Find the Villain

Interesting tech story caught my eye this morning:

A hacker was able to shout abuse at a two-year-old child by exploiting a vulnerability in a camera advertised as an ideal "baby monitor".

ABC News revealed how a couple in Houston, Texas, heard a voice saying lewd comments coming from the camera, made by manufacturer Foscam.

Vulnerabilities in Foscam products were exposed in April, and the company issued an emergency fix.

Foscam said it was unable to provide a statement at this time.

However, a UK-based reseller told the BBC it would contact its entire customer database to remind them "the importance in setting a password to their cameras".

The spokesman added that it would be urging Foscam's head office - based in Shenzhen, China - to send out a memo to all its resellers suggesting they too contact their customers.

ABC reported that Marc Gilbert and wife Lauren were left shaken when they heard a "British or European accent" coming from the camera.

Mr Gilbert said the voice directed offensive, sexualised words at their daughter Allyson, who was asleep in bed.

The family believed the hacker was able to call the child by her name because it was spelt out on the bedroom's wall.

The two-year-old is deaf, something the couple described as "something of a blessing" in the circumstances.

This is as bad a privacy breach as I can imagine - people all over the world having access to watch your child AND BULLY HER without your consent. And the people who are terrified because the government has access to your secrets aren't going to angrily protest Foscam, or demand that the head of Foscam be impeached. They won't even boycott Foscam.

The crowd that's enraged about the NSA surveillance program don't seem concerned that the information they're mining all comes from private corporations, who could just as easily be targeting you for elimination or social turmoil. In fact, the only reason Edward Snowden is in Russia right now is because the government farmed out all this data to ANOTHER private company, which didn't have the good sense to keep it away from him.

It increasingly looks to me like Government and Corporations both know too much about us. But at least the Government isn't a bunch of amateurs about it. The government has never let my credit card information fall into the hands of thieves, the way Exxon/Mobil did once. The government just wants to keep tabs and lock my information down. Google and Facebook... God only knows. If there's money in it, they'll sell me to Al Quaeda.

The Final Solution

Yep, that's it right there, my Roomba. I turned the thing on before I left and it was crawling around for an hour or so, ample time to nudge a very light timer all over everything. I was just lucky it didn't wind up under the bed!

I suppose if there's any moral to take away from this incident, it's this: If I guy comes up to you on the street tells you that robots are hiding his stuff...you know what, just get away from him. Your first impression is usually right.

Mystery Part 2

See the last post, to which this is the continuance.

You probably haven't found my Chinese Cooking Timer yet, because I haven't given you enough data. If you have been to my place you might have figured it out but otherwise no.

Recall that I said there was an important clue in the second paragraph: this will rule out pets. I don't have a dog or cat (or lorakeet or monkey, like my neighbors - oh wait, that's a teenager) and didn't allude to any such thing in the paragraph. More clues? Okay, here's one. It's where I found the timer.

Apologies for bad photography - the timer is face down in the living room, by the front door, around 20 feet away. Interestingly, it could have been on the floor ANYWHERE IN THE APARTMENT.

More soon.

Me and My First World Problems: A Mini-Mystery

I ran into a problem tonight that was interesting, in the sense that everything about it wouldn't have been possible when I was growing up and what's more, it couldn't happen to people much poorer than I am. And I'm not exactly rich, people!

You need to know this before I start - I loves me some gadgets. I live alone but I own two computers and a big-screen TV with a 240 mhz frame rate, because I can't tolerate 60 frames a second. If I felt like it, I could be watching that TV now as my second monitor. I have a GPS in a car and a digital speedometer on my bike. The pictures that I illustrate this with were taken with my iPhone. Only one phrase in this whole paragraph is a clue to the mystery that follows.

A few weeks back I ordered up a Digital Cooking Timer from eBay. It's Chinese and it would have cost me a dollar if it wasn't for shipping. It looked like this when I left for work this morning:

There it is, stuck to my freezer door with a magnet.

I came home from work and I decided to cook up an Omaha Steaks hamburger patty with some roasted potatoes I buy from Trader Joes. I was melting butter in a skillet when I moved to set the timer and I saw this:

What you're looking at there is a magnet, no longer attached to a timer. A tiny bit of adhesive facing out suggested the magnet was inadequately glued in place. My eyes went to the floor only to find... floor.

Where was my timer? I live alone, and I determined that no one had been in my apartment since I left at 8:00 am. The answer will be in my next post but I want to encourage guessing in the mean time.

Chip Nostalgia

Man, this'll make you feel old, unless you aren't old. Then it will just mystify you.

So I grew up in Santa Cruz, which is just over the hill from Silicon Valley. A lot of my smarter classmates went straight from high school to the burgeoning personal computer business. At least one of them wound up marrying one of the founders of Yahoo and is, last time I saw her, a very very happy woman.

