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Showing posts from January, 2021

Serious Sudo Trouble for Linux Distros via The New Stack

With this one, if you’re lazy about keeping your computers up to date, you’re in trouble. This sudo heap-based buffer overflow can be exploited by any local user. Worse still, any Joe or Jane user can leverage it to elevate privileges to root, even if they’re not listed in the sudoers file. As the sudo programmers explained: Usually, when you run a sudo command in shell mode, you escape any special characters in the command’s arguments with a backslash. The sudoers policy plugin then removes the escape characters from the arguments before evaluating the sudoers policy. But, that same code will read beyond the last character of a string if it ends with an unescaped backslash character. Read Serious Sudo Trouble for Linux Distros via The New Stack An interesting link found among my daily reading

The White House website reinstates Spanish version that Trump removed via The Next Web

Showing the importance of NOT using technological reasons to excuse not serving your customer base — in this case, the Spanish speaking citizens of the United States. We knew it was a disingenuous excuse immediately, but they used it to stall for 4 years. — Douglas   As noted by Julio Ricardo Varela of Latino Rebels the Spanish page is directly accessible from the White House website’s main menu, or at whitehouse.gov/es. There are new La Casa Blanca Twitter and Facebook accounts too. You might recall that upon the Trump administration taking over the website, the Spanish version was promptly removed. At the time, then Press Secretary Sean Spicer blamed the removal on the fact the administration has “a lot of work to do.” He also noted that they would “continue to build out the website” and implied reinstating the Spanish page was “just going to take a little bit more time.” Read The White House website reinstates Spanish version that Trump removed via The Next Web An interestin

This Raspberry Pi Etch-A-Sketch Draws Pictures For You via Tom's Hardware

What's better than an Etch-a-Sketch? A giant Etch-a-Sketch! What's better than a giant Etch-a-Sketch? One controlled by a Raspberry Pi that does the work for you, like this awesome project created by a maker known as BenB116.BenB116 custom-designed the housing from scratch so it could support all the necessary components. Stepper motors control 3D-printed knobs that operate the drawing function on the display. Don't worry, artists: you can also manually operate the knobs to draw freely. Read This Raspberry Pi Etch-A-Sketch Draws Pictures For You via Tom's Hardware

This Raspberry Pi Etch-A-Sketch Draws Pictures For You via Tom's Hardware

Read This Raspberry Pi Etch-A-Sketch Draws Pictures For You via Tom's Hardware An interesting link found among my daily reading

Historical Technology Books - 76 in a series - Electrical Age (1901)

Historical Technology Books - 76 in a series - Electrical Age (1901)   More information: Publication date  1891 Topics  Electricity ,  Electrical engineering Publisher New York : Electrical Age Pub. Co. Collection  ColumbiaUniversityLibraries ;  americana Contributor  Columbia University Libraries Language  English Find more books on Bookshop and Help Indie Book Stores!  

Spacecraft AR app by NASA JPL brings the ISS and others into your world via TikTok [Video]

Spacecraft AR app by NASA JPL brings the ISS and others into your world via TikTok [Video] @jennyabneysivie That time the ##ISS and ##curiousityrover were in the circle ##geek ##ar ##augmentedreality ##space ##spaceship ##nasa ##learnontiktok ♬ original sound - Jenny Abney Sivie

Arduino Temperature Sensor Code: Automated Fan via Geek Pack Hack [Arduino]

For Arduino projects that include temperature sensors, it’s necessary to understand how to write the Arduino temperature sensor code to program your Arduino board. In this post, we’ll show you how to write the Arduino temperature sensor code to build an automated fan. When the temperature gets too hot, the fan will turn on. The fan will turn off when the temperature goes down. Read Arduino Temperature Sensor Code: Automated Fan via Geek Pack Hack An interesting link found among my daily reading

Parler’s amateur coding could come back to haunt Capitol Hill rioters via Ars Technica

