the etymology of the anatomical term “Thagomizer” : ‘The term was coined by Gary Larson in a 1982 Far Side comic strip, in which a group of cavemen in a faux-modern lecture hall are taught by their caveman professor that the spikes were named “after the late Thag Simmons”. The term was picked up initially by Ken Carpenter, a palaeontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, who used the term when describing a fossil at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting in 1993. Thagomizer has since been adopted as an informal anatomical term, and is used by the Smithsonian Institution, the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, the book The Complete Dinosaur and the BBC documentary series Planet Dinosaur.’ (via John Looney)
(tags: via:john-looney thagomizer the-far-side comics til dinosaurs funny)
Author: dailylinks
Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet : ‘Predator and Reaper crews use removable hard drives to load map updates and transport mission videos from one computer to another. The virus is believed to have spread through these removable drives.’ hmm, not quite sure how that air gap is supposed to work
(tags: air-gap security drones viruses firewalls)
Bayes’ theorem ruled inadmissible in UK law courts : Bayes’ theorem, and ‘similar statistical analysis’, ruled inadmissible in UK law courts (via Tony Finch)
(tags: uk law guardian via:fanf bayes maths statistics legal)
Amazon hiring embedded OS developers : hey, I know a few of those! ‘I need more help on a project I’m driving at Amazon where we continue to make big changes in our datacenter network to improve customer experience and drive down costs while, at the same time, deploying more gear into production each day than all of Amazon.com used back in 2000. It’s an exciting time and we have big changes happening in networking. If you enjoy and have experience in operating systems, networking protocol stacks, or embedded systems and you would like to work on one of the biggest networks in the world, [get in touch].’ — James Hamilton
(tags: james-hamilton aws jobs amazon networking embedded)
feedback loop n-gram analyzer : ‘a simple parser of ARF compliant FBL complaints, which normalizes the email complaints and generates a 6-tuple n-gram version of the message. These n-grams are stored in a Redis database, keyed by the file in which they can be found. An inverse index also exists that allow you to find all messages containing a particular n-gram word.’
(tags: anti-spam spam fbl feedback filtering n-grams similarity hashing redis searching)
Lovelace’s Leap : a great observation from jgc. ‘Lovelace realized that even though a computer was, at its heart, a mathematical machine, it wasn’t restricted to doing mathematics. She realized that a computer could be used to process other types of ‘information’ by having numbers represent anything else. She realized that a computer could handle text, or music, or practically anything. That’s Lovelace’s Leap.’
(tags: jgc history ada-lovelace computing software information code babbage)Rectangular subdivisions of the world : ‘Eric Fischer, who continues his string of mapping fun and doesn’t even do it for his day job, maps the world in binary subdivisions. Each bounding box contains an equal number of geotagged tweets.’ via Nelson
(tags: maps mapping bounding-boxes world earth geodata geotagging twitter)
Hikaru Dorodango : ‘Hikaru dorodango are balls of mud, molded by hand into perfect spheres, dried, and polished to an unbelievable luster. The process is simple, but the result makes it seem like alchemy. A traditional pastime among the children of Japan, the exact origin of hikaru dorodango is unknown.’
(tags: mud dirt dorodango japan art howto sculpture hands craft play children)
Storm : ‘The past decade has seen a revolution in data processing. MapReduce, Hadoop, and related technologies have made it possible to store and process data at scales previously unthinkable. Unfortunately, these data processing technologies are not realtime systems, nor are they meant to be. There’s no hack that will turn Hadoop into a realtime system; realtime data processing has a fundamentally different set of requirements than batch processing. However, realtime data processing at massive scale is becoming more and more of a requirement for businesses. The lack of a “Hadoop of realtime” has become the biggest hole in the data processing ecosystem. Storm fills that hole.’
(tags: data scaling twitter realtime scalability storm queueing)Storm: distributed and fault-tolerant realtime computation : intro slideshow to this really nifty-looking distcomp platform
(tags: distcomp distributed realtime storm slides twitter)Hacker News thread on Storm : lots of good questions and answers in here
(tags: twitter storm distcomp distributed)
Computer gamers solve problem in AIDS research that puzzled scientists for years : “This is the first instance that we are aware of in which online gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem,” writes Khatib. “These results indicate the potential for integrating video games [like FoldIt] into the real-world scientific process: the ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems.”
