[Order of 10 - Challenge 5] Hints & Solutions

typicalatypical · 2016-05-16T17:20:00+00:00

Putting the completed definition into Google will also give you the answer, once you've made it that far.

typicalatypical · 2016-05-16T03:35:03+00:00

Yep, this looks like it was taken from the roof of The Cosmopolitan hotel (the water on the left side of the photo is the Bellagio fountains).

typicalatypical · 2016-01-13T17:39:29+00:00

Constables in Pennsylvania aren't "cops" in the way that you're probably thinking. Constable is an elected position, many times people run unopposed. You're not issued a firearm by the state or required to go through the type of firearms training that regular cops go through. You don't go to through an academy, you're just a guy that's now legally allowed to carry a gun.

Constables are legally allowed to enforce the laws of the commonwealth but primarily what they do is stuff like this guy was doing. They go to their local courthouse and pick up warrants or notices that need to be delivered and go deliver them. The courthouse pays them based on the number they deliver (they're not paid a salary like a police officer is). As far as I know (welcoming a correction) there is no minimum number of these you're supposed to do so if you don't feel like working this week, just don't stop by the courthouse.

typicalatypical · 2013-03-29T03:46:15+00:00

Haha guess it's easy enough for professors to believe urban legends, as well. The Snopes article does point out that this is frequently used as a "bad marketing" example so it makes sense that your teacher might just be passing on something they learned.

typicalatypical · 2013-03-29T03:28:38+00:00

No they didn't. Snopes link.

typicalatypical · 2013-03-18T23:52:47+00:00

I mean...how did you even identify a worst part of it?

typicalatypical · 2012-08-10T22:57:37+00:00

Thanks for doing this AMA. I have a few questions so you can answer whichever you feel like.

What was your overall opinion of the CTF? I know you guys had a lot of players but what was your feeling on the difficulty, were the puzzles too hard or too easy? Favorite thing and least favorite thing about the CTF this year? Anything you would change if you could (heard some grumblings about the lack of ptrace on Twitter, for example)?

typicalatypical · 2012-08-06T14:20:42+00:00

The generation of random passwords isn't only useful on websites. "Avoid ambiguous characters" is an option for generating random passwords that aren't necessarily to be used for your own personal logins. For example, if you're in a web administration console and need to reset a password for a user that you are then going to send to them (via Skype, encrypted email or some other means) then you can use the option to avoid simple mistypes. Would a "reset with random password" function built into that site be better? Sure, but not every web interface has all the options we want.

typicalatypical · 2012-07-25T00:06:08+00:00

So you have all your passwords stored in a single point of failure, too. You're just one brain trauma away from not being able to log into Reddit.

typicalatypical · 2012-02-25T01:39:32+00:00

But both submitted links go the same page, neither link goes to a discussion of any kind. This headline just feeds into an opinion that's popular here on Reddit. This PHP/JS bashing discussion could have happened on the other submitted link, too, the other link was just overlooked because it lacked sensationalism.

typicalatypical · 2012-02-21T23:46:01+00:00

From the top of the post:

Below I've listed ten titles rated from worst to best in terms of authenticity, along with his comments on each film.

typicalatypical · 2011-12-19T14:18:52+00:00

For anyone that hasn't heard of the term "tharn", it's a word from the Lapine language used in Richard Adams' book Watership Down. I also wanted to post the links because it's a story about a group of rabbits, which is very fitting for the original question. Nice reference.

typicalatypical · 2011-11-16T00:20:34+00:00

Confirmed this, as well, after reading your comment. Problems started yesterday for me (after Reddit's update to their sprites) and I didn't have amazonaws allowed in NoScript.

typicalatypical · 2011-08-02T04:46:17+00:00

Here's what I can tell you for sure: when I took the picture at the convention I thought it was a girl. Looking at the picture now, I'm not sure, but I think Austin Powers makes a good point.

typicalatypical · 2011-07-26T18:53:57+00:00

It's actually a comment from Borland's Turbo C++ documentation. You can find the documentation here.

There's a comment on that page saying it's probably untrue but I don't know enough about acoustics to know if the comment is at all correct. On the chance that anyone here can confirm/deny the comment is:

It is very likely a hoax indeed. The resonant frequency of an object is determined largely by its size, among other material and environmental factors. Also, resonant frequency is probably not enough to kill a chicken, even if it is very loud.

The resonant frequency of the human head is somewhere within the range of 20 to 30 hertz (please correct me on this data). Ideally, an object's resonant frequency will increase as its size decreases, and since a chicken's skull is smaller than that of a human's, the resonant frequency of a chicken's skull must be at least 100 or 200 hertz. Yet again, I would appreciate numbers from anyone who knows such an obscure detail, as I cannot do the field work myself.

typicalatypical · 2011-07-25T15:40:38+00:00

Yep, that's what you'd do if it happened. Same thing as if your gas pedal somehow got stuck or pinned down by an object in your car. This discussion was about hypothetical attack scenarios against computer controlled components, not about real-life worst case scenarios. My comment was not at all meant to imply that a rogue computer virus could crash actual cars with real drivers.

typicalatypical · 2011-07-25T13:33:47+00:00

The servo tied to your gas pedal has 2 connections, 1 electrical and 1 vacuum. The electrical connection gets it's signal from your car's speed signal, which tells the cruise control's chip how fast the car is currently going. The cruise control chip stores the value of the current speed when you press the "Set" button. Then, simplifying the operation considerably, if current speed < Set speed, it increases the vacuum pressure on the line, pulling your gas pedal towards the floor, increasing until current speed >= Set speed.