I'm going to quote someone anonymously from their Facebook comment here, and tell me that this isn't some unique new wrinkle on nostaliga.

One of my first jobs was working at Seagate, but that was before Seagate made HD's. They originally assembled computers and put a Seagate sticker on it.. nameing it a Seagate Computer... Damn those were the days.

I mean come on, this is a sea change of some kind, isn't it? RetroTechnoLust? Do you wish you still had that fax machine that was the size of a mini-fridge? Do you long for the days that you played Leisure Suit Larry in monochrome on your Gateway Palmtop? Do you wonder why they don't name modern CPUs the 1286 or the 1486? If so, it's not just me.

American Jobs Lost

Don't read that title as a plural!

PRESS RELEASE: Letter from Steve Jobs

August 24, 2011–To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Hopefully I'll still be using Apple products 5 years from now, instead of Google-branded things. Apple's nicer. I'm glad I didn't buy any Apple stock though, because tonight it's tanking.

Hard To Assign Blame On This One

Republican Federal Communications Commission commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker is planning to leave the agency for a job at Comcast Corp., according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Ms. Baker is expected to announce her departure as soon as this week for an unknown position at the Philadelphia-based cable giant. Comcast declined to comment, a company spokeswoman said.

...Baker’s move to Comcast comes just four months after she voted, along with three of the agency’s other FCC commissioners, to approve Comcast’s $13.75 billion deal to acquire control of NBC Universal from General Electric Co.

So on one hand, Obama appointed her in early 2009, so we should blame the Democrats for this startling display of graft. On the other hand, she's a Republican. There's nothing to be done about it either. You can refuse to give a lobbyist a government job, but you can't prevent an ex-politico from getting a job as a lobbyist.

In any event this isn't as big a deal as you think, because the big four networks are getting smaller every day. It's amazing there still was an NBC to merge by the time they approved the deal.

There Are Followers

People really love sarcasm.

-- Andy Kindler, about 10 hours ago on his Twitter feed.

I have taken to Twitter in a big way, to the point where I rely on it for news bulletins. What's trending? Who's dead now? Sweet Jesus, what's Rebecca Black still doing on this list? But this is not what really attracts me; it's the challenge of compressing a thought into 140 characters. Some are easy, almost none are impossible. Here's one I put out there yesterday.

If Sarah Palin doesn't get into the race soon, I'm going to have to support Bachmann!

The idea behind the tweet was that I'm hoping one of these two women wins the Republican primary because they are supported by a slim segment of their own party, let alone by the Independents and Democrats. Either one would be a losing presidential candidate! That was the point of the tweet. From yesterday. In context it would be pretty obvious that neither woman would be my choice for president.

One of the other things I love about Twitter is that you get instant metrics. People can subscribe to your feed, and you know who those people are. Currently I have 72 followers, which is an okay number for a non-celebrity. But I picked up four of them since that tweet: Campagnone4Palin12, Sandy4FarRight, Winfield4Palin1 and weirdly, eroshypnosis, which appears to be an account for an Erotic Hypnosis concern. I can't recall what might have attracted them to my account unless I did it during that 45 minutes yesterday when I just can't remember anything. And why do I have bruises around my nipples?

Anyway, the first 3 are pretty similar - no custom icon, no tweets, a 4 in the name. Assuming they are unironic in nature, I can expect them to drop off by the end of the day. UNLESS they are unironic bots. Maybe these accounts are spiders, searching the web for positive Palin references and rewarding them with followers. I'm going to post Palin sucks! to my account right after I post this and see what happens.

They're Tryin' to Kill Me Jimmy!

Stuart Margolin as Angel, just to shore up the quote in the title

I have had a rough week. Sunday night I noticed the hot water had vanished in my apartment. No hot water! Rescue forces have replaced the heater but it's still only gradually returning to normal. I only have lukewarm water.

Meanwhile I come home last night to discover that the nerve center of my life is also down. My DSL modem has failed! ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG !!

As it happens, I have backup systems - my iPhone, the computer at work, Starbucks. I guess I have access to hot showers too, because of the gym membership, but this internet thing is driving me nuts. It's not just my computer, you know. Though that's a problem (almost everything I do on the computer hooks into the cloud somehow, and what's worse my printer is connected via Wi-Fi so I can't print) the TV and BluRay player are also internet-enabled. For some reason, my TV has decided that it's an hour later than it was a couple days ago, because it's not getting its time from a server online.

And remember, without a constant supply of new material from blogs and internet radio, my source of home amusement is television. And I DON'T HAVE CABLE. Why would I, right? Television is different than the internet. If someone says something stupid on TV, you can't answer back to them. You can't save funny screen grabs and email them to your friends. Ads show up whether you click on them or not. And without cable, it's almost impossible to find porn. I think it's pretty obvious now that Mubarak sealed his own doom when he shut down the internet in Egypt.

