Sign inLikeFollow @mashablesee more >SearchMust ReadsSocial MediaTechBusinessEntertainmentUS & WorldWatercoolerMoreChannelsMust ReadsSocial MediaTechBusinessEntertainmentUS & WorldWatercoolerCompanyAbout UsLicensing & ReprintsArchiveMashable CareersContactContact UsSubmit NewsAdvertiseAdvertiseLegalPrivacy PolicyTerms of UseAppsiPhone AppiPad AppAndroid AppResourcesSubscriptionsSitesJobsEventsSocial Good SummitMedia SummitWatercoolerLikeFollowMonday, 26 May 2014
15 Combined GIFs That Prove Two GIFs Are Better Than One
window.__o = {"channel":"watercooler","content_type":"article","v_buy":null,"v_buy_i":null,"h_pub":3.5,"h_buy":null,"h_pub_buy":null,"v_cur":0.6,"v_max":0.7,"v_cur_i":0,"v_max_i":0,"events":"event51,event61","top_channel":"watercooler","content_source_type":"Internal","content_source_name":"Internal","author_name":"Annie Colbert","age":"0","pub_day":26,"pub_month":5,"pub_year":2014,"pub_date":"05/26/2014","isPostView":true,"post_lead_type":"No Lead Image","topics":"humor,Lists,Uncategorized,Watercooler","campaign":null,"display_mode":"list"}; window._gaq = window._gaq || []; window._gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-92124-1']);15 Combined GIFs That Prove Two GIFs Are Better Than OneMashableMashableSign inLikeFollow @mashablesee more >SearchMust ReadsSocial MediaTechBusinessEntertainmentUS & WorldWatercoolerMoreChannelsMust ReadsSocial MediaTechBusinessEntertainmentUS & WorldWatercoolerCompanyAbout UsLicensing & ReprintsArchiveMashable CareersContactContact UsSubmit NewsAdvertiseAdvertiseLegalPrivacy PolicyTerms of UseAppsiPhone AppiPad AppAndroid AppResourcesSubscriptionsSitesJobsEventsSocial Good SummitMedia SummitWatercoolerLikeFollow15 Combined GIFs That Prove Two GIFs Are Better Than One
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The Internet Is Burning
Online security is a horrifying nightmare. Heartbleed. Target. Apple. Linux. Microsoft. Yahoo. eBay. X.509. Whatever security cataclysm erupts next, probably in weeks or even days. We seem to be trapped in a vicious cycle of cascading security disasters that just keep getting worse.
Why? Well — “Computers have gotten incredibly complex, while people have remained the same gray mud with pretensions of godhood … Because of all this, security is terrible … People, as well, are broken … Everyone fails to use software correctly,” writes the great Quinn Norton in a bleak piece in Medium. “We are building the most important technologies for the global economy on shockingly underfunded infrastructure. We are truly living through Code in the Age of Cholera,” concurs security legend Dan Kaminsky.
Most of which is objectively true. And it’s probably also true, as Norton states and Kaminsky implies, that a certain amount of insecurity is the natural state of affairs in any system so complex.
But I contend that things are much worse than they actually need to be, and, further, that the entire industry has developed learned helplessness towards software security. We have been conditioned to just accept that security is a complete debacle and always will be, so the risk of being hacked and/or a 0-day popping up in your critical code is just a random, uncontrollable cost of doing business, like the risk of setting up shop in the Bay Area knowing that the Big One could hit any day.
What’s more, while this is not actually true, most of the time it is no bad thing.
I’m pleased that I was a Heartbleed hipster, dissing OpenSSL before it was cool (i.e. ten days before Heartbleed emerged into the light) but I don’t pretend to be a security expert. I do write software for a living, though … and recent events remind me vividly of the time I attended DefCon just after Cisco tried to censor/gag-order Michael Lynn.
You can read the details behind the link; it’s quaint history now. But in particular, I am put in mind of this slide from his censored presentation;
Those details are largely obsolete now, but I remember that as a lo-and-the-scales-fell-from-my-eyes moment: wait, the Swiss-cheese bird’s-nest holes-the-size-of-Mack-trucks Microsoft security model doesn’t have to be the norm! People could, and actually do, design systems built for security from the ground up!
To be fair, Lynn’s talk was about exploiting a bug that existed anyway; and as Norton points out, “things are better than they used to be. We have tools … that keep the idiotically written programs where they can’t do as much harm.” But who are we kidding? We live in a world in which people still write security-critical code in C, send passwords in plaintext, and release hopelessly confusing security APIs. This is a world that has not much prioritized software security.
I contend that online security is so bad not because it has to be, but because there has been no systemic incentive to make it any better than it is. Sure, credit-card companies would like to reduce fraud — hence their incompetent hacks like “Verified by Visa” — but they’re still enormously profitable. Sure, eBay would rather they hadn’t been hacked; but most people will just sigh, change their passwords, and move on.
