Tag: General Hardware

Random Neat Historical Fact: Pay Phones and Chronographs Edition

It always amazes me how technologies intermingle with one another. Consider the average automobile, which almost always have a cigarette lighter. This simple almost universal inclusion actually says a lot about the popularity of cigarettes in our society (at least the historical popularity). Most of these intermingling technologies go unnoticed by us because they’re just so common.

One of those technological minglings that I never noticed, even though I’m a bit of a horological nerd, specific markings on old chronographs. Oftentimes the minute subdail for the chronograph function will emphasize the markers for three, six, and nine. I always assumed this was merely an aesthetic thing and never questioned it further but as it turns out there was a functional reason for this:

It all comes down to the telephone. According to a watchmaker and enthusiast, I was informed that back in the 40s, 50s and early 60s when these watches were being produced, people used payphones regurarly. Cell phones obviously didn’t exist and many people didn’t have landline in their home yet. When using a payphone at the time, the money you put in got you three minutes of talk time, and you were cut off abruptly when your time was up.

The lines on the chronograph simply help you keep track of your telephone call. You’d start the chronograph, put in your money, and easily be able to know when to put more money in or to finish your conversation. Most calls were likely under 10 minutes, which is why only the first three-minute markers look like this.

I would have never guess that. After all pay phones were already in rare use when I was a kid. This makes me wonder if the next generation of children, who will likely have much more limited exposure to cigarettes, will be confused about what the removable button in the car that gets hot when pressed is for.

Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better

I’m a fan of wrist-mounted time measuring devices (commonly referred to as watches). Although my true passion lies in mechanical watches I do have a great deal of interest in smartwatches. I own a Pebble and find it to be surprisingly useful. It’s obviously a first generation (at least this time around, I did have a watch made by Fossil that ran PalmOS back in the day) device and I’ve been looking forward to seeing where the market heads to next. Of all the newly announced smartwatches Google’s Moto 360 is the most interesting to me. It seems to be a well thought out design and I was thinking about picking one up but Google, in my opinion, failed in one department: size:

The round watch is about 46 mm in diameter. That sounds big — I have a 42 millimeter watch that I consider large — but Wicks made a good point. If the watch was rectangular, it would feel and be even bigger with a 46 millimeter face, with the corners cutting into wrists

46mm? Wow! That’s way too large for my girl-ass wrists. Big watches are all the craze today, which can make finding a watch difficult for me since anything over 40mm begins to look stupid, but it would be nice if Google made the Moto 360 in a more reasonable size. According to the article Google believes women will be willing to buy a 46mm watch but I’m not so sure. Some women do buy larger watches but from what I’ve seen most continue to wear small watches.

One of the things Pebble got right was the form factor. The Pebble isn’t overly large. It uses a display that sips power so the small battery can still provide between five and seven days of juice. With a color touchscreen I believe Google had to increase the Moto 360’s overall size to get a battery large enough to keep the display powered for an extended period of time.

It will be interesting to see if the Moto 360 takes off. I’m not sure if the gargantuan size will hurt or help sales. But I can say for certain that the technology is really cool.

Upgrading My Reloading Setup

I’ve been reloading since I was a teenager. Since then I have been using the RCBS Rock Chucker I started out with for all metallic cartridge reloading. It’s a decent setup but it’s slow. I finally decided that I’m an adult and it’s time I stepped up my reloading operation. So I spent Christmas morning with my father setting up this bad boy:

upgrading-my-reloading-setup

I am now rocking a Hornady Lock-N-Load AP. Needless to say I’m looking forward to the decrease in reloading time.

Raspberry Pi Bitcoin Miner

As those of you reading know, I’m a big fan of Bitcoin and a big fan of the Raspberry Pi. It was only a matter of time until I decided to follow in the footsteps of many and setup a Raspberry Pi Bitcoin miner. In an unrelated Amazon search I noticed that the ASCIMiner Block Erupters had come down in price (they sell for $29.98 on Amazon’s main page but cheaper units can be had from other Amazon vendors) so I decided to order a couple.

