Google’s newest offering, the Chrome browser, is due to be released today. The initial ‘press release’ was in the form of this rather nifty comic book created by Scott McCloud.
The Official Google Blog gives us the low-down:
All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.
Blogoscoped has a good overview of the browser and points us to the page where the browser will eventually be available to download.
via Link Banana
The company who produce the animation for Grand Theft Auto, Image Metrics, claim to have create photo-realistic animations that break through the ‘uncanny valley‘ barrier. The Times is a believer, giving us a sample video and stating that IM’s lifelike animation heralds a new era for computer games.
“Ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real, [...] the subtlety of the timing of eye movements is a big one. People also have a natural asymmetry - for instance, in the muscles in the side of their face. Those types of imperfections aren’t that significant but they are what makes people look real.”
Previous methods for animating faces have involved putting dots on a face and observing the way the dots move, but Image Metrics analyses facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video, meaning that the subtlest variations - such as the way the skin creases around the eyes, can be tracked.
The rise of university textbook piracy: the scourge of the textbook publisher, a blessing for students.
All forms of print publishing must contend with the digital transition, but college textbook publishing has a particularly nasty problem on its hands. College students may be the angriest group of captive customers to be found anywhere.
Compared with music publishers, textbook publishers have been relatively protected from piracy by the considerable trouble entailed in digitizing a printed textbook. Converting the roughly 1,300 pages of Organic Chemistry into a digital file requires much more time than ripping a CD.
Time flies, however, if you’re having a good time plotting righteous revenge, and students seem angrier than ever before about the price of textbooks.
The New York Times goes inside the world of online trolls, who “use the Internet to harass, humiliate and torment strangers”.
[…] Even if we had the resources to aggressively prosecute trolls, would we want to? Are we ready for an Internet where law enforcement keeps watch over every vituperative blog and backbiting comments section, ready to spring at the first hint of violence? Probably not. All vigorous debates shade into trolling at the perimeter; it is next to impossible to excise the trolling without snuffing out the debate.
If we can’t prosecute the trolling out of online anonymity, might there be some way to mitigate it with technology? [One possible] answer is persistent pseudonymity, a system of nicknames that stay the same across multiple sites. This could reduce anonymity’s excesses while preserving its benefits for whistle-blowers and overseas dissenters. Ultimately, as Fortuny suggests, trolling will stop only when its audience stops taking trolls seriously. “People know to be deeply skeptical of what they read on the front of a supermarket tabloid,” says Dan Gillmor, who directs the Center for Citizen Media. “It should be even more so with anonymous comments. They shouldn’t start off with a credibility rating of, say, 0. It should be more like negative-30.”
Of course, none of these methods will be fail-safe as long as individuals like Fortuny construe human welfare the way they do. As we discussed the epilepsy hack, I asked Fortuny whether a person is obliged to give food to a starving stranger. No, Fortuny argued; no one is entitled to our sympathy or empathy. We can choose to give or withhold them as we see fit. “I can’t push you into the fire,” he explained, “but I can look at you while you’re burning in the fire and not be required to help.” Weeks later, after talking to his friend Zach, Fortuny began considering the deeper emotional forces that drove him to troll. The theory of the green hair, he said, “allows me to find people who do stupid things and turn them around. Zach asked if I thought I could turn my parents around. I almost broke down. The idea of them learning from their mistakes and becoming people that I could actually be proud of… it was overwhelming.” He continued: “It’s not that I do this because I hate them. I do this because I’m trying to save them.”
via Mind Hacks
Kevin Mitnick and Emmanuel Goldstein are undoubtedly the most widely known names in the black hat community*. In a series of videos from CNET News, they describe and demonstrate social engineering techniques.
On the same subject, this video demonstrating how easy it is to social engineer you way into clubs by pretending you’re the DJ is worth your time.
*I guess Kevin Poulsen should be on that list too… now the senior editor at Wired News and author of Threat Level.
via Schneier on Security