Link: Proximity-card cloning
Turns out those HID, etc. RFID-based proximity cards aren’t quite as secure as your employer thinks they are. $30 will build you a cloner. Add a bit more, and you can read and clone cards from a couple of feet away.
Feel safe yet?
Useful ideas from Joe Howard (Firefighter Fitness Formula) for making cheap or free workout gear, including a slosh pipe, tractor tire, Bulgarian training bag, and a medicine ball:
More, from ReadyMade:
Link: CES: The Missing Protocol
Jean-Louis Gassée on what’s missing from electronic devices today: the ability to talk back. I think he’s absolutely right:
This being the Consumer Electronics Show, we’ll see a flood of new and improved entertainment devices, TVs, home theaters systems, security cameras and other home control products. All of which have a terrible time talking to one another and being centrally controlled, or even simply controlled.
Why can’t TVs, receivers and DVD players answer questions? Some devices have Ethernet or even WiFi connections and they all contain one or more micro-controllers, but they still resist interrogation. How hard would it be to program a device to provide some feedback?
Link: xkcd: Audiophiles
They are such easy targets. (And the lightbulb joke is fantastic.)
Link: Cherokee, Apple partner to put language on iPhones
Cherokee is now a language option on Macs, iPods Touch, iPhones, and iPads.
MacOS has supported Cherokee since 2003, but iOS has only supported it since version 4.1. I would not be surprised at all to see Apple do a big push to translate iOS even more widely in the next year or two. (AP story, on Yahoo! News)
December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse (by Michael Black)
Belmar, NJ apparently got rather a lot of snow. :)
Link: ‘Damn right,’ I said (LRB - Eliot Weinberger)
Foucault vs George W Bush, Jr. Worth reading, rather unlike Decision Points, of which this is a review.
Link: NYC blizzard
Short film shot in Astoria yesterday during a nice blizzard. No words, just music.
Link: The Greatest Letter Ever Printed On NFL Team Letterhead
One might argue that this represents the greatest exchange of correspondence EVER.
Link: Keynote ProTip: Two Start Slides
From Tim Bray (read the rest, too):
The time starts counting when you hit “next slide" for the first time; not when you hit “Play" on the slide show. Now, in many cases, when the audience comes into the room, you want to have your title slide showing so they know they’re in the right room.
Thus the recommendation. So you walk up to the podium, hit “Next Slide" and because there are two copies of the title, the screen doesn’t change, but the time clock starts counting.