WiTrack
WiTrack: Through-Wall 3D Tracking Using Wireles Signals
Hasnain says:
"WiTrack is a device that tracks the 3D motion of a user from the radio signals reflected off her body. It works even if the person is occluded from the WiTrack device or in a different room. WiTrack does not require the user to carry any wireless device, yet its accuracy exceeds current RF localization systems, which require the user to hold a transceiver. It transmits wireless signals whose power is 100 times smaller than Wi-Fi and 1000 times smaller than cellphone transmissions."
Holy ...
Posted on 2013-12-31T08:36:41+0000
Zoom, enhance. Corneal reflections can reveal bystanders (Wired UK)
Researchers at the Universities of York and Glasgow have managed to successfully extract identifiable images of bystanders from reflections in people's eyes
fogus: The best things and stuff of 2013
Pseudo-random ramblings from Fogus.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2013-12-27T23:11:34+0000
Classic 70s and 80s games go online
Classic video games from the 1970s and 1980s have been put online by the Internet Archive and can be played within a web browser.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2013-12-27T23:04:02+0000
Why Some People Respond to Stress by Falling Asleep
Fight or flight, or sleep
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2013-12-27T20:51:05+0000
Philip Guo - The Two Cultures of Computing
The Two Cultures originally referred to the schism between the sciences and humanities. However, I've noticed a similar schism in computing between users and programmers, which makes it hard to teach programming to beginners.
Hasnain says:
"There are now two main cultures in computing: Most computer users treat software as a tool for getting tasks done, while programmers hold conversations with their software. One big challenge when teaching programming, no matter in what language, is getting students used to a conversation-oriented programmer culture, which is very different than a tool-oriented user culture"
Posted on 2013-12-27T07:47:24+0000
How to generate a random snowflake
'Tis the season... And it's about time I pose my first question on MMA SE. So, here's an holiday quest for you Graphics (and P-chem?) gurus. What it is your best code for generating a (random) sno...
Essays from the funniest man in Microsoft Research - The Old New Thing - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
James Mickens has written a number of essays for ;login: magazine. The wall-of-text presentation is kind of scary, and the first time I encountered them, I skimmed the essays rather than reading them through. As a result, my reaction was, "I got tired." But if you follow the path and read the essays...
Hasnain says:
These are absolutely hilarious and worth reading.
"Interestingly, these kinds of intuitive arguments are not intuitive. A successful intuitive explanation must invoke experiences that I have in real life. I have never had a real-life experience that resembled a Byzantine fault tolerant protocol. For example, suppose that I am at work, and I want to go to lunch with some of my co-workers. Here is what that experience would look like if it resembled a Byzantine fault tolerant protocol:
JAMES: I announce my desire to go to lunch.
BRYAN: I verify that I heard that you want to go to lunch.
RICH: I also verify that I heard that you want to go to lunch.
CHRIS: YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO TO LUNCH.
JAMES: OH NO. LET ME TELL YOU AGAIN THAT I WANT TO GO TO LUNCH.
CHRIS: YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO TO LUNCH.
BRYAN: CHRIS IS FAULTY.
CHRIS: CHRIS IS NOT FAULTY.
RICH: I VERIFY THAT BRYAN SAYS THAT CHRIS IS FAULTY.
BRYAN: I VERIFY MY VERIFICATION OF MY CLAIM THAT RICH CLAIMS THAT I KNOW CHRIS.
JAMES: I AM SO HUNGRY.
CHRIS: YOU ARE NOT HUNGRY.
RICH: I DECLARE CHRIS TO BE FAULTY.
CHRIS: I DECLARE RICH TO BE FAULTY.
JAMES: I DECLARE JAMES TO BE SLIPPING INTO A DIABETIC COMA.
RICH: I have already left for the cafeteria."
Exclusive: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million
Hasnain says:
"Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a "back door" in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September."
"Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract."
-_-
Posted on 2013-12-20T21:52:42+0000
Target stores hit by data breach affecting 40 million cards
Target says about 40 million credit and debit card accounts may have been affected by a data breach linked to recent purchases in its U.S. stores.
Spoiler alert: Bill Gates did not get you, because he got me. - Secret Santa 2013 - redditgifts
I want to start by giving a HUGE THANK YOU to Mr. Bill Gates for an amazing gift and secret santa experience. Bill- you ...
Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana
The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.
Hasnain says:
This is from 1995.
"Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople."
And here I sit, peacefully ordering things from Amazon so that I don't have to interact with people.
Posted on 2013-12-19T03:20:56+0000
Disney's Frozen - A Material Point Method For Snow Simulation
Disney's Frozen is now playing in theatres in 3D! Find showtimes: http://di.sn/pIO Like Frozen on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DisneyFrozen Follow Froz...
Hasnain says:
2:16: "Now we destroy a castle with a cannonball"...
(paper: https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/production/publication_asset/72/asset/snow.pdf)
Posted on 2013-12-18T22:33:45+0000
Icons of the Web
The top million web sites on the Internet visualized in a 5-gigapixel interactive collage
Data Structure Visualization
cs.usfca.edu
I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System
A former prosecutor fights the law and lets it win.
Hasnain says:
"But in between the important cases, I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking weed – shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything more than raised eyebrows and scoldings – I often wondered if there was a side of the justice system that we never saw in the suburbs. Last year, I got myself arrested in New York City and found out."
Posted on 2013-12-17T21:38:17+0000
A Great Old-Timey Game-Programming Hack - Tom Moertel’s Blog
A long time ago, when I was a college undergrad, I spent some time working on computer video games. This was in the 8-bit PC era, so the gaming hardware was almost impossibly slow by today’s standards.
