Author: dailylinks

DNS Pre-fetch Exposure on Thunderbird and Webmail : Ugh, very bad idea indeed. A backchannel for spammers/phishers/attackers from the mail reader is something we definitely do not want to provide. This is why we chose to cut URLs at the registrar boundary for URIBL lookups in SpamAssassin
(tags: privacy email dns mozilla thunderbird prefetching urls abuse security spam)

Pricewatch – The route of the problem : great article about Dublin Bus’ shortcomings, featuring an interview with Antoin! Very interesting to hear about the upcoming GPS-based accurate bus timetabling service to be visible via their website, that’ll be fantastic
(tags: gps busses dublin-bus dublin mass-transit commute travel)

explanation of the PS3 exploit : good walk-through by Nate Lawson
(tags: ps3 root hypervisor exploits mod-chips consoles reversing)

The SAY2K10 bug [LWN.net] : LWN follows up on the FH_DATE_PAST_20XX fiasco. ‘It would appear that what SpamAssassin needs is some dedicated maintenance talent which is not dependent on evening hours put in by developers committed to other projects.’ I wish
(tags: spamassassin say2k10 bugs maintainance lwn commentary)

Whisky Map of Distilleries in Scotland (Malt Madness Distillery Data) : wow. my new shopping list. also: now do one for Ireland ;)
(tags: whisky yum reference maps geodata distilleries single-malts)

The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache SpamAssassin Version 3.3.0 : w00t!
(tags: asf apache spamassassin releases 3.3.0 anti-spam)

The New Data Center Rack From … IKEA? : the LACKRack — IKEA’s “LACK” side tables have exactly 19 inches of space, perfect for rackmounted hardware with a little hacking
(tags: lack ikea funny furniture hardware datacenter rackmount)

Waiting for the Apple Tablet, with Joel Johnson : possibly the best article written yet about the iTablet
(tags: itablet apple civilization vans bulldogs off-the-grid products consumerism joel-johnson)

Dublin & Wicklow Walks » Lugnaquilla : this is the plan for tomorrow — looks good!
(tags: lugnaquilla walks wicklow dublin ireland hiking)

AOL sacks pretty much the entire US postmaster team : ‘This is a totally devastating blow to everyone’
(tags: aol anti-spam layoffs postmaster email smtp)

One Mutation per 15 Cigarettes Smoked : aka, lung cancer develops after 50 pack-years of smoking. sobering thought
(tags: cancer lung-cancer smoking tobacco risk mutation)

The Top Google Search Result for each Unicode character : exactly what it says on the tin
(tags: google search unicode hublog)

How would you serve 100,000 simultaneous comet requests with node.js? : C10K microbenchmarking fun in Javascript (via:simonw)
(tags: web http javascript scaling comet c10k node.js long-poll)

French Anti-Piracy Organisation Hadopi Uses Pirated Font In Own Logo : ‘Of course you have to appreciate the irony – the agency in charge of enforcing France’s new anti-piracy legislation using a pirated proprietary font in its very own logo.’ hoho! hoist by their own petard
(tags: hadopi piracy copyright design fail france fonts typography logos ip)

YouTube – Mass Effect 2 Launch Trailer : whoa. really looking forward to this, Mass Effect was one of the best games I’ve ever played
(tags: mass-effect games via:colmbrophy xbox scifi video youtube trailers)

Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic: case report — Rogozov and Bermel 339: b4965 — BMJ : holy shit. This is absolutely amazing, a first-person account of auto-appendectomy (via infovore)
(tags: history science russian medicine antarctica medical amazing appendectomy surgery)

Google Translate fail : Google reckons that the English translation of “Amhran na bhFiann” — the Irish national anthem — is “Save The Queen”. ie. part of the *English* national anthem. the perils of machine learning (via Adam Maguire)
(tags: via:AdamMaguire funny fail google translation machine-learning)

Google Agrees to Censor Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry in Australia : nice work, Aussies! this is very stupid indeed (via Waxy)
(tags: censorship google satire australia stupid encyclopedia-dramatica trolling)

Mobile Internet access data retention (not!) : so, it seems the wireless ISPs don’t have sufficient IPv4 space for their customers, and are filtering access to the internet via NAT; unfortunate side effect is that this breaks data retention as defined in the UK. wonder if the same applies here?
(tags: uk data-retention privacy nat isps wireless mobile phones networking internet filtering)

I was a Doctor at an online pharmacy : Reddit thread from answers from a “doctor” at a dodgy online prescription-drugs store, supposedly not a spamvertized one though
(tags: medicine pharma spam reddit iama scummy illegal law)

Semi-Realtime Satellite Desktop Backgrounds : Russ Garrett with another set of near-realtime desktop weather imagery (cf. http://taint.org/xplanet/ )
(tags: weather desktop image satellite realtime backgrounds)

