I had to take a picture of damage for the insurance company, and learned my phone is either terrible at facial recognition, or it doesn’t have a very high opinion of my friends.

I found an interesting web site I was not previously familiar with. Called CodePen, it shows bits of web content, any of which you can  hover over to get a brief explanation of what you’ll be seeing, then click on and view the underlying HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), and .js (JavaScript) if any, in their own window.

If you’ve ever wondered what goes in to creating some of the things you see on webpages, this is a really interesting site to look around and begin to become familiar with the way they are coded.

A good example to start with is Hyperspace, which you can view at this link. It has no JavaScript, although you see some in the right window, however it is in fact what is known as ‘commented out.’ Because it is contained within the ‘/*’ and ‘*/,’ it is considered explanatory and ignored by the browser. But you can see the other code that went in to it.

Another good example that does use JavaScript is ‘100,000 particles,’ the first link under the ‘popular‘ heading. It shows what’s capable with some actual coding powering the display of a web browser.

And I’m ok with that. As we should all know, you can’t kill cockroaches. They’re no water bear, but you can step on them, burn them, freeze them, you can drop a nuclear bomb DIRECTLY ON THEM and they just. won’t. die.

So what’s a good thing to do? Make them even *more* invulnerable! A team of international scientists has successfully implanted nanobots made from strands of DNA into the systems (remember those?) of cockroaches, and they have been folded in such a way that they can actually carry out logical operations; specifically, upon meeting a specific type of chemical compound, mainly protein, they can unfold and release medicine contained in their folds.

The articles I’ve read compare this to computing power but never explain it, and that bugs me. Get it? Bugs me?

Anyway, what it means is that these nanobots essentially carry out a single binary decision, for lack of a better word. If there are many of these nanobots carrying out these binary decisions, it’s a bunch of binary events taking place in conceptually the same way they happen in a digital device. If you get enough of them in an organism, you could compare it to an actual digital device’s computing power, and these scientists have done just that; they say soon they will be able to have the equivalent processing power in these nanobots to give the cockroach the equivalent of an 8-bit computer. That would include machines like the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Nintendo NES.

Live video by Animal Planet L!ve

The process is remarkable, an incredible advancement in nanotechnology and medicine, and if it could be deployed in humans or other mammals, it could theoretically provide cell-specific methods of fighting diseases like cancer, which as of now are only targeted very broadly.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen cockroaches used in some amazing examples of biotechnology; earlier this year, scientists in Japan managed to equip cockroaches with a sensor that allowed them to be remotely controlled, and they could then be used – as the article states – to look for trapped survivors in places humans couldn’t go. They are also rugged and require no power or fuel, making them even more appealing in this regard.

Back to the nanobots, one thing to keep in mind is that mammals risk rejecting the foreign invaders though through our built-in autoimmune response, but surprisingly the scientists are very common that human tests could start in 2015. Exciting stuff!

You know that amazing new Samsung Galaxy S5 you just got? The phone that lets you act superior to all those Luddites still using an iPhone? The one that is at the forefront of smartphone design? Well I have some bad news; the fingerprint scanner has been hacked already.

It only took a few days, but the researchers used a trick employed by a hacking group who bypassed the iPhone’s fingerprint scanner last year, and posted a video on YouTube showing them making the breach. They hack involves a photo of a fingerprint and glue, and although they don’t say it outright, it’s actually very similar to the method for finding latent fingerprints on compromised or porous materials in criminal investigations. Additionally, contrary to what they imply, making the false fingerprint is non-trivial and not something the average low-level criminal would be doing. At least not yet.

By doing this, they were able to gain access not just to the phone, but to the apps included such as PayPal and make purchases and money transfers. The very dryly narrated (VERY dryly narrated) video explaining their process is below. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t tell you anything but it’s all they gave us.

You know how I always talk about our toasters becoming intelligent and telling us we eat too much toast? Well look what I found! That guy up there is a toaster that can, via an Ethernet connection, become depressed if it doesn’t get used enough, and jealous if it finds out other connected toasters are being used more! The future is today!

It turns out Garfield was way ahead of me this whole time, and I think we’ll all feel the same if it ever comes to this.

Remember our discussion of social networks? There isn’t much to say about this, except advise you to learn a valuable lesson from this teenager’s mistake: Don’t ever tweet a terroristic threat to an international airline, it will never have a happy ending.

She wasn’t arrested nor did the FBI get involved, she turned herself in when the whole world started commenting on the wisdom of such an ill-informed prank. To be fair, she’s a 14 year-old girl, and at that age very few people, regardless of gender, always make the best decisions.

I am so glad there was no public Internet when *I* was 14.

What to write about? There’s so much going on! For example, the Heartbleed Bug was used as an entry method to steal the data of 900 Canadian taxpayers.  On another note, the FBI intends to have a facial-recognition database with 52 million faces – likely to include yours – up and running by next year. The photos won’t only be of criminals, but of regular people with photos plucked from Facebook among other sources.

But I decided to mention briefly what could be a divisive post: the Navy launching what is by far the largest most advanced warship ever built, the $7 billion U.S.S. Zumwalt; The linked article is fascinating, with a full behind-the-scenes look at what the ship has to offer. A massive beast that appears as a fishing boat on radar, it has exceptionally advanced controls (all munitions are launched by computer), in fact most things – even shower pressure – are electronically controlled as opposed to manually as is often the case these days, and will be an appropriate complement for the almost-ready-for-testing railguns that shoot inexpensive projectiles at seven times the speed of sound using electricity only, require only one crew member to operate and do not require an explosive warhead, and laser-weapons for shooting down unmanned drones, both weapons that are going into field-test aboard the U.S.S. Ponce. 

