Month: April 2013

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This amazing photo of Earth cost only $750 to take

By Nicholas Deleon, TechCrunch » Gadgets – March 25, 2010 at 08:00AM

Hello, Earth! Can you believe that this photo was taken by a man who attached a digital camera to a balloon? Madness.

There’s actually not too much involved here. You take a helium-filled, high-altitude balloon, strap a digital camera to it, and off you go. The camera goes up (that’s 22 miles above the surface of the planet), takes a photo every five minutes, then it comes floating down to Earth on a parachute. A simple GPS, not too different from the one in your car right now, gives the location of the camera when it comes back down.

It’s the space-photography equivalent of macaroni glued to construction paper.

Total cost? Around $750. That’s less than what I spent to build the PC I’m writing this post with. Clearly Robert Harrison, the UK chap who put all of this together, is cooler than I’ll ever be.

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Eco Coke

By noreply@blogger.com (Salih Küçükağa), PackagingBlog / Best Packaging Designs Around The World – March 24, 2010 at 04:38AM


“Designed by Andrew Kim, the Eco Coke Concept is made of 100% organic material (sugar cane byproducts to be more specific). One big feature about this design is that it is much more collapsable, making it more condusive to carrying to a recycling bin. Hopefully we’ll see this in the market sooner than later.”

Designer: Andrew Kim
Country: USA

Via Trendhunter

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This Guide to Cuts of Beef Makes Sure You’re Never Confused at the Meat Counter Again

By Alan Henry, Lifehacker – April 02, 2013 at 08:00AM

This Guide to Cuts of Beef Makes Sure You’re Never Confused at the Meat Counter Again It can be pretty challenging to shop for beef if you don’t know the difference between a shoulder blade steak and a center ranch steak. The difference in cost, size, and preferred cooking method can throw off even the best home cook. Thankfully this handy chart makes sure you’re always prepared when buying and cooking beef.

The chart serves as a map to the cuts of beef you’ll find in most grocery stores, along with icons indicating how that cut is best prepared—whether it’s best on the grill, in a skillet, braised, roasted, stir fried, or even stewed. Plus, each cut is marked with its relative price, so you’ll remember when you’re in the grocery store which cuts are the more expensive ones, and what their average prices are so you can tell if you’re getting a good deal.

Hit the link below (or click the image below to enlarge) to see the chart in its full-sized glory, or to download it for quick reference later. At the very least, you’ll see the parts of the cow that your favorite cuts come from, and see if there are any more options that are easier cooking or aren’t quite as expensive.

Cuts of Beef | Visual.ly

This Guide to Cuts of Beef Makes Sure You’re Never Confused at the Meat Counter Again

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How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords [Security]

By John Pozadzides, Lifehacker – December 16, 2010 at 12:01PM

How I’d Hack Your Weak PasswordsInternet standards expert, CEO of web company iFusion Labs, and blogger John Pozadzides knows a thing or two about password security—and he knows exactly how he’d hack the weak passwords you use all over the internet.

Photo remixed from subcircle.

Note: This isn’t intended as a guide to hacking *other people’s* weak passwords. Instead, the aim is to help you better understand the security of your own passwords and how to bolster that security. We originally published this piece back in March, but in light of our recent security breach, it seemed more applicable than ever.

If you invited me to try and crack your password, you know the one that you use over and over for like every web page you visit, how many guesses would it take before I got it?

Let’s see… here is my top 10 list. I can obtain most of this information much easier than you think, then I might just be able to get into your e-mail, computer, or online banking. After all, if I get into one I’ll probably get into all of them.

  1. Your partner, child, or pet’s name, possibly followed by a 0 or 1 (because they’re always making you use a number, aren’t they?)
  2. The last 4 digits of your social security number.
  3. 123 or 1234 or 123456.
  4. “password”
  5. Your city, or college, football team name.
  6. Date of birth – yours, your partner’s or your child’s.
  7. “god”
  8. “letmein”
  9. “money”
  10. “love”

Statistically speaking that should probably cover about 20% of you. But don’t worry. If I didn’t get it yet it will probably only take a few more minutes before I do…

Hackers, and I’m not talking about the ethical kind, have developed a whole range of tools to get at your personal data. And the main impediment standing between your information remaining safe, or leaking out, is the password you choose. (Ironically, the best protection people have is usually the one they take least seriously.)

