The Weekly Weird - 2014-10-24
- Start your Friday with a cute little CGI short: http://vimeo.com/105788896
- I don't know which is better, the Swedish navy searching for a Russian sub (yes, in 2014), The Guardian's headline "Sweden searches for suspected Russian submarine off Stockholm" and how badly they obviously wanted to use 'Soviet' there for alliterative purposes, or this delightful (and prescient) story in the same vein: http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2014-October/023114.html
- Here's a good one: low-level chip manufacturer ships a driver that bricks counterfeit versions of its hardware: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/ftdi-driver-kills-fake-ftdi-ft232/ This is in a lot of dodgy USB ebay gear so who knows what's going to randomly stop working. Also can you imagine getting that user report? I bought a new <thingie> and my other <thingie> now no longer works on any other computer. boggle (more FTDI stuff w/pics! http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supereal )
- "Your language sucks" is common enough in tech circles, this one is a little different though: http://garrett.damore.org/2014/10/your-language-sucks.html(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8475215
- Some crypto 'paranoia' from tcui: http://cr.yp.to/talks/2014.10.18/slides-djb-20141018-a4.pdf , the hn thread is very good as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8478427. Also in this vein is Poul-Henning Kamp's talk on Operation Orchestra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcl17Q0bpk
- What percentage of human progress is now a direct result of people taking xkcd comics to their logical extreme? http://code.flickr.net/2014/10/20/introducing-flickr-park-or-bird/ Or: xkcd is the world's most effective optimizing compiler, sadly only usable by one person.
- I find electricity grids fascinating, especially watching them cope with the shift from fossil fuels to less predictable renewable sources. This gigantic HVDC interconnection is great: http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/wind/norway-wants-to-be-europes-battery Come for the "country sized battery", stay for the "oh we'll just use the ocean as an interim cable while we reconfigure the wires".