In this project, Nimesha Periyapperuma and Yudhanjaya Wijeratne present Team Watchdog’s simulation of Colombo. Using accurate topographical representation, detailed land use and zoning, and data reflecting real-world demographics, the project aims to help citizens better comprehend urban issues and potential interventions. The simulation, built on the Cities Skylines platform, allows for visualizing infrastructure changes, testing […]
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This document delves into the world of secure elements and FIDO hardware tokens, specifically focusing on the Infineon SLE78 secure element found in YubiKey 5 Series devices. By analyzing a similar JavaCard platform, researchers discovered a side-channel vulnerability in the Infineon ECDSA implementation, allowing for the extraction of the ECDSA secret key with physical access. […]
Steve Ballmer shares a challenging puzzle question used in Microsoft interviews about guessing a number between 1 and 100, offering monetary rewards based on the number of guesses taken with increasing penalties. Ballmer argues against playing, noting that the game has a negative expected value due to the difficulty of predicting his choice and the […]
The Dutch data protection watchdog has fined Clearview AI, a facial recognition startup, with 30.5 million euros for creating an illegal database of billions of photos of faces, calling facial recognition a highly invasive technology. The agency warned Dutch companies against using Clearview’s services and stated that the lack of proper information to people in […]
Command lines are often misunderstood and even exploited for security issues. One key point of contention is the conventional practice of reserving the first argument of a process’ command line for the process’ name, known as argv[0]. Despite being a relic of the past, this practice can lead to unpredictable behavior and security vulnerabilities, especially […]
Repaint is a website builder aimed at creators looking to design professional websites from scratch. It combines design and web development, allowing for fast editing, customization, and control over the website’s appearance on different devices. The tool eliminates the need to design in one program and rebuild in another, making the process much simpler. Repaint […]
Wesley Dickinson and James Porter share a riveting story of IBM’s RAMAC, the world’s first disk drive, born out of recurring close calls with disaster. Their recount of RAMAC’s creation showcases the remarkable innovation and dangers faced during its development. The blog post then transitions to a unique visit to the Computer History Museum, where […]
Puente Hills Landfill in Los Angeles, California, opened in 1957, buried five decades of trash until its closure in 2013. Landfill engineering evolved, from basic trash pits to highly engineered structures. Siting a landfill involves geology, engineering, and more. Landfills prevent trash from contaminating the environment, using liners and leachate collection systems. Compaction maximizes landfill […]
The author explores creating a music visualizer inspired by the classic game pong, where the ball bounces to the beat of a song. By altering the game’s physics and retaining key rules, such as the contact point of the ball on the paddle determining its angle of reflection, the author delves into maximizing screen utilization […]
In 2012, the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider confirmed the existence of a field responsible for generating masses of elementary particles. Physicists struggle to explain how the Higgs field works, often resorting to tall tales involving substances like soup or molasses, which conflict with fundamental laws of motion. In reality, […]