Tech

Tue - August 21, 2007

Pseudo-liveblogging: GeekSouth

I attended my first GeekSouth dinner

Tonight I'm attending a dinner with a group called GeekSouth. Tonight there will be a speaker on information security. Since there's no wireless here in the restaurant, this will only be psuedo-liveblogging. I'll be typing everything live, but I'll have to wait until I get home to post it all.

Our speaker for tonight will be Erik W. Rolf, President of Deliberare, Inc. I see he's on a powerbook as well and using keynote '08 - I already like him.

Juan does the introduction and we're off.

Tonight we're going to cover the time he spent in Vegas at Defcon and Blackhat. These are two big hacker conferences. We'll also cover some "news you can use".

Blackhat:
- Grossman and Hansen: "Fun with and without Javascript Malware"

The interesting thing is that everyone says you can turn your javascript off and be safe, but thats actualy not true anymore. "New research has revealed that even if Javascript has been disabled or restricted, some now popular attack techniques - such as Browser Intranet Hacking, Port Scanning and History Stealing can still be perpetrated."

A lot of corporations spend a lot of money on firewalling, NATd IPs and such, but that filters the stuff coming IN to the network. These hacks are specifically dangerous for what they send OUT of the network, and they come in through normal web traffic so they can't be blocked.

How do we stop that? One way is through egress filtering in the corporate environment. This would specifically target the traffic coming out of the web, and possibly block malicious stuff. Another option is personal firewalling software, which should be able to block some of these attacks.

Other interesting talks:
- Brad Hill "attacking XML security" - highlighting some of the dangers in the AJAX security model.
- Sullivan & Hoffman "Premature AJAX-ulation"
- "NACATTACK" - hacks that attack Cisco software that is supposed to secure visiting laptop users on corporate networks.

He showed us a video on how they can pick physical locks with all sorts of crazy stuff - a Kryptonite lock with a ball point pen, a Master lock with an electric toothbrush, and a Kensington lock (those little cables that everyone has a hole for on his laptop) with a roll of toilet paper!

Defcon 15:
"Dirty Secrets of the Security Industry"
- Defense in Depth is Dead (at least as we know it): These are really means of only protecting poorly written software.
- You can't train everyone: Even if you do, they won't always do what they're told to do.
- Network Security is Dead: See the javascript talk above
- Full disclosure is dead: Full disclosure is when you find a hack in a certain browser or software, then you publish it everywhere to force the company into fixing it. The problem is that most hacking stuff is actually being heavily run by organized crime. If they find an exploit, most likely they will simply use it rather than disclose it because they don't want it patched.

So what to do? Fix the $#%&ing code
- Type Safety
- Secure coding taught to ALL CS majors
- Trusted computing
- At least, we need better software controls on our systems, not better firewalls.

New you can use:
- Privacy is pretty much dead. There's a lot of data out there about us, and people seem to keep finding it (e.g. TJ Maxx's recent compromise)
- Vulnerabilities are way up. SANS email just from this week said it is the largest batch of critical exploits it has ever seen in one week.

So what do we do?
- Talk to Erik - Deliberare :)
- Use a Mac (amen!)

Tue - October 31, 2006

Turing Machines and Human Thought

A response to a NY Times story, emailed to me by my dad

My Dad, an avid technology enthusiast, emailed me a story from the NY Times on a convention where presenters prophetically envisioned what the world would look like in 2016. Seems like an interesting convention, and I have to agree with some of their conclusions. For instance, they predict technology will expand further and further into social areas and become more of a policy issue, both through heightened opportunity in exploiting surveillance capabilities and through more integration of technology into social networks. But I did take issue with a piece of the article, because its an area that I loved to study when I was in college. And since I have a blog on which to share things like this, here's the email I sent to my Dad:

From the NY Times: "Skeptics in academia would often say that after Alan Turing described the concept of the “universal machine” in the late 1930’s — the idea that a computer in theory could be made to do the work of any kind of calculating machine, including the human brain — all that remained to be done was mere engineering."

Actually, using the Turing Machine as a mathematical construct, it can be proven (mathematically proven, outside of any speculation over hardware or software) that a computer can NOT replicate the functionality of the human brain. Specifically, you cannot write a program that can check any given program for program correctness. Therefore, a machine will never be able to be handed a program and tell you if its correct or not, but a human can (in fact, its called code reviews and its done often). Since this is a mathematical proof, it doesn't mean that we simply aren't moving fast enough, or another 20 years of Moore's law will overcome the obstacles, it means that as long as your new computer can be reduced to a Turing Machine (and everything that was once new from Von Neumann architecture machines to Neural Nets has been reduced to a Turing Machine), then its incapable of thinking in the way we understand human thinking.

I find it all to be a compelling case against materialism and the idea (purported here by the NYT) that humans are simply computers made out of meat. You don't think with your brain, you think with your mind. So while the brain may have serious implications and functionality in the process of thought, the soul is a necessary component. All of which is good news, because it means that we are not deterministic machines but humans, capable of love and volition and all the other wonderful things that come from freewill.

