engineering
Google’s Patrick Brady tells us how the Nexus 7 went from ‘start to finish in four months’
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/02/how-the-nexus-7-came-to-be/
At this past year’s CES, we were inundated by tablet after tablet after, well, tablet. Some were big, some were small, and some were just right. A few, though, kind of faded into the wallpaper and didn’t return. Such was a little prototype NVIDIA brought by for us to play with, a 7-inch tablet from ASUS with Tegra 3 power and an amazing price tag — just $250. We got our hands on it briefly (as seen in the video below) and it was impressive, but it was never to be seen again.
One month later, Google’s Director of Android Partner Engineering Patrick Brady joined Matias Duarte in Taipei to meet with ASUS and to launch the project that would become Google’s first Nexus tablet, the 7-inch, Tegra 3-powered Nexus 7 that is shipping soon for an even more amazing $199. Coincidence? Join us for a discussion with Patrick about how Google’s mighty little tablet came to be.
Google’s Patrick Brady tells us how the Nexus 7 went from ‘start to finish in four months’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://gizmodo.com/5914674/how-hackers-nearly-took-down-googles-recaptcha-system
Last weekend a group of hackers unveiled Stiltwalker, a hack that subverts the reCaptcha system Google uses to protect its services from bots with 99 percent accuracy. But just hours before the group was set to present their hack at the LayerOne conference Google patched it up so it wouldn’t work anymore.
Stiltwalker is an impressive piece of engineering by the hackers from Defcon Group. CAPTCHA hacks have existed before, but what makes this hack so neat is that when it was working it could nail Google’s coded system much more accurately than any other before it. Rather than attack a single vulnerability, the hackers attacked several shortcomings of the audio portion of the audio version of reCAPTCHA from multiple angles. Ars Technica reports:
What the hackers-identified only as C-P, Adam, and Jeffball-learned from analyzing the sound prints of each test was that the background noise, in sharp contrast to the six words, didn’t include sounds that registered at higher frequencies. By plotting the frequencies of each audio test on a spectogram, the hackers could easily isolate each word by locating the regions where high pitches were mapped. reCAPTCHA was also undermined by its use of just 58 unique words. Although the inflections, pronunciations, and sequences of spoken words varied significantly from test to test, the small corpus of words greatly reduced the work it took a computer to recognize each utterance.
The group has said they’re already working on a way to get past Google’s new system. [Defcon Group via Ars Technica]
Image by Dirtbag / Blackhatworld
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5912616/see-the-no+stick-ketchup-bottle-of-the-future-in-action
Getting ketchup out of a bottle is a massive unsolved engineering problem. Plastic squeezy bottles, upside down bottles, tapping the 57, just shove a butter knife in there—none really does the job. But the wonderful nerds at MIT might have done it with their new non-stick LiquiGlide bottle.
LiquiGlide is actually a coating made up of super-slick materials that’s food-safe and can work on plastic, glass, or other types of packaging. Its creator, Dave Smith at MIT, told Fast Company, LiquiGlide is “kind of a structured liquid—it’s rigid like a solid, but it’s lubricated like a liquid.”
The long term goals—beyond cracking the $17 billion bottle industry—are anti-clogging for oil and fuel lines, or building a better, non-icing windshield. For now, though, check out the amazing video of your not-too-distant hot-dog topping future. [FastCo]
I Read 21 Books About The Financial Crisis And They Explained Nothing
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-lo-21-books-financial-crisis-2012-2
Ever thought you would have to read 21 books to get to the bottom of what caused the financial crisis?
Andrew Lo, an economist at MIT, has some bad news: it’s going to take at least 22.
Lo, a leading expert on hedge funds and financial engineering, has written a paper (h/t NPR) for the Journal of Economic Literature describing his experience reading 21 books on the crisis — nine by journalists, 11 by academics and one by a former Treasury Secretary.
His conclusion: In a field that prides itself on its scientific rigor (however dismal), the books reveal that alarmingly few facts about the crisis have been agreed upon. Was there too little or too much regulation? How much of a factor were low interest rates? No one’s been able to say conclusively.
“After each book, I felt like I knew less,” Lo told NPR’s Planet Money.
Economics, he says, has fallen well short of that standard when it comes to understanding the crisis:
“Many of us like to think of financial economics as a science, but complex events like the financial crisis suggest that this conceit may be more wishful thinking than reality.”
Read Andrew Lo’s Reading About the Financial Crisis: A 21-Book Review >
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See Also:
- Goldman In Talks To Hire Former Geithner Aide To Lead Communication Effort
- Lloyd Blankfein Just Fired His Fall Guy, But Goldman’s Problems Aren’t Going Away
- Here’s The Will Ferrell Super Bowl Ad For Old Milwaukee That You Missed
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Twitter Just Acquired A Huge Anti-Spam Startup
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-dasient-2012-1
Twitter has acquired security startup Dasient, a company that specializes in fighting spam and malware.
