stray bullets

Mafiaboy grows up; a hacker seeks redemption The Internet attack took Yahoo Inc. engineers by surprise. It came so fast and with such intensity that Yahoo, then the Web's second most-popular destination, was knocked offline for about three hours. That was on the morning of Feb. 7, 2000. A few months later, 15-year-old Michael Calce was watching Goodfellas at a friend's house in the suburbs of Montreal when he got a 3 a.m. call on his cell phone. His father was on the line. "They're here," he said. A hacker seeks a career. This seems to be the standard arc: make news, get busted, do time, write a book, become a security consultant.

Follow up: Almost human: Interview with a chatbot No machine has yet passed. But the winner of the Loebner Prize at the weekend – Elbot, brainchild of Fred Roberts at Artificial Solutions in Germany – came close, according to the contest's rather generous rules.

Ocean Containers To Bury According to most survivalist sites, ocean containers can be buried, hidden away under the ground outfitted with electricals, rudementary plumbing, and all the food and water you can store for several months of keeping a low profile. While we at American Steel have seen it done, I'd like to give a word of caution.... Anyone planning to use a container for anything should take note. (via)

Downloads soar despite crackdown Music downloads among US adults have risen sharply during the past several months, despite a crackdown by the music industry to curb such behaviour. Few I know could afford their music collection. (via)

also:
Recurring science misconceptions in K-6 textbooks (via)
First look at Downey Jr and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson
$56,000 Turntable Only An Audiophile Could Love
Surrealist techniques (via)

viddy:
Buffalo Dance featuring Hair Coat, Last Horse, and Parts His Hair
Trio: Da Da Da
Alien Contact: What will happen on October 14 (thx, dave)

stray bullets

Humans Have Astonishing Memories, Study Finds If human memory were truly digital, it would have just received an upgrade from something like the capacity of a floppy disk to that of a flash drive. A new study found the brain can remember a lot more than previously believed.

NASA to Explore 'Secret Layer' of the Sun Next April, for a grand total of 8 minutes, NASA astronomers are going to glimpse a secret layer of the sun. Researchers call it "the transition region." It is a place in the sun's atmosphere, about 5000 km above the stellar surface, where magnetic fields overwhelm the pressure of matter and seize control of the sun's gases. It's where solar flares explode, where coronal mass ejections begin their journey to Earth, where the solar wind is mysteriously accelerated to a million mph. It is, in short, the birthplace of space weather.

ET could 'tickle' stars to create galactic internet Advanced extraterrestrial civilisations may be sending signals through space by "tickling" stars, new research suggests. The signalling would be the galactic equivalent of the internet.

also:
Doctored photos: 20 memorable picture fakes (via)
The 10 most decadent dictators (via)
Al Capone’s Island (via)
How to be a thrifty gardener

viddy:
Welcome to my Study 5
Ah Pook Is Here
Billiard playing robot

stray bullets

Study: Large Earthquake Could Strike New York City The new study revealed a significant previously unknown active seismic zone running at least 25 miles from Stamford, Conn., to the Hudson Valley town of Peekskill, N.Y., where it passes less than a mile north of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. Several small quakes are clustered along its length. It is "probably capable of producing at least a magnitude-6 quake," the researchers said in a statement.

Could Robot Aliens Exist? The existence of a race of sentient alien robots might be not just possible, but inevitable. In fact, we might be living in a "postbiological universe" right now, in which intelligent extraterrestrials somewhere have exchanged organic brains for artificial ones.

What conductors are doing when they wave their hands around -- and what we get out of it Waving the hands, as conductors frequently do, seemed largely for show. The conductor appeared to me to be more dancing along with the music than actually leading the musicians in any meaningful way. It wasn't until I married an amateur musician that I actually learned that the conductor could have an important influence on the way an orchestra sounds.

also:
Interview: Brian Eno (via)
20 best: ambient records ever made (via)
Thought Control In Economics (via)
The Enigmatic Notebook Drawings of Nicolas Flamel (via)

viddy:
Buckminster Fuller on "Death"
Olivier Messiaen talks about birds
Robert Rauschenberg - Erased De Kooning
Tom Jones with Janis Joplin (via)
Jedi Knights - May the Funk Be With You