Micropost

La Máquina Analítica no tiene ninguna pretensión de producir nada. Puede hacer cualquier cosa que sepamos cómo ordenarle que haga. Puede seguir un análisis; pero no tiene la capacidad de anticipar ninguna relación o verdad analíticas. Su función es ayudarnos a hacer accesible aquello con lo que ya estamos familiarizados. Está diseñada para hacer esto principalmente, claro está, por medio de sus facultades ejecutivas; pero es probable que ejerza de otra manera una influencia indirecta y recíproca sobre la propia ciencia. Porque, al distribuir y combinar las verdades y las fórmulas del análisis, de manera que las combinaciones mecánicas de la máquina las puedan manejar con mayor rapidez y facilidad, las relaciones y la naturaleza de muchas cuestiones de la ciencia quedarán bañadas en otra luz y podrán investigarse en mayor profundidad. Sin duda, esto es una consecuencia indirecta y, en parte, especulativa, de tal invento. Sin embargo, es evidente que, en general, al concebir una nueva forma de registrar verdades matemáticas y arrojarlas para su uso, es probable que nos inspiren nuevas perspectivas que, de nuevo, deben reaccionar en la fase más teórica del asunto. Todas las ampliaciones del poder humano, o aumentos del conocimiento humano, conllevan siempre varias influencias colaterales, aparte de los objetivos principal y secundario obtenidos. ...

There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ’hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you’re a hacker. ...

In the face of widespread Internet surveillance, we need a secure and practical means of talking to each other from our phones and computers. Many companies offer ”secure messaging” products”but are these systems actually secure? We decided to find out, in the first phase of a new EFF Campaign for Secure & Usable Crypto. » eff.org

El sistema truca las ondas electromagnéticas del monitor. De esta forma se puede transmitir información desde la pantalla a un teléfono que esté a menos de siete metros, con un ancho de banda de hasta 60 bytes por segundo, suficientes para obtener una contraseña en ocho segundos, según aseguran los investigadores. » Sergio Ferrer | elconfidencial.com

Computer Scientist Gary Kildall created just such an operating system in 1974 for a small computer called the ”Intellec-8ó that Intel had designed to showcase their new microprocessors. Called ”CP/M”, it was unlike most other operating systems for small computers because it was written in PL/M, a portable higher-level language that he had designed earlier, rather than in the assembly-language of a particular computer. That meant that CP/M could be ported to run on many different personal computers. And if the applications were written in PL/M, they could be ported as well. ...

The goal for this research was to identify the most common problems and challenges that Android developers face with the devices they build for. The 288 unique Android device models represent a significant volume of Android use: approximately 92 to 97% of global Android volumes, depending on how it gets measured and what regions and markets are included. This research represents remarkable coverage of Android usage globally, and it shows the most obvious problems as well as the status of Android hardware and software from a developer’s point of view. ...

Researchers at the security startup Shape Security say they’ve found a strain of malware on a client’s network that uses that new, furtive form of ”command and control””the communications channel that connects hackers to their malicious software”allowing them to send the programs updates and instructions and retrieve stolen data. Because the commands are hidden in unassuming Gmail drafts that are never even sent, the hidden communications channel is particularly difficult to detect. ...

Pues bien, se trata más bien de un ’side project’, es decir, el típico proyecto en el que te embarcas fuera de tu actividad principal, dedicándole o bien pasta o bien algo de tiempo. En mi caso han sido ambas cosas, pero es totalmente compatible con mis otros menesteres, como pegar los carteles de nvivo.es. » txantxez | txarly.com

In case anyone’s wondering how I approached this as a programming problem, a quick trick is to not get drawn into writing a whole chessboard representation. Use a tool like pgn-extract to convert SAN moves (e.g. ”Nc3”) to long algebraic moves (e.g. ”Nb1c3”) - since we can safely assume all moves in the PGN are legal, this saves a lot of effort implementing the rules of chess (although you still have to handle castling and en passant carefully). » png-extract » SurvivingPieces ...

I’m putting a team of Debian developers together to work full time on a derivative distribution of Debian. The idea is to provide a high-quality regular release based on Debian unstable, ensuring that all patches are given back to Debian, and ensuring that the install disk of our distribution consists entirely of Free software. Martin and I spoke at length about the project and he seemed to like the idea very much. I’m sure he’d be happy to let you know his thoughts directly. If you’re interested I’d like to give you a call to discuss it further with you. I’m based in the UK so we’re roughly in the same timezone, just let me know when and what number to reach you on. ...