Here’s some fun for you. You can now pay for hulu.com and get access to full seasons, and watch on your mobile devices. It’s $10 /mo that’s prob cheaper than having cable, just make sure you have a good internet connection. Called Hulu Plus. (please report back if you sign up, and tell us if it’s worth it)
And secondly,
OK so there is some tech buzz going around I just have to comment on. First, the domain extension .xxx was approved. This as you could imagine is a domain reserved for adult content. So as a warning if you see a website that ends in .xxx do not click the link. What does that mean? If you see something like: Check out www.mcblog.xxx for a free virus scan! Unfortunately, the domain is just an additional place to put porn, not a required place to put porn. So you could still find a lot of junk at .com, .net, etc domains. What would be great is for all porn to be required to be located at a .xxx address. Then you could just block those domains and feel pretty good about surfing the net.
Next is this phone. The iPhone 4 came out yesterday. Apparently the phone loses signal completely or really bad when you hold it in your left hand connecting the two sides of the antenna with your flesh. OOPS! Here’s the part that made me have to blog about it, Steve Jobs responded with “Non issue. Just avoid holding it in that way.”
WHAT!!! That’s it!? That’s your response!? Hey thanks for forking out all the money for this cool thing, and you can’t hold it in your left hand because then it’s not cool. I just don’t understand people! I mean if the best phone on the planet, the EVO 4G had some problem that made it so you can’t hold it in your right hand, I would have to tell everyone that it is no longer the best phone available anymore. Sorry that’s a game changer when the PHONE CAN”T ACT AS A PHONE WHILE BEING HELD IN YOUR HAND!!!! Helllooooooo!!!!??? I know we have lots of Apple fans that read this, and I have tons around me at work, someone please explain this. Tell me you aren’t still willing to fight me to the death that the iPhone is the best phone. OK I’m gonna breath now. -source
Speaking of things that need constant upkeep… I just got this in the mail and I don’t have any details yet, but I’ll let you know if anything has been automatically changed for you again.
Hi Pace,
Facebook will roll out changes today that will make it easier for our users to understand and control their privacy settings. As this change will have an impact on our users, we wanted to let you, a valued advertising partner, know about it. Please note that this change will not affect your advertising campaigns and there is no action required on your part.Facebook is a company that moves quickly, constantly innovating and launching new products to improve the user experience. The feedback we heard from users was that in our efforts to innovate, some of our privacy settings h ad become confusing.
We believe in listening to our users and taking their feedback into account whenever possible. We think the following changes address these concerns by providing users with more control over their privacy settings and making them more simple to use.
Starting today, Facebook will:
* Provide an easy-to-use “master” control that enables users to set who can see the content they share through Facebook. This enables users to choose, with just one click, the overall privacy level they’re comfortable with for the content they share on Facebook. Of course, users can still use all of the granular controls we’ve always offered, if they wish.
* Significantly reduce the amount of information that must be visible to everyone on Facebook. Facebook will no longer require that users’ friends and connections are visible to everyone. Only Name, Profile Picture, Networks and Gender must be publicly available. Users can opt to make all other connections private.
* Make it simple to control whether other applications and websites access any user information. While a majority of our users love Facebook apps and Facebook-enhanced websites, some may prefer not to share their information outside of Facebook. Users can now opt out with just one click.
UPDATE: I didn’t read the post but I watched the video on the facebook blog, and it SEEMS like they figured it out. They created a “master switch” that will keep your settings for all previous content and future features, allow you to turn off applications/website access, and “simplified” it. I logged in and didn’t see the new master switch page, so comment if you see it and how easy it is. Here’s the official explanation. Guess they didn’t like “delete facebook profile” as being a google trend… nice reaction Facebook, maybe you aren’t as evil as I thought.
I have a love hate relationship with computers. Mac or PC it doesn’t matter, they all break at some point, they all need fixing at some point, they all need upkeep. Saw this video that summed it up perfectly:
Well I’m debating on waiting till tomorrow or just hitting the update button now. I jumped over to the Sprint.com forums to see if anyone was asking when the 2.1 update would come, when all of a sudden I saw a post saying it was out. And there were links! Woo hoo. So I now have on my HD the supposed 2.1 Moment update, from the Sprint servers, and the update instructions, which look very similar to the 1.5.7 update, but dated May 14th. ANYWAY, most of you don’t care. But for the rest of you, this is SWEET! Watch for an official announcement tomorrow.
So facebook is a cool useful place to gather friends and share info, but what happens when that company that has all your info starts whoring you and your friends out to the highest bidder? Well you have to login and change your privacy settings again b/c they automatically set it up for you to make them money. Seeing how all of you will want to do this, here’s step by step instructions.
See this thing… now think evil… now click learn more
That takes you to this list (your privacy settings, also accessible via your account drop down list)
Click edit settings across from “What your friends can share about you”
Uncheck all the ones you want (I unchecked all of them b/c I don’t want any unsavvy friends sharing any of my info with urbank.com)
Hit save, and go back to the list, now click on edit settings across from “Instant Personalization”
This is the awesome one, it is automatically checked and it says Can we make partners and let them automatically access your public info, even if you’re not logged in? Pretty please, they are our “partners” oh and they pay us money… So uncheck that, and then click the STUPID confirm button, they want to make you understand you are screwing them by withholding this cool feature.
There that’s it! Now you’re again safe from stupid automatic privacy settings changing in Facebook.
Here’s a video running through all that, go fullscreen.
