It seems with the recent flare-up of 2nd Amendment debate stemming from Biden’s attempt to ban “assault weapons”, whatever those are, the majority of arguments I’ve seen against the absolute “shall not be infringed” intent of the Amendment are focusing on erroneous understandings of what the “militia” is, what “well-regulated” means, or on some imagined […]
I’m unable to attend the protests. I am in proximity to very young children and immune-compromised partners, and COVID-19 is still very, very real. But I have my voice, technology, and words. Lots, and lots of words. These are my letters to my Federal, State, and local representatives. Feel free to use as many or […]
Over what now approaches a decade since Satoshi first published the Bitcoin white paper there has been continued speculation of who might be Satoshi. Over time, various people—myself included—have been imagined to be Satoshi for various reasons. Certain would-be Satoshis have made attempts to claim that they are Satoshi. Unfortunately some have even been so […]
I’ve just recently returned from REcon 2012 and while I heard a couple people express that they had “heard” that some people were more disappointed with this year’s conference compared to prior ones, I personally really enjoyed it and felt it was the best one yet. I saw and enjoyed more of the lectures this […]
On a recent trip to Orlando, I opted out of the full-body scan at AUS, as I always do at every airport security checkpoint. While waiting for my pat-down, I was lectured by the TSA gate agent about how safe they are, was subsequently questioned about my cellphone use as a radiation exposure comparison, and […]
After a two year absence due to unavoidable other obligations like good friends’ weddings, I finally made it back to one of my favorite hacker conferences, Toorcon. San Diego is always beautiful when I happen to be there with nice weather and a cool mix of people, both locals and visitors who are there for […]
Taking place over the last week was the CanSecWest 2010 security conference, with their now annual Pwn2Own contest. For those that are unfamiliar, the Pwn2Own contest presents a number of devices usually consisting of mobile or cellular devices and laptops as targets and allows contestants to attempt to compromise them in some way. These targets […]
Yesterday I came across Cleverbot, an “AI” from icogno. As far as I can tell, it’s an incarnation of their jabberwacky AI which supposedly learns from it’s past interactions. I’m always skeptical of anything that is claimed to be AI, because actually creating a convincing fake AI, much less a real one, is an extremely […]
Earlier today, this article from ComputerWorld came across my desk. The headline grabbed my attention, having indicated controversy and disagreement, which of course I’m going to look into. The article, which cites Microsoft’s semi-annual security intelligence report, claims that Microsoft has only been right in it’s vulnerability exploitability predictions about 27% of the time. Others […]
When a book is so well-received by your peers as The IDA Pro Book has been, even if reverse engineering isn’t a huge part of what you do every day, you pretty much have to give it a read. The creator of IDA Pro, Ilfak Guilfanov, even recommends it himself for a number of reasons, […]