Tag Archives: tech blog

Firefox OS Will Get Overwhelming Developer Support

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The Mozilla Foundation has just renamed the project Boot to Gecko “Firefox OS”. But can we really talk about an operating system?
Absolutely. In terms of architecture, it is an operating system based on Linux, just as Android is. But we rely on Gecko, the Firefox web browser layout engine, to run applications written entirely in HTML5. We dropped XUL (the XML User Interface Language) in favour of HTML5, a language known to all web developers.

Even native applications, such as the dialer or address book, are written in HTML5, and users will be able to examine the source code to check it.

via Firefox OS Will Get Overwhelming Developer Support – Mozilla.

A Faster Fourier Transform

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The principle of the Fourier transform, which dates back to the 19th century, is that any signal, such as a sound recording, can be represented as the sum of a collection of sine and cosine waves with different frequencies and amplitudes. This collection of waves can then be manipulated with relative ease—for example, allowing a recording to be compressed or noise to be suppressed. In the mid-1960s, a computer-friendly algorithm called the fast Fourier transform (FFT) was developed. Anyone who’s marveled at the tiny size of an MP3 file compared with the same recording in an uncompressed form has seen the power of the FFT at work.

via A Faster Fourier Transform – Technology Review.

A faster transform means that less computer power is required to process a given amount of information—a boon to energy-conscious mobile multimedia devices such as smart phones.

Note the higlighted statement.  Power consumption is trumping speed in modern computing devices.  Also Note:  The author of the linked to article isn’t me.

Facebook IPO Post Mortem

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4. Mobile is going to crush Facebook. The logic for Facebook’s price decline is that they have a problem in mobile. They can’t offer all the games they can in a browser. They can’t offer the same ads or branding opportunities. All true.

via Facebook IPO Post Mortem – Killer – but not for the reasons you think ! « blog maverick.

5. And in the interest of disclosure I bought 150k shares of FB. 50k shares at 33, 50k shares at 31.97 and 50k shares around 32.50. Its a trade, not an investment. Kind of like buying a Mickey Mantle, a Hank Aaron and a Barry Bonds Rookie Card knowing there is a card show in town next week

Plastic Logic Unveils a Flexible Color ePaper Screen (video)

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There’s no word yet on when the new screen might hit the market, but I do know that it can display 4 thousand colors (4,096 to be exact) with a resolution of 75ppi. While that might seem awfully low, there’s a reason for it. Plastic Logic added color to their existing screen in much the same way that E-ink did.

The color is provided by a filter lying on top of the grayscale screen. The screen underneath the filter has a resolution of 150 ppi, and that gets cut in half because you need 3 pixels to do red, green, and blue. There’s also a 4th pixel which is left alone (it shows the white/black of the underlying screen. The RGBW are arranged in a 2 by 2 grid in the layer on top of the Plastic Logic screen.

via Plastic Logic Unveils a Flexible Color ePaper Screen (video) – The Digital Reader.

FreeBSD 10 To Use Clang Compiler, Deprecate GCC

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Going back to 2009, FreeBSD developers have worked to replace GCC with LLVM/Clang. Over time, there’s been numerous improvements especially with the FreeBSD 9.0 release. The FreeBSD developers are interested in doing away with the GPL-licensed GNU Compiler Collection and instead use the Apple-sponsored LLVM/Clang work that’s under a BSD-like license.

via [Phoronix] FreeBSD 10 To Use Clang Compiler, Deprecate GCC.

New research: There’s no need to panic over factorable keys–just mind your Ps and Qs

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We have been able to remotely compromise about 0.4% of all the public keys used for SSL web site security. The keys we were able to compromise were generated incorrectly–using predictable “random” numbers that were sometimes repeated. There were two kinds of problems: keys that were generated with predictable randomness, and a subset of these, where the lack of randomness allows a remote attacker to efficiently factor the public key and obtain the private key. With the private key, an attacker can impersonate a web site or possibly decrypt encrypted traffic to that web site. We’ve developed a tool that can factor these keys and give us the private keys to all the hosts vulnerable to this attack on the Internet in only a few hours.

via New research: There’s no need to panic over factorable keys–just mind your Ps and Qs | Freedom to Tinker.

The last time I was at this blog was many years ago when he showed how to hack electronic voting machines.

Android Developers Blog: A Closer Look at 10 Billion Downloads

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On Tuesday, we announced that Android Market passed 10 Billion app downloads. We wanted to look a little deeper at that huge number. First question: which app was lucky number 10 billion? Photobucket Mobile. They’ll be getting a great prize package, including tickets to next year’s Google I/O developer conference.

via Android Developers Blog: A Closer Look at 10 Billion Downloads.

Arp Cache Poisoning and Packet Sniffing

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Arp cache poisoning puts the attacker in position to intercept communications between the two computers. Computer A believes it is communicating with Computer B, but because of the poisoned arp table, the communication actually goes to the attacker’s computer. The attacker can then either respond to Computer A (pretending to be Computer B), or simply forward the packets to its intended destination, but only after the packet information is captured and logged for later use by the attacker. Likewise, the response from Computer B can be captured and logged by the attacker, who has also used Arp poisoning to make Computer B think the attacker’s computer is Computer A. This type of attack is known as Man in the Middle attack.

via Arp Cache Poisoning and Packet Sniffing – ADMIN | The resource for all system administrators.