- Familiar yet alien ancient views of Earth – photorealistic simulations of the world as seen from space, millions of years ago.
- Back in 2006, Qualcomm effectively discontinued Eudora, though they sponsored a project to extend Mozilla Thunderbird with the look, feel, and some features of Eudora. I lost track of it over the years, but it turns out they finally released Eudora OSE last September…four years later.
- Revealed: How Area 51 Hid Secret Craft. Advanced designs by humans, of course, not alien ships.
Category: Life
If You Teach a Man to be Phished…
I’ve dealt with a couple of companies that try to plug the general lack of security in email by using a “secure email” service. The way this works is:
- The company sends you an email with a link to a third-party or co-branded website, asking you to click on it in order to read important information about your financial/insurance/whatever account. (Or better yet, the third party site sends you the mail on the company’s behalf.)
- You click on the link and open the site in your web browser.
- You register for the site (which usually involves entering your name, choosing a password, and possibly entering other personal detail like a reminder question.)
- You log into the site and actually read the message.
Can you see what the problem is?
That’s right: Steps 1-3 are exactly what you see in a phishing attack. Only in a phishing attack, the third-party site is a fake that’s trying to collect account information (like your login and password) or personal information (like your SSN).
So while they may be solving the immediate problem of “someone might intercept this message,” they’re perpetuating a broader problem by training people to fall for phishing attacks.
Sadly, this is not new.
Update 2022: A decade later, they’re still doing it.
Recent Links
- Those early Priuses are still going strong, ten years later.
- Never put critical private information online unless you are certain it’s protected. Your tax documents could show up in search results.
- Optimizing a Screen for Mobile Use (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
- Why bad science reporting matters: Churn The Other Cheek
- Homeopathy vs. Science: A Metaphor
For All Purposes In Tents
What do people think an “intensive purpose” is? “For all intents and purposes” may be redundant, but it actually makes sense.
Apple Pi
Katie baked this chai spice apple pie in honor of Pi Day. We ate it for dessert after shepherd’s pie for dinner.
Rays from the Anti-Sun!
Believe it or not, this is looking *away* from the sun. Sun rays are (at this distance, anyway) basically parallel, and a trick of perspective makes it look like they converge toward the sun or, in this direction, toward the point exactly opposite, like looking down a long hallway.
Ever since I read that these were possible under the right circumstances, I’ve been hoping to spot them and (if possible) photograph them. I saw some once while looking toward the mountains a year or two ago, but they were too faint to photograph. Naturally, when I finally saw them again, I was driving, and didn’t have time to stop and aim. Amazingly enough, one of the photos I took just pointing the camera out the window actually caught the rays!
Contrast enhanced to make the rays more visible. You can also check out the unmodified version.
That’s Not What I Said!
Things Google speech recognition came up with when I tried to search for “The Lost Bean” (an independent coffee place in Tustin):
- oh clock team
- the team
- zoloft 18
After three tries I gave up and searched for something else in the same strip mall. Oddly enough, it had no trouble figuring out Nieuport 17. 😕