And while it’s possible to build much-more-secure systems,
A lot of people don’t really understand the incredible amount of detail and attention to every possible outcome that needs to be made, because one mistake in the entire library can bring a system down. And that’s a flaw of the type we’re seeing with Heartbleed.
to quote Seth Hardy of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. (Disclaimer/disclosure; Seth’s a friend.)
Or — Kaminsky again:
Professor Matthew Green of Johns Hopkins University recently commented that he’s been running around telling the world for some time that OpenSSL is Critical Infrastructure. He’s right. He really is. The conclusion is resisted strongly, because you cannot imagine the regulatory hassles normally involved with traditionally being deemed Critical Infrastructure. A world where SSL stacks have to be audited and operated against such standards is a world that doesn’t run SSL stacks at all.
There’s actually quite a tricky implicit tradeoff here. We can slowly, carefully, write more secure (though still imperfect!) systems; or we can damn the torpedoes, steam full speed ahead, innovate like crazy, and treat security as an afterthought or a nice-to-have. The reason massive security disasters hit almost weekly these days is because for twenty years virtually the entire industry has, tacitly or explicitly, chosen the latter course.
…And, until now, for 95% of the Internet’s population, that has arguably been the right decision. Oh, it’s been awful if you’re an activist, a dissident, a journalist, a victim of identity theft, a specific target of the NSA, etc; but most people aren’t. Secure software — and it does exist — is still written by a tiny minority for a tiny minority. Sad but true. That’s one reason why it’s so often so hard to use.
The good news is that we seem to finally be nearing the point at which the Internet collectively decides that much stronger online security would probably be a good idea. The bad news is that the most powerful entity on Earth appears to be virulently, bitterly opposed to any such development. But there is no natural law requiring that software be as fragile and vulnerable as most of it is today. We as an industry allowed that to happen — and if we want to, we can fix it.
Image credit: yours truly, Flickr.
Amazon Keeps Fighting Big Publishers But Authors Pay The Price
It’s Amazon’s world and we’re just living in it. As the company continues to flex its muscle against big publishers – this time against Hachette – the average author could be excused for feeling a bit of schadenfreude. Publishers have run the show for a long time and their efforts at cultural curation have resulted in million dollar deals for Snooki and bupkus for smaller literary writers. Luckily, the world’s slushpile is slowly flowing around the big houses, moving directly to on-demand publishing and epubs. I should know. I use Amazon as my primary sales channel for my book Mytro.
But when Amazon flexes, authors get hurt.
Amazon is essentially squeezing the big houses for more profit. They are not entirely blameless and the company is as far from the little old bookseller in the village square as possible. To Amazon, books are another product. Some books are as popular as tooth whitener and Rogaine and other books languish on the shelves like a five-pack of lag bolts. But Amazon carries them all and makes a few pennies per shipment. And publishers know that if they don’t sell their wares on Amazon then they’re dead. Barnes & Noble stores should be gone by 2015 (my own prediction) and independent bookstores offer a respite but not relief. Wal-Mart stores don’t want much of the publisher’s back catalog – they just want that Snooki book – and they can’t find any way to really control digital distribution without Amazon or Apple. In short, they’re stuck.
At the same time, I foresee a renaissance in writing. Being able to upload and sell a book in minutes is a boon to self-publishers and writers. Any author formerly on Hachette could, in the future, bypass the the house entirely like Clay Shirky who calls publishing a “button” not a job. He writes:
Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done.
In ye olden times of 1997, it was difficult and expensive to make things public, and it was easy and cheap to keep things private. Privacy was the default setting. We had a class of people called publishers because it took special professional skill to make words and images visible to the public. Now it doesn’t take professional skills. It doesn’t take any skills. It takes a WordPress install.
But here’s the rub: publishing is hard. Marketing is hard. Distribution is hard. It’s not an impossible task by any stretch – there are plenty of independent writers (see Hugh Howey) who made it big for whatever reason – but the vast majority of these self-published pieces will languish.
That’s what Hachette and Random House are good at: running an engine of commerce that will ship millions of books a year. Seen in that light, Amazon is just a part of that engine and not even an integral part. If the publishers decided to go it alone, they could probably sell a few million books and ebooks on the backs of their best sellers. But the problem is that they need big sellers all the time. And that means fewer smaller books. And that means fewer important books.
Then, finally, we have the authors. As giants fight above, the authors are stuck in the mud. It may seem like no one needs to shed a tear for Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store. After all, he got a nice advance and he’s a famous writer. But Amazon briefly cutting his title on their site, as they did yesterday, means that Stone gets to sell fewer books. He gets lower royalties and he drops in the rankings. While I’m fine with Hachette getting a kick in the shin, I don’t like that Stone gets a kick in the chest.