Well it’s monday again, funny how that keeps happening. Here’s a little video to perk you up.
"Let’s see… here is my top 10 list. I can obtain most of this information much easier than you think, then I might just be able to get into your e-mail, computer, or online banking. After all, if I get into one I’ll probably get into all of them.
1. Your partner, child, or pet’s name, possibly followed by a 0 or 1 (because they’re always making you use a number, aren’t they?)
2. The last 4 digits of your social security number.
3. 123 or 1234 or 123456.
4. “password”
5. Your city, or college, football team name.
6. Date of birth – yours, your partner’s or your child’s.
7. “god”
8. “letmein”
9. “money”
10. “love”
Statistically speaking that should probably cover about 20% of you. But don’t worry. If I didn’t get it yet it will probably only take a few more minutes before I do…
Assuming the hacker has a reasonably fast connection and PC here is an estimate of the amount of time it would take to generate every possible combination of passwords for a given number of characters. After generating the list it’s just a matter of time before the computer runs through all the possibilities – or gets shut down trying.
Pay particular attention to the difference between using only lowercase characters and using all possible characters (uppercase, lowercase, and special characters – like @#$%^&*). Adding just one capital letter and one asterisk would change the processing time for an 8 character password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries.
Remember, these are just for an average computer, and these assume you aren’t using any word in the dictionary. If Google put their computer to work on it they’d finish about 1,000 times faster.
Here are some password tips:
1. Randomly substitute numbers for letters that look similar. The letter ‘o’ becomes the number ‘0′, or even better an ‘@’ or ‘*’. (i.e. – m0d3ltf0rd… like modelTford)
2. Randomly throw in capital letters (i.e. – Mod3lTF0rd)
3. Think of something you were attached to when you were younger, but DON’T CHOOSE A PERSON’S NAME! Every name plus every word in the dictionary will fail under a simple brute force attack.
4. Maybe a place you loved, or a specific car, an attraction from a vacation, or a favorite restaurant?
5. You really need to have different username / password combinations for everything. Remember, the technique is to break into anything you access just to figure out your standard password, then compromise everything else. This doesn’t work if you don’t use the same password everywhere.
6. Since it can be difficult to remember a ton of passwords, I recommend using Roboform for Windows users. It will store all of your passwords in an encrypted format and allow you to use just one master password to access all of them. It will also automatically fill in forms on Web pages, and you can even get versions that allow you to take your password list with you on your PDA, phone or a USB key. If you’d like to download it without having to navigate their web site here is the direct download link. (Ed. note: Lifehacker readers love the free, open-source KeePass for this duty, while others swear by the cross-platform, browser-based LastPass.)
7. Mac users can use 1Password. It is essentially the same thing as Roboform, except for Mac, and they even have an iPhone application so you can take them with you too.
8. Once you’ve thought of a password, try Microsoft’s password strength tester to find out how secure it is."
Taken from How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords
Just wanted to pass along these good words of advice to our readers. I can’t personally recommend the software he mentions in this article, b/c I don’t use it. I really liked the chart showing how useful using an uppercase or numeric value is. Comments? Questions?
UPDATE: I wanted to put this back on the main page after I got two extra special SPAM emails last week. One from my brother linking to www.hgr5.tabletxpills.com (don’t go there). He sent it to my old email address via his old hotmail account. The email included a CC of everyone else in his address book (hint hint). Somehow someone got the password to his hotmail and ran a script to email eveyone this link. The second one was a desperate cry of help from my old roommate, Kylin Kovac. He was stranded in Europe and needed me to click a link and send him money. Funny, I haven’t talked to Kylin since he got married and swamped with kids and medical school. KYLIN, UPDATE YOUR GMAIL PASSWORD!
Ok that’s it, I’m taking this McBlog back over. Time for some guy stuff!
First and most important, who will be in Utah on April 9 & 10 to go to the Man Expo with me?
Second, this cool thing came out today that turns your camera into a wireless camera. What’s that mean? Well imagine never having to find those darn cables each time you want to get pictures from your camera. Instead, take a picture then go to your computer, b/c it synced wirelessly. “WOW that’s AWESOME!” you say. “Yes it is” I say back. Isn’t it expensive!? Well normally you’d think this would recuire a new camera, or fancy stuff. Well a company has shoved all the necessary hardward into an SD card. Eye.fi. If you have a sony camera, you’re out of luck b/c they have a proprietary card design… BUT this is SWEET! You should definitely get this on your birthday list. Check the cheesy mom explanation video.
Third, there has been a huge explosion of Android announcements. If you’ve been cruising along happily with your old cell phone, you might not have noticed that the future is here and it’s called Android. All major carriers have at least two phones running this operating system.. when’s the last time that happened? (That tells you how tech shattering this is) Sprint, my carrier of choice as of this writing, will have 5 Android phones available by the end of April. AND Sprint also announced WiMax (4G) coverage is coming in SLC. So that’s cool.
OK, I think that’s enough geek to cover us for a bit. What do you think?
(What’s Iron Man there for? Well, he’s a really cool man, and he is techie)
Wow! This is so very cool. I just saw this on a news feed. It’s a refrigerator sized box that holds a bunch of fuel cells. It takes oxygen and a fuel and creates electricity. 60 minutes did an interview last night.
The creator claims that one fuel cell (not one bloom box) could power an american home for a year. They will be officially launching on Wed. So stay tuned for more excitement, one day you might not be paying the city for electricity anymore, but a company who makes fuel cell boxes.