The Linkielist

Linking ideas with the world

Intimate game controllers

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Robin

This is a game controller made from a bra and a pair of shorts. Both have 6 sensors. The woman stands in front of the man, and by touching each other they can play the game. This was designed in response to women feeling alienated by their boyfriends playing games and their exclusion from them.

Lolcats

Posted on May 3, 2007 by Robin

This has been growing larger and larger on the internets. I think they’re damn funny.

Basically they’re pictures of cats with texts added. Or they’re with sealions, who are looking for their bucket. You can’t explain – follow the links and see.

This article has a few interesting links and some commentary on the meme.

I can has cheeseburger is a brilliant site with loads coming in.

Acoustic Remote Cavitation

Posted on May 3, 2007 by Robin

Yes! A new way to destroy stuff! You send two sound waves and where they intersect the shock waves create a destructive cavitation field.

Here’s some more stuff on supercavitation, which says it works on the surface and in the air as well (from a comment in the original article)

Another way to beat smoking in pub bans

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Robin

Simple: Ask Peru to turn your building into a consulate. It’s legal to smoke in Peru, so no problem in the pub!

DIE, evil anti-smoking nazi’s, we will find a way to prevail!!!

EU forcing the “consitution” down our throats

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Robin

It doesn’t matter that we voted the “constitution” down with a resounding round of referenda across the EU, Merkel literally says that they should change the presentation or “to use different terminology without changing the legal substance” in order to ram the unwieldy thing down our gullets.

More using brainwaves

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Robin

Using the brain to control a computer used to be a comparitive rarity, but this article looks at 3 different companies who are launching products soon which allow brain control.

Neurosky Inc should be launching a cheap product towards October 2007 and they want to retail the controller at $20,-

Emotiv Systems Inc is also focusing on the gaming market with the Epoc.

CyberLearning Technology LLC wants to target people with disorders, but has a pricepoint of around $600,- and hooks up hrough existing products such as XBox and Wii.

Semi-Submersible transport ship

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Robin

This ship is designed to have its deck sink allowing goods to be floated on and off.

US Spying on own citizens at record levels

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Robin

In all, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court signed off on 2,176 warrants targeting people in the United States believed to be linked to international terror organizations or spies. The record number is more than twice as many as were issued in 2000, the last full year before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Welcome to the USSR!

Stellarium Planetarium

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Robin

The programme is a really easy to use planetarium, with a fish-eye view for round mirrors so you can project the output onto the inside of a sphere should you want to. You can view the stars and labels from any point at any time on the globe as well as from other planets. It’s free and open source, runs on most OS-es.

Optical hacking

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Robin

You don’t have to splice the optical line or attack the multiplexer to be able to read network traffic over fibre optic cable lines – all you have to do is bend it a bit, and read the light that comes off the bend. There are apparently plenty of devices which clip on to do the job, such as the Exfo FCD-10B bend coupler.

Synergy: control multiple PCs with one keyboard and mouse

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Robin

One of the PCs is set up as a server, the rest run the client. Like dual-monitor, you can move the mouse to the next computer and it takes over control. You can also share clipboard content over the computers, allthough this is still a bit buggy.
So, can you take an IR keyboard and repeat the signal to your server from room to room in your house?

Vista sets admin rights depending on programme name

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Robin

Oddly enough, anything named ‘install’ will be seen by Vista as requiring Admin rights. However, just rename it and you don’t require admin rights any more. It’s being touted as a ‘feature’ of course, but it’s one of the most bloody stupid features I’ve ever heard of.
A bit like having username ‘Magix’ and being able to log in to the same account as user ‘M’ in XP.

Gaia Online new form of social networking

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Robin

Gaia online is a mix of an MMO (people have Avatars and can walk around in a virtual, Manga-esque world, but there are no ‘enemies’), forums, media and ways to improve your avatar. You get gold by being social – ie. posting on the forums, exploring the world or uploading content.
The subscriber base has doubled from 1m to 2m in the past month.
It’s aimed squarely at teenagers and looks like a very promising concept.