One of the simplest ways to gain access to your information is through the use of a Brute Force Attack. This is accomplished when a hacker uses a specially written piece of software to attempt to log into a site using your credentials. Insecure.org has a list of the Top 10 FREE Password Crackers right here.

So, how would one use this process to actually breach your personal security? Simple. Follow my logic:

  • You probably use the same password for lots of stuff right?
  • Some sites you access such as your Bank or work VPN probably have pretty decent security, so I’m not going to attack them.
  • However, other sites like the Hallmark e-mail greeting cards site, an online forum you frequent, or an e-commerce site you’ve shopped at might not be as well prepared. So those are the ones I’d work on.
  • So, all we have to do now is unleash Brutus, wwwhack, or THC Hydra on their server with instructions to try say 10,000 (or 100,000 – whatever makes you happy) different usernames and passwords as fast as possible.
  • Once we’ve got several login+password pairings we can then go back and test them on targeted sites.
  • But wait… How do I know which bank you use and what your login ID is for the sites you frequent? All those cookies are simply stored, unencrypted and nicely named, in your Web browser’s cache. (Read this post to remedy that problem.)

And how fast could this be done? Well, that depends on three main things, the length and complexity of your password, the speed of the hacker’s computer, and the speed of the hacker’s Internet connection.

Assuming the hacker has a reasonably fast connection and PC here is an estimate of the amount of time it would take to generate every possible combination of passwords for a given number of characters. After generating the list it’s just a matter of time before the computer runs through all the possibilities – or gets shut down trying.

Pay particular attention to the difference between using only lowercase characters and using all possible characters (uppercase, lowercase, and special characters – like @#$%^&*). Adding just one capital letter and one asterisk would change the processing time for an 8 character password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries.

How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords

Remember, these are just for an average computer, and these assume you aren’t using any word in the dictionary. If Google put their computer to work on it they’d finish about 1,000 times faster.

Now, I could go on for hours and hours more about all sorts of ways to compromise your security and generally make your life miserable – but 95% of those methods begin with compromising your weak password. So, why not just protect yourself from the start and sleep better at night?

Believe me, I understand the need to choose passwords that are memorable. But if you’re going to do that how about using something that no one is ever going to guess AND doesn’t contain any common word or phrase in it.

Here are some password tips:

  1. Randomly substitute numbers for letters that look similar. The letter ‘o’ becomes the number ‘0′, or even better an ‘@’ or ‘*’. (i.e. – m0d3ltf0rd… like modelTford)
  2. Randomly throw in capital letters (i.e. – Mod3lTF0rd)
  3. Think of something you were attached to when you were younger, but DON’T CHOOSE A PERSON’S NAME! Every name plus every word in the dictionary will fail under a simple brute force attack.
  4. Maybe a place you loved, or a specific car, an attraction from a vacation, or a favorite restaurant?
  5. You really need to have different username / password combinations for everything. Remember, the technique is to break into anything you access just to figure out your standard password, then compromise everything else. This doesn’t work if you don’t use the same password everywhere.
  6. Since it can be difficult to remember a ton of passwords, I recommend using Roboform for Windows users. It will store all of your passwords in an encrypted format and allow you to use just one master password to access all of them. It will also automatically fill in forms on Web pages, and you can even get versions that allow you to take your password list with you on your PDA, phone or a USB key. If you’d like to download it without having to navigate their web site here is the direct download link. (Ed. note: Lifehacker readers love the free, open-source KeePass for this duty, while others swear by the cross-platform, browser-based LastPass.)
  7. Mac users can use 1Password. It is essentially the same thing as Roboform, except for Mac, and they even have an iPhone application so you can take them with you too.
  8. Once you’ve thought of a password, try Microsoft’s password strength tester to find out how secure it is.

By request I also created a short RoboForm Demonstration video. Hope it helps…

Another thing to keep in mind is that some of the passwords you think matter least actually matter most. For example, some people think that the password to their e-mail box isn’t important because “I don’t get anything sensitive there.” Well, that e-mail box is probably connected to your online banking account. If I can compromise it then I can log into the Bank’s Web site and tell it I’ve forgotten my password to have it e-mailed to me. Now, what were you saying about it not being important?