(tags: foldit gaming games science biology aids viruses protease protein-folding proteins vr)
Black Hat: Insulin pumps can be hacked : “Everything has an embedded processor and computer in it,” he said. “Every time you hide behind [security by] obscurity, it is going to fail.” Brad Smith, a researcher and Black Hat conference staffer who also is a registered nurse, said the medical field largely looks the other way when it comes to securing patient devices. “I lecture at all the medical conferences,” he said during the press conference. “They just hide it. Pay attention to what [Radcliffe] is saying. His life is in this pump.” (via Risks Digest)
(tags: via:risks insulin pump medicine security hacking health wireless)A few git tips you didn’t know about : ‘git checkout -t’ alone is worth the bookmark
(tags: git tips coding unix reference tricks via:proggit)
Conor O’Neill on his freesat/DTT system : ‘Our replacement for Sky TV cost €99. Ariva 120. No monthly fees!’ — sounds very intriguing, that’s a good price point
(tags: digital fta satellite television dtt sky upc ireland)Golomb-coded sets : ‘a probabilistic data structure conceptually similar to a Bloom filter, but with a more compact in-memory representation, and a slower query time.’ could come in handy
(tags: gcs bloom-filters probabilistic data-structures memory algorithms)
The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit) : contains a surprisingly-large number which I haven’t read
(tags: scifi fiction books science-fiction)
Dutch grepping Facebook for welfare fraud : ‘The [Dutch] councils are working with a specialist Amsterdam research firm, using the type of computer software previously deployed only in counterterrorism, monitoring [LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter] traffic for keywords and cross-referencing any suspicious information with digital lists of social welfare recipients. Among the giveaway terms, apparently, are “holiday” and “new car”. If the automated software finds a match between one of these terms and a person claiming social welfare payments, the information is passed on to investigators to gather real-life evidence.’ With a 30% false positive rate, apparently — let’s hope those investigations aren’t too intrusive!
(tags: grep dutch holland via:tjmcintyre privacy facebook twitter linkedin welfare dole fraud false-positives searching)
The Monkeysphere Project : OpenPGP’s web of trust extending further. ‘Everyone who has used a web browser has been interrupted by the “Are you sure you want to connect?” warning message, which occurs when the browser finds the site’s certificate unacceptable. But web browser vendors (e.g. Microsoft or Mozilla) should not be responsible for determining whom (or what) the user trusts to certify the authenticity of a website, or the identity of another user online. The user herself should have the final say, and designation of trust should be done on the basis of human interaction. The Monkeysphere project aims to make that possibility a reality.’
(tags: via:filippo gpg pki security software ssh ssl web)Convergence : ‘Convergence is a secure replacement for the Certificate Authority System. Rather than employing a traditionally hard-coded list of immutable CAs, Convergence allows you to configure a dynamic set of Notaries which use network perspective to validate your communication. Convergence allows you to choose who you want to trust, rather than having someone else’s decision forced on you. You can revise your trust decisions at any time, so that you’re not locked in to trusting anyone for longer than you want.’
(tags: ssl tls trust security https web via:filippo firefox plugins pki)
Dave Neary on The Cost of Going it Alone : ‘I’m going to talk about the costs associated with modifying and maintaining free software “out of tree” – that is, when you don’t work with the developers of the software to have your changes integrated. But I’m also going to talk about the costs of working with upstream projects. It can be easy for us to forget that working upstream takes time and money – and we ignore that to our peril. It’s in our interests as free software developers to make it as cost-effective as possible for people to work with us. Hopefully, if you’re a commercial developer, you’ll come away from this article with a better idea of when it’s worthwhile to work upstream, and when it isn’t. And if you’re a community developer, perhaps this will give you some ideas about how to make it easier for people to work with you.’