Thu - June 22, 2006

Turning waste into fuel

Leftover farm waste + enzymes = sugar. Sugar + fermentation = ethanol. Ethanol + cars = energy independence.

Turning corn into ethanol to be used as fuel - instead of moonshine - isn't anything new. It has, however, only replaced about 3% of our fuel consumption. But scientists are working on a new twist to turn corn stalks and other waste products such as "wood chips, sawdust, wheat straw, [and] waste paper" into liquid fuels. Estimates are that the U.S. could replace as much as 30% of its fuel usage with fuel made from biomass.

The basic process is to take a ton of biomass (essentially plant waste left over from food crops) and throw it into a hopper with some enzymes. The enzymes break apart the fiber in the biomass and turn it into sugars, which can then by fermented and distilled into pure, 200-proof ethanol. It will take a lot of innovation and some large scale plants before it really starts to prove itself, but the thought that we could run a third of our nation on leftover junk is pretty amazing.

(H/T Cranach) 

Cross posted at Wizbang! Tech

Fri - June 16, 2006

Biodiesel now cheaper than standard diesel

Soaring fuel costs make biodiesel a cheaper alternative fuel

It was somewhat inevitable as fuel costs keep rising, but biodiesel has now actually dipped under the cost of regular diesel fuel. At this point its a mere 2 cents, but the more fuel costs rise, the more incentives there will be for companies and co-ops to find ways to make biodiesel even cheaper.

Cross posted at Wizbang! Tech

Tue - June 13, 2006

Site Layout as Art

A cool tool will let you view a visualization of your website's layout

One of the guys at work tipped me off to this cool tool that lets you see a visual graph of the layout of your site. It can take a while to run, depending on how complex and deep your site is, but its worth the wait. Websites are made up of tags, which lay out the page in a certain style, call out an image, link to another site, etc. This tool color codes each one of those tags, and then shows their relationship to one another graphically. Here is the color scheme / legend he uses (snipped from his post):

blue: for links (the A tag) 

red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags) 

green: for the DIV tag 

violet: for images (the IMG tag) 

yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags) 

orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags) 

black: the HTML tag, the root node 

gray: all other tags

His post also has the graphs of some of the major sites, like Google, Yahoo, CNN, etc. Its really interesting - at least for geeks like me - to see and compare the different structures of some major sites. Though I don't do a lot of front end coding, the combination of structure and style with technical functionality is very comparable to the engineering work I do day to day, and its pretty cool to be able to see a visual representation of what you might think of in your head if you looked at the code.

So what does this site look like? Here is the graph of my site, Sarcasmagorical.com

Tue - April 4, 2006

Speedy parallel Macs?

A new rumor about a Mac with a very large core

This could be a very interesting development. PPC Macs had short, but wide processing, which attempts to make computing faster by distributing the processing across the wide pipe - the drawback being that you can't dial clock speeds as high and your lookaheads are short. Intel PCs had long, but thin processing, which allows for much higher clock speeds and deeper look ahead, but things like bubbles (where you can't determine the next instruction, or your look aheads were rendered useless by a branch) are much more costly.

Think of it this way - at the McDonald's you can go in, where there are 5 cashiers and shorter lines, but slower service at each one. Or you can go to the drivethru, where their is a longer line and only 1 cashier but they are trying to push people through faster. All things being equal, they are probably about the same. But if you have a slow cashier or some guy in front of you takes forever with his order, if you're inside you can just move over to another line. Conversely, some McDonald's put a lot of focus on their drivethru and can move people through it much more faster because its their only focus. So each has its benefits and downsides.

But now, we arrive at the peanut butter meets chocolate moment. Having both a huge parallel core, and really fast pipelines could very well give you the best of both worlds. You could process a lot of stuff at one time, and make the time it takes to process it much faster. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

( H/T to my fellow SigDev blogger Andrew. SigDev = Significant Developments, a group blog and soon to be podcast about cool new technology and futurism )

Thu - October 6, 2005

UN to take over Internet?

The UN is expected to vote to take control of the internet's top level infrastructure away from the US

My friend Van noticed this article and, fearing the worst, stated "the internet will never be the same". I'm not so sure this is all that big of a deal. The top level domains sound like they are a big deal, because they own the stats on all first level domains (e.g. they control who gets .com names). But the entire design of the internet was decentralized on purpose, so if a particular location was bombed or shut down, the rest of the net wouldn't feel it. By nature, decentralized systems are hard (perhaps impossible) to control from a central authority. In fact, even the control of naming has been split apart into tons of little companies that eventually submit to ICANN.

That being said, of course, the UN having anything to do with anything generally means two things - bureaucracy and corruption (perhaps thats only one thing ;) ). While I don't think they have the technical ability to muck around that much, they could make life very difficult for the people/companies involved in building and selling top level stuff. The other danger is if they have control of the RFC (Request For Comment) process, because that dictates the underlying technology for the internet. Still, the internet affords quite a lot of opportunity to thwart the efforts of intrusive governments, if for no other reason than the fact the technology is fast and governments are not.