Writers and publishers shouldn’t be enemies. Publishers are the gatekeepers while writers are the stewards. But, thanks to Amazon, these gatekeepers will become more selective and more mercenary. Amazon hurts them both in unequal measure. The publishers rewrite the contracts and keep making money. The authors get lower advances and the art in writing declines. It shouldn’t be this way.
Not everyone can be a self-published author. Writers have always depended on the kindness of strangers. The sad thing is that those strangers are getting hungrier and more callous thanks to Amazon’s efforts at squeezing a few more points out of the business of culture.
Hands On With Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3
Microsoft’s newest Surface, the Surface Pro 3, is an interesting gadget. Akin to its predecessors, it sits somewhere between a tablet and a laptop. In Microsoft’s estimation, the Pro 3 can replace your laptop while providing the utility of a tablet. It’s a big claim. TechCrunch got its hands on a Pro 3 here in San Francisco, and sat it next to its predecessors and competitors.
The Pro 3 something like a Surface Pro 2's guts shoved into an outstretched Surface 2. It’s certainly more compelling than the Microsoft devices that came before it. But the chief question is simple: Can it stack up next to and best the Macbook Air in terms of price, and utility? The answer, it turns out, isn’t binary. The Surface Pro 3 offers different use cases. I think that the Macbook Air still offers a better pure-laptop experience, but the Pro 3 allows for other input options that might, in your use, more than compensate for that deficit.
The Surface Pro 3 is the first Surface device that meets Microsoft’s initial vision for the line. Will consumers react well to it? We’ll know soon enough when Microsoft reports new revenue numbers for its nascent OEM business.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Talks to Buy NBA Clippers, Report Says
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Sign inLikeFollow @mashablesee more >SearchMust ReadsSocial MediaTechBusinessEntertainmentUS & WorldWatercoolerMoreChannelsMust ReadsSocial MediaTechBusinessEntertainmentUS & WorldWatercoolerCompanyAbout UsLicensing & ReprintsArchiveMashable CareersContactContact UsSubmit NewsAdvertiseAdvertiseLegalPrivacy PolicyTerms of UseAppsiPhone AppiPad AppAndroid AppResourcesSubscriptionsSitesJobsEventsSocial Good SummitMedia SummitEntertainmentLikeFollowA Paralyzed Teen Will Kick The First World Cup Ball Thanks To A Robotic Exoskeleton
A Paralyzed Teen Will Kick The First World Cup Ball Thanks To A Robotic Exoskeleton | TechCrunch #site-logo { background: url(http://s1.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/techcrunch-2013/images/logos/green.png) no-repeat !important; }if (!ads.isMobile()) {(function(window,$){window.TechCrunch.loader.on('tc_ads_wrapper_omniture', function(){if ( !window.ads.isAdPageSet ){if ( typeof window.adSetAdURL == 'function' ) {window.adSetAdURL('/wp-content/themes/vip/techcrunch-2013/_uac/adpage.html');window.ads.isAdPageSet = true;}}window.htmlAdWH('93311139', "LB", "LB", 'f', 'adsDiv4f311e2641');});}(this,this.jQuery));}\ABS\Auto Blog Samurai\data\Latest Tech News\techcrunch\)
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Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs…Browse more...A Paralyzed Teen Will Kick The First World Cup Ball Thanks To A Robotic ExoskeletonPosted yesterday by John Biggs (@johnbiggs)More
Next StoryA Badass Darth Vader Is Running The Internet Party Of Ukraine
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Today In Dystopian War Robots That WillPosted Apr 25, 2014More robots articlesPopular Postsif( !ads.isMobile() ){ window.TechCrunch.loader.on( 'gravity-beacon', function(){ window.tc_loadGravityScript( 'recirculation-accordion' ); } ); }Up NextA Badass Darth Vader Is Running The Internet Party Of UkrainePosted yesterday CrunchBoard Job Listings Operations Engineer Taulia Sr. Backend Engineer Direct Commerce API engineer - Data Analytics PubMatic Customer Success Engineer @ Pantheon Pantheon Product Managers Meetup More from CrunchBoardAdvertisementTechCrunchNewsTCTVEventsCrunchBaseAboutStaffContact UsAdvertise With UsSend Us A TipInternationalChinaEuropeJapanFollow TechCrunchFacebookTwitterGoogle+LinkedInYoutubePinterestTumblrInstagramStumbleUponFeedTechCrunch AppsiOSAndroidWindows 8Subscribe to CrunchDailyLatest headlines delivered to you dailySubscribe to Subscribe to CrunchDailyEnter Email Address© 2013-2014 AOL Inc. All rights reserved.Aol TechPrivacy PolicyAbout Our AdsAnti Harassment PolicyTerms of ServicePowered by WordPress.com VIPFonts by 
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Watch A Myo-Controlled Humanoid Robot Lay The Groundwork For Real-World ‘Real Steel’Brain-Linked Prosthetic Arm Wins FDA Approval As Our Bionic Future LoomsToday In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs…Browse more...A Paralyzed Teen Will Kick The First World Cup Ball Thanks To A Robotic ExoskeletonPosted yesterday by John Biggs (@johnbiggs)MoreNext StoryA Badass Darth Vader Is Running The Internet Party Of UkraineThe 2014 World Cup begins next month in Brazil and will feature something truly amazing: the plan is for a paralyzed, non-ambulatory Brazilian teenager to stand up and kick the first ball of the first game using a motorized exoskeleton and special 3D-printed helmet.
