So, maybe one takeaway would be ...

... to vote for members of Congress who will fund space watch programs?

This level of ocean evaporation is commensurate with atmospheric temperatures rising to over 500 degrees Celsius for a few weeks after the impact, and remaining above 100 degrees Celsius for over a year. That’s what models have predicted would occur for collisions with asteroids 50 to 100 kilometers across.

In fairness, this happened three and change billion years ago, and as we are all frequently told, the Earth is only 6000 years old, so ... not to worry.

Reminder: 100°C is the boiling point of water. 212°F if you're keeping score in Fahrenheit.

What could possibly go wrong?

Seen on Ars:

Engineers from Stanford and Berkeley Universities have figured out how to make radios the size of an ant, which have been created specifically to serve as controllers and sensors in the Internet of Things.

The radios are fitted onto tiny silicon chips, and cost only pennies to make thanks to their diminutive size. They are designed to compute, execute, and relay demands, and they are very energy efficient to the point of being self-sufficient. This is due to the fact that they can harvest power from the incoming electromagnetic signal so they do not require batteries, meaning there is no particular lifetime associated with the devices.

Emphasis mine.

[Added] Related.

Just so you know where your trillions have been going

Think U.S. military computer networks are secure? Think again. A panel of computer security experts from across the U.S. government told a U.S. Senate committee yesterday that computer networks operated by the U.S. Department of Defense are so thoroughly compromised by spies from other nations that there’s almost no point in trying to keep them out.

In fairness, the rest of the article from Ark Hesseldahl at AllThingsD makes it seem like the hysteria was driven in part by the desire to get the Senate to agree to give the military even more money.

Not sure if that's entirely comforting, but hey, it's what I got. Enjoy your weekend!

Let's get scared!

As I tweeted back to Brad DeLong, dog-lovers are going to be impossible to be around for the next few days:

How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy

Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia? A biologist’s science- fiction hunch is gaining credence and shaping the emerging science of mind- controlling parasites.

Click, if you dare.

And can't you just hear Carl Zimmer cackling?

(pic. source, pic. source)

Let's get scared!

One afternoon this month, a hacker took a tour of a dozen conference rooms around the globe via equipment that most every company has in those rooms; videoconferencing equipment.

With the move of a mouse, he steered a camera around each room, occasionally zooming in with such precision that he could discern grooves in the wood and paint flecks on the wall. In one room, he zoomed out through a window, across a parking lot and into shrubbery some 50 yards away where a small animal could be seen burrowing underneath a bush. With such equipment, the hacker could have easily eavesdropped on privileged attorney-client conversations or read trade secrets on a report lying on the conference room table.

Worth reading the whole thing, whether to give your spine some chills, or if you're like me, for entertainment.

Can't resist quoting this, too:

In this case, the hacker was HD Moore, a chief security officer at Rapid7, a Boston based company that looks for security holes in computer systems that are used in devices like toaster ovens …

Remember when we all laughed at the $8000 Internet-connected refrigerator? Just sayin.

(pic. sources: The Flying Toasters, natch, and SMC)

The next time someone tells you "We understand phyics so well, we're just about done" ...

... (and yes, I am assuming you run into such characters fairly often, because I do), point him or her to "Fundamental constants are not constant—or maybe they are, we don't really know," which is a remarkably clear blog post, title notwithstanding.

"All stealth bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned."

"Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."

It's not just the ex-Governator who's saying it anymore. Meet the X-47B.

MORE »

Let's Get Scared

Some fragments …

DNA sequencing is becoming faster and cheaper at a pace far outstripping Moore’s law …

[...]

“Data handling is now the bottleneck …"

[...]

The lower cost, along with increasing speed, has led to a huge increase in how much sequencing data is being produced. World capacity is now 13 quadrillion DNA bases a year, an amount that would fill a stack of DVDs two miles high …

[...]

Researchers are increasingly turning to cloud computing so they do not have to buy so many of their own computers and disk drives.

Google might help as well.