RDS-TMC injection

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Robin

Navigation systems are now using FM systems more and more to tell each other where traffic jams are developing or where accidents have occurred etc. Inverse Path LLC has found a way to inject various messages using $40,- worth of equipment. Apparently the authentication is weakly encrypted and the messages aren’t encrypted at all, making this fairly trivial.

OpenOffice broken

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Robin

A Russian developer has built a programme which will recover your OpenOffice password using several different methods.

Desktop apps here to stay

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Robin

The Register ran a survey among it’s readers and it turns out that Software as a Service is not really taking off yet. The most common apps people use are email and office. MS is the Office king. Doesn’t look like web-based apps will rule any time soon and thin clients are still a stupid idea.

Sex Therapy works

Posted on April 18, 2007 by Robin

And of course it does. Allthough sex therapy only uses intercourse in around 15% of cases, so don’t get too worked up. Oh and the sample size of the brave doctor who has ressurrected this practice is only 30 people, but the results from this group is very promising indeed. So, where can we sign up to increase the scientific validity of the results?

THC cures lung cancer?

Posted on April 18, 2007 by Robin

THC is the active ingredient in marjhuana and hashish, if you didn’t know. This stuff apparently cuts tumor growth in half and also inhibits the tumor’s ability to grow. Which is why all those hippies never get lung cancer – a strange statistic that has puzzled many 🙂

Slysoft isn’t sitting still

Posted on April 18, 2007 by Robin

With all the talk of Blue Ray and HD being cracked, people seem to have missed Slysoft EasyDVD which removes the copy protection and FBI warning screens from DVDs in the drive, allowing them to be backupped by their lovely CloneDVD software.

GBP 14m diamond heist by one man

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Robin

Quite possibly the largest one man heist in history, a conman managed to get the keys to the bank and information on where all the diamonds were stored, allowing him to bypass a > 1m GBP security system by being a nice guy.

Breaking WEP in under 60 seconds

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Robin

I’ve known that WEP encryption still used to protect a lot of WiFi (wireless connections) was crackable in around 15 minutes, but these papers describe how to do it in under 60 seconds – the fastest attack I’ve found to date!

The Original paper by Tews, Weinmann and Pyshkin (pdf)

The tool (aircrack-ptw) to do it with.

And the tutorial to use the tools with (written for aircrack-ng, but with some changes from the above link it works for aircrack-ptw)

The lesson? Use WPA

AMD to hardcode DRM

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Robin

The AMD rep spelled it out in words that would have been undiplomatic coming from me: He said that the new chips will “block unauthorized access to the frame buffer.” In short, that means an unauthorized party can’t save the contents of the display to a file on disk unless the content owner approves it.

Statistical Analysis of Peak Oil

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Robin

These guys seem to be oil professionals, and they’re definitely not pulling statistics out of their arse. They’re painting a serious doom scenario – Peak Oil is upon us NOW. Look at the charts, analysis and comments and decide for yourself (nb. there’s also a lot of sociological / economic comments in there as well, of which I’m not sure whether oil professionals are qualified enough to be interesting about).

Hospital treatments often don’t work

Posted on April 11, 2007 by Robin

Apparently patients in hospitals are given treatments that just don’t work. Not only this, but the practitioning doctors know this and would probably be surprised by the amount that do! Part of the problem is the huge body of research out there, which doesn’t filter down to the doctors, who don’t change their way of working.

Space Sims

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Robin

It’s been a long while since I’ve last played X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Elite, Wing Commander, Privateer, Freespace et al. and I’ve missed the genre.
After a little hunting around I’ve found two space sims which look very worth exploring (Allthough, unfortunately, none is multiplayer as far as I can see…):

X3: Reunion is a huge, lovely looking, non-linear Elite replacement. Unfortunately it’s slow, trading is huge and complex and there isn’t much gameplay to keep you going if you want a storyline to follow. The pace is slow, but the detail and possibilities are breathtaking.

DarkStar One is more based on making your money through blowing things up whilst following missions. Trading is an option, but it’s fortunately simple. The graphics are slightly less beautiful but still at times awesome, but there’s apparantly a sameness to the galaxies and trading posts which marrs what would be a top space shoot-em-up.

Both look very worth playing though.