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Hasnain says:
This is a pretty good read, just at the right level in terms of technical details.
Posted on 2013-03-27T18:19:48+0000
Online Dispute Becomes Internet-Snarling Attack
A squabble between a group battling spam and a Dutch company that hosts Web sites said to be sending it has escalated into an attack clogging up key online infrastructure worldwide.
Hasnain says:
Cyberbunker claims that they fended off a SWAT team as well - not so difficult given that they're located inside a NATO bunker designed to withstand a 20 megaton blast and the SWAT team was using a battering ram.
Posted on 2013-03-27T14:22:27+0000
How I became a password cracker
Cracking passwords is officially a "script kiddie" activity now.
Jackson Gariety — Designer, Developer, Philosopher
Crafted on Thursday, March 21st, 2013Toward the end of January I conducted an experiment that I didn't tell anyone about. At the time, #hackernews was filled with a lot of "how I hacked my x with y" posts so I thought I'd give it a whirl. My idea for a journal quickly turned into a hack session and…
Jean-Baptiste Queru - Google+ - Dizzying but invisible depth You just went to the Google…
Dizzying but invisible depth You just went to the Google home page. Simple, isn't it? What just actually happened? Well, when you know a bit of about…
Exact Exponential Algorithms
Many computational problems have been shown to be intractable, either in the strong sense that no algorithm exists at all—the canonical example being the undecidability of the Halting Problem—or that no efficient algorithm exists. From a theoretical perspective perhaps the most intriguing case occur...
Hasnain says:
|At U Maryland I took a course from Bill Gasarch on computation. The first thing he said to the class, famously, was "I'm going to show you that there are problems that are impossible to solve. Then I'm going to show you some problems even harder than those.""
This is a good read.
Posted on 2013-03-18T12:47:33+0000
“We Gained Hope.” The Story of Lilly Grossman’s Genome
One – The Twitch It started with a slight twitch. Steve and Gay Grossman both noticed it in …
Click to view the original at phenomena.nationalgeographic.com
Prohibition & Humanism – The Humanist
Whether it’s drinking coffee in Seattle, smoking hookah in Istanbul, sipping sake in Tokyo, or eating ibogaine in the jungles of Cameroon, drug use is deeply ingrained in the cultural traditions of humanity.
http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100031p.pdf
ams.org
Hasnain says:
"In fact, hostility to mathematics is endemic in
our culture. Imagine a conversation:
A: What do you do?
B: I am a ———.
A: Oh, I hate that.
Ideally this response would be limited to such occupations as “serial killer”, “child pornographer”,
and maybe “politician”, but “mathematician” seems
to work. It is common enough that many of us are
reluctant to identify ourselves as mathematicians.
Paul Halmos is said to have told outsiders that he
was in “roofing and siding”!"
A pretty good read, titled "A Revolution in Mathematics? What Really Happened a Century Ago and Why It Matters Today"
Posted on 2013-03-11T07:04:20+0000
Elizabeth Kolbert: The Science of Sleeplessness
New technologies have made the study of sleep cheaper, easier, and less intrusive. But if this is sleep research’s golden age, then why are we all so tired?
Hasnain says:
Teen-agers are owls, which is why high schools are filled with students who look (and act) like zombies. Roenneberg advocates scheduling high-school classes to begin later in the day, and he cites studies showing that schools that delay the start of first period see performance, motivation, and attendance all increase. (A school district in Minnesota that switched to a later schedule found that the average S.A.T. scores for the top ten per cent of the class rose by more than two hundred points, a result that the head of the College Board called “truly flabbergasting.”) But, Roenneberg notes, teachers and school administrators generally resist the change, preferring to believe that the problem is insoluble.
Posted on 2013-03-10T18:33:03+0000
Introduction to Machine Learning
Instructor:Barnabas Poczos (office hours 10am-12pm Thursdays in Gates 8231) and Alex Smola (office hours 2-4pm Tuesdays in Gates 8002)
Playable Simcity 2013
Play Simcity 2013 online!
The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble
A world-renowned physicist meets a gorgeous model online. They plan their perfect life together. But first, she asks, would he be so kind as to deliver a special package to her?
State lawmaker defends bike tax, says bicycling is not good for the environment
Representative Ed Orcutt (R – Kalama) does not think bicycling is environmentally friendly because the activity causes cyclists to have "an increased heart rate and respiration." This is according ...
Hasnain says:
“You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car,” he said
...
Posted on 2013-03-05T19:45:33+0000
Life Inside the Aaron Swartz investigation
A reluctant witness' account of a Federal prosecution.
40 Years After an Acid Attack, a Life Well Lived
In 1973, a man committed an unthinkable act against a Brooklyn boy named Josh Miele. Still haunted decades later, a neighbor searched for answers.
Steve Mann: My “Augmediated” Life - IEEE Spectrum
What I’ve learned from 35 years of wearing computerized eyewear
Viral Video Shows the Extent of U.S. Wealth Inequality
The matter of wealth inequality in the United States is well known, but this video shows you the extent of that inequality in dramatic and graphic fashion.
How Search Works - The Story – Inside Search – Google
Our algorithms are constantly changing. These changes begin as ideas in the minds of our engineers. They take these ideas and run experiments, analyze the results, tweak them, and run them again and again.
Schneier on Security: Phishing Has Gotten Very Good
"The message had the subject line 'China and Climate Change' and was spoofed to appear as if it were from a legitimate international economics columnist at the National Journal."