Created by an international team of designers and engineers, the video shows Colorado State University’s design for the custom trode helmet that will keep the leads in place and protect the kicker’s head.
First announced in January, the exoskeleton is finally coming together and should be ready for the kick-off. Called the Walk Again Project at Duke University, the kick will be one of the first massively public demonstrations of a human controlling a robot with neural signals.
The Walk Again Project is a nonprofit, international collaboration among the Duke University Center for Neuroengineering, the Technical University of Munich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience of Natal in Brazil, The University of California, Davis, The University of Kentucky, and Regis Kopper of The Duke immersive Virtual Environment.The CSU researchers, led by David Prawel, built the helmet while other teams built the exoskeleton and the neuro interface for the robot. They’re using a 3D printer to extrude a foam structure that is soft and squishy and that will be able to keep the electrodes in place while in motion. The kicker will also train in a VR environment to get used to walking with their new nervous system.
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Amazon.com appears to be flexing its muscle against publishers once again.
The New York Times reported this morning that Amazon had removed preorder options for upcoming titles from publisher Hachette (which owns the imprints Grand Central Publishing, Little Brown, Orbit, and others), a move that affected books, including The Silkworm, the latest mystery by J.K. Rowling (writing under the pen name Robert Galbraith) and the paperback version of Brad Stone’s book about Amazon, The Everything Store.
It’s not exactly clear what happened here — Amazon declined to comment, and Hachette has not responded to my email. For some readers, this might not seem like a huge deal, since it’s focused on upcoming books, not ones that are already available.
Nonetheless, the news has prompted some critical commentary from writers and editors. For example, editor Ellen Datlow tweeted a link to the NYT story and said that Amazon is “evil,” while author Lilith Saintcrow (whose novel The Ripper Affair was affected by the changes) described this as an attempt to “blackmail” a publisher in a way that also hurts writers and editors.
Steven Gould, president of the Science Fiction Writers of America and author of the novel Jumper (I studied with him at the Viable Paradise workshop) emailed me a comment about why this is a big deal. To be clear, this meant to be a personal statement, not an official comment from SFWA. Anyway, here it is:
If Amazon were one of many comparable online distributors of goods, the Hachette/Amazon dispute (like the Macmillan/Amazon dispute of a few years ago) would not be significant. However, Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer with revenue that’s 58 billion dollars a year more than their nearest competitor so their actions have huge impacts on the viability of publishers and the careers of their authors. I am sadly reminded of “Too Big Too Fail,” in our recent economic downturn. A healthy industry needs retailers, lots of them, in both the digital and physical realm.
Even before, it looked like Amazon’s negotiations over e-book terms had affected Hachette’s books, with Amazon reportedly charging higher prices to consumers, shipping books at a slower pace, and recommending other titles.
A couple of years ago, The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta offered a pretty thorough overview of the complicated relationship between publishers and Amazon. (At the time, Amazon, Apple, and the publishers were embroiled in a legal battle over publisher’s attempts to ally themselves with Apple and become less dependent on Amazon, with the Department of Justice ultimately siding with Amazon.)
This isn’t the first time that Amazon has changed listings as part of its negotiations with publishers, either. As Gould alluded to, back in 2010, the company stopped selling Macmillan titles directly. The moves against Hachette thus far haven’t been quite as aggressive.
Will the criticism against Amazon make much of a difference? Well, the Amazon backlash is nothing new, and Gould’s comment is colored with almost a sense of helplessness — it may be unhealthy for one book retailer to be quite so dominant, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is. It’s also worth noting that after Amazon’s dispute with Macmillan, we declared that Barnes & Noble had come out ahead, but that bookseller’s fortunes have not noticeably improved.
On the other hand, it’s been interesting to see comments pointing readers to other sites where they can also buy Hachette books. Perhaps more importantly, Amazon probably doesn’t want to be painted as anti-author, particularly since it works directly with authors through initiatives like Kindle Direct Publishing. And the company did capitulate to Macmillan four years ago. I don’t think readers, publishers, or writers (aside from a few one-offs) will be abandoning Amazon anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean the company can’t be pressured into taking a different approach.
[image via Flickr/goXunuReviews]
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