The Dasient team will be plugged into Twitter’s “revenue engineering” group as Twitter monetizes with self-serve ads, reports TechCrunch.
In terms of the size of the team this acquisition was a large one, said TechCrunch’s sources.
It could be a match made in heaven — the most likely scenario seems that Twitter wants to protect its self-serve ad product from being used as a vehicle for spam.
With Dasient being well-versed in anti-spam and anti-malware efforts, it could be just what Twitter needs to maintain the product.
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See Also:
- This First Example Of A SOPA ‘Blackout’ Is Pretty Lame
- ANALYST: Twitter Could IPO Today, But It Would Be A Big Mistake
- SOPA Is So Serious That Mark Zuckerberg Just Tweeted For The First Time In Three Years
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Watch This Earthquake-Proof Desk Easily Shrug Off a 2,000 Pound Block [Video]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5877608/watch-this-earthquake+proof-desk-easily-shrug-off-a-2000-pound-block
I don’t live in a high risk area for deadly tremors, but after watching this earthquake-proof table easily survive having a 2,200 pound block dropped on it, I think I still want one for my office—just in case.
The table was designed by Ido Bruno and Arthur Brutter primarily for use in schools. Students are typically taught to hide under their desks in the event of an earthquake, but most desks aren’t designed to support the weight of all the debris were the building to collapse. Which is clearly demonstrated in this video when they drop just a 1,000 pound weight on a traditional desk and it’s immediately pancaked.
![medium 9a24299d12ad18d5e5d291a5332a1063 Watch This Earthquake Proof Desk Easily Shrug Off a 2,000 Pound Block [Video]](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2012/01/medium_9a24299d12ad18d5e5d291a5332a1063.jpg "Watch This Earthquake-Proof Desk Easily Shrug Off a 2,000 Pound Block")
In addition to providing a safe haven for students, the desk’s supporting structure is designed in such a way that it also provides several escape routes depending on how debris has fallen. It’s also light enough to be lifted by just two students, and is built with durable but inexpensive materials so it’s actually affordable for a school to purchase en masse. Now it’s not available just yet, but based on these tests being conducted at the Structural Engineering department at Padua University in Italy, it shouldn’t have much trouble getting approved for sale. [designboom]
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NYC opening its first public high school dedicated to software engineering
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/17/nyc-opening-its-first-pubic-high-school-dedicated-to-software-en/
There are plenty of specialized public high schools in New York City and in September of 2012 that roster of educational institutions will grow by one more when the Academy for Software Engineering opens its doors. The school will greet its first class of incoming freshman at the beginning of the next school year and become the first NYC public school dedicated to pumping out programers. Beyond filling our desperate need for more engineers the school will be special in several respects. For one, it will be a “limited, unscreened” institution, which means grades and attendance records are not considered for admission — only interest. Secondly, this isn’t a vocational school that simply teaches kids to live and breathe in C++ and JavaScript. While the focus will be on software engineering, it will be accompanied by traditional college preparation academic classes. Check out the source and more coverage links for a few more details.
NYC opening its first public high school dedicated to software engineering originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Here’s The Information Facebook Gathers On You As You Browse The Web
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-tracking-2011-11
Facebook stirred up privacy concerns when it came out that its “Like” and “Share” buttons appearing all over the web actually report your visits back to Facebook servers.
Now Facebook engineering director Arturo Bejar has shared what personal information the company retains with its tracking cookies, as reported by USA Today.
When you’re logged in, Facebook will keep a timestamped list of the URLs you visit and pair it with your name, list of friends, Facebook preferences, email address, IP address, screen resolution, operating system, and browser.
When you’re logged out, it captures everything except your name, list of friends, and Facebook preferences. Instead, it uses a unique alphanumeric identifier to track you.
Keep in mind that Facebook isn’t tracking your entire browsing history, just your visits to sites with “Like” and “Share” buttons.
Bejar told USA Today that Facebook technically could link your name to your logged-out browsing data, but he “makes it a point not to do this.”
Why does Facebook gather all this info and what do they do with it? By keeping so many details, it makes it easier to identify fake accounts and scammers. By keeping track of what users “Like” around the web, Facebook can show people ads that will be the most interesting to them and generate more revenue.
Despite Facebook having the best intentions — wanting to maintain a high quality user experience and generate ad revenue — you can see why privacy experts are concerned.
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See Also:
- THE APPLE INVESTOR: iOS 5-Twitter Integration Is Paying Off
- More Young People Want To Work Here Than Anywhere Else
- The 15 Tech Companies Young People Are Dying To Work For
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