Someone report this whole blog to this guy, willya? I can't.

Thank God Trader Joe's is still open so I can still get Organic Kona Whole Bean Coffee. I suppose my grinder will go down next!

Volt: Nuts!

American car companies just don't want to do real electric cars. You might think that GM's Volt was going to change that, with it's 230 miles to the gallon and an internal combustion engine which exists solely to charge the batteries. LIES!

In August of last year, we heard GM's then-CEO Fritz Henderson claimed with all the marketing might it could muster at a Detroit-area press event, that the Chevy Volt would get 230 MPG in city driving conditions. Now, as the Volt's being tested by the auto trade press, we're seeing some surprisingly low fuel economy figures amid the expected lavish praise buff books are heaping upon the Volt.

Let's see what they've found out. Popular Mechanics saw just 37.5 MPG in city driving. Car and Driver apparently didn't choose to use their wheel time for any city driving — but found with all-electric driving

"...getting on the nearest highway and commuting with the 80-mph flow of traffic-basically the worst-case scenario-yielded 26 miles; a fairly spirited back-road loop netted 31; and a carefully modulated cruise below 60 mph pushed the figure into the upper 30s."

Motor Trend, like the rest of the trade press other than Popular Mechanics, didn't appear to do any testing in city conditions, but did find that

"Without any plugging in, [a weeklong trip to Grandma's house] should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s."

They also parrot GM's new line of 25-50 miles of all-electric — a far cry from the 230 MPG they originally marketed — that the "Volt provides 25-50 miles of real-world electric operation no matter how hard you flog it."

...But while even providing only 10% of the fuel economy initially touted, these more real-world figures are merely an exaggeration. The bigger problem is that, as Mr. Oldham now claims, is that GM lied to them about the powertrain.

Since the Volt was first unveiled as a concept car, GM engineers, public relations staff and executives have all claimed adamantly that the internal combustion engine did not motivate the wheels. If that were the case then the Volt would be nothing more than a very advanced hybrid. Even as late into the development cycle as this June, we were told the only drivetrain that motivated the wheels was the electric one. The auto trade press swallowed the line, hook and the sinker. Sam Abulesmaid at Autoblog even ran a piece headlined "Repeat after us: The Chevrolet Volt's gas engine does not drive the wheels!." And why shouldn't he have lapped it up when in online chats, the Volt's chief engineer Andrew Farah was saying:

Apparently it's GM's JOB to kill the electric car, over and over again. When are those Teslas coming out again?

Event Verizon

At %$#%$^$ last!

Apple Inc. plans to begin mass producing a new iPhone by the end of 2010 that would allow Verizon Wireless to sell the smartphone early next year, said people briefed by Apple.

The new iPhone would be similar in design to the iPhone 4 currently sold by ATT Inc. but would be based on an alternative wireless technology called CDMA used by Verizon, these people said. The phone, for which Qualcomm Inc. is providing a key chip, is expected to be released in the first quarter of next year, according to the same people.

An Apple CDMA iPhone would spell the end of the exclusive U.S. arrangement with Apple that ATT has had since 2007, when the original iPhone debuted.

I am happy to report that my contract with ATT should be ending early next year, heh heh heh.

Speaking of tech that has taken a little long to come down the pike:

Richard Buckminster Fuller had a lot of nerve. In the 1930s, the great US inventor secured the first $1,000 he needed to build a giant futuristic car, called the Dymaxion... The Dymaxion was meant to be phase one of a social revolution, fuelled by the latest technology, but only three were ever built. No 1 caught fire and No 3 was turned into scrap; only No 2 survived. It now sits in the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada – or it did until 18 months ago, when the architect Norman Foster decided he wanted to fulfil a dream, and build Dymaxion No 4. So he borrowed No 2 for inspiration.

"The Dymaxion had the same engine and transmission as the Ford Sedan of the time," says Foster, who worked with Fuller, his design hero, from 1971 until his death 12 years later. "However, at three times the volume, with half the fuel consumption and a 50% increase in top speed, it not only did more with less, but anticipated the 'people mover' of several decades later."

My friend Skot labored for the better part of a decade to restore a 1946 Chevy Panel Van, which he also painted emerald green. Presumably that's the color he'll be when he sees the Dymaxion.

I'm Feelin' A Little Down Myself

Gizmodo has been following the strange saga of Foxconn, a tech company in Japan which has had a recent unexplained rash of employee suicides. The latest story?

Hon Hai Precision Industry has announced that it will raise the salaries of employees at its Foxconn factory by about 20 percent. The company claims that the raises were planned for a while and aren't in response to recent suicides.

