56043501
submission
eggboard writes:
Public libraries are starting to build temporary and permanent labs that let patrons experiment with new arts, crafts, and sciences, many of them associated with the maker movement. It's a way to bring this technology and training to those without the money or time to join makerspaces or buy gear themselves. It seems to extend the mission of libraries to educate, inform, and enrich, but is a seemingly rare move in the direction of teaching people to create for pleasure and professionally. Many libraries are experimenting with experimenting.
55910531
submission
eggboard writes:
The Internet Archive has copies of Web pages corresponding to 378 billion URLs. It's working on several efforts, some of them quite recent, to help deter or assist with link rot, when links go bad. Through an API for developers, WordPress integration, a Chrome plug-in, and a JavaScript lookup, the Archive hopes to help people find at least the most recent copy of a missing or deleted page. More ambitiously, they instantly cache any link added to Wikipedia, and want to become integrated into browsers as a fallback rather than showing a 404 page.
55798155
submission
eggboard writes:
Marc Andreessen wrote an essay in the New York Times that appeared today, in which he tried to make the case for Bitcoin going mainstream for payments, if not as a currency. After comparing Bitcoin to the rise of personal computers and the Internet, he tries to explain how it eliminates fraud and will solve global money transfers and the plight of the unbanked. I wrote a critique of these and other points in his essay:
Bitcoin doesn’t eliminate fraudulent transactions; it only eliminates counterfeit payments. This can, of course, save many tens or hundreds of billions of dollars a year globally and translate to more efficiency in commerce. But removing the intermediary also removes recourse outside of courts, and the cost and nature of that can’t be determined.
55511325
submission
eggboard writes:
The tools to make crafts, electronics prototypes, and cool stuff have started rapidly to turn to medical gear, especially in developing nations. The early results are quite marvelous, but there are a ton of concerns, too. The pace of change is incredibly fast:[Many people] without any without any formal medical training—can take advantage of access to global supply chains, cutting-edge medical knowledge, and recent leaps in design and fabrication technology that have made the prototyping process faster, cheaper, and simpler than ever before. Even as concerns about safety and liability are only starting to be addressed, medical inventors and other technical tinkerers are already improving and saving lives—sometimes their own.
53466911
submission
eggboard writes:
Penny Arcade wants to hire one IT person to do four jobs, and is looking for someone with a terrible work/life balance to be paid poorly because the company isn't money-focused. This isn't unusual for an IT job, of course, especially at a small company. But Penny Arcade rakes in millions from its webcomics, PAX conventions, games, and more, and says the job's benefits will outweigh the low salary. But did they mention you need to be able to work in an "offensive environment"? Yes, they did. Sounds perfect for the right person.
18295068
submission
eggboard writes:
The New York Times ran a strange story that tried to explain why Wi-Fi fails when thousands of people gathered a tech event try to use a network set up by organizers. The story says Wi-Fi wasn't designed for that kind of use. I disagree, and explain why at length. The 1999 IEEE 802.11b spec might not have been designed for it, but 802.11g could handle mass numbers, and 802.11n is designed to deal with interference and large user bases.
13255070
submission
eggboard writes:
After examining the WWDC video and talking to two veteran Wi-Fi experts, it seems likely that the iPhone 4 has a Wi-Fi driver flaw that was part of the trouble in making a network connection during Steve Job's WWDC keynote. The other problem was the massive congestion caused by so many independent access points. (Congestion may have triggered the iPhone 4's troubles, too.) With mobile hotspots proliferating on phones and in portable devices like the MiFi, we're going to see more trouble in the future.
9995812
submission
eggboard writes:
Martin Beck, who in 2008 co-wrote a paper describing a way to inject packets into a secured Wi-Fi system, is back with a more extensive exploit. His "Enhanced TKIP Michael Attacks" still doesn't allow extraction of a key, and is limited to TKIP (not AES-CCMP) WPA-protected networks. Still, he's figured out how to put in large payloads, and to extract data sent from an access point to a client--all without cracking the network key. The attack requires proximity to sniff and inject data, but it's another crack in the older key standard (TKIP) that no one with serious security interests should still use.
6535371
submission
eggboard writes:
Apple told a few reporters in briefings yesterday to look for significant changes in its two top-line base station models, which are noted in passing as "new" on the product pages: 50 percent throughput improvement and 25 percent distance bump. How did they do this? With Engadget's FCC tip about "3x3" models, I've determined that Apple now offers what seems to be the first mass-market 450 Mbps, three radio-chain Wi-Fi router. Virtually all other consumer routers max out at 300 Mbps.