U.S.S. Zumwalt

The computer systems on the Zumwalt are controlled primarily by IBM Blade servers, in enclosures that will protect them from the elements at sea, which is good since ALL sea elements are risks for electronics. Not only that, when the time comes for upgrade or in the case of a component failure, this makes the process of adding/replacing hardware much easier. It even has sensors that can pick up various wavelengths of light and analyze the images to determine if something under or above the water is a threat. That, by the way, will result in fewer crew needed to actively monitor the ship’s surroundings.

Although its engines use gas as part of its power, it is actually move through the water by electric propulsion, like a hybrid! It generates so much power so efficiently that there is enough leftover power to operate the railgun mentioned earlier.

This all results in more effective weaponry, more efficient engines, easier and faster data analysis, half the required crew of current warships, and a longer expected service life.

Also, tomorrow’s tax day! Get on it, people!

I couldn’t find a relevant image for this post, so here’s the last thing you’re likely to see before you die.

We all know there are some oddball sites out there, like omfgdogs.com. WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THAT SITE?

Anyway, I thought I’d present you with sites that are unusual, but at the same time useful. Ready? Here we go!

Wolfram Alpha

Although the guy who developed it is an arrogant ass, this site is absolutely incredible. Anything you want to know about can be researched here. It will provide information on any topic, answer any equation, tell you any detail, it’s knowledge is almost limitless. It is so skilled at providing an overwhelming amount of info on any topic you like that hours can be spent just discovering. Type in anything, and be amazed.

nickreboot.com

If you’re around my age, and even if you’re not, you may remember the good old Nickelodeon shows that used to be on. Rugrats, Hey Arnold, Ahhh! Real Monsters, Rocko’s Modern Life, and many others. Well, at NickReboot, you can watch them all streaming for free! Relive your childhood!

shelterpups.com

On this site, you can send them a picture of your dog and they’ll send you a plush version that looks just like it!

Pizzacodes.com

Don’t eat pizza! It’s bad for you. But if you must, this site lets you enter in your zip code and it will list all the pizza coupons that are available for pizza places in your area. It mainly returns Domino’s and Papa John’s coupons, but there are occasionally others as well.

Southparkstudios.com

You may remember in class we talked briefly about South Park, and its creators demanding control over all Internet rights to the show. Back in the ’90’s, the network scoffed and said ‘sure,’ never realizing what the Internet would become. Because of that control, you can watch all episodes ever created of South Park, online for free, but with advertising. They are in the process of rolling out a new site, so you can even test the beta if you’d like.

myfridgefood.com

Now here’s a site that was built for people just like me. On this site, you can check off the random food you may have laying around in your refrigerator or kitchen, and the site will present you with recipes that can be made from the ingredients you selected. So if you’re not sure what to do with a leek, applesauce, white onion, chocolate syrup, and peppered turkey, you will now!

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the government agency that has given us so much including the Internet, and their good friends Boston Dynamics, who have given us such wonderful, cuddly creations as Big Dog from the header picture, are now furthering work on their Atlas robot, a man-sized robot that is capable of navigating over obstacles, running, and maintaining its balance if impacted by an outside force.

Amazing as that is, Atlas is only capable of doing what it does while tethered via lifelines to a control center. However, and this is a big however, now with MIT’s CSAIL lab at the helm they are getting ready to have those tethers removed, and Atlas will, if everything goes according to plan, be able to navigate on its bipedal own completely unattached to anything. I VERY STRONGLY encourage you to watch the video in that link (it wouldn’t embed, sadly), as it is very interesting and a little unnerving.

This is a big deal, as robots have incredible difficulty maintaining balance if something goes wrong. Humans have well-developed systems that rely on all senses as well as the spine and inner ear to maintain balance, and we all know if they are thrown off even slightly we can become very sick or lose our orientation. Robots obviously don’t do those last two, but their ability to balance and recover that balance is it’s lost has to be programmed in. Here’s another example of Atlas doing his thing.

As many of you may know, the Heartbleed bug has been outed and is one of the most severe security risks to come along in quite some time. It exploits the Open Secure Sockets Layer (Open SSL) encryption used to protect the identity of sites and encrypt traffic, namely usernames and passwords, and it’s the security used on about 75 percent of all websites.

What it does is relatively simple in the end; it extracts bits of memory a little at a time and sees if there is anything of value in the chunk it extracts. It may be nothing, but it may be account information, a social security number, a username, a password, or other important information.

It has affected hundreds of thousands of sites, all of which use the Open SSL protocol. Most of them have now been patched, but it is very important you not use these sites until you can be sure yours has as well. You can contact the site if you have their contact information, or you can use The Heartbleed Test or The LastPass Heartbleed Test to check if the server has been patched up or not. If it has, change your password. If it hasn’t, don’t change your password until it has, or your *new* password could be taken.

Many popular sites, including Google, Facebook, Tumblr, Imgur, and Yahoo were affected, and many of them should have indicated via email whether they’ve been fixed up.

This vulnerability and bug has apparently been around for a couple of years, and at least now it is hopefully being taken care of.