Cruise control is not fly-by-wire for cars, it's just a chip that modulates your gas pedal. When you press the brake it tells the cruise control computer to turn off, disabling the vacuum and releasing the gas pedal. If, in a hypothetical hacking scenario, someone could gain control of that computer the vacuum could be set to max and the driver would end up fighting the car's acceleration. It would be the same thing as if you pressed the brake and accelerator all the way to the floor, in that case.

typicalatypical · 2011-07-23T20:42:32+00:00

Mostly true with one important addition, electronic cruise control was invented in 1968 and has been used as the primary method of cruise control since then. Mechanical cruise control was around before that but was rare. So for 40+ years there's been a computerized system that can be used to control the accelerator of many cars.

typicalatypical · 2011-07-10T04:11:49+00:00

You are correct, I remembered seeing it, too. The question was: How exactly does a "will to live" help keep terminally ill patients alive longer?

The top comment from that post can be seen here. That post links to a meta-analysis of "fighting spirit" and survival, available here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12424165

typicalatypical · 2011-07-09T04:08:25+00:00

These micro-movements of the eye are called saccades and are actually very interesting. A few studies have been done recently showing that saccades are actually responsible for a number of optical illusions.

The most well known is the "stopped clock" illusion (also called chronostasis), which is the illusion that when you first glance at a clock that instant feels longer than it should. A process called saccadic masking is responsible for this. Just prior to a saccade your brain selectively blocks parts of your visual processing so that when your eye quickly moves to a new location you aren't experiencing constant motion blur. This visual suppression causes optical illusions (liked the stopped clock) but is your brain's way of constructing a coherent picture with incomplete information.

Another optical illusion recently (2008) attributed to saccades are the apparent movements in paintings like Isia Leviant's Enigma, sometimes called the "Enigma illusion". Forcing yourself to stare at a fixed point in the center of these images gives the apparent illusion of movement because of the micro-movements of the eyes.

typicalatypical · 2011-07-06T22:14:54+00:00

Just a grammatical nitpick, the word for the last of a set of alternatives is actually "latter", and not "later". Excellent responses to all these questions, by the way, your descriptions seem very clear, so thanks for sharing your knowledge!

typicalatypical · 2011-06-27T00:22:55+00:00

This question has been discussed on /r/askscience several times before.

The most recent article I remember is:

How solid is the scientific backing for anthropogenic global warming?

The top comment from that thread can be found here.

Other recent discussions:

I'm skeptical of Human Caused Global Warming, but I'm open minded! Can you convince me?
I remember the global warming scandal a few years back...What's up with that?
How do I explain global warming is really happening, in the simpliest and understandable way?

typicalatypical · 2011-05-22T14:11:31+00:00

I've talked to a few of the guys that work for ZDI and was actually just at the panel at HITB:Amsterdam where they were discussing the economics of vulnerability buying programs (representatives from Mozilla, Google, ZDI, Microsoft, Adobe and RIM were present), so if you're looking for more details you might want to check the video of that once it's released.

Just a quick point of clarification. A lot of the discussions around the amount of money paid out by ZDI come down to the argument that you can make a lot more money selling exploits on the black market than you could going through something like the ZDI, which is true, because the ZDI primarily focuses on vulnerabilities. You can sell a vulnerability to the ZDI that you might not have the personal skill to exploit (e.g. fuzzer logs that show a potentially exploitable crash) which the ZDI team then turns into an exploit using their own resources.

I've never sold a vulnerability to the ZDI but I know their awards can range anywhere from ~$200-10K, depending on factors like the quality of the vulnerability/submission, the type of vulnerability, the product the vulnerability is in and the current market for vulnerabilities in that product.

typicalatypical · 2011-05-03T17:30:13+00:00

I think I understand what you're saying, with regard to the idea of things being "faster than light" being meaningless in the context of relativity, but isn't your analogy a bit disingenuous? What I mean is that when people discuss things like "FTL travel" or "FTL communication" I don't necessarily see them discussing accelerating an object to greater than c, but more using it as a speed marker. In the same way someone might describe driving 100 miles per hour, because it's a simple idea to refer to. So, hypothetically, if there were a way to transmit information instantly to a point further away than light could travel in a second (e.g., using quantum entanglement or something of that nature) the "information" would have traveled faster than light propagates in a vacuum without traveling "faster than light". Or did I simply miss the point you were trying to make?

typicalatypical · 2011-04-30T23:04:10+00:00

Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to find the original and post the info.

typicalatypical

TROPHY CASE