By adding a new, sensor-laden back plate, he can measure heart rate, blood flow, rate and depth of breath, and how hard and fast the user shakes the controller.

In response to these measurements, Kovacs has designed a game that can maximize excitement by adding more stimulus (like bad guys or explosions) whenever a gamer’s heart rate drops. Or it could do the reverse, ramping down the zombie factor for someone who wants to take it easy (but insists on playing zombie games to do so).

all sensors all »

Grandpa’s iPad — Shawn Blanc

2014-01-24T03:46:00+00:00January 24th, 2014|Tags: |

Grandpa’s iPad — Shawn Blanc

minimalmac:

My Grandpa’s iPad has enabled him to do something that he’s been unable to do for as long as I can remember. The 9.7-inch touch screen has turned my Grandpa into a photographer.

Just when I start to become jaded by technology something like this comes along and reminds me why it matters. Great piece by Shawn.

My Grandpa’s iPad has enabled him to do something that he’s been unable to do for as long as I can remember. The 9.7-inch touch screen has turned my Grandpa into a photographer.

2013-04-19T17:30:16+00:00April 19th, 2013|Tags: , , , , |

That’s right, sorry. Tor, uh, and the Navy network, and I don’t actually understand how all of that worked. And the reason I’m mentioning this is I’m…I’m fundamentally interested in what happens with that technology as it evolves. Right. And so, the problem I would assert, is that if you’re trying to receive data you need to have a guarantee of anonymity to the sender, you need to have a secure channel to the recipient, the recipient needs to be replicated, you know…

– Eric Schmidt

If you feel dumb for not knowing how Tor works don’t feel bad. Eric Schmidt doesn’t really understand it either.

Here’s a good place to start if you want to learn how it does work.

2012-01-27T02:16:21+00:00January 27th, 2012|Tags: , , |

Technology lets us do things faster and more efficiently; why would we use that newfound free time to do more and more of the same old thing? I’m not just talking about smarter consumption of content like Johnson is– I’m also saying, fuck consumption.

Brian Lam
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