iRi

Sometimes in the middle of the night I get kind of stuck. Laying in bed, ...

jerf@jerf.org (jerf) — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:59:13 -0000

Sometimes in the middle of the night I get kind of stuck. Laying in bed, not quite awake, not totally asleep, kind of dreaming. And stuck on one particular subject, unable to change it and think/dream about anything else. - recently at Chizumatic

I'm sitting here wide awake at 4:15 am local time having just had this happen due to a bad combination of getting too cold while sleeping (always gives me annoyingly complicated dreams) and probably too much caffeine.

My reward is a rather nasty awakening where my subconscious was making a good run at convincing me an infrequently recurring sound I've been hearing may be an auditory hallucination, which still almost freaks me out to type so I must not be quite ready to go back to sleep yet. It actually took me a moment to establish that I really have a memory of having heard this sound in real life and that the whole thing wasn't a dream-time mental fabrication. The idea that I frequently have a mathematically precise auditory hallucinations does not pass rational muster, but who's rational at 4:15am?

To prove to myself that I'm not crazy I tried to Google the sound, which is not easy, but I finally found something very similar here; it starts exactly the same, but it always ended differently. (Perhaps because I'm almost always directly on top of a tower, or perhaps this is a recording of a data burst where I'm just hearing a simple sync signal.) Since you have to register for that site, here's an mp3 version of the characteristic beginning (I cut off the part that varies for space & bandwidth).

Perhaps you've heard it too. Now you know: Cell phone interference, probably GSM.

Not auditory hallucination. You hear that, subconscious? Real. Can I go back to sleep now? Yes? Thank you.

Comment...

"Web tripwires" reveal 1.3% of web pages altered in transit

jerf@jerf.org (jerf) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:35:57 -0000

Will integrity issues be heating back up?

... probably not. It looks to me, based on the project page, that the vast majority of modifications come from local proxies the user is running, and the remainder is just on-the-fly image compression, which I am broadly not opposed to, as the human perception integrity is mostly maintained. (Not in favor of, mind you, but not opposed.)

Comment...

What Every Programmer Needs To Know About Encoding

jerf@jerf.org (jerf) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:02:42 -0000

In many modern languages, encoding errors are the number one cause of security flaws in software.

This is going to be long because if you don't have a deep understanding about what is going on, you too will write encoding-based security flaws. Given the widespread state of ignorance about this situation, including a large number of people who don't even believe there is a problem, I do not believe I can make this much shorter.

But before I can discuss any sort of solution, what exactly is the problem? Let us start with a parable.

Read the rest...

One of the little games I play with my spam is waiting for their incredibly ...

jerf@jerf.org (jerf) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 04:00:35 -0000

One of the little games I play with my spam is waiting for their incredibly bad random name schemes to come up with a name I actually recognize. Today I've had the closest hit yet: "Charles Brown", who, tragically, has turned to the Nigerian scam to fund his kite habit.

Oh, kite-eating tree, how low you have brought him.

Comment...

U.S. consumer prices were unexpectedly flat last month - Wall Street Journal Is it just ...

jerf@jerf.org (jerf) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:09:12 -0000

U.S. consumer prices were unexpectedly flat last month - Wall Street Journal

Is it just me, or is every bit of economic news lately being prefaced with "unexpectedly"?

Is it just me, or has prediction gotten noticeably harder in the last year or so? Maybe I'm just paying attention more, but you name the prediction from this time last year, from the state of Iraq, to the economy, to the domestic political situation, and not a one of them is even close.

Edit: By the way, I mean the "Is it just me?" as an honest question, not a rhetorical device. Are things really getting harder to predict, or am I finally internalizing something that has always been as true as it is today?

Comment...