But is it art?
Jackson Pollock.org. [Update: Click the picture. It’s only funny if you click the picture with Flash enabled. The site requires Flash.]
Jackson Pollock.org. [Update: Click the picture. It’s only funny if you click the picture with Flash enabled. The site requires Flash.]
I just wanted to draw attention to the comments in Michael Froomkin’s blog post on “Cabinet Confirmation Mechanics.” I am delighted to have had ‘Jim’ concur with my Constitutional analysis by quoting the closing lines of Ulysses. I’m in awe of your commenters, Michael.
(Or, the presentation of self in everyday donations) So I’ve had a series of fairly political posts about election finance, and in one of them, I said “I’d prefer that the rules avoidance be minimized, and I think transparency is the most promising approach there.” Well, in the interests of transparency, I need to comment […]
In the Cryptography mailing list, John Gilmore recently brought up and interesting point. One of the oft-debated ways to fight spam is to put a form of proof-of-work postage on it. Spam is an emergent property of the very low cost of email combined with the effect that most of the cost is pushed to […]
I just finished an interesting paper, K. Koscher, A. Juels, T. Kohno, and V. Brajkovic. “EPC RFID Tags in Security Applications: Passport Cards, Enhanced Drivers Licenses, and Beyond.” In the paper, they analyze issues of cloning (easy) read ranges (longer than the government would have you believe) and `design drift’ (a nice way of saying […]
They’ve added a blotter to add news that isn’t quite breaches, and they’re looking for funds to help with their FOIA requests. Please join me in donating.
Speaking of how you’re presented and perceived…”How to request your travel records,” by Ed Hasbrouck. By popular demand, I’m posting updated forms to request your PNR’s and other records of your international travel that are being kept by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)… If you […]
Chris Hoff pointed to an interesting blog post from Peter Shankman. Someone* tweeted “True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here!’” Well it turns out that… Not only did an employee find it, they were totally offended by […]
So what do you do with the million photos everyone took of the inauguration? Here at Emergent Chaos, we believe that we should throw them all in a massive blender, and see what emerges. A massive blender isn’t a very technical description of Photosynth, but it’s not a bad analogy. The project cleverly figures out […]
I am surprised I hadn’t heard about the book Nudge, by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. I haven’t read it yet, but from the web page it seems to be about how policymakers can take into account the heuristics and biases characteristic of human decision-makers and create a choice architecture which yields “proper” decision-making. I […]
The Globe and Mail and the CBC each report that Canada’s Do Not Call list is being used by telemarketers both good and bad (where each term is relative). This is a bit sad for Canada. The US’s DNC list has been very successful, and one of the very few places where the US has […]
This photograph was taken at 11:19 AM on January 20th. It’s very cool that we can get 1 meter resolution photographs from space. What really struck me about this photo was.. well, take a look as you scroll down… What really struck me about this is the open space. What’s up with that? Reports were […]
Quoting first from Obama’s inaugural address: The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move […]
The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on […]
Well, Mordaxus got the story, but I’ll add some links I found interesting or relevant. StoreFront BackTalk has From The Heartland Breach To Second Guessing Service Providers. Dave G at Matasano added “Heartland’s PCI certification.” The Emergent Chaos time travel team already covered that angle in “Massachusetts Analyzes its Breach Reports:” What’s exciting about this […]
While we were all paying attention to the Inauguration and having merry debates about how many Justices can deliver the Oath of Office on a pin, what may be the biggest breach ever tried to tiptoe past. Heartland Payment Systems may have lost 100 million credit card details, surpassing the 94 million that was lost […]
Now it’s no secret to those of you who know me that I’m a big believer in using risk management in the security space. Iang over at Financial Cryptography think’s it is “a dead duck”: The only business that does risk management as a core or essence is banking and insurance (and, banking is debatable […]
During a chat I had this afternoon, someone brought up an interesting situation to contemplate. The Presidency of George Bush fils ended today at noon EST, but Mr. Obama wasn’t sworn in until 12:10. Who then, the question was, President during those ten minutes. One mildly unsatisfactory answer is Ms. Pelosi. If there is neither […]
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The reality that a black man is about to become President of the United States is both momentous and moving. It’s hard to say anything further on the subject that hasn’t been said and re-said, but I am simply proud that the pendulum has swung to someone like Obama. I’m excited to have an educated, […]
