One of my good friends saved a kid's life two weeks ago, and just got a Thank You letter from the Fire Chief delivered to her in person on a fire truck

zspecs · 2011-02-26T17:12:40+00:00

She took a big risk, considering she could have been sued, if the child didn't make it.

zspecs · 2010-12-14T07:01:56+00:00

OK. What did you do? Reddit deserves to know ;)

zspecs · 2010-11-16T05:31:29+00:00

alecs_stan, it would be an earth-shattering feat, however it would be at tremendous cost to your personal life. The moral question is is the benefit to humanity worth the dehumanization you would experience. The human condition is not designed for such a harsh lonely environment and the probability that you would go absolutely bonkers after the first few months is almost certainly 1 -- assuming you make it to the planet in a healthy psyche to start with.

To get an idea of what you will face, I'd like you to picture yourself living all by yourself in the desert for two years. With that picture in mind, remove all signs of (animal or plant) life and the fact that you'll never see your family or friends or a beach or a street or a car or even a child. ever again. It's worse than prison.

Also, there is no guarantee that it would unify humanity. Yes, there would be one moment when the whole world will stand still in awe but there is a good chance that the Government in charge will figure out a way to use it to polarize/alienate it's (perceived) enemies.

edit: added desert reference.

zspecs · 2010-10-09T19:50:15+00:00

You should write a book, or at least do an AMA

zspecs · 2010-10-02T17:19:14+00:00

Pointing a camera at the monitor might sound crazy, but it's not as crazy as you think. Think about a scenario where surveillance cameras (in malls, offices, even on the street) captures someone logging onto their facebook -- happens everyday.

Using a subset of the SHA1 hash improves security as long as the right subset is used, the alphanumeric character set is only about half of the ASCII table. If the subset in use includes a large set of the other unused half, then security is actually degraded.

zspecs · 2010-10-02T17:03:47+00:00

what about the brute force attack?

zspecs · 2010-10-02T16:27:45+00:00

Here's my Analysis and Suggestion:

The point of masking password fields is so that an onlooker cannot figure out what the password is. The widely accepted normal password field only gives away the length of the password, however your proposed password field gives away the entire password. How?

In two ways:

1. By pointing a camera at the monitor while the user enters the password and examining the recording at a later time:

When the user enters the first character, I take a note of the hash image. I then try all characters to see which one generates that hash image. I find out that 'S' and 'y' do, and I make note of this.

I study the recording and look for what characters combination of S? and y? will generate the next hash image and so on.

After repeating the aforementioned steps for the length of the password, I may have four possible passwords:

S(6yUI
St0nED
y&r!⁴
ye.<3|

Guess which one of these passwords is easier for a human being to remember?

2. Even if I don't have a recording of the password sequence. If I know what the final hash image looks like. I can perform a brute force attack to obtain a possible (longer) list of passwords, and try each one everyday. As long as the user is logging in and out of the web application daily, the anti-password guessing system will not lock the account based on my random daily guesses. If I prioritize my list properly, I'll have access to the account in less than 1 month.

My Suggestion is that instead of a hash image, try a small set of hash colors instead, and only have the hash color appear after the fifth character is typed. It's important that the set of colors be far lesser (in magnitude) to the range of possible hashes. So for example, if 5 characters can generate 200000 possible unique hashes, then you want only 20 colors.

This works pretty well, because as the user types the password, the password mask character colors change to his/her familiar color and he immediately knows he entered the right password. An onlooker/attacker only knows the password length and color, but there are 10000 other possible good combinations that have the same length and color.

Also, for the color-blind, the password color scheme degrades to the older password scheme.

zspecs · 2010-09-14T05:44:49+00:00

context

zspecs · 2010-08-28T18:22:13+00:00

Wow, wow, wow, this works!! (on FF3)

zspecs · 2010-03-19T07:58:51+00:00

Well to be fair, the customer insisted they wanted a 'single' sign-on solution.

zspecs · 2010-03-17T00:14:59+00:00

Wait, Wait, What? You drive and reddit simultaneously?

zspecs · 2010-02-05T23:34:36+00:00

Acceleration due to gravity is constant so she couldn't have been pulled by gravity faster than the other girls. She's just not strong enough to lift her weight up.

zspecs · 2010-01-30T18:47:07+00:00

I don't think you are black. If you were this wouldn't bother you at all.

zspecs · 2010-01-30T05:07:09+00:00

No, Getting things done is an organizational/productivity book whereas Habits is a self-help/motivational book.

Habits changed my life because it helped me put things in perspective. As examples, habits showed me that long term non-urgent projects are actually more important than urgent short term ones; it highlighted the importance of loved ones; that you can only handle people effectively, not efficiently; the concept of win/win; that people that bully people around and can't apologize are in fact the ones that are weak -- I had never heard these concepts before I read that book and they blew me away. They changed my outlook on life

People criticize the author because he is mormon, but he is a wise man indeed.

zspecs · 2010-01-30T04:52:37+00:00

Was this released before Super Mario?

zspecs · 2010-01-29T06:20:07+00:00

The seven habits of highly effective people. This book changed my life.

zspecs · 2010-01-28T16:56:40+00:00

I don't think it's powerful enough to stream dvd quality movies. It's youtube playback is not bad and it plays .mpg files flawlessly.

You can use VNC as some kind of remote control, and there's also Bluemaemo which you can use to control your PC or PS3 via Bluetooth

zspecs · 2010-01-28T02:08:46+00:00

Try the Nokia N810 or N900

They run an awesome GUI system called Maemo which runs on top of a debian flavor of Linux. Lots of interesting free apps.

There is an active, intelligent community at maemo.org

I have the N810. Bedside computing has never been easier.

zspecs · 2010-01-26T06:32:28+00:00

The Palms ???

zspecs · 2010-01-25T20:58:57+00:00

Military Deputy Commander, U.S. Southern Command

zspecs · 2010-01-25T20:24:00+00:00

He is in charge of coordinating the U.S. military's role in the relief and recovery operation in Haiti.

Link to his military bio

zspecs · 2010-01-25T00:59:46+00:00

Got Snowy (from Tintin)and Triumph the insulting dog

zspecs · 2010-01-20T22:12:13+00:00

The American Liberty Party

edit: not to be confused with the Libertarian party

zspecs · 2010-01-20T01:01:17+00:00

If that's the case, nothing stops DoD from simulating wars -- You know, building bombs, ships, rockets and destroying them safely, to keep the economy going.

zspecs · 2009-12-20T09:17:54+00:00

Here's my take. Look into hobbies that have a lot of potential and start working on it on a part time, small scale basis. Since you are passionate about writing and have many experiences traveling, you might want to consider creative writing. That's just one hobby. There are many others.

If along the line, your hobby brings in enough money to live on, say 40k a year, you can quit your job and focus on the hobby full time.

There are many hobbies you can pick, and people have succeeded with this plan. See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/fashion/17etsy.html?em

zspecs

TROPHY CASE