Mind you, nobody is going to get rich off of a Block Erupter. My desire was to experiment with them. I’ve often wondered how much a somewhat decent miner could be built for. Combining cheap Block Erupters with cheap Raspberry Pis seemed like an excellent want to build an affordable miner (with the acknowledgement that the setup was unlikely to pay for itself). I followed the setup guide on Adafruit and was mining Bitcoin in minutes. What follows are some issues I ran into.

First, my Raspberry Pi wasn’t able to provide reliable power to both modules. This wasn’t unexpected. While the Pi could run one Erupter without any issue the second one would periodically die from loss of power. The mining application I used, cgminer, continuously notified me of hardware errors. Fortunataly, I have a second Raspberry Pi that runs my Tor relay so I unplugged the second Erupter from the first Pi, plugged it into the second Pi, and got it up and running without any trouble. The obvious solution to this problem is to purchase a powered USB hub.

Second, Block Erupters run hot. I learned this lesson when I went to unplug my second Erupter from my first Pi. If you’ve been running an Erupter make sure you give it time to cool down before touching it (or be impatient, like me, and grab some gloves). You will also want to invest in a small fan to keep your Erupters cool. This USB powered fan has been recommended by several people and costs all of $8.00.

Third, as I feel this needs to be pointed out, setting up a mining rig isn’t the most efficient way to acquire Bitcoin. Sites like Coinbase are better sources. The amount of Bitcoin you can mine with an Erupter isn’t going to pay for the hardware for quite some time (even before calculating in the cost of electricity, fans, powered hubs, etc.). I’m perusing this project for fun and to fulfill my curiosity. When I need to acquire Bitcoin in usable quantities I tend to buy from sellers.

The iPhone 5S Fingerprint Reader

Yesterday Apple announced their new iPhones. The iPhone 5c was, in my opinion, wasn’t at all newsworthy. Apple’s new flagship phone, the iPhone 5s, wouldn’t be newsworthy except for its fingerprint reader:

Apple’s brand-new iPhone 5s isn’t dramatically different from last year’s model, but it has at least one major addition: a “Touch ID” sensor. Us human beings are calling it a fingerprint sensor, and it’s built into the phone’s main Home button below the screen. Apple’s Phil Schiller says, “It reads your fingerprint at an entirely new level” — it’s 170 microns in thickness with 500 ppi resolution. According to Cupertino, it “scans sub-epidermal skin layers,” and can read 360 degrees. As expected, the sensor is actually part of the Home button, making it less of a button and more of a…well, sensor. Using Touch ID, users can authorize purchases in iTunes, the App Store, or in iBooks by simply using their thumbprint (starting in iOS 7, of course). Pretty neat / scary!

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about this. It’s certainly a neat piece of technology and I don’t want to decry Apple for trying something new in the smartphone field. Today you can lock your phone with a four-digit passcode or a full password. If I were betting money I would bet that a majority of users use neither option. Of the people who put a passcode on their phone a vast majority likely opt for the four-digit option. Phones are devices that are accessed frequently. Having to enter a long password every time you want to check your Twitter feed get annoying quickly. Therefore few people are willing to use a complex password to security their phones. That leaves most people not enabling any security and those who enable security most likely opt for a relatively insecure four-digit passcode.

Apple has been fairly good about including security features that are relatively easily to use and this fingerprint reader looks to be another one. Time will tell if the sensor is easily fooled by other fingerprints but if it convinces more people to put some kind of security on their phone I’m happy. If the technology is properly implemented it could easily be more secure than the four-digit passcode (admittedly not a high barrier to climb over).

Then there’s the other side of the coin. My first thought after seeing the announcement of a fingerprint reader was that the police are going to love it. As it currently stands, a police officer wanting immediate access to your phone must obtain a search warrant and gain your cooperation, have a mechanism of exploiting a security hole in the phone on site, or bring force into things either as a threat or as physical harm. With the inclusion of a fingerprint reader a police officer need only force your finger onto the sensor to unlock it. That seems to be far less hassle than the other three mentioned options.

In light of Edward Snowden’s leaks there is also the concern that your fingerprint will be send off to the National Security Agency (NSA). While Apple promised that your fingerprint data will only be stored locally there is no way to verify that fact. Furthermore, if Apple was compelled with a national security letter to include a mechanism to allow the NSA to obtain fingerprint data they wouldn’t be legally allowed to tell us. That thought should scare everybody.

