Well, let’s assume that Microsoft had .NET runtimes on everything. Right now I’m staring at an IV machine in the hospital room where our next son will be born. Why couldn’t a doctor Tweet that machine? Using a message that looks something like this:

@sequoia_iv_0451 set level to 1 pt per hour

That would change the drip rate on her machine to 1 pint per hour.

That doesn’t seem that important, does it? But now what if EVERY device in the hospital had a runtime like this and could be queried through a Twitter language?

Wouldn’t that open up new application possibilities that don’t exist today? Absolutely!

... ... I don't know what to even say to this. Ignore the massive security issues. Ignore that Robert is suggesting a 3rd party run by hipsters should be used dispense medical care. A system that fails so often that it uses a flying smiling whale instead of HTTP 500 server errors. Ignore that this is yet another love letter blog post in the "wow, twitter is *Amazing*!" collective circle jerk that is Silicon Valley these days.

I ignore all of that... and I still am overwhelmed by this. Somewhere, the IPv6 guys are all going "See! He gets it!"

[mental note to self: use the phrase "collective circle jerk" more often]

silly

The first part of this video is a pool playing robot. while a cool engineering feat, it does what you would expect at the level of accuracy you would expect.

The 2nd part is the cool part!

Augmented Reality pool

I spend a large amount of time looking at URLs. Most of that time is spent looking at the query string. Which caused me to completely miss a problem in WebInspect's URL normalization logic.

Quick, spaces can be URL encoded as either + or %20 right?

True, but only in the query string. So:

http://site.com/foo.php?msg=billy+hoffman
http://site.com/foo.php?msg=billy%20hoffman

both normalize to the same things.

When in the path or filename %20 is a space and + is a literal + character in the filename.

So the urls:

http://site.com/filename+with+spaces.html
http://site.com/filename%20with%20spaces.html

point to two different files on the webserver named "file+with+spaces.txt" and "filename with spaces.txt" respectively.

If you are someone who has to handle URLs, remember that you cannot do a blanket "url = url.Replace("+", "%20") as part of your normalization logic.

The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination.

Holy shit!

Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession | Mail Online

I knew Jake was cool when I met him at the BlackHat speaker party and I found out:

1) He's part of the yak.net family.
2) He likes hacking magstripes.

But then I saw this...

Seeing this photo makes me want to have a giant cardboard cutout of Donald Knuth in that pose...

Jake is my hero

[Driving through yet another dead end and detour on Roswell Rd]

Tom: God just does not want us to have pizza tonight...

Robotic infantry is a reality. ROBOTEX has developed a vision and prototype for an Infantry Replacement Robot to be included in the US Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.

This is seriously disturbing.

RoboteX - Products

1. Tom and I went drinking
2. Tom and I discussed punk bands
3. Tom had not heard Goldfinger
4. Tom has been missing out.

You tell me where your skeleton's hiding
Tell me all and I'll tell you
You think you have a real good fucking answer
A fucking answer I'll give you

Goldfinger - Answers

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Appalling does not even begin to describe systematic and unconscionable destruction of one of the greatest minds in the history of Computer Science all because of his sexuality. Professional exile, revoked security clearances, threatened imprisonment, and forced chemical castration all of which culminated in suicide.

Utterly Disgraceful.

Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling” - PM | Number10.gov.uk

If I were starting out today, I would, without a shadow of a doubt, write a web app instead of a desktop app, for these reasons:

This is pretty interesting.

Why I’m Done Making Desktop Applications