July 2007
10 posts
Threat Level →
Security researchers, commissioned by the state of California, report that they can compromise each of three major e-voting systems in a number of different ways, including overwriting firmware and bypassing server clients to directly access the vote database.
SIGPIPE 13 » Using OpenSSL for license keys →
Interesting discussion of how to use public-key encryption tools to create software serial numbers (and, incidentally, another object lesson in why SHA-1 being broken is important).
Scientific American: Ask the Experts: Physics: Why... →
“When the simulation was complete, it showed that the spray drove a vortex. The center of this vortex—much like the center of a cyclone—is a low-pressure region. This low-pressure region is what pulls the shower curtain in.”
1 tag
Terrorist Watch List: 20,000 False Alarms →
“How do I know they’re all false alarms? Because this administration makes a press splash with every arrest, no matter how scant the evidence is. Do you really think they would pass up a chance to tout how good the watch list is?”
Review of "A World Without Time: The Forgotten... →
“[I]t would be fair to say that arguments like Gödel’s against ‘the reality of time’ can be matched by similar arguments against ‘the reality of space’. The real question is: What is the physical significance of such models? […] To use the existence of a class of models with closed time-like world lines as an argument against the concept of time, without a shred of evidence that such models...
Checkmate for checkers - Computer program is... →
“[Jonathan] Schaeffer has now announced that [he and his team at the University of Alberta] have solved the game of American checkers.”
"I've Got Nothing to Hide" and Other... →
“[W]hen confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the ‘nothing to hide’ argument, in the end, has nothing to say.”
The Emergence of Costly Punishment →
“A surprisingly simple model shows that if individuals have the option to stand aside and abstain from the joint endeavor, this paves the way for the emergence and establishment of cooperative behavior based on the punishment of defectors. Paradoxically, the freedom to withdraw from the common enterprise leads to enforcement of social norms. Joint enterprises that are compulsory rather than...