Instructables user powerpants created a quick and dirty card reader interface with an Arduino. The Arduino decodes the data from the swiped card and transfers it to a PC over a USB serial connection. This instructable shows how to use some freely available code, an arduino, and a standard magnetic stripe reader to scan and […]
Every GSM cellphone user is familiar with the annoying Bzzzhtzttt noises that tend to emanate from random electronics anywhere you take your device. The iPhone is no exception, but the problem is exacerbated since most people have it sitting on their desk with a speaker close by playing music at reasonable amplification. It sucks. Mac […]
Cory Menscher writes: As part of the NYU ITP “5in5” event this week, I created the Asterisk File Transfer Protocol. Using the CSound audio programming language, I wrote a PHP script that converts a binary file into an audio WAV file based on the “Kansas City standard”, created in 1975, for transferring binary files via […]
If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of the DNS vulnerability that Dan Kaminsky announced about a half year ago. The plan was that Kaminsky would be working with DNS server vendors to provide a patch, giving ample time for administrators to upgrade before the details of the exploit were released […]
It’s unfortunate, but there are only a few sites that have done a good job of enhancing the user experience with hotkey support. In searching for the easiest way to do this in my own applications, I stumbled across the Hotkeys plugin for jQuery. In typical jQuery form it lets you do something moderately complicated, […]
Dan Guido from the Information Systems and Internet Security Lab at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU wrote in about the Institute’s 5th annual Cyber Security Awareness Week. If you’re in high-school or a college undergraduate program, this is a great opportunity to test your infosec skills against your peers, and hopefully earn a little prize […]
Jay Pipes, MySQL employee and co-author Pro MySQL, gave a great presentation to Google employees which covers a number of techniques for tuning performance on MySQL. His examples include debugging and analyzing problems as well as best practices for table and index design, query and join operations, and server variable adjustments. It’s a little over […]
