Sometimes on the web people think that they can deliver images or music to your computer for you to look at or listen to, but somehow keep you from possessing.  They can’t.
Continue reading How to snag images that someone doesn’t want you to get in 4 steps.
My buddy Ian has a great post about his experience trying to find out if he had to move his car. Seems the DOT updates this info on Twitter rather than putting it out on their own website.
Now that’s just crazy, but I know why. Sam used to work for the city and I’ve heard some stories about trying to get things done there. Â The municipal IT department is paid below average wages, there are no negative incentives like being let go, and they are given no positive incentives like promotions or bonuses. Â IT at the city seems to be a job that you take and show up for until you collect your pension.
So it isn’t that this is a bad strategy, it’s just that the city is so completely incompetent at IT that they can’t even put in a CMS. Therefore, private sources have built really good communication tools that are actually working. It sucks that the city can’t do IT, but it is good that they are doing what it takes to help people know. Twitter is a single point of failure, it falls over all the time, but at least it has RSS feeds and it’s open for anyone to read. I think the city should do better, I just don’t know that they can.
Nate Whitten wrote in with a suggestion for Better Berkeley Webcasts. He wants to save all of the files to check them out later. He’s using a download manager like Down Them All 1, but Berkeley’s files are named poorly, so he doesn’t know which one to watch first.
Even better, he sent in the fix for it – he’s numbered the download links.
You should download it from me, or over on the UserScripts.Org page. As always, you’ll need Firefox and Greasemonkey.
The group of misfits I grew up with has turned out pretty well.
One of them, Robb Willer was my debate partner for a while. He’s gone on to be a professor at Berkeley. Robb won the Golden Apple award for being an awesome teacher. How awesome? Robb’s got intellectual groupies!
Berkeley put up Robb’s lectures under a Creative Commons license, so you can download them if you want and distribute them. Of course, Berkeley hasn’t given people any links to download the lectures. A bit lame if you ask me. Also, the way they’ve presented the lectures is terrible. Clicking anywhere on the page during playback makes the video close! That won’t do. I whipped up a quick fix.
Done. Now the video is fixed. When I get a free moment I’ll update the script to provide download links to all of the lectures, because what use is a creative commons license when you can’t get the media‽ Now the videos are available for download as well.
Congrats Robb!
I am intrigued by this weird advisory on cryptome, keeper of, if not all, then at least exclusively, things you are not supposed to know. There’s no attribution, no explanation, and no other mention of this on the web.
The very short gist is:
Avoid the treacherous anonymous web browser, bangotango.com. It is harvesting unwary user addresses. It is operated by triumphpc.com as a law enforcement/intelligence sting.
It would be an interesting concept, if only because it has such problems with the idea of entrapment. The idea that the some agency could make the promise of proxied worry free browsing, even going so far as to include the text of the 4th amendment on the website, and then use evidence gathered there in court is boggling.
I’ve recommended to a number of my friends and coworkers that they get firefox for a nicer time browsing this here interweb.
If you are still using Internet Explorer, it’s important that you get it updated rightnow. There is a current vulnerability in IE that means simply looking at a .jpg can let bad guys do nasty stuff to you. Since the web seems to have a whole lotta images on it, it means that it’s impractical to browse with images turned off. So go get that fixed.
Firefox coincidentally has a similar issue for .bmp images in an older version. The current version is all good, but if you don’t have it, best go get it now. I looked into all the technical hoo ha and it comes down to a single library with an error in it.
Called libpr0n. What’s up with the name?
From their FAQ:
- Why the name “libpr0n”?
- The main goal of the library is to render pornographic images in an efficient way.
I just had another idea about steg poems. You could also use a binary scheme. Unfortunately it’s even less practical, as you need even more lines for each letter. My previous scheme involved a 26 line key, then one line per letter. So for a message X letters long, it would take X+26 sentences.
Unfortunately to translate a single letter to binary requires eight sentences. So while it took 22 sentences to hide “help me”(32 if we had written out the full key), it would take 48 sentences if we used binary.
And I don’t think I could write a 48 line poem with only two rhyme sounds.
I was thinking about rhyme schemes the other day. You basically take a poem, like a limerick, and map the rhymes to letters. A limerick would be: aabba.
a There once was a man from nantucket
a Whose dick was so long he could suck it
b He said with a grin,
b As he wiped off his chin,
a “If my ear was a pussy, I’d fuck it!”
