High-speed bullet train? Not.

For kevin_standlee. :-)

High-speed bullet train? Not.

For kevin_standlee. :-)

This is Mike and me on a cruise...

...when we couldn't get to the Google:



Via Bits & Pieces.

This is Mike and me on a cruise...

...when we couldn't get to the Google:



Via Bits & Pieces.

When "unauthorized user" becomes "unauthorized typist"

Ars Technica offers a fascinating look at a firm using typing cadence as a metric for determining if a user is actually the authorized person or someone either freeriding or stealing the person's identity.

Do you and your spouse share one account for accessing a paid service? The cadence-analyzing software would out you:

"As you're typing, you have a cadence and rhythm," Shanahan says, a rhythm that includes how long one holds down various keys and how long it takes to move between keys. Applying the technology to its data set of 20 million logins, Scout pulled out 175,000 unique patterns—thereby identifying 175,000 distinct users, even when they used the same login credentials on the same machine.

But only 130,000 users had subscribed to the services in question, meaning that 45,000 of the 175,000 people using the services were freeriding. Even if cookie tracking were 100 percent accurate, it would be off by a factor of 2-4x when it comes to tracking individual users of a service.

It's intriguing stuff...and also pretty creepy. Wide-spread use of this type of metric could lead to some really uncomfortable issues. If you've injured your hand, would you be able to log in at all? Is there any real reason why members of the same household should buy *two* subscriptions to paid services, when they surely would share the same magazine or newspaper or cable box in accessing "traditional" content?

I'll be fascinated to see where this goes...

When "unauthorized user" becomes "unauthorized typist"

Ars Technica offers a fascinating look at a firm using typing cadence as a metric for determining if a user is actually the authorized person or someone either freeriding or stealing the person's identity.

Do you and your spouse share one account for accessing a paid service? The cadence-analyzing software would out you:

"As you're typing, you have a cadence and rhythm," Shanahan says, a rhythm that includes how long one holds down various keys and how long it takes to move between keys. Applying the technology to its data set of 20 million logins, Scout pulled out 175,000 unique patterns—thereby identifying 175,000 distinct users, even when they used the same login credentials on the same machine.

But only 130,000 users had subscribed to the services in question, meaning that 45,000 of the 175,000 people using the services were freeriding. Even if cookie tracking were 100 percent accurate, it would be off by a factor of 2-4x when it comes to tracking individual users of a service.

It's intriguing stuff...and also pretty creepy. Wide-spread use of this type of metric could lead to some really uncomfortable issues. If you've injured your hand, would you be able to log in at all? Is there any real reason why members of the same household should buy *two* subscriptions to paid services, when they surely would share the same magazine or newspaper or cable box in accessing "traditional" content?

I'll be fascinated to see where this goes...

The chewing dead

National Geographic's special on vampire forensics will include a look at this 17th century book about vampires:

De Masticatione Mortuorum, translated from Latin as "On the Chewing Dead," is an aged manuscript written in 1679 by Philip Rohr. The 330-year-old text discusses a common fear of the time: that some human corpses were capable of rising from the dead and feasting on the flesh of the living.

The creatures described in Rohr’s book consume the bodies of live humans, not only the blood, differing slightly from the modern conception of the vampire. Nevertheless, De Masticatione Mortuorum has played a vital role in the evolution of the vast vampire mythology canon.

The show is on Tuesday at 10 p.m.

The chewing dead

National Geographic's special on vampire forensics will include a look at this 17th century book about vampires:

De Masticatione Mortuorum, translated from Latin as "On the Chewing Dead," is an aged manuscript written in 1679 by Philip Rohr. The 330-year-old text discusses a common fear of the time: that some human corpses were capable of rising from the dead and feasting on the flesh of the living.

The creatures described in Rohr’s book consume the bodies of live humans, not only the blood, differing slightly from the modern conception of the vampire. Nevertheless, De Masticatione Mortuorum has played a vital role in the evolution of the vast vampire mythology canon.

The show is on Tuesday at 10 p.m.

Dark side, light side...#4,733

From There, I Fixed It...I'm pretty sure this is a new use for duct tape.

Dark side, light side...#4,733

From There, I Fixed It...I'm pretty sure this is a new use for duct tape.