Golden Age of Insect Aviation: The Great Grasshoppers from Wayne Unten, an animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios. (His tumblr).
Tomorrow is Rabbit Hole Day.
Plan accordingly!
Tag: the internet is scary
like hacker-themed future fiction from the 1980’s
Hacker uses malware built-in chat to toy with researchers:
Malware researchers investigating a Trojan linked in a gaming forum as a how-to video for Diablo III got a surprise when the hacker started chatting with them — through a feature in the malware. Franklin Zhao & Jason Zhou of antivirus company AVG were looking for keylogging code in the malware with a debugger after downloading it to a virtual machine when a chat box popped up. The hacker asked, in Chinese, “What are you doing? Why are you researching my Trojan?”
The dialog is not from any software installed in our virtual machine. On the contrary, it’s an integrated function of the backdoor and the message is sent from the hacker who wrote the Trojan. Amazing, isn’t it? It seems that the hacker was online and he realized that we were debugging his baby…
We felt interested and continued to chat with him. He was really arrogant.
Chicken: I didn’t know you can see my screen.
Hacker: I would like to see your face, but what a pity you don’t have a camera.
He is telling the truth. This backdoor has powerful functions like monitoring victim’s screen, mouse controlling, viewing process and modules, and even camera controlling.
We then chatted with hacker for some time, pretending that we were green hands and would like to buy some Trojan from him. But this hacker was not so foolish to tell us all the truth. He then shut down our system remotely.
privacy, sexism, the personal public
RECOMMENDED READING: Gratuitous: How Sexism Threatens to Undermine the Internet.
[…] Checking my Tumblr feed is like checking in with my friends, even if these “friends” are people I know very little about and will possibly never meet in real life. I met most of these people through friends of friends or via the social discovery that re-blogging affords. I somehow stumbled into their worlds, and they were interesting enough to make me want to come back. I interact with enough of them that I can pretty clearly say that when they post something, it is intended for me. I’m part of their small group, and I have no qualms about that.
Lisa, on the other hand, is a different matter. Lisa is a college student at a large university in the Midwest (and Lisa is not her name; I don’t know whether she would want a bunch of book nerds suddenly reading her posts or not, so I’m not going to link to her blog here, either). She seems pretty smart, and she blogs about her love life, her schoolwork, her friends, and all of the other things that matter to her. I find Lisa’s life very interesting, and her blog is great. But I haven’t completely settled the “is she talking to me” question. While Lisa follows me back, we don’t interact with each other. She uses Tumblr in a very social way, she isn’t really part of the crowd of people whom I otherwise follow. And I find this somewhat troubling. […]
The pane of glass, and the contrast between the brightly lit casting room and the dim audience space, was enough distance to effectively dehumanize these girls. There were other factors at work, such as the blonde California girl’s status as marketing conceit and sexual totem, but I think a big reason we all felt free to dissect and dismiss these girls is because they couldn’t really see us. We were, more or less, anonymous. It was especially unsettling to turn around after watching for a few minutes and see one of the girls who had been in the call standing just behind us. How long had she been there, the girl in the leopard print shorts? And how did she suddenly become so real? […]
Why are women treated differently than men online? I suppose the greater question is why they are still treated differently everywhere — online or otherwise — but since this post is about the web, I will focus on that. Surely there’s the garden variety sexism that permeates most of our culture, where women’s opinions are discounted or denigrated, and where the female form is used to sell everything from liquor to football. But I think there is something else at work online, and in many ways, it’s related to the strange feeling of watching all of those girls wait to have their pictures taken, as well as my conflicted feelings about enjoying college girl Lisa’s blog so much.
for your amusement
It looks perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it? Until you notice this:
wish I heard his voice more often
BABIES AS WEAPONS is the most twisted thing you will see today, even if you’re a regular at ModBlog. It’s the inelegant site of XenoSapien, a man in the States who believes he is “suffering from deep feminist-culture side-effects.” I hope he never discovers gifs, as the flame motif is bad enough already. (Warning: for reasons unknown he plays inappropriate music very loudly). The front page has a pencil sketch named MyPain of a woman dressed as a stripper about to whip a prostrate man with a baby that’s still attached to her by an umbilical cord that snakes from between her legs. For added wtf, the diapered baby seems to be angrily shouting into a microphone. The entire thing gives me the quesy feeling he watches Wicker Man and touches himself on Friday nights.
Today has been full of unexpected phone calls, disco light moments, when the blare of music fades into almost silence at the exact moment you see her face. Theatre people, friends, night and day. Someone’s finally read my pen written letters, public transit edited. A long distance shout from an ex-lover, three defeated countries away, sunburned voice peeling across the lines, unexpected and welcome and a little puzzling. I love him, but why now? Little mirrors refracting light, circling in the room. Another chrome ring, pick-up-the-phone – a potential investor, in town from Memphis, surprise, someone I’ve been considering handing the project off to once I get it up on its feet and properly connected to my city. (We all know I want to leave.) I’m cancelling my plans this evening so as to see him.
Just as a reminder: Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo opens tomorrow at The Western Front. Further details here. I’m going, are you? Especially quick comments have a chance at a comp.