photography and its discontents

Called the golden ratio or the Fibonacci series, this numerical ratio underlies the complexity of pattern in nature and art. This fantastic video by a Spanish studio explains why.

Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

Aspects of espionage and cyberwar can be hyped up, but at the end of the day I don’t know if it’s been hyped enough in the sense that I don’t think people understand how big of a problem it actually is . . .

I do everything online. And I do it on my phone too. I would feel more comfortable doing things on my phone than on my computer, for the most part. On a computer there is so much attack surface to be compromised. Yeah, the iPhone has vulnerabilities, but when you look at the sheer numbers, like the fact that I open up PDF documents all day for work, that’s a lot scarier than the idea that I’m on my phone. I’m also a Windows Mobile guy and a lot of people think it sucks so it’s like running a Mac desktop—nobody cares.

The thing I would never want to put online would be my Social Security number. That kind of identity theft can be a nightmare to clean up. Not even online, but at the gas station where card skimmers are becoming so commonplace. In those cases, it’s better to use a credit card and not your ATM and PIN combination where they can take money out of your account directly. The threat with online banking is that scammers will set up a bill pay account to themselves or do customer-to-customer or some other type of wire transfer. People should set it up with their bank so that their bill payees are locked and they can disable or freeze wire transfers or require a phone call from the bank before such transactions are done.

-from security expert Marc Maiffret (gizmodo)

Carl Leonard, security research manager at Websense.

“To embrace social networks like Google Buzz safely, businesses need to protect themselves and their employees with a security solution that keeps up with constantly changing web content in real time.”

The security firm said Web 2.0 sites allowing user-generated content are a top target for cybercriminals and spammers, and research revealed that 95 percent of user-generated comments to blogs, chat rooms and message boards are spam or malicious.

Furthermore, during the second half of the year, 81 percent of emails contained a malicious link.

“Today’s emerging threats often evade traditional antivirus and security solutions, demonstrating the need for unified Web, data and email security. With the right support, web 2.0 opens up a host of new opportunities which can deliver real business benefits.”

Websense is advising web users to use caution when clicking on unknown links. It also revealed it hopes Google is prepared to deal with the volume of spam it is bound to see on the new service.

what Google does really, really well. and so should you.

10 Googly principles

credit: visual economics

google, will you stop it with all this impressive technology? you’re scaring me!!! here’s google’s new feature that compares current satellite imagery with historical photos of the same view.

Lyon, after WWII bombing/how it looks today

http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/02/wwii-historical-imagery-in-google-earth.html