Finally, on a more practical side, biometrics have a fatal flaw: the technology is based on sensor data obtained from your body as a point in time. What happens if you cut your finger? Will the sensor detect your altered fingerprint as somebody else? What happens if your finger is cut off? Our bodies can change over time and those changes are often difficult, if not impossible, for biometric technology to detect.

As with most security technology there are ups and downs to this fingerprint reader. If it convinces more people to enable security on their phones then I will be content. However, one must realize that there are real downsides to using your fingerprint as a security token.

3D Printed Skin

The technology industry makes me happy. While politicians run around trying their damnedest to wreck everybody’s life the technology industry is busy trying to improve everybody’s life. One of the most interesting technologies that looks to change our society is 3D printers. Taken to its logical conclusion, 3D printer technology stands to decentralized great deals of manufacturing and medical care. The manufacturing side of 3D printers is discussed frequently but the technology’s applications in the medical field are less publicized. For example, I haven’t read about the fact that scientists at Wake Forest University have printed skin onto a burn victim:

Scientists have developed a method of 3D printing new skin cells onto burn wounds at Wake Forest University’s Military Research Center. The method is far superior to traditional skin grafts because regular grafts require skin from a donor site somewhere on the patient’s body. Taking skin from a donor site is painful and sometimes the patients do not even have enough unburned skin to transplant.

Wake Forest accomplishes the skin printing by way of laser scanning and a modified inkjet printer. The laser scans the patient’s burn and that information gets translated into a personalized plan for filling the wound up with cells. Then the inkjet printer lays down the cells individually, one layer at a time until the burned area is completely covered.

Imagine a day when entire organs can be printed. No longer will people in need of transplants have to worry about a lack of potential donors.

Prototype Automatic Gauss Gun Developed

Although I love firearms I must admit that I’m beginning to find old fashioned chemical propulsion to be rather boring. Thankfully the hacker community has been working on this issue by developing exciting new electromagnetic propulsion systems. Meet the fully automatic Gauss gun:

While it may only be able to shoot a few cans right now, we certainly wouldn’t want to be in front of [Jason]‘s fully automatic Gauss gun capable of firing 15 steel bolts from its magazine in less than two seconds.

The bolts are fired from the gun with a linear motor. [Jason] is using eight coils along the length of his barrel, each one controlled by an IGBT. These are powered by two 22 Volt 3600mAh LiPo battery packs.

Here’s a video of the weapon firing:

Obviously the weapon isn’t very deadly at this point in time but it’s a prototype developed by a hobbyist in his spare time. As technology tends to do, this design will continue to advance until it becomes a viable weapon platform. These are the things I get excited about in the firearm industry these days, new prototypes that make actual advances.

Careful What You Plug Your Phone Into

I’ve often said that I would enjoy putting several phone charging stations in an airport or mall that would exploit whatever phone was plugged into them. As it turns out, I’m not the only one with such demented ideas:

This news couldn’t wait for the Black Hat conference happening now in Las Vegas. We reported in June that Georgia Tech researchers had created a charging station that could pwn any iOS device. The full presentation revealed precise details on how they managed it. I’m never plugging my iPhone charger into a USB port in a hotel desk again.

This is a potential vulnerability with any device that is capable of receiving data over it’s power input. Most smartphone, and many dumb phones for that matter, use a Universal Serial Bus (USB) to transfer data and charge the battery. Manufacturers of assume the USB port, being a port that requires physical access, is secure and doesn’t need much in the way of verification of validation (although this attitude is slowly changing) making the transfer of malicious software relatively easy. Just because a port requires physical access doesn’t mean one can’t do away with security measures. It’s trivial to convince most people to plug their phone into a random USB port (just claim that they’re plugging it into a phone charger).

Social engineering, the art of tricking somebody to do something for you, is probably the most effective security bypassing mechanism. You may not have access to a machine you want to exploit but chances are you can convince somebody who does have access to grant you access. For example, gaining access to a phone is often as easy as asking the person with the phone if you can make a phone call. If you make an effective story that appeals to the owner’s emotions chances are high that they’ll hand you the device.