Upload and store your files in the cloud with Google Docs : no sync or automated backup yet, so more like sendspace than dropbox, limited usefulness
(tags: google backup online-backup sync storage)

the MagicJack : a GSM femtocell for the home — USB-driven, the size of a pack of cards, $40. this won’t last long
(tags: femtocells gsm phone home voip telephone)

Zamberlan Snow Chains : chains — for your shoes. basically crampon overshoes, to deal with ice and snow, EUR45
(tags: chains ice snow shoes boots footwear weather crampons)

Irish Weather Network : live weather-station data from across Ireland, overlaid on a Google Map, using amateur and professional stations. fascinating
(tags: weather data mapping ireland live)

Malicious App In Android Market : phisher creates a banking app for Android phones which relays the authorization details to another site, possible because of insufficient app vetting (via Mulley)
(tags: apps iphone android smartphones phones mobile phishing security banking fraud)

fixing a frozen condensate trap on a condensing boiler : another day, another broken boiler
(tags: boilers home maintainance diy fix cold frozen)

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski : nicely done; Lebowski a la Shakespeare (via Waxy)
(tags: via:waxy shakespeare writing humor lebowski movies parody funny)

Snow Chains in Ireland? – boards.ie : good thread, despite a lot of patronising asshattery
(tags: snow weather commute mobility chains driving)

Una “UnaRocks” Mullally on the state of Irish blogs : ‘I think that ‘first wave’ of Irish blogging was over a long time ago, probably around the time Blogorrah hit the dirt, but in spite of time and an increase of participants and bigger audience there seems to be no real drive to improve content. People will always read something good – online or offline – and until that something good (hopefully in plural) starts to emerge and while good bloggers log off indefinitely, Irish blogging, for what it’s worth, is in a state of disarray.’
(tags: irish irishblogs ireland writing blogosphere blogging unarocks)

Atheist Ireland Publishes 25 Blasphemous Quotes : in protest against the Fianna Fail religious right’s ludicrous new blasphemy law
(tags: blasphemy ireland law legal censorship democracy atheism religion quotes)

Body By Victoria – Secure Computing: Sec-C : Dr. Neal Krawetz brings the science on detecting Photoshop retouching
(tags: pixels images forensics jpeg photoshop fake analysis detection)

jwz – How to use Facebook with a feed reader : “Justin Mason likes this”
(tags: jwz facebook feeds rss atom howto syndication)

Parselets.com : ‘free, open, developer-generated APIs for a wide variety of websites. Parselets.com is a place to create and share them. [..] Check out [..] ways to use parselets from our web service, Ruby, Python, C/C++, or the *nix command-line.’
(tags: parselets scraping html web regexps sitescooper json)

RegExr: Online Regular Expression Testing Tool : a very nice interactive editor in Flash, supporting lots of the usual perlish stuff. via Joe
(tags: via:jdrumgoole regexps regular-expressions spamassassin rule-dev flash regex flex utilities)

Deployment is just a part of dev/ops cooperation, not the whole thing : metrics, monitoring, instrumentation, fault tolerance, load mitigation called out as other factors by Allspaw
(tags: ops deployment operations engineering metrics devops monitoring fault-tolerance load)

Build Web Apps for iPhone using Dashcode : hmm, not too tricky
(tags: iphone html css js dev coding dashcode)

Fill and span DVD archives with Discspan : filed under “about time I did another DVD backup”
(tags: backup dvd spanning via:donncha linux storage offline recovery)

mnot’s Weblog: HTTP + Politics = ? : how the Great Firewall of Oz breaks so much more than the web browser
(tags: http web politics australia internet proxies filtering)

Play framework : ‘a Java framework made by Web developers. Discover a clean alternative to bloated enterprise Java stacks. Play focuses on developer productivity and targets RESTful architectures.’
(tags: java rails webdev mvc webapps play playframework)

Turing-incomplete Lua? : discussion thread on the cons of using Turing-complete general-purpose programming languages in places where it’s not necessary, such as configuration files
(tags: configuration turing-complete safety coding software lua)

Why it’s time to lighten up about “weird” Japan : ‘Being majime (too serious) is not cool in Japan; likewise it is important for voyeurs of Japanese culture to recognize that most everything pop-culture-y that is exported to the West comes at us with a wink. If you’re all up in arms about it, then maybe the joke is on you.’
(tags: japan majime seriousness fun weird news journalism)

GameFAQs: Assassin’s Creed II (X360) Puzzle/Codex FAQ : linked by Nelson; will return to this once i’ve gotten into the game
(tags: assassins-creed games via:nelson toread xbox)

Chrome extension: edit textarea in an external editor : very new, but heading in the right direction (although the idea of using a browser action is probably not correct). This is the last hold-up for me to switch
(tags: chrome web browsers google editing external editors vim emacs)

How to build a Google Chrome extension in 15 minutes : wow. that _is_ easy; wonder if it’d be nearly as easy to write an extension as it is nowadays to write userscripts in Firefox
(tags: user-scripts google chrome firefox extensions coding html css)

Useful Google Chrome Extensions : from Nelson. looks like it’s becoming a viable browser, maybe I’ll give it a go
(tags: chrome google extensions web nelson-minar)

