I havent written anything on here in way too long, but a couple things:
Some things I'm working on at Curious Minds : Ringadoc +Telethrive + some extra secretive stuff I can't talk about (yet)
C'mon Sprint and Verizon, we want a FULLY functional ATT alternative for the iPhone. I am waiting for LTE before I switch from ATT..
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Thats basically a big FU from a Cambridge professor to the banking industry who think they have the power to censor a student's thesis. Whats the thesis on? It documents a well-known flaw in the chip-and-PIN system used in banking:
The flaw is that when you put a card into a terminal, a negotiation takes place about how the cardholder should be authenticated: using a PIN, using a signature or not at all. This particular subprotocol is not authenticated, so you can trick the card into thinking it’s doing a chip-and-signature transaction while the terminal thinks it’s chip-and-PIN. The upshot is that you can buy stuff using a stolen card and a PIN of 0000 (or anything you want). We did so, on camera, using various journalists’ cards. The transactions went through fine and the receipts say “Verified by PIN”.
In a deal with FilmDistrict, Netflix's new streaming service will now carry first run movies like the rest of the satellite and cable providers (who get movies a few months after the theatrical release). For me its amazing because not only will I reduce my plan to the new stream only price of $7.99, but the movie library will be expanding. This is an great because I hated getting DVDs in the mail in the first place. Pat yourselves on the back, Netflix.
So the paranoid world has gone crazy with the release of Firesheep a few days ago (the firefox extension that allows any moron to sniff unsecured login details for facebook, amazon, etc).
There are countless articles on how to protect yourself, how scary it is, and how Mozilla cant pull a kill switch on the extension. All in all, its really nothing new. Protecting yourself in public wifi hotspots with SSL has been around for a long time. But I think Firesheeps creator is bringing a lot of attention to the security issue and I bet within the next few weeks facebook (et al) will begin to default users to https versions of their site.
After a long wait (over 6 months) my free square swipper finally came in the mail. Its amazingly small--- All I know is I'm gonna start cashing in on all those IOUs...
Its crazy to think that a company with 17 million handsets sold in 2010 profited over one-third of the total profits in the entire mobile industry (but I guess its only surprising if you know that Nokia/Samsung/LG sold 400 million handsets total in the same period). Apple only sold 2.8% of the total handsets, but accounted for almost 40% of the profit? Insane. Its evidence of the value the devices provide for the users and the amount of money their loyal following with shell out for it. The original article can be found here
