It’s got a serial port!!!
The great iPhone serial port hack – Slideshow – Computerworld.
The great iPhone serial port hack
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Monthly Archives: October 2010
NL Police kill botnet by installing their own bot
Talk about fighting fire with fire! Keep the police out of your PC!
Politie over de schreef bij botnetontmanteling – UPDATE | Webwereld.
NL Fingerprint in passport a violation of human rights, unsafe
The system is not open enough and basically only offers the illusion of extra security. Don’t do it say the government advisors.
Regeringsadviseur hekelt Nederland om vingerafdruk – UPDATE | Webwereld.
How to Boost Your BitTorrent Speed and Privacy
Some good settings to change and try in your bittorrent client
How to Boost Your BitTorrent Speed and Privacy.
AppMakr :: iPhone App Maker
This webbased system allows you to create apps from RSS streams and guides you through publishing them on the app store.
AppMakr :: iPhone App Maker | Make your own iPhone App | Free iPhone App Maker.
NL vs three strikes
The foreign minister for NL is refusing to accede to Sarkozy’s request on a three strike ruling, forcing ISPs to kick someone from internet if they are ‘caught’ breaking some rules, such as illegal downloading. The real problem with this is that in this system there is no place for a judge, meaning the copyright holders themselves become judges and can randomly go nuts on people they don’t like for some reason. Copyright owners haven’t been known to be exactly rational in the past, so why should we expect them to be now?
De wetgeving houdt in dat een gebruiker na drie overtredingen van de regels, bijvoorbeeld downloaden, zonder tussenkomst van de rechter van het internet wordt afgesloten. “Nederland zal deze wetgeving niet steunen”, liet Rosenthal weten.
via Rosenthal tegen ‘three-strikes-out’ | nu.nl/internet | Het laatste nieuws het eerst op nu.nl.
People can do some bizarre things
USAF loses contact with 50 minuteman nuke missiles
The silo missileers couldn’t communicate and so control the 50 nukes. Apparently this has happened before, but only with up to around 8 missiles at a time…
USAF Has Nuke Issues, Again. Really, Really?! | Defense Tech.
Icebow is better than double rainbow
iOS 4.1 Bug Allows Access to Contacts, Photos – iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad news
A nasty glitch in iOS 4.1 lets anyone easily access both the phone and photos app on every model of the iPhone. The bug was found by a MacRumors forum member last week, but has just recently received major attention.
To bypass the password protected lock-screen, all you have to do is tap “Emergency Call”, enter a random number and hit call, then quickly press the lock / power button. You will then be booted to the phone app, where you can access contacts, recent calls, and even dial a number. If you tap a contact’s picture ID, you will be taken to the Photos app, where you have full access to view any picture. In this state, neither the home button nor the lock button do anything, and to exit you will have to make and end a call – at which point you will be brought back to the lock-screen.
via iOS 4.1 Bug Allows Access to Contacts, Photos – iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad news – Multi-Touch Fans.
Firesheep Sniffs Out Facebook and Other User Credentials on Wi-Fi Hotspots
Firefox: Firesheep sniffs out and steals cookies—and the account and identity of the owner in the process—of popular web sites (like Facebook and Twitter) from the browsing sessions of other users on the Wi-Fi hot spot you’re attached to.
Firesheep is a proof-of-concept Firefox extension created by Eric Butler to show how leaky the security many popular web sites (like Facebook, Flickr, Amazon.com, Dropbox, Evernote, and more) employ is. The problem, as Firesheep shockingly demonstrates, is that many web sites only encrypt your login. Once you are logged in they use an unsecured connect with a simple cookie check. Anyone from your IP address (that of the Wi-Fi hotspot) with that cookie can be you. When using Firesheep on a public hot spot any session it can intercept is displayed in the Firesheep pane with the user’s name and photograph (when available). Simply click on their name to intercept the session and start browsing the website as though you are them.
via Firesheep Sniffs Out Facebook and Other User Credentials on Wi-Fi Hotspots.
Piracy increases sales – if you engage with the pirates!
Underground comic creator found out that someone had scanned his entire comic and posted it online in 4chan. Instead of getting pissed, he chatted with the people and his sales went higher than after being reviewed at Boing Boing!
UNDERGROUND » Pictures help us learn..
Moon Blast Reveals Lunar Surface Rich With Compounds
There is water on the moon … along with a long list of other compounds, including, mercury, gold and silver. That’s according to a more detailed analysis of the chilled lunar soil near the moon’s South Pole, released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday.
via Moon Blast Reveals Lunar Surface Rich With Compounds | The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour | PBS.
I knew there was water there, but gold, silver and mercury maybe makes it economical to get there! This is data from the LCROSS mission, where they plowed a satellite into the moon at 6000 kph and had another close behind measuring the particles with a spectrometer.
European Parliament: pay your bills on time!
The directive will fully harmonise the period within which payment is due at 30 days. Companies dealing with other companies will be able to set that period at 60 days in their contracts, but must pay bills within 30 days if no contractual period is set.
Contracts will not be able to extend that period beyond 60 days “unless otherwise expressly agreed in the contract and provided it is not grossly unfair to the creditor”, according to the new directive.
Organisations that break those rules will have to pay interest at 8 per cent above the European Central Bank’s reference rate. They will also have to pay fixed fees to companies to cover costs. This will be set at a minimum of €40 but can cover all reasonable costs.
via European Parliament: If you don’t pay, you will pay • The Register.
UK Internet snooping is back
The reemerging Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) means internet providers will be forced to install interception equipment in their networks to capture details of who contacts whom, when, where and how via services such as Facebook, Skype, webmail, and online games.