“Google has enough capacity to do all of genomics in a day,” said Dr. Schatz of Cold Spring Harbor, who is trying to apply Google’s techniques to genomics data. Prodded by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, Google is exploring cooperation with Cold Spring Harbor.

In conclusion, the worry about tracking cookies is over.

Read the whole sequence article.

Car pwnership

Let's get scared:

Researchers at UCSD have modified an MP3 file so that when it is played on a car's stereo system it modifies the stereo's firmware and opens up a security back door into the car's operating system. Using it, they were then able to control the door locks, the car ignition, and change the speedometer reading.

They hypothesize that black-hats could create such modified files and spread them around on the torrent networks. And given that some cars now are networked and contain GPS systems, they say that cars which become compromised could be programmed to announce their location so that thieves could locate and steal them.

Swiped from Chocolate Pickle on Metafilter.

Should I be impressed or scared?

I just clicked Send and got this pop-up window.

Want to Get Scared?

Watch the diavlog of Will Wilkinson interviewing Jeff Sharlet on BloggingHeads.tv. The topic: Sharlet's new book, The Family, subtitled The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

The Family looks at a politically active, yet below the radar, group that was founded in 1935 and has long had among its ranks members of Congress and other very powerful figures. The group adheres to a particularly twisted form of Christianity, to the point where they disavow the concept of charity and express reverence for Hitler. Oh, not his ends, mind you. Just his means.

I know this sounds like a classic conspiracy theory, but if you watch the diavlog, I'm pretty sure you'll be convinced that it's not. Sharlet spent a considerable amount of time with the group, many of whom, like Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), were happy to go on the record. Here's a clip from the beginning of the diavlog:

(Note that the embedded clip may not be visible if you're reading this via RSS.)

Watch the whole thing here. You can stream it, or download the video or audio files from the same page.

And while you're waiting for Sharlet's book to come out, you might like to read an article on The Family that he published in Harper's, in 2003.

Scary stuff indeed.

Let's Get Scared!

Via Josh Marshall, the latest in "Republican attack ads:"

I love the "paid for" line at the end.

(alt. video link)

Let's Get Scared

Joel Achenbach preys on my liberal paranoia:

Scalia to Determine Democratic Nominee

I gotta admit, he makes it sound plausible.

Your Daily Dose of Paranoia

I composed this post on 2007-07-25, and noticed 2007-08-16 that I had forgotten to publish it. Or maybe I was scared.

Under a ruling this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, such surveillance -- which does not capture the content of the communications -- can be conducted without a wiretap warrant, because internet users have no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the data when using the internet.

-- Kevin Poulsen

(h/t: Matt Egan)

Let's Get Scared (Redux)

Being the geek that I am, I have been keeping some stats on how well my spam filter is "learning." It is a so-called Bayesian filter, which means, superficially, that its efficacy depends on being presented with more and more data, and being told when it made the right decision and when it didn't.

At any rate, after inputting the results from yesterday into the spread sheet, the new detect versus miss totals are 694 and 348.

That is, through 1/6/06, 66.6% of spam has been correctly filtered.

I'm just saying . . . how's my canned goods supply looking?

Let's Get Scared

This morning's email from KK detailed problems about losing his bookmarks. He had been rebuilding them by typing in URLs of sites that he knew he wanted to re-bookmark. Being the tasteful sort that he is, one of the first places he visited (or tried to) was this fine establishment.

Unfortunately, a minor case of PEBKAC cropped up, and he found himself at

http://bjkeefe.blogPSot.com/

instead of at

http://bjkeefe.blogSPot.com/

Now, we'll not harsh (for too long) on you parasites who endeavor to capitalize on those poor souls suffering finger dyslexia, but we will say that it seems awfully un-Christian of you to use pop up windows and jiggly banner ads, when you've likely lured people to your site under false pretenses in the first place.

Although, when you think about it, it's not like there aren't plenty of leadership examples for this sort of behavior.

---

(A tip of the Le Show chapeau for the title of this post)