The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction |...
We're seeking intelligent problem solvers who are inspired and motivated to change the world.
SteamOS
SteamOS Beta is the first public release of our Linux-based operating system. The base system draws from Debian 7, code named Debian Wheezy. Our work builds on top of the solid Debian core and optimizes it for a living room experience. Most of all, it is an open Linux platform that leaves you in ful...
David Deutsch – On Artificial Intelligence
The very laws of physics imply that artificial intelligence must be possible. What's holding us up?
Inside the Go Playground - The Go Blog
In September 2010 we introduced the Go Playground, a web service that compiles and executes arbitrary Go code and returns the program output.
The Best Books I Read in 2013
December 12, 2013 | By Bill Gates I read a lot, but I don?t always choose what?s on the bestseller list. Many of the books I read this year actually came out years ago.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2013-12-13T00:45:27+0000
Capturing the Second Largest Tree in the World in a Single Image
For a recent National Geographic story on giant sequoia trees, photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols was tasked with capturing a photograph showing the sheer
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2013-12-12T21:21:43+0000
Code rant: Are Your Programmers Working Hard, Or Are They Lazy?
When people are doing a physical task, it’s easy to assess how hard they are working. You can see the physical movement, the sweat. You also see the result of their work: the brick wall rising, the hole in the ground getting bigger. Recognising and rewarding hard work is a pretty fundamental human i...
Madagascar village 'hit by plague'
A village in Madagascar has been hit by a deadly outbreak of the bubonic plague, medical experts on the island confirm.
Hasnain says:
I know it's horrible and I'm probably going to hell for this, but I find it hilarious that the bubonic plague hit Madagascar first ...
Posted on 2013-12-11T02:09:42+0000
Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
First, before we look into that alert, the system lets us quickly access a variety of background information about our subject. To start with of course, we can easily see Mr. Benjamin’s movements throughout the course of the day: A sense of the subject’s movements over time can als...
Tomgram: Chase Madar, The Criminalization of Everyday Life | TomDispatch
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Hasnain says:
"Even as simple a matter as getting yourself from point A to point B can quickly become a law enforcement matter as travel and public space are ever more aggressively policed. Waiting for a bus? Such loitering just got three Rochester youths arrested."
What the frak...
Posted on 2013-12-10T19:38:49+0000
Why Cul-de-Sacs Are Bad for Your Health
Award-winning Canadian journalist Charles Montgomery's fascinating new book Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design examines how lessons from psychology, neuroscience and design activism can help us fix broken cities and improve our quality of life in an increasingly urban-centered w...
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2013-12-10T19:13:26+0000
Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers - Blog - Hacker School
Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers We're excited to announce that Google is sponsoring over $150,000 of need-based grants for female programmers to come to Hacker School. These grants will allow us to provide financial assistance for living expenses to women for our upcoming...
Hasnain says:
If anyone wants to do a fully funded 3 month crash course on programming in NYC. Easy visa too.
Posted on 2013-12-10T07:08:05+0000
Smile Always Automatically Loads Amazon's Free Charity Donation Page
Chrome: AmazonSmile is a neat program where Amazon donates 0.5% of your Amazon purchases to a charity of your choosing. The problem is that you have to remember to login at smile.amazon.com before shopping for it to work. Smile Always is a simple Chrome extension that automatically redirects you to…
Hasnain says:
I think anyone buying stuff from Amazon should use this.
(thanks, Saagar)
Posted on 2013-12-10T01:10:42+0000
The Vigilante of Clallam County
Patrick Drum was tired of seeing sex offenders continue to hurt children. So he decided to kill them.
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2013-12-09T20:36:25+0000
Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life
There are more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression. This is one of their stories.
No Man's Sky Is A Huge Procedurally Generated Sci-Fi Exploration Sim - Indie Statik
At Spike's VGX tonight, four-man team Hello Games announced a seemingly huge, procedurally generated, first person sci-fi exploration sim called No Man's
Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system
Physicist doubts work like Higgs boson identification achievable now as academics are expected to 'keep churning out papers'
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2013-12-07T06:02:06+0000
Stolen cobalt-60 found in Mexico; curious thieves likely doomed
Mexican authorities say hunt for missing radioactive over and that the two men who stole it are likely doomed.
Small things add up
For years I’ve used YSlow and PageSpeed to profile page performance on 4chan. Page performance has always been important to me for two big reasons: 1) I browse 4chan daily and can’t stand slow...
Hasnain says:
"By migrating to the new domain, end users now save roughly 100 KB upstream per page load, which at 500 million pageviews per month adds up to 46 terabytes per month in savings for our users. I find this unreal."
Holy ...
Posted on 2013-12-03T03:05:23+0000
No girls allowed
Unraveling the story behind the stereotype of video games being for boys.
How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang
In 2000, economist Steven Levitt and sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh published an article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics about the internal wage structure of a Chicago drug gang. This piece wou...
Hasnain says:
"With a constant supply of new low-level drug sellers entering the market and ready to be exploited, drug lords can become increasingly rich without needing to distribute their wealth towards the bottom. You have an expanding mass of rank-and-file “outsiders” ready to forgo income for future wealth, and a small core of “insiders” securing incomes largely at the expense of the mass. We can call it a winner-take-all market."
Just swap "low-level drug sellers" with "fresh PhDs", and "drug lords" with "tenured faculty" and it's still true.
Posted on 2013-12-01T02:21:51+0000