What are all these goths doing here? I thought I came to a post-punk show.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Future Noir:

Turning down the block and ducking into a futuristic newsstand revealed the most humorous touches of layering, for it was here that this author immediately noticed that a number of faux twenty-first-century magazines had been stuffed into racks mounted on the newsstand's walls, and that many of them sported decidedly tongue-in-cheek covers.

These publications had been designed by BR art department member Tom Southwell. Periodicals of note include Krotch (going for $29 a copy!), Zord (at $30), Moni, Bash, Creative Evolution, and Droid. Horn, the "skin mag" of the future, had a cover which offered articles such as "The Cosmic Orgasm" and "Hot Lust in Space." Kill (whose logo was "All the News That's Fit to Kill") sported cover stories like "Multiple Murders - Reader's Own Photos."

Mirrored from jwz.org.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/05/friday_squid_bl_327.html

Seems that squid ink hasn't changed much in 160 million years. From this, researchers argue that the security mechanism of spraying ink into the water and escaping is also that old.

Simon and his colleagues used a combination of direct, high-resolution chemical techniques to determine that the melanin had been preserved. The researchers also compared the chemical composition of the ancient squid ink remains to that of modern squid ink from Sepia officinalis, a squid common to the Mediterranean, North and Baltic seas.

"It's close enough that I would argue that the pigmentation in this class of animals has not evolved in 160 million years," Simon said. "The whole machinery apparently has been locked in time and passed down through succeeding generations of squid. It's a very optimized system for this animal and has been optimized for a long time."

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/23737817722

G-G the book.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

http://penny-arcade.com/2012/05/25/disruptive-technology

The life simulator used is Golly which has a built-in script to generate these metapixel grids (select a pattern, and choose "metafier.py" from the scripts list).

Outer Totalistic Cellular Automata Meta-Pixel:

The metacell uses a period 184 tractor beam, which acts as a clock. It pulls a block downwards by eight cells per impact, releasing a glider in the process. Some of the gliders are utilised; the rest are eaten. When the block reaches the base, it is restored at the top to begin the cycle again. Period 46 and 184 technologies (which are compatible) are used extensively throughout the configuration.

The rule is encoded in two columns, each of nine eaters, where one column corresponds to the 'Birth' rule and the other corresponds to 'Survival'. The nine eaters correspond to the nine different quantities of on cells (0 through 8). The presence or absence of the eater indicates whether the cell should be on in the next meta-generation. The state of the eater is read by the collision of two antiparallel LWSSes, which radiates two antiparallel gliders (not unlike an electron-positron reaction in a PET scanner). These gliders then collide into beehives, which are restored by a passing LWSS in Brice's elegant honeybit reaction. If the eater is present, the beehive would remain in its original state, thereby allowing the LWSS to pass unaffected; if the eater is absent, the beehive would be restored, consuming the LWSS in the process. Equivalently, the state of the eater is mapped onto the state of the LWSS.

Previously, previously, previously.

Mirrored from jwz.org.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/05/the_explosive_f_1.html

Interesting:

Although the plot was disrupted before a particular airline was targeted and tickets were purchased, al Qaeda's continued attempts to attack the U.S. speak to the organization's persistence and willingness to refine specific approaches to killing. Unlike Abdulmutallab's bomb, the new device contained lead azide, an explosive often used as a detonator. If the new underwear bomb had been used, the bomber would have ignited the lead azide, which would have triggered a more powerful explosive, possibly military-grade explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN).

Lead azide and PETN were key components in a 2010 plan to detonate two bombs sent from Yemen and bound for Chicago—one in a cargo aircraft and the other in the cargo hold of a passenger aircraft. In that plot, al-Qaeda hid bombs in printer cartridges, allowing them to slip past cargo handlers and airport screeners. Both bombs contained far more explosive material than the 80 grams of PETN that Abdulmutallab smuggled onto his Northwest Airlines flight.

With the latest device, al Asiri appears to have been able to improve on the underwear bomb supplied to Abdulmutallab, says Joan Neuhaus Schaan, a fellow in homeland security and terrorism for Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

The interview is also interesting, and I am especially pleased to see this last answer:

What has been the most effective means of disrupting terrorism attacks?
As with bombs that were being sent from Yemen to Chicago as cargo, this latest plot was discovered using human intelligence rather than screening procedures and technologies. These plans were disrupted because of proactive mechanisms put in place to stop terrorism rather than defensive approaches such as screening.

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/05/25