So I was also thinking about steganography. Steganography is the process of hiding a message inside other data. Some interesting applications of this have been the idea of taking a gif, which is really just a set of 1’s and 0’s, and hiding data in the image. The image wouldn’t change visibly, but someone who knew there was a message and knew how to extract the message, could do so while others just admire the vacation photos.
The cool thing about steganography is that it is misdirection, like the old magicians trick of flourishing one hand so that the other could do the important part of the trick. If I just send off an encrypted message, anyone who gets a hold of it not only knows that there’s something fishy going on, but also that it is important enough to hide! They’d know to get cracking on that message. Waste, a product of the amazing Justin Frankel, offers to hide encrypted file transfers by keeping up a steady hum of encrypted noise that only occasionally contains true data. The problem there is that you end up a suspicious guy – why are you always sending out all this encrypted noise?
Another problem with cryptography is that we have to exchange keys – if you don’t have the key to my message, you are in the same position as my enemies. You know there’s something in there, but you don’t know how to get it out! Steganography is letting anyone have the message, but tricking them into not looking for it. So if you know to look for my messages, you don’t need a key.
And when I thought about rhyme schemes it kind of clicked.
1. Write message that you want to encode. “help me”
2. write the letters out uniquely in alpha order. “ehlmp” – p is technically the last letter we will need to encode in our key.
3. Write the alphabet out to the last letter, then put a different rhyme sound next to each letter. We will need 16 rhyme sounds to reach p.
a – bake
b – red
c – crazy
d – shock
e – home
f – bike
g – ripple
h – art
i – fancy
j – jam
k – quiz
l – light
m – door
n – sing
o – lay
p – lie
That was much easier than I expected!
4. Now you write a nice message, each sentence ending with a rhyme word for 16 lines, then ending with words that rhyme with your rhyme words for the rest of it.
Bob,
Don’t know what’s up with you, hope you’ve made some time to go to the lake. Those good old days keep going through my head. Everything is fine here, not working too hard, not being too lazy. Did you see the portrait of “The Man from Little Rock”? Clinton’s going to get hung under the capital dome. Just not how the republicans would like! Don’t know how it will affect the current election, but I suspect we will see some kind of ripple.
How’s your tart? She’s okay with the pregnancy? Just kidding, I know you’re not ready to start a fam. More like ready to start a biz! Her brother’s still living with you, right? No particular reason I’m asking for. Just want to keep up on everything. You know how we say. I know I’m just rambling now, can’t think of anything no matter how much I try. Just wanted to make sure we keep in touch, guess writing this is a start. Old friends, they are important to stay up with, no matter how far we roam. Am I right? Do I lie?
Well, that’s what this letter is for. Didn’t mean to write such a tome…
Write back,
mlk
— That was tougher, but not that bad. The bold letters are the bits that contain our actual message, and I’ve italicized the correponding bits in the beginnning. See if you go through the letter and assign a rhyme scheme you will find it looks like this:
a Bob, Don’t know what’s up with you, hope you’ve made some time to go to the lake.
b Those good old days keep going through my head.
c Everything is fine here, not working too hard, not being too lazy.
d Did you see the portrait of “The Man from Little Rock”?
e Clinton’s going to get hung under the capital dome.
f Just not how the republicans would like!
g Don’t know how it will affect the current election, but I suspect we will see some kind of ripple.
h How’s your tart?
i She’s okay with the pregnancy?
j Just kidding, I know you’re not ready to start a fam.
k More like ready to start a biz!
l Your dad’s still living with you, right?
m No particular reason I’m asking for.
n Just want to keep up on everything.
o You know how we say.
p I know I’m just rambling now, can’t think of anything no matter how much I try.
h Just wanted to make sure we keep in touch, guess writing this is a start.
e Old friends, they are important to stay up with, no matter how far we roam.
l Am I right?
p Do I lie?
m Well, that’s what this letter is for.
e Didn’t mean to write such a tome…
So advantages of this form of steganography:
1. Can be done without special equipment
2. Can be quickly decoded.
3. Easy to send disinformation without corrupting the message
Interesting feature:
May be difficult to use for different dialects. My girlfriend is a brit, so she pronounces words differently than I do. She might have a very tough time with my message, since the rhyme scheme may not match up for her. So this may be more useful for people from similar geographic regions.