(tags: dave-neary gnome open-source maintainers upstream forking)
Google App Engine Price Hike Stuns Developers – – Platform as a Service – Informationweek : ‘Now that Google has begun offering App Engine users a way to calculate the new rate and compare it with the old rate, developers are realizing their bills will rise, by a factor of 10 or 100 or more in some cases, when the pricing change takes effect in a few months.’ – ouch
(tags: google gae appengine costs pricing paas)
Through speed of traffic on San Francisco area streets vs. popularity with Flickr and Twitter users : “slower streets” generate more photos/tweets than “faster streets”, with a peak around 9 mph
(tags: data san-francisco photos flickr twitter speed driving)
Microsoft’s new IE “Ribbon” debunked : ‘nobody — almost literally 0% of users — uses the menu bar, and only 10% of users use the command bar. Nearly everybody is using the context menu or hotkeys. So the solution, obviously, is to make both the menu bar and the command bar bigger and more prominent. Right? Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody.’ (via Nelson)
(tags: design hci microsoft ui statistics user-hostile ribbon windows)
The Daily Mail’s frequent copyright abuse finally catches up with them : This is how you do it — bravo to Alice Taylor, who got them fair and square as they did their usual trick of lifting copyrighted content without permission
(tags: copyright journalism photography daily-mail via:torrentfreak)Real-World Scala: Dependency Injection (DI) : I think I prefer the structural-typing approach, TBH
(tags: scala patterns programming oo coding dependency-injection)
Bog Body: Committing to Open Source : Oisin Hurley on viable strategies for a commercial software company to handle participation in open source. Shame I’ve never found anywhere to viably put these into action, but they sound accurate
(tags: open-source oisin-hurley oss corporate work)
Fastest sort of fixed length 6 int array – Stack Overflow : huh, I’d never heard of sorting networks before
(tags: sorting-networks c algorithms sorting optimization sort stack-overflow)
‘What Idiot Wrote The Patent That Might Invalidate Software Patents? Oh, Wait, That Was Me’ | Techdirt : ‘So I was thinking – great they invalidated software patents, lets see what crappy patent written by an idiot they picked to do it – then I realized the idiot in question was me :-) Not sure how I feel about this. John – inventor of the patent in question.’
(tags: patents swpats reform usa software-development coding funny techdirt)
good taxonomy of memcached use cases : via Jeff Barr’s announcement of the Elasticache launch. from 2008, but a better taxonomy than I’ve seen elsewhere
(tags: memcached caching mysql performance scalability via:jeffbarr)Bootstrap, from Twitter : ‘a toolkit from Twitter designed to kickstart development of webapps and sites’; ‘includes base CSS and HTML for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, and more.’ Very, very nice, AL2 licensed (via Mick Twomey)
(tags: via:micktwomey twitter ui css design html styling web-apps layout)echolibre & Orchestra : ‘In particular, we want to thank the Irish and Dublin web communities. I’ve met other web communities in Europe and in the USA, and I can say, hand on heart, they don’t have a patch on you guys.’ awww ;) Congrats, guys
(tags: echolibre php web startups ireland paas orchestra.io engine-yard)
Building with Legos : Netflix tech blog on how they deploy their services. Notably, they avoid the Puppet/Chef approach, citing these reasons: ‘One is that it eliminates a number of dependencies in the production environment: a master control server, package repository and client scripts on the servers, network permissions to talk to all of these. Another is that it guarantees that what we test in the test environment is the EXACT same thing that is deployed in production; there is very little chance of configuration or other creep/bit rot. Finally, it means that there is no way for people to change or install things in the production environment (this may seem like a really harsh restriction, but if you can build a new AMI fast enough it doesn’t really make a difference).’
(tags: devops cloud aws netflix puppet chef deployment)Bog body found in Co Laois could be that of sacrificed king : ‘All of the other bog bodies were found on significant boundaries. The idea is that because the goddess is the land, by inserting bodies and other items relating to their inauguration as king along the boundaries, it gives form to the goddess.’ things were pretty damn gory back then
(tags: ireland history laois bog-bodies bog human-sacrifice)
nifty Cydia iPhone signal-strength app : very nifty. pity my phone’s not jailbroken, or I’d be trying this out
(tags: jailbreaking cydia iphone signal-strength 3g wireless mapping)Pavo Real : amazingly detailed peacock print by Argentinian artist Azul de Corso; very nice
(tags: prints toget peacock azul-de-corso art)
Unbound: The Crowdfunding Cargo Cult – Telegraph Blogs : ‘why was Unbound set up in the first place? It’s because they constructed a cargo cult, believing that if they mimicked the superficial elements of successful crowdfunding, they could enjoy the same success as others – but perhaps even more, thanks to their relationships with publishers, agents, authors, and the media.’ They’re not the only Kickstarter-cargo-culting company, too. via waxy
(tags: via:waxy unbound kickstarter cargo-cult funding crowdfunding books uk)
Arthur Recreates Scenes from Classic Movies : bored on maternity leave, this is what happens (via Niamh)
(tags: movies babies funny via:niamh)IT expenditure and failure – submission to public expenditure consultation : Antoin lays into the disfunctional Irish IT procurement system. “The status quo isn’t just making things expensive and slow, it’s asphyxiating the government’s ability to serve.”
