Group items tagged

Very interesting article that begins with the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, and continues to speak about different techniques of encryption that are harder and harder to break. It also deals with the fact that Mary's messages were being intercepted and the article speaks about secure encryption using photons where you would know if your message was intercepted.

The thing I found very interesting about this article is the discussion about ex-NBA owner Donald Sterling. Yes, his comments were horrifying, but he said things in the privacy of his home. I guess what I, and this article, are trying to say is that privacy is dead and all information is vulnerable.

This article is interesting because the author makes an unusual comparison (between a controversial art piece and the far reaches of space) in order to make his point. Despite the differences between these two topics he melds them together in order to show the reader a new way of thinking about the concept of nothing.

This doesn't quite follow the guidelines of the blogging assignment, I don't think, but I found it pretty interesting, so I'll share this one too. This is basically about the people who are going to be holding the keys to the building blocks of the internet. I'm not sure I understand it completely, but it sounds fascinating!

Excellent find! I heard about this security system when the author of this piece, James Ball, was interviewed for the "On the Media" podcast: http://www.onthemedia.org/story/so-many-keys/. Great stuff.

This article opened my eyes to many things, such as how many cookies can be stored on your computer from not going to many websites, how easy it is to track ones location, and how Facebook could easily recognize you in real life. It discussed ways that information is gathered and stored about someone online that I hadn't even thought of before and was very eye-opening.

Facebook already knew you would feel that way about this news.

An article about a Cisco security upgrade for the cloud and various devices that access the cloud.

I like the way this is written because the author makes it a fun read. It is not a long boring article about the writing process of her story, but rather it breaks down her process into steps. Moreover, her writing is entertaining, which grasped my interest more so than many other posts. 

An in depth summary about Mary, Queen of Scots, and the people she encountered.

I found this article and liked it because it gave me a lot of information about the Beale Cipher and treasure, even more information than Singh. I especially was interested in the reasons describing the possibility of it being real or a hoax.

I felt that this article was particularly well written because of how conversational the author was with the reader. The conversational aspect allows the scientific aspect of the article to be better understood, in a way. The use of a video was also allowed for a better understanding of the physics.

I was thinking about doing this one! I curled for a couple of winters, and always wondered about the weirdly illogical physics of curling stones. Unfortunately, the nearest curling club is 3 hours away in Knoxville...

Interesting article about Charles Baggage's computer designs finally being put to use! Found it interesting because we read about Charles Babbage and I was surprised to learn that the computer hadn't been built yet.

For the latest on Plan 28, the initiative to build Babbage's analytic engine, visit http://plan28.org/.

Interesting to read a little more about the history of the Vigenere Cipher. Also explains how it is cracked.

This blog has information about military cryptography and privacy in general, including this post about the Zimmermann Telegram. Is it ethical to lie to an ally if it is in their best interest? What are the ethics behind spying on one's allies? Do ethics hinder one's ability to win a war, and if so, should ethics be disregarded in times of war? Another interesting post examines how Snowden should be viewed as a patriot, not a traitor. This made me question where one's loyalty should remain- to the government or to the people?

About the same time we talked about the Ahmed Mohamed story during class yesterday, this happened.

"A factory refurbished Thinkpad shipped with Windows 7 and a scheduler app that ran once a day, collecting usage data about what you do with your computer and exfiltrating it to an analytics company. "

The St. Louis Cardinals are being investigated by the FBI for allegedly hacking into networks and trying to steal information about the Houston Astros, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

What really stood out to me about this article was that they said the NSA actually pays more attention to those people who use encryption. So, in order to protect ourselves and also avoid prying NSA eyes, we should encourage people to stand in solidarity with encryption. I thought this was really interesting because I always thought that encryption would undoubtedly make everything more secure, but here they're saying that it actually attracts attention (which isn't necessarily a good thing).

When I was a kid, I read an issue of Superman in which he faces Batman's villain, the Joker. At one point, the Joker tells Superman that he's kidnapped all of Superman's best friends (Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and so on) and locked them inside lead-lined caskets, hidden throughout Metropolis. Since the caskets are air-tight, they only have an hour to live, and Superman can't find them because his x-ray vision can't see through lead! That's what the Joker said. Actually, since Superman can't see through lead, those caskets *stood out* when he scanned the city with his x-ray vision, and he rescued all his friends in short order. Same basic idea.

You can find anything on the Internet: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/superjoker6.jpg.

I'm just going to resubmit the bookmark directly to this page so I'll be sure it ends up publicly in the group. This wasn't mentioned in Singh chapter 2, but it was created around the time period discussed in the chapter. (Plus, it's one of my favorite articles I've read in Wired so I really wanted to use it as a bookmark.) The article discusses the strategies used to break this cipher, some of which, such as frequency analysis, we have talked about in class. It's also just fascinating to read about the Oculists and their history.

I was just followed on Twitter by someone from Blockstream, which looks like a start-up based on crypto currencies like Bitcoin. Fascinating.