The Beer with the Green Label : Sierra Nevada tries to reclaim its cred – CHOW : ‘Ask a craft brewer which other brewers he most admires, and he’s likely to mention Sierra Nevada. The Chico, California, brewery is considered to be sacred ground, and its beers expertly crafted. “When you die as a brewer, you go to Chico,” says Matthew Brynildson, brewmaster of Firestone Walker in Southern California.’ paging Ben
(tags: sierra-nevada beer ipa yum via:torrez)

Code: Flickr Developer Blog » Flipping Out : Flickr don’t use branches. mental
(tags: branching integration branch version-control coding flickr sysadmin wtf deployment)

best Comic Sans story ever : MeFi commenter ftw
(tags: comic-sans mefi funny morbid comments fonts via:fp)

How Google/Firefox Geolocation API works : I didn’t realise Firefox’s geolocation used wifi triangulation, too
(tags: wifi google linux firefox mapping geolocation triangulation)

Highcharts: JavaScript Charts that don’t suck : good HN thread on better charting tools in JS
(tags: javascript charts graphs js dataviz hacker-news)

Charlie’s Diary: The myth of the starship : Charlie Stross’ thoughts on the true viability of interstellar travel. This was about the most thought-provoking bit of ‘Accelerando’ for me alright
(tags: beans ships travel interstellar space ai downloading)

Church ‘lied without lying’ – The Irish Times – Thu, Nov 26, 2009 : you have got to be kidding. Father Ted meets the Inquisition
(tags: church catholicism ireland pathetic child-abuse appalling)

Meeting Notes 2009 11 24 – Noisebridge : notes curated by Danny O’Brien: ‘I have volunteered to take the meetynge notes in the style of a 17th century essayist.’
(tags: meetings hilarity 17th-century ye-olde-wiki minutes via:3ze)

All Android Phones : so many! Saw a Hero last night, it looked pretty swish — although not quite as pretty as the iPhone ;)
(tags: phones android htc hero os g1 mobile tech shopping)

explicitly running author tests from a CPAN module : we do something similar in SA
(tags: perl tests testing)

Node.js : I’m late to the party, but this sounds lovely
(tags: javascript server http web comet closures node.js event)

nginx_http_push_module – Comet For The People : looks great
(tags: nginx ajax webdev server comet scalability)

“Source Code Optimisation”, Felix von Leitner, Linux Kongress 2009 [PDF] : Good presentation on C compiler optimization, via Cal Henderson. ‘People often write less readable code because they think it will produce faster code. Unfortunately, in most cases, the code will not be faster.’ I particularly like ‘Fancy-Schmancy Algorithms’: ‘If you have 10-100 elements, use a list, not a red-black tree; Fancy data structures help on paper, but rarely in reality. (More space overhead in the data structure, less L2 cache left for actual data.)’
(tags: via:iamcal compilers c c++ optimization coding assembly speed for:colmmacc)

Me and Belle de Jour – ‘Could it be Brooke?’ : LinkMachineGo knew the true identity of Belle du Jour way back when — and set a Google trap to ensnare snooping journos. nice work
(tags: belle-du-jour google blogging blogs via:waxy privacy googlewhack identity daily-mail journalism)

JSON Format : ‘your online JSON Formatter’. useful. via JKeyes
(tags: via:jkeyes json formatting tools useful format debugging)

Summary of all the MIT Introduction to Algorithms lectures : good reviews and notes from Peteris Krumins
(tags: algorithms mit programming coding lectures)

MacRumors iPhone Blog: Undercover 1.5 Adds Push Notification Tool to iPhone Theft Recovery App : very clever. ‘You can make the messages as enticing as you want – say, by having them pretend to be a notification from your bank account. If the crook chooses to view the push notification, Undercover will launch, [..] loading any Website of your choosing, such as the aforementioned bank’s. While the thief is distracted, Undercover will be happy to save the device’s GPS coordinates and IP address to Orbicule’s Website.’
(tags: iphone theft crime push-notifications undercover)

Boingo Wireless – AVOID : argh. wish I’d seen this page before I signed up for a month’s access while travelling — they’ve now charged my credit card again, over a week after I requested the account’s cancellation :(
(tags: boingo avoid customer-service customer-hostile scams wifi travel)

HTC Hero is on Meteor : according to Fergal, at half of the price of O2’s iPhone “deal”
(tags: htc hero o2 iphone android phones mobile ireland meteor)

SSL trick certificate published : ioerror published the ‘\00’ wild-card SSL cert for any domain (for affected SSL client libs at least)
(tags: ssl tls security nul ioerror bugs exploits)

Google employees now discouraged from using Python for new projects : ‘You have to balance Python’s strengths with its weaknesses: your engineers may be more productive using Python, but if they have to work around more platform-level performance/scaling limitations as volume increases, do you come out ahead? etc.’
(tags: google performance scalability python unladen-swallow languages via:preddit)