There’s an interesting (and long!) “Final Report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States.” Michael Froomkin summarizes the summary.” Adam Thierer was a member of the task force, and has extensive commentary on the primary online safety issue today […]
Moving Forest is a park on wheels. The park is made of trees in shopping carts that allow the public to rearrange their own little park. The forest is created by Dutch architect firm NL architects in response to the lack of green nature in contemporary urban environments – which in the case of the […]
It’s appetizing news for anyone who’s ever wanted the savory taste of meats and cheeses without actually having to eat them: chemists have identified molecular mechanisms underlying the sensation of umami, also known as the fifth taste. … The umami receptor’s shape is similar to that of sweetness receptors, he said, and his team’s research […]
One of the dirty little secrets of bad privacy law is that it kills. People who are not comfortable with the privacy of their medical care may avoid getting needed care. That’s why privacy features in the Hippocratic oath. But few people want to study this issue, and studying it is hard–people are likely to […]
[Update: This got to #5 on change.org’s list, and they’re now working to draw attention to the issue on change.gov.] Jon Pincus has asked me for help in drawing attention to his “Get FISA Right” campaign to get votes on change.org. When I’ve tried to look at this, it’s crashed my browser. YMMV–I use a […]
In “Report On The M.G.L. Chapter 93H Notifications,” the Office of Consumer Affairs analyzes the breach notices which have come in. The report is a lot shorter than the “Maine Breach Study,” coming in at a mere four pages. There are many interesting bits in those four pages, but the two that really jumped out […]
In “The Social Security Blogger Awards,” Alan Shimel asks for nominations for blogs. Ironically, to even see the site at http://www.socialsecurityawards.com/, you need to accept Javascript. I think we should have an award for “best vuln in the voting system.” But anyway, please take a minute to go vote. I’ll ask for your vote for […]
..or, Spaf‘s DVD players get bricked. In which, lies a tale…
Listening to Gary McGraw’s Silver Bullet #33, Laurie William mentioned protection poker. Protection poker, like planning poker isn’t really poker. Planning poker is a planning exercise, designed to avoid certain common pitfalls of other approaches to planning. The idea behind protection poker is to be a “informal form of misuse case development and threat modeling […]
Normally, this would be something for Twitter, but…well…. Officiating at the NY v. Philadelphia game has been poor. Not biased, I don’t think, but poor.
Chris Anderson via Paul Kedrosky.
All from the Strange Maps blog. You could click on the pictures, but this blog is perfect Saturday afternoon “hey look at this” material.
Gary McGraw has a new podcast, “Reality Check” about software security practitioners. The first episode features Steve Lipner. It’s some good insight into how Microsoft is approaching software security. I’d say more, but as Steve says two or three good things about my threat modeling tool, you might think it some form of conspiracy. You […]
Larry Lessig has a very interesting article in Newsweek, “Reboot the FCC.” The essence is that the FCC is inevitably bound by regulatory capture. He proposes a new agency with three tasks: “The iEPA’s first task would thus be to reverse the unrestrained growth of these monopolies.” “The iEPA’s second task should be to assure […]
Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton, dead at 60.
The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) released their year-end breach report: Reports of data breaches increased dramatically in 2008. The Identity Theft Resource Center’s 2008 breach report reached 656 reported breaches at the end of 2008, reflecting an increase of 47% over last year’s total of 446. Dissent of PogoWasRight has some analysis. I’ll take […]
Galois has announced “” Cryptol is a domain specific language for the design, implementation and verification of cryptographic algorithms, developed over the past decade by Galois for the United States National Security Agency. It has been used successfully in a number of projects, and is also in use at Rockwell Collins, Inc. … Cryptol allows […]
(I’d meant to post this in June. Oops! Chaos reigns!) Peter Swire and Cassandra Butts have a fascinating new article, “The ID Divide.” It contains a tremendous amount of interesting information that I wasn’t aware of, about how infused with non-driving purposes the drivers license is. I mean, I know that the ID infrastructure, is, […]
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles. The wearer adjusts […]
…or, antique car collectors are an honest lot. According to the Times (of London, dear chap), a recently-deceased British surgeon has left his heirs a rather significant bequest: a super-rare, super-fast, antique Bugatti which hasn’t been driven since 1960 and is expected to fetch several million at auction. This is the fabled “Imagine their surprise, […]
A South Korean woman entered Japan on a fake passport in April 2008 by slipping through a state-of-the-art biometric immigration control system using special tape on her fingers to alter her fingerprints, it was learned Wednesday… During questioning, the woman allegedly told the immigration bureau that she had bought a forged passport from a South […]