Sat - May 21, 2005

e3 - photos

I went to e3 today, and came back with some pictures

One of the cool perks of my job is that every year - at least when we aren't too busy, which is only half the time - is that we get tickets to e3. e3 is the Entertainment Electronics Expo, and its the biggest collection of geek stuff anywhere. It is a huge trade event for the video game industry where they show off the latest and greatest and unveil what they will be doing in the future. It is really amazing to see the lengths they go to when setting up the different "booths" that make up the exhibit floor. Rather than try to explain how cool it all is, I thought I would just throw some photos up so you can see for yourself.

The entrance to e3, with psuedo-Matrix Atari sign and weird dood with blue hair and lightning bolts shaved into it.

Jeff and I taking a look at a very cool set up the Army put on. They had a Humvee on shocks with a turret gun on top. One person could drive the Humvee (which then effected the view on the panaramic screen in front. The other person fired the gun, which also keyed off of the screen. And no, contrary to what it looks like, Jeff is in fact NOT peeing on the game.

This is EA Games XBox360-inspired exhibit. It was kind of like a remake of Circlevision in old Disneyland - you had a 360 degree view of stuff. So they'd run a promo for a car game and you could see the guys come up in front of you, watch as they slip to your side and then behind you as you pass them. Or they'd put you in the middle of a football game with blocks and tackles all around you. Very cool.

View of the show floor. this gives you a small glimpse of the size and scope of this exhibit hall. This was only one of the exhibit halls there (I think there were like 5 or so - I only went to this one).

Another view of the show floor. This was shot from a second story walkway that Xbox built for their exhibit space.

I've already mentioned my excitement about the movie, but here's a Chronicles of Narnia game. Pretty cool, but I didn't have much time to play it (it's a long role playing game - not something that plays well in 5-10 minutes)

Call of Duty is getting a sequel

This is a shot from the floor looking up at the ramp from which where I took the other photos. XBox built this whole section as their "booth".

Stormtroopers... what would a convention of geeks be without Stormtroopers?

Here they even built a whole street, with lamps and store fronts

The World Poker Tour is getting immortalized in a game by 2k studios. They held 20 min tournaments - more on this later.

Yes, even the Bible is represented here.

Another shot of the Bible game - you have to answer Bible trivia to score points (or something, it wasn't easy to understand - but I did get all of the trivia correct).

And another shot of the actual gameplay of the Bible game. Sadly, like most Chrisitan attempts at pop culture, it looks straight out of about 10-15 years ago (which looks even more ridiculous at a show that features bleeding edge game technologies)

Rockstar Games (known for Grand Theft Auto) had this chain-link fenced in area of busses

Howard Lederer is lending his name to Crave's sequel to last years poker game. I was badly beaten at their booth last year, and I came seeking my poker revenge this year.

Which brings us to this photo of me playing in one of the WPT game tournaments.

Another shot of me at the table. I was chip leader and played really well, and then tried a stupid move. Since I thought I had the other guy covered and I knew it was the last hand, I just folded so that they could count the chips and declare me the winner (these tournaments were timed - not based on who wins). Unfortunately I was off by a few, and he beat me with a small handful of chips.

Poker Pro Robert WIlliamson III at the poker table. I got into my second tournament of the day after this game, and I won this one.

Robert WIlliamson III signing autographs, with the actual game playing behind him

The pile of loot

My signed Robert Williamson III photo.

Thu - March 3, 2005

Cool trick for the Mac

This handy little tip solves one of my very few problems with the Mac

I received this tip via email from a friend of mine, who's email says it originated on Slashdot. It fixes one of my few annoyances with the Mac - the Home and End keys don't behave like they do on other systems. Home takes you to the top of the documents (but only your view, not your cursor - so if you type, it snaps right back to where you were) and End takes you to the very end of the document. On most systems, notably the PC, the Home and End keys work on a line only - Home takes you to the beginning of the line (and moves your cursor as well) and End takes you to the end. Holding down ctrl-home or ctrl-end then gives you the ability to move to the top or bottom of the document.

Using a Mac, you sort of just get used to not having this functionality, but it used to bug me all the time. After all, I moved to Mac because the other 98% of the time it makes my life so much easier. Well, leave it to the Mac to provide a way to fix this annoyance:

Got to your home directory (the one with your user name and the house icon on it) and find the Library directory. In there, if you see a KeyBindings directory, go there. If you don't see it, create it and go there. Then, create a file called DefaultKeyBinding.dict with the following content (or simply use this file - rt. click, save as into ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict):

/* Home/End keys more like Windows */
{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /* home */
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /* end */
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + home */
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + end */
"^\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfDocument:"; /* control + home */
"^\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfDocument:"; /* control + end */
}