To date, 15 Foxconn employees have lept from the roof to their deaths, which is probably quite a downer to the rest of them. Nintendo and Apple buy parts from Foxconn, among others. Personally I'm happy with the place I work, but I'd probably be much, much happier if I were making 20% more.

A Little Somethin' Somethin'

I Have Seen The Future, and It Has Liver Spots

This is the creepiest iPhone app that will ever be.



I just bought this and aged a picture of myself. The creepy part: I can put my iPhone into the speaker-dock on my desk at work and it faces me. An aged version of myself, the eyes furtively darting around, watches me as if to say, "this is how you will look, and you will spend the rest of your days behind that desk. Despair! Despair!" You can't imagine how unsettling it is.

It, Robot

I took advantage of a 1/3 off deal at buy.com last week and ordered up a Roomba. This is one of those purchases I've resisted for years but the price is right and I vaccum my apartment maybe once a month. Since last night, Roomba has vaccumed twice.

Brief review: the Roomba missed a few spots that I would have gotten during the hour it ran last night; however it's more to the point that it missed the spots while I watched Netflix. Daddy likes. Plus I like the idea that it's a robot that is far more effective not looking like a smoother version of a person. Roomba looks like a hyper-frisbee. That certainly cuts into the creepiness factor! I can't envision the Roombas banding together to take my job, for example. I CAN imagine them cleaning up where I work.

So a couple of thumbs up. Why not? My hands are free.

Great Scott, Mickey!

Forget about Obama's speech. Didn't see it. Instead, check this out!

NASA scientists have created an anti-gravity field that works at room temperature, which is a big Where's My Back to the Future Skateboard breakthrough. The only problem is that it only works on mice.

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have created a superconducting magnet that generates enough energy to lift small animals off the floor. The magnet pushes the water inside the animals up, making them fly. The amazing fact is that it works at room temperature—not the ultra-cooled down environments typical of these magnets—and it's large enough to make rodents to levitate.

The problem with the mice is that they panic, so they have to be sedated to remain calm enough to stay aloft. So if we have a big enough magnet and a mellow enough person, say Matthew McConaughey, human levitation is achievable.

Speaking of levitation, "According to CNN the percentage of American supporting reform proposals went from 53% before the speech to 67% after the speech. In addition, 56% of viewers had a "very positive" reaction to the speech." It's true the results are skewed because there were many more Democrats than Republicans questioned, but let's assume that the Republicans all hated it before and still hated it. Eric Cantor spent the whole time sending emails on his Blackberry; the only Republican who was listening was Rep Joe Wilson. Speech wasn't for these guys, who believe that Obama can't even prove that he was born. Speech was for the people who are going to vote on the bill.

Operating System Follies, Part 24

Again with the reformatting of my Dell Mini 9 computer. It took the better part of a Sunday but I finally pulled the trigger on something I've been wanting since I bought the damn thing in March - I am running Mac OSX on my tiny netbook. I'd show you a picture of it in action but a: it's boring, and b: I can't turn the webcam on my screen, because it's built in.

I'd have done this long ago but it's a little elaborate. Apple doesn't want its OS running on non Apple hardware, so the first thing you have to do is fool the installer disk into working with the Dell. Fortunately this is accomplished with a free hack, but to run the hack I had to pay for the following:

External disk drive, because the Netbook rightly doesn't include one
Internal 32 gig Solid State Drive, because the netbook shipped with 8 gigs. Which was plenty for Linux, but Linux looks like 1995.
2 gig RAM - come on, RAM is cheap.
OSX - would have cost me $100 and change, had I not already owned a copy.
A Sunday afternoon - then again it was 100 degrees out there, so it's good that I had an excuse to say in.

I've used Windows 7 and OSX on this device and I have to say for a variety of reasons, OSX is much better. It's snappier. It takes OSX about 5 seconds to awake from sleep vs 40 seconds for Windows 7. The rest of the system is similarly elfin and sprightly. And because I subscribe to the pricey .mac service, everything synchronizes automatically so now the netbook already knows all my bookmarks and passwords and email accounts. I'm a happier man than I was this time last week.

Windows 7 looked a little better and shipped with great games, but I can DOWNLOAD games man.

RetroApple

Enjoy this mind-bending mockup of what Apple's web page would have looked like in 1979, if there had been web pages. Or a web.

Even I Don't Think Solar Power Is Good For EVERYTHING

This for example. I'm sorry, but the solar lamp is an idea whose time will probably never come.

(h/t Gizmodo)

An Easy Way To Get Your Fifteen Minutes of Fame

Complain about digital TV service.

Listen to this week's LeShow (as I write this the show is on so it's not available online, but it will be soon at this link) and in the first five minutes, there's Harry reading emails from people across the nation complaining about the digital switchover. I'm the last email.

Okay, I'm going to fire up the TV and watch bootlegged TORCHWOOD episodes now.