Some 80 terabytes of posts, many already deleted, preserved for posterity. By now, you may have heard of the hacker who says she scraped 99 percent of posts from Parler, the Twitter-wannabe site used by Trump supporters to help organize last Wednesday’s violent insurrection on Capitol Hill. What you may not know yet is the abysmal coding and security that made the scraping so easy. To recap, the scraping was pulled off by a hacker who goes by the handle donk_enby. She originally set out to archive content posted to Parler last Wednesday in hopes of preserving self-incriminating material before account holders came to their senses and deleted it. By Sunday, donk_enby said she had collected roughly 80 terabytes of posts, including more than 1 million videos, many of which contained the GPS metadata identifying the exact locations of where the videos were shot. Read Parler’s amateur coding could come back to haunt Capitol Hill rioters via Ars Technica An interesting link found am

Building an Inexpensive 3-D Printed ROS Robot | by Jason Bowling [Raspi]

  Built around a Pi4, low cost gear motors, and an RPLidar A1   I recently began playing with ROS in simulation, and am really enjoying it. I want a platform that I can use for experiments, particularly learning to configure a physical robot for SLAM and navigation. If you are not familiar with ROS, or have been intimidated by the steep learning curve, you might want to give my introductory article a look first.   I stumbled on the Weddell 2 ROS Robot by user pokpong on Thingiverse, and was very impressed. It was very close to what I was after. I couldn’t source the motors the original device used, so I made a remix of that design that was set up for inexpensive gear motors with encoders. I hope this write-up is useful if you want to do something similar. The modified files are here. Read Building an Inexpensive 3-D Printed ROS Robot | by Jason Bowling | The Startup | Dec, 2020 via Medium An interesting link found among my daily reading

To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language via MIT News

  Neuroscientists find that interpreting code activates a general-purpose brain network, but not language-processing centers. In some ways, learning to program a computer is similar to learning a new language. It requires learning new symbols and terms, which must be organized correctly to instruct the computer what to do. The computer code must also be clear enough that other programmers can read and understand it. In spite of those similarities, MIT neuroscientists have found that reading computer code does not activate the regions of the brain that are involved in language processing. Instead, it activates a distributed network called the multiple demand network, which is also recruited for complex cognitive tasks such as solving math problems or crossword puzzles. Read To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language via MIT News An interesting link found among my daily reading

No string attaches this tin can telephone via Arduino Blog

Geoff (AKA Facio Ergo Sum) has created a new take on the classic “tin can telephone,” using an Arduino and nRF24L01 transceiver to pass audio signals instead of a physical string.  The build and testing process are outlined in the video below, including poking holes for an antenna and talk button, as well as hot gluing everything in place. Read No string attaches this tin can telephone via Arduino Blog An interesting link found among my daily reading

Top TechnologyIQ Posts for 2020

Onion Pi makes your web traffic anonymous via Open Electronics The Best Zoom Tips and Tricks for Better Video Meetings via iPhone Hacks Noted: 6 Ways to Repair Broken Plastic The Best Zoom Tips and Tricks for Better Video Meetings via iPhone Hacks How an LED Works via Today I Found Out Liked: Arduino Radar Project [Video] Arduino Life 5: Arduino Yun and ftp client/server Education: "Soldering is Easy" Complete Comic Book available for download from MightyOhm Cool Tool: Brinch 15.6-Inch Multi-functional Suit Fabric Portable Laptop Sleeve Case Bag Best Raspberry Pi Projects: August 2020 via Tom's Hardware 13 Zoom video chat tips, tricks and hidden features via CNET Best Raspberry Pi Projects: August 2020 via Tom's Hardware Project: Tiny Arduino Music Visualizer: Maximum blinkenlights, minimum effort! via Adafruit Noted: 6 Ways to Repair Broken Plastic Education: "Soldering is Easy" Complete Comic Book available for download from MightyOhm ARRL

Gaming Like It's 1925: The Public Domain Game Jam Has Begun! via Techdirt

Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io » Today's the day:works published in 1925 have run out of copyright protection and the public domain has gotten bigger, and our game jam celebrating it has begun! Gaming Like It's 1925 runs from now until the end of the month, and it's the perfect chance to start digging into of all the amazing material that's finally free for everyone to use. The premise of the jam is simple: build a digital or analog game that incorporates, in some way or another, one or more works from 1925. You don't need to be an experienced game designer to participate — entries can be as simple as a few instructions in a PDF, or as robust as an entire board or video game, and you can make use of all sorts of easy development tools (a few of which are listed on the jam page). And there are so, so many great works to choose from, a few of which are listed on Duke University's annual round-up, which is a great place to start looking. R