Archive for the 'Technology' Category

Tokyo: Charms against computer viruses

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Japan is one of the leading high-tech places around the world but it’s also a country of traditions.

When visiting Tokyo many have a look-around the Akihabara quarter to see the latest gadgets and future computing tools that are often already available there in small series before hitting mass markets around the world.

Next time visiting Tokyo and when you bought some great new computing device in Akihabara, take it with you and visit nearby Kanda-Myojin Shinto shrine.

The shrine sells the faithful special IT prayer charms to ward off computer viruses. Visitors can also have their computers purified to protect them from common electronic ghosts and devils.

The “computer protection services” offered by the shrine have been popular for some time among…

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AI: Autonomous Helicopters teach themselves to Fly Stunts

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Finally someone has adapted human learning approaches and used them within AI.

Called “apprenticeship learning” and build into AI Algorithms by Stanford University students, they created an autonomous helicopter system that learns to fly stunts by watching human pilots.

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DIY: Two more ideas for things made out of paper

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Two more additions to our loose series on great paper craft sites - guitars and disasters…

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Humor: Change your nationality with Google Chrome

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Not even out a day as a Beta release Google’s new web browsers already has massive impact on people living in parts of Europe.

If your Belgium, Austrian, Danish, Dutch or from parts of the Czech Republic and Switzerland from now on you’re part of the Greater German Reich. Please send your passport to Google and…

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Google: A Comix to create interest for a new web browser

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To gain further interest and introduce new features of its web browser launched today, Google created a comix book about the browser. On 38 pages the comix describes benefits, key scenarios and advantages of the Google Browser in comparison to existing solutions…

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Security: YouTube Hijacking

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It’s an issue of the Internet infrastructure well known since at least the 1990s - data / packets can be rerouted to more or less any IP address via the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP, RFC 4271).

BGP is normally used to announce between routers which networks are reachable by which (preferred) routes. And on the Internet all routers trust each other and there are no mechanisms built into the protocol to assure that the counterpart in a communication “does not lie“.

The issue, as said, is not new and known at least to insiders…

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Image: Small talk with a web designer

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Great visualization of a cliche that unfortunately is too often true…

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Security: The weakest link

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We have been asked a few times for an example to better understand that the security of a system is defined by its weakest link. Well here’s one of our example video for that…

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Software: World Clock Screen-Saver

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The World Clock by Simon Heys is an interesting screen-saver for Mac OS X, Windows PCs and the Apple iPhone. Very interesting typography and eye friendly dark background…

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DEFCON: From war-dailing to war-carting

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Three MIT students have shown the weaknesses of the Boston and other local transportation systems in the US (and of course got sued instead of learning from it). The image below is a compilation of some of the DEFCON slides from their presentation…

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