(tags: antoin it procurement ireland government civil-service letters)
Why we should expel the Vatican’s Ambassador, the Papal Nuncio : ‘In 2011, we have a new Government, who have stopped making excuses for the Vatican State. The Facebook campaign now has over 5,000 members, who continue to send emails and letters to their TDs and to the Minister for Foreign Affairs expressing the clear message that we want action. Enda Kenny said yesterday that the Vatican downplayed the rape and torture of Irish children to to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation’. We should expel the Vatican’s Papal Nuncio and send the message that they have destroyed the very things they prized the most.’
(tags: vatican papal-nuncio religion catholicism politics diplomacy ireland child-abuse cloyne-report)
Paintings by Daniel Castan : really striking oil paintings of Manhattan; looks like small-format canvases can be bought at http://en.carredartistes.com/acheter-un-tableau-peintre-et-vente-peinture-artiste/petit-format/daniel-castan
(tags: daniel-castan art via:mlkshk paintings toget cities new-york nyc manhattan)
Facebook group: Expel the Irish Papal Nuncio : “The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Sexual Abuse in the Dublin ArchDiocese clearly states that the Papal Nuncio, the Diplomatic representative of the Vatican, refused to reply to investigators. Now the Cloynes Report has found that the Vatican’s Ambassador intervened to undermine the efforts to protect children as recently as 1996. This is not acceptable. The Irish Government has the power to expel diplomats. If we are to take the reports’ findings seriously, we must expel the Papal Nuncio.”
(tags: vatican politics ireland abuse facebook lobbying cloyne-report)zen.org Communal Weblog » Bigger Than His Body : ‘My beautiful, smart, funny, geeky, blue-eyed, bearded, amazing husband died last night with me and two of his aunts holding him.’ So sorry for Elana and their boys — Brendan was a nice guy and a great hacker :(
(tags: brendan-kehoe awful leukemia life death rip)Death Notice Of Brendan KEHOE, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland : ‘Removal on Saturday from Quinn’s of Glasthule to Mount Jerome Crematorium for service at 2pm. No flowers, please. Donations, if desired, to Educate Together.’
(tags: rip brendan-kehoe)
Tracking the Trackers: To Catch a History Thief | Stanford Center for Internet and Society : jaysus. the Epic Marketplace online ad network performs a history stealing attack to determine if the viewer has recently visited ‘pages about getting pregnant and fertility, including at the Mayo Clinic’. very very scummy — massive privacy violation (via Adam Shostack)
(tags: privacy history browsers history-stealing css attacks security via:adamshostack epic-marketplace nai ads)How we use Redis at Bump : via Simon Willison. some nice ideas here, particularly using a replication slave to handle the potentially latency-impacting disk writes in AOF mode
(tags: queueing redis nosql databases storage via:simonw replication bump)
SSL perf tip : don’t use Diffie-Hellman ciphers, they’re slow
(tags: ssl tls nginx performance web diffie-hellman ciphers)stud : ‘a network proxy that terminates TLS/SSL connections and forwards the unencrypted traffic to some backend. It’s designed to handle 10s of thousands of connections efficiently on multicore machines.’
(tags: stud tls ssl security networking web proxies performance)
an ex-Skype employee dishes the dirt on their buyout and acquisition : some incredible stories — pretty mind-boggling stuff, I’m amazed people stuck around
(tags: skype startups legal share-options shares economics)PSI License [PDF] : the license under which the open data from various councils around Fingal and Dublin (see www.dublinked.ie) is being published
(tags: licensing open-data dublin fingal open public government county-councils city-council ireland)
Great Hacker News thread on Andy Baio’s “Kind Of Screwed” shakedown : full of good commentary on the rather horrific result. here’s one: “I wonder how the photographer would feel if the company that manufactured the trumpet played by Miles Davis had claimed that his photograph violated the copyright of their “sculpture” and the tailor Miles got his suit from also protested. Of all art forms, photography has some of the least claim on being an entirely original creation of the artist.”
(tags: photography miles-davis jay-maisel andy-baio waxy hn discussion copyright copyfight creativity art)
_Scaling with MongoDB_, Michael Schurter 2011 [PDF] : presentation with some rather terrifying MongoDB war stories
(tags: mongodb performance presentation scaling war-stories)