September 2013 – Page 3 – Maxson Central

11/09/2013

imagine goober here going…

Surprise surprise surprise. What didja think?

http://gizmodo.com /surprise-the-nsa-repeatedly-violated-court-rules-on-da-1288331948

08/09/2013

Trust is essential for society to function. Without it, conspiracy theories naturally take hold. Even worse, without it we fail as a country and as a culture. It’s time to reinstitute the ideals of democracy: The government works for the people, open government is the best way to protect against government abuse, and a government keeping secrets from its people is a rare exception, not the norm.

https ://www.schneier.com /blog/archives/2013/09/conspiracy_theo_1 .html

06/09/2013

here’s what I thinj

They have found weaknesses in some applications they can exploit. They’ve convinced companies to put in backdoors. They can crack weak passwords. BUT the math and large keys still stand in floss. I think these stories are to try and get around the groundswell of people starting to use encryption they can’t break.

http://gizmodo.com /the-nsa -can-crack-almost-any-type-of-encryption-1258954266

05/09/2013

so that is ssl broken?

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/09/nsa-attains-the-holy-grail-of-spying-decodes-vast-swaths-of-internet-traffic/

04/09/2013

The “Walkie Scorchie” tower

At certain times of the year, the news is full of stories like “The Wrong Kind of Snow” or “Leaves Disrupt Rail Travel” or “Sun Delays Rail“. Well, now there is another “wrong kind of sun” story: a new building under construction in London (at 20 Fenchurch Street) is slightly concave. It does what a shape like that does and focuses the sun onto a point.

Well, it turns out that in the fall autumn (and I would say in the spring as well) the building focuses light across the street. It has even melted cars and cooked eggs. I’m curious to see how this plays out.

Image from becky via flickr

04/09/2013

Amazon Kindle Matchbook

Personally, I like this. After the cost of layout, etc… there isn’t any additional cost to an ebook. It is sort of like giving people mp3s when they purchase a CD. Don’t think about this as being like giving people mp3s. Why? Well, mp3s are easy to rip from a CD. It is way hard to take a book of any length and make an ebook…hard enough I’d almost call it impossible.

Doing this would make me buy a real book for the bookshelf and get the ebook. I’ll certainly do this in cases where ebooks are free. Amazon Kindle Matchbook

02/09/2013