Under the most likely scenario, Deep Packet Inspection technology will be configured by GCHQ to grab such data from passing traffic and store it in vast silos run by communications providers. The same technology will also allow for the content of communications to be intercepted, although this requires a warrant from the Home Secretary.
via Green light for spooks’ net snoop plan • The Register.
And here I was thinking the new government was for privacy…
Twitter mood predicts the stock market
Behavioral economics tells us that emotions can profoundly affect individual behavior and decision-making. Does this also apply to societies at large, i.e., can societies experience mood states that affect their collective decision making? By extension is the public mood correlated or even predictive of economic indicators? Here we investigate whether measurements of collective mood states derived from large-scale Twitter feeds are correlated to the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) over time. We analyze the text content of daily Twitter feeds by two mood tracking tools, namely OpinionFinder that measures positive vs. negative mood and Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS) that measures mood in terms of 6 dimensions (Calm, Alert, Sure, Vital, Kind, and Happy). We cross-validate the resulting mood time series by comparing their ability to detect the public’s response to the presidential election and Thanksgiving day in 2008. A Granger causality analysis and a Self-Organizing Fuzzy Neural Network are then used to investigate the hypothesis that public mood states, as measured by the OpinionFinder and GPOMS mood time series, are predictive of changes in DJIA closing values. Our results indicate that the accuracy of DJIA predictions can be significantly improved by the inclusion of specific public mood dimensions but not others. We find an accuracy of 87.6% in predicting the daily up and down changes in the closing values of the DJIA and a reduction of the Mean Average Percentage Error by more than 6%.
via [1010.3003] Twitter mood predicts the stock market.
Interesting: the OpinionFinder (which is itself examined here and GPOMS could be used to find other mood causalities…
Yes – Opinion Mining and sentiment analysis has a look at this
There’s a whole world of Sentiment Analysis out there!
UK Strategic Defence and Security Review published
The navy loses a carrier and a helicopter landing ship immediately (no words on the planned acquisition of the next 2 carriers) and four frigates. The army loses a brigade as well as artillery (35%) and tanks (40%). The air force loses Harrier immediately and will lose C-130 10 years earlier than planned as well as losing VC-10 and three Tristar variants from 2013 and Sentinel after Afghanistan (whenever that may be).
Big cuts!
However, support for Afghanistan is unequivical and repeated. They’re going to stick that out and try to support the in country structure as much as possible.
MyClip Thigh for pilots
Drinking water, from sunshine
Led by Steven Dubowsky, a professor in both the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and graduate students Amy Bilton and Leah Kelley, the group built a small prototype of the system last spring to test algorithms they had developed to run it. They have since demonstrated that the prototype is capable of producing 80 gallons of water a day in a variety of weather conditions. They estimate that a larger version of the unit, which would cost about $8,000 to construct, could provide about 1,000 gallons of water per day. Dubowsky and his students also estimate that one C-130 cargo airplane could transport two dozen desalination units — enough to provide water for 10,000 people.
via In The World: Drinking water, from sunshine.
Another clever thing is that it uses hardly any external power at all.
MediaRover: Bring Your Family’s iTunes Libraries Together
Or, if you sync with multiple computers, this should work easily and for free. Works with Mac and PC.
MediaRover: Bring Your Family’s iTunes Libraries Together.
Buy light bulbs as heatballs
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters.
Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs — by producing them in China, importing them as “small heating devices” and selling them as “heatballs.”
To improve energy efficiency, the EU has banned the sale of bulbs of over 60 watts — to the annoyance of the mechanical engineer from the western city of Essen.
Rotthaeuser studied EU legislation and realized that because the inefficient old bulbs produce more warmth than light — he calculated heat makes up 95 percent of their output, and light just 5 percent — they could be sold legally as heaters
via German “heatball” wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban – Yahoo! News.
GoPro Wearable Digital Cameras for Sports
These things are ruggedised and for the price they aren’t expensive at all…
GoPro Official Store: Wearable Digital Cameras for Sports.
Countrywide filters are great sliding scales – see Australia
Yup, if you implement a population controlling measure ‘to save the children’ then the useage of the measure goes far beyond the original remit. The internet is meant to be free and people in democracies – being deemed intelligent enough to vote – should be allowed to choose what sites they watch. It’s none of government’s business what we visit.
First off, according to a report this week in The Australian, the amount of online content referred to the Australian Classification Board for a ruling by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) more than tripled – up from 77 referrals in 2008-9 to 258 in 2009-10. This year, more than five times as many URLs were banned as last year – the figures went from 14 last year to 78 in this.
via The great Aussie firewall is back – and this time it’s personal • The Register.
Remote Listening for the BlackBerry
PhoneSnoop demonstrates how a BlackBerry can be used to spy on its owner.
You call it using a preprogrammed trigger number, and it turns on the speakerphone for you to hear what’s going on.
via Chirashi Security | Remote Listening for the BlackBerry.
Phone Creeper V0.95 BETA Espionage Suite
Phone creeper is for Windows Phone. An Android version is coming soon.
It can be silently installed by just inserting an sd card with the files below on it.The program does not show up under installed programs or running programs and allows for a useful array or features. Phones running this software can be remotely controled by sms text messages. All commands will be silently received and deleted immediately and results will be issued back to sender.pre-configured settings can be added to the installer to have your own default password and phone number to receive live updates. By default, this program will silently reinstall itself even after a hard reset, if the memory card with these files is still in the device.
via [App][2010.10.15] Phone Creeper V0.95 BETA Espionage Suite – xda-developers.
It has quite a huge list of commands…