Often times people also reason that all of their passwords and logins are stored on their computer at home, which is safe behind a router or firewall device. Of course, they’ve never bothered to change the default password on that device, so someone could drive up and park near the house, use a laptop to breach the wireless network and then try passwords from this list until they gain control of your network — after which time they will own you!

Now I realize that every day we encounter people who over-exaggerate points in order to move us to action, but trust me this is not one of those times. There are 50 other ways you can be compromised and punished for using weak passwords that I haven’t even mentioned.

I also realize that most people just don’t care about all this until it’s too late and they’ve learned a very hard lesson. But why don’t you do me, and yourself, a favor and take a little action to strengthen your passwords and let me know that all the time I spent on this article wasn’t completely in vain.

Please, be safe. It’s a jungle out there.

EDIT: You might also want to listen to my interview on Connecticut Public Radio about password security.

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Top 4 Signs Your HDTV Isn’t Properly Configured

By Matt Burns, TechCrunch – April 05, 2010 at 04:29PM

HDTV is probably the greatest thing to ever happen to the human race. It’s too bad then that a lot of us are ignorantly watching poorly set-up HDTVs. You owe it to yourself to ensure that you’re getting every ounce of enjoyment out of your expensive boob tube. There are a few common problems HDTV owners face and you can quickly diagnose an HDTV with a few simple steps. Don’t fret if you’re living with any of these calamities. Most of the time the fix is just one button away.

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Grsync — A Simple GUI to Help You Use ‘rsync’ Easily [Linux]

By Varun Kashyap, MakeUseOf – April 05, 2010 at 12:30PM

One of the many reasons syncing solutions like Dropbox are so popular is due to the fact that they are intelligent enough to know which files are already present on the server and other computer; and only transfer new and changed files. For example, you can copy and paste your Dropbox folder to a totally separate location or a new computer and then link up your Dropbox account to that folder. Dropbox will recognize that the files are all the same and won’t waste bandwidth transferring all the files back and forth.

Recently I was using FTP for a project that involved frequent updates to the server. Maintaining a list of all the files which were modified to transfer them via FTP soon became a problem.


There were options like setting up the archive bit and then use a script to automate the process but that would have required fair bit of testing before I could really use it with confidence. Luckily, I could SSH into the server and use the rsync command.

Soon, it was obvious why geek’s love it. At the core level, rsync is a fancy ‘file copy’ utility available as a command on most Linux systems. As opposed to some of the other command line titles, rsync has a pretty steep learning curve. With a host of options and things that you can use to modify your Linux rsync configuration, it is hard to initially know which are the best for the task in hand. A look at the rsync manual page is enough to dazzle a newbie starting out with the tool.

linux rsync configuration

Perhaps that is the reason why a number of GUI’s exist for Rrync. Grsync is a GUI front end to rsync for your Gnome desktop. You can install Grsync by issuing the following command in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install grsync

Once installed, you will find Grsync listed under Applications > System tools. Go ahead and run it. The GUI is fairly basic and does a nice job of separating basic options that you are likely to use most often with rsync and the advanced options that help you tweak and customize rsync’s behavior to suit your needs.

linux rsync configuration

First off, you need to create a session. You can add and delete sessions easily. A session will help you retain all the settings including the source and destination folders so that you can quickly come back to it and the settings will be there as it is.

linux rsync configuration

The option labels refer to the various switches that are available when using Grsync. While the option labels try to do the best to explain what is what, you will need to refer to the manual occasionally. Hover over any label and a tool tip pops up displaying the corresponding rsync option that the checkbox will invoke.

rsync linux

In addition, Grsync offers some extra options as well. For instance, you can run other commands just before Grsync invokes rsync or after rsync has completed. You can defer rsync execution if a command returns an error. These options are excellent if you want to transfer files to and from an external device or network location that is not always present or mounted.

Grsync is an excellent tool that makes it easier to manage your Linux rsync configuration without reading the 3000+ lines manual page or without learning it the hard way by making mistakes.

Are you an rsync fan? Achieved something clever using rsync? We would love to hear about it.

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