Read a little. Learn a lot. • Tightly-written news, views and stuff • Follow us on Twitter • Be a Facebook Fan • Tumble us!

13 Dec 2010 21:07

tags

Tech: The WSJ did a breakdown of the most-used Gawker passwords

Dear morons: Don’t give your account the password of “123456,” “password,” “12345678,” or name it after the site you’re visiting. It’s just a bad idea. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 4 Comments • Permalink

13 Dec 2010 10:47

tags

Tech: Great. Gawker’s leak may have led to large-scale Twitter attack

  • bad Gawker’s data – tons of it, from images to user passwords to database files to worse – was uploaded by a couple of axe-grinding bad eggs on Bittorrent last night. Great. Thanks, jerks!
  • worse It appears that someone may have taken the passwords from the torrent and used them to turn Twitter accounts into Acai Berry-pitching spambots. CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS, STAT. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Dec 2010 21:11

tags

Tech: Hackers: Gawker used very outdated form of password encryption

  • yeah … Gawker staffer Scott Kidder claimed that users’ passwords should be safe from hacking. “Passwords are encrypted anyway,” he says, “so stealing passwords isn’t even possible.”
  • … but A document from the hackers in their bittorrent explains that the passwords used a very outdated form of encryption that only protected the first eight characters. Yikes. Freaking yikes. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Dec 2010 20:27

tags

Tech: An open letter to the dudes who hacked Gawker Media

  • Gawker is a site that’s easy to hate, we know this. We’re sure that plenty of people were taking lots of joy in Nick Denton’s misery today. But the thing that bothers us about that stance is that, as harsh as Gawker and Denton come across sometimes, they prove they’re worth their weight in salt every time they get a scoop. When it comes to the Web, nobody tops them, honestly.
  • why they’re uniqueThey’re not afraid of taking on the tawdry story because it’s tawdry. They’re not afraid of paying a source because it requires paying a source. They’re not against digging into rumors just because they’re rumors. And they know just when to play each of those hands.
  • Why they matterAs much as we’d like to hate Gawker and its sister sites for being the most arrogant content network on the entire internet, every time we want to hate them, they do something really freaking cool. They make reading the news online worthwhile, ’cause they get it.
  • They hate you? So what? Gawker talks crap about 4chan or Anonymous or whomever? So what. They talk crap about everybody. And they deserve to get away with it. Because unlike the gossip sources of yore (think National Enquirer), they actually have substance. source
  • » Oh yeah: One thing we cannot and will not get behind is making a million and a half commenters pawns in this silly game. Gawker may deserve it (to some degree), but the readers aren’t worth getting crapped on. We feel bad for them more than anyone else in this endeavor.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Dec 2010 12:14

tags

Tech: Best news ever: Paul Allen’s patent troll lawsuits thrown out

  • whatThe patent-troll lawsuit Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen filed against every major technology company in the world failed in court on Friday. Good for everyone but Paul Allen.
  • whyHis company wasn’t specific about how the many companies he was suing violated the patents. They have until December 28 to refile to prove specific damages. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Dec 2010 11:49

tags

Tech: This is how the terrorists will defeat the full-body scanners

  • It is very likely that a large (15-20 cm in diameter), irregularly-shaped, cm-thick pancake with beveled edges, taped to the abdomen, would be invisible to this technology, ironically, because of its large volume, since it is easily confused with normal anatomy.
  • Leon Kaufman and Joseph W. Carlson • In a piece titled “An evaluation of airport x-ray backscatter units based on image characteristics,” which they wrote for the Journal of Transportation Security. To put it simply – if terrorists were smart enough to create pancake-shaped plastic explosives that look like someone’s belly on a full-body scanner, the technology would be defeated and we’d all be dead. Good to know.  source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Dec 2010 11:20

tags

Tech: Groupon CEO Andrew Mason holds mastercourse in dodging questions

  • Groupon’s CEO, Andrew Mason, is officially the coolest interviewee ever. He dodges questions like some would paint impressionist art. He answers questions using stories nobody would ever think of bringing up. Matt Lauer has no idea what to make of him. And it’s great. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

09 Dec 2010 23:16

tags

Offbeat, Tech: Poll: Sticking one’s tongue out via Internet unpopular

  • :P the most hated emoticon, according to a CNN poll source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 Dec 2010 22:07

tags

Tech: AOL’s “You’ve Got News”: The reason you should switch to Chrome

  • In case you’re wondering what the coolest app on the Chrome Web Store is, it’s AOL’s semi-belated entry into the tablet-esque news reader app market. You’ve Got News, a riff on their legacy branding, has a really slick feel and reminds you exactly how much content AOL has on its many news sites. Why isn’t this on the iPad yet, guys? It’s amazing. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 Dec 2010 21:50

tags

Tech: In the U.S., people smuggle drugs. In China, they smuggle iPads

  • 14 Chinese housewives were arrested for smuggling lots of tech devices into China
  • 88 the number of iPads the fourteen women had, roughly enough to create an iPad fort
  • 340 the number of phones they had; it was a total haul worth roughly $143,000 source
  • » Why the demand? Simple. The only version of the iPad sold in China is the wi-fi version. The 3G version (sold in Hong Kong) is in very high demand as a result. Plus, China has recently started taxing iPads brought in from Hong Kong, and on the other end, smugglers have been recruiting people without criminal records to make the runs from Hong Kong to China (for around $30 a run). We end this post with a visual image; imagine a woman with 65 smartphones wrapped around her chest and 20 more in her handbag. Yes, this actually happened.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
<< newer 
top tags
older >>