Side channel attacks by Wayt Gibbs

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I’ll admit, the technology that Wayt Gibbs discusses in his Scientific American article on side channel attacks would be really cool, if it weren’t utterly disturbing.

The 18-point letters on the laptop screen at the end of the hall look nearly as clear as if the notebook computer were on my lap. Not only is the laptop 10 meters down the corridor, it faces away from the telescope. The image that seems so legible is a reflection off a glass teapot on a nearby table. Backes has discovered that an alarmingly wide range of objects can bounce secrets right off our screens and into an eavesdropper’s camera. Spectacles work just fine, as do coffee cups, plastic bottles, metal jewelry—even, in his most recent work, the eyeballs of the computer user.

Merlin Mann on priorities

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Merlin Mann with a brilliant essay on priorities, and why you can have only one:

A priority is observed, not manufactured or assigned. Otherwise, it’s necessarily not a priority. You can’t “prioritize” a list of 20 tasks any more than you can “uniqueify” 20 objects by “uniqueness,” or “pregnantitze” 20 women by “pregnantness.” Each of those words means something….

It’s not a question of order or shuffling. It’s a question of brutally honest decision-making and constantly saying, “No, I have another thing to take care of.” Because, once you see what’s really there — once you know about an idea or a thing or a person or whatever that you’d reject 10,000 other things to protect and nurture — you’ve found your priority. And, consequently, you’ve discovered a bunch of other things that aren’t allowed to be priorities any more.

Internet Juxtaposition: Today in Video

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Sometimes, the fun part about the Internet is when it juxtaposes two stories that tell you more about the world together than either can separately.

Take my video podcast feed today:

First, an interesting argument from Alex Tabarrok at TED: demonstrating how much better the world is, post-Great Depression, than even the best economists of the 1920s could have predicted. Economic growth through globalization, he argues (and argues well), can cure the ills of any economic crisis.

Second, the Onion News Network with a report on their latest reality show, Auto Warriors, in which two factories compete against each other to see which one will survive plant closures.

Really, watch them both back-to-back.

Couldn’t make this up if I tried

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From yesterday’s issue of The EFFector:

A BOSTON COLLEGE STUDENT’S COMPUTER, CELL PHONE, AND OTHER PROPERTY WERE SEIZED as part of an investigation into who sent an e-mail to a school mailing list identifying another student as gay. Not only is there no indication that any crime was committed, the support for the search warrant is at times laughable. Some of the supposedly suspicious activities listed include: the student being seen with “unknown laptop computers,” which he “says” he was fixing for other students; the student uses multiple names to log on to his computer; and the student uses two different operating systems, including one that is not the “regular B.C. operating system” but instead has “a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.”

During its March 30th search, police seized (among other
things) the student’s computers, storage drives, cell
phone, iPod Touch, flash drives, digital camera, and Ubuntu
Linux CD. None of these items have been returned. His
personal documents and information are in the hands of the
state police.

Preparing for our socialist future

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I’ve had this working theory for a while: the Right’s compulsion to tag all liberal (and most moderate) political ideas as “socialism” is going to come back to bite them in the ass. Because if most people are in favor of a “socialist” idea like receiving health care, well, can socialism be that bad?

Turns out, I’m right: only half the country identifies as pro-capitalism, with 20% pro-socialist and rest undecided. Better yet, under-30 adults are evenly divided between the pro-capitalist and the pro-socialist.

My guess is that most of these folks are actually progressives, and they identify as socialist only because they keep hearing on Fox News that they have to be if they believe the wacky ideas they do. Which, of course, probably primes them to be receptive to actual socialist ideas.

Great meme, GOP. Keep it up.

EFF: Obama wiretapping arguments worse than GWB’s

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I’m frequently accused, most commonly by Brian, of believing with goosestep precision that everything Obama does is better than anything Bush ever did.

Personally, I like to think of myself as a bit less of a liberal meatpuppet; my belief that Bush was execrable is a conclusion, whereas my belief that Obama is better is an ongoing proposition. As such, evidence that Obama is neither perfect, nor do I personally believe him to be so: In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ’s New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush’s.

The legal argument are bad — the proof in the pudding, though, will be whether the Obama administration has an actual plan to continue wiretapping the entire frakking nation. That’s something I’d like to hear more about.