One of the most entertaining rooms at Defcon this year was the Social Engineering Village. Inside they had a phone booth where competitors would call various businesses and try to use social engineering to pump important information out of employees. The tactic worked frighteningly well. During one of the times I popped in the competitor had a man on the phone spilling his guts about the entire network setup for his company. Trickery works.

The Nintendo Entertainment System Turned 30

I never thought I’d post this many video game related articles in one day but I learned that the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) turned 30 yesterday, making the same age as me.

The NES was the first video game system I ever owned and I probably spent more time playing that thing that I should admit (in my defense I grew up in the small town with nothing to do). It was kind of cool to learn that it’s the same age as I am.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2013

Yesterday Apple held it’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and announced a slew of new software and hardware. Most notable were the introductions of a new Mac Pro and iOS 7. Of course Apple also unveiled a new version of their desktop operating system, OS X. OS X 10.9 no longer follows the tradition naming convention of large cats, instead 10.9 is called Mavericks. Frankly, I think it’s a stupid name but the name really is irrelevant. What is relevant are the features.

The first feature Apple announced in 10.9 is property multi-montior support. Yes, Apple has finally joined the 1990s. No longer are users relegated to a menu bar and dock only on one screen and users can now have a full-screen application running on each monitor! All I can say is that it’s about fucking time.

OS X will also include Apple Maps. What does this mean for consumers? It means they can get the same shitty direction on OS X as they get on iOS and even transfer those shitty directions from their Mac to their iPhone or iPad.

iBooks will also be included in OS X. Mac users can now not read the books they didn’t buy in the iBooks Store because they were too busy buying them from the Amazon Kindle Store. As you can tell I’m absolutely ecstatic about this announcement.

That’s basically it. Apple did talk about new Safari features but nobody uses Safari so nobody cares what features are included in it.

Switching over to more exciting things Apple also announced new MacBook Airs. The new Airs are based on Intel’s new Haswell processor, which means the battery life is mind blowing. Apple claims the 11-inch Air will get 9 hours of battery life and the 13-inch will get 12 hours. Even if those claims are exaggerated and the 11-inch only gets 7 hours and the 13-inch only gets 10 hours those numbers of fucking impressive.

Hell hath also frozen over because Apple has finally announced a new Mac Pro. The new Mac Pro is an impressive piece of hardware. It’s no longer a large box. Instead the computer is shaped like a cylinder with a crap load of ports on the back of the device. It also includes new Xeon processors that are 256-bit, which I didn’t even know existed. The rest of the specs are equally impressive. In the end the new Mac Pro was probably the best thing that was announced. Sadly it’ll probably cost $5,000 because of the obviously alien technology included in the case.

I also mentioned the new version of iOS was announced. The biggest difference between iOS 6 and iOS 7 is the graphical interface. Apple gave iOS a complete overhaul. The shitty skeuomorphic applications are finally gone; replaced with flat icons in pastel colors. I’m not sure if I’m wild about the color scheme since it looks like the Easter Bunny vomited all over the screen but I’ll take a new design that looks a little nutty over the old design that I was getting bored of.

iOS 7 also includes a new feature called Control Center. Control Center is a small dashboard that allows users to quickly disable wireless interfaces, adjust the phone’s volume, adjust the screen brightness, and several other features Android users have been enjoying for ages. I’m glad Apple has finally joined the party, it would have been better if they arrived on time.

There’s also some unspecified multitasking features. I hope this means applications can have some limited access to network resources while sitting in the background but I’m guessing the implementation won’t be as good as I’m hoping. I’ll have to play with this feature before I make any ruling. On the upside Apple has finally copied WebOS’s app switcher, which was basically the best app switcher implemented in smartphone history.

The other iOS features were pretty minor in my opinion. It was good to see Apple didn’t announce any new iPhones or iPads. Why is this good? Because it means iOS 7 won’t be gimped on my iPhone 5. I hate downloading a shiny new operating system only to find out various features are disabled.

Overall this is the first product announcement Apple has done in a while that impressed me. Granted the only thing that really impressed me was the new Mac Pro but impressed I was. I may not be as impressed when I see the price tag but that’s another story.