Topic: COMPUTER - on April 29, 2014 at 4:41:00 PM CEST
This Incredible Animation Was Made By Code That Could Fit on a Floppy
This is no 20 GB video file, painstakingly pulled from a render farm. All of it was generated in real time by one tiny algorithm. And it's amazing.
Every Easter, the town of Saarbrücken, Germany, plays host to Revision, a demoparty where hundreds of programmers and artists get together for four days of showing off. This year, the demoscene group Mercury unveiled an incredible 64k intro called The Timeless. Since the file size is limited to 64 kilobytes, the graphics and music are all generated algorithmically in real time—this is called procedural generation.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on February 14, 2014 at 3:49:00 PM CET
Millionenbeute: Unbekannte rauben Drogenportal mit Bitcoin-Trick aus
Seit Tagen warnen Bitcoin-Plattformen vor einem Sicherheitsproblem. Die Betreiber der Online-Drogenbörse "Silk Road 2.0" haben diese Warnungen ignoriert und müssen dafür einen hohen Preis zahlen: Unbekannte haben ihnen digitales Geld im Millionenwert abgenommen.
Über eine Schwachstelle im Bitcoin-Überweisungssystem haben Unbekannte die Online-Drogenplattform "Silk Road 2.0" um knapp zwei Millionen Dollar betrogen. Am Donnerstag teilte einer der Betreiber des Handelsportals über "Reddit" mit : "Wir sind gehackt worden." Für ein bis zwei Tage soll die Plattform nun stillgelegt werden, bis die Hintergründe des Angriffs geklärt sind. "Silk Road 2.0" ist einer der prominentesten Ableger der Drogenbörse "Silk Road", die von US-Behörden im vergangenen Jahr geschlossen worden war. Das Portal ist dafür bekannt, dass dort vor allem mit illegalen Gütern wie Drogen und Waffen gehandelt wird. Es ist nur über das Anonymisierungs-Netzwerk Tor erreichbar.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on January 6, 2014 at 2:14:00 PM CET
Largest small system emulator
This entry weighs in at a magical 4043 bytes (8086 nibbles, 28,301 bits). It manages to implement most of the hardware in a 1980’s era IBM-PC using a few hundred fewer bits than the total number of transistors used to implement the original 8086 CPU.
If you are using OS X, the included sc-ioccc.terminal configuration file will correctly display console applications that use ANSI graphics.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on December 27, 2013 at 2:21:00 PM CET
CCC-Kongress: Hacker-Treff im Snowden-Sturm
Der Chaos Computer Club selbst spricht von einem "viertägigen Congress um Technologie, Gesellschaft und Utopie". Mehr als 130 Vorträge sind zu hören (und sollen auch live über das Internet übertragen werden), aber die sind nur ein Teil der Veranstaltung: Das ganze Treffen ist durchzogen von kleinen Spiel-, Arbeits- und Bastelecken. Hier können sich Gruppen mit kleinen Einzelprojekten befassen, zusammen löten, programmieren oder klönen.
Streams ccc.de/congress/2013/wiki/Main_Page 8.000 Nerds gegen die NSA
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Topic: COMPUTER - on December 23, 2013 at 2:43:00 PM CET
Glenn Greenwald to deliver keynote at 30C3 hacker conference
The world's oldest and largest global hacker organization The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has announced it will open next week's conference, the 30th Chaos Communication Congress (30c3), with a December 27 opening keynote by Glenn Greenwald.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on December 15, 2013 at 5:21:00 PM CET
Data Dealer, the gleefully sarcastic game about data privacy
"Privacy? Screw that. Turn the tables! Become a data dealer and get all the dirty details on your friends, neighbors and the rest of the world. Learn how to trick your users and make cash out of their personal info! Legal? Illegal? Whatever."
Data Dealer is an online game about collecting and selling personal data - full of irony and gleeful sarcasm. It´s a browser/serious/edu/impact game about digital culture and surveillance and aims to raise awareness about online privacy in a new and fun way. The English version was released in May 2013. Let's call it a bastard offspring of certain shiny 2010 Facebook Games and the 1990 TV simulation game Mad TV, reborn with the souls of South Park and Bruce Schneier. And it´s also available on Facebook! Oh, the irony.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on December 14, 2013 at 6:23:00 PM CET
SteamOS beta, early build-your-own system requirements
As it announced earlier this week, Valve shipped its 300 Steam Machine prototypes to its randomly selected beta testers late today. That announcement was accompanied by the first public release of SteamOS, the currently-in-beta Linux-based operating system that will power Valve's new gaming-PCs-turned-consoles.
Valve's announcement post has given us a better idea of exactly what SteamOS includes: it's based on Debian 7 ("Wheezy"), which Valve has "optimize[d]... for a living room experience." It comes with the Gnome desktop environment pre-installed, and users are free to download and install other software to the OS as they see fit—while SteamOS is clearly being built with gaming in mind, there's nothing to stop you from loading it up with productivity software and browsers and using it as a work PC, either.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on December 3, 2013 at 3:39:00 PM CET
Explain Shell breaks down Linux command line arguments for you
While it is possible to use modern Linux distributions without touching the command line at all, or only on rare occasions, you will usually quickly come into contact with command line arguments when you want to make a change to the operating system and need to research how it is done on the Internet.
You can run these commands right away, but if you do not really know what they will do, it is usually not a good idea to do so.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on December 3, 2013 at 3:37:00 PM CET
Stuxnet 2 in the works, claims Iranian news agency
Hold the front page: Saudi Arabian and Israeli spy agencies are developing a worm more powerful than Stuxnet to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program again, after meeting in Vienna last week.
Sound a little far-fetched? Well, stranger things have happened but this particular yarn comes from Iran’s FARS news agency, thought to have strong ties to the country’s Revolutionary Guard, so a healthy dose of scepticism is probably advised.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on November 29, 2013 at 2:42:00 PM CET
Linux.Darlloz worm attacks embedded systems
A Symantec researcher has discovered a worm that runs on embedded Linux systems, like those found in set-top boxes and routers. It's common for owners of these devices to forget about them, letting them run in the background for so long as they don't misbehave -- and as a result, they are often out of date. The worm, called Linux.Darlloz, attacks out-of-date Linux installations running on Intel hardware (a small minority in the embedded systems world), but it would not be hard to modify it to attack embedded linuces on other chips.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on November 13, 2013 at 2:03:00 PM CET
Apple II DOS Source Code Released
The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, is not just a museum of hardware, but also of software. The Museum has made public such gems as the source code for MacPaint, Photoshop, and APL, and now code from the Apple II. As their site reports: 'With thanks to Paul Laughton, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Damer, founder and curator of the Digibarn Computer Museum, and with the permission of Apple Inc., we are pleased to make available the 1978 source code of Apple II DOS for non-commercial use. This material is Copyright © 1978 Apple Inc., and may not be reproduced without permission from Apple
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Topic: COMPUTER - on October 17, 2013 at 4:22:00 PM CEST
Google to support Windows XP longer than its developer Microsoft
Microsoft will officially retire its Windows XP operating system early next year, but Google on Wednesday announced it will continue to support its Chrome browser for the platform through at least early 2015.
The Mountain View, Calif., Web giant announced it will keep sending out updates and security patches to the Windows XP version of Google Chrome "until at least April 2015."
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