onfocus

Cortex is go! Josh is using the All You Can Jet promotion from Jetblue to meet MetaFilter members across the country. This is where he'll be posting about his month-long adventure.

This is where you can adjust your Flash security settings, including managing Flash cookies that you can't control via the browser.

"More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plug-in to track users and store information about them..." [via schneier]

"Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just allowing them to play." [via Daddy Types]

"Superfeedr is Real-time Feed Parsing in the Cloud." Great idea that could help build specialized aggregators. Bummed it's ATOM at the end. I'd prefer RSS.

This blog connects Mad Men episodes with advertisements and details from the time. [via kottke]

ahh, dreams. [via joshua]

Privacy, Security, Lock-In, and Downtime. Gina runs down some problems with outsourcing your data management.

"The cloud, however, comes with real dangers...If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you." A good summary of some problems yet to be solved with cloud computing.

"Enclosure is a process whereby a resource held in common is taken into private control....The acts of enclosure of the information age are about social assets, they are subtle and invisible, and they are being implemented, to a large degree, by peer pressure." [via anil]

1. Start with an original but memorable phrase. 2. Turn your phrase into an acronym. "These mnemonic passwords are hard to forget, but they contain no guessable English words." [via lifehacker]

"Reassuring people about privacy makes them more, not less, concerned. ...sites would much rather obfuscate the issue than compete on [privacy] as a feature."

MetaFilter is #1 on a list of companies that don't get Oregon cred. Not only is Matt Portland-ish, but I'm Corvallish, and Josh is smack-dab Portlandy.

"...increasingly, we're seeing people with similar levels of access engage in fundamentally different ways. And we're seeing a social media landscape where participation 'choice' leads to a digital reproduction of social divisions."

A disposable email service for single-use, throwaway accounts. [via nelson]

"Different things work for different people but I thought I'd share what worked for me in the hopes that maybe one or more of these tips will help your own weight loss as well." Good tips and motivation for healthy eating.

Interesting Twitter demographics. "...45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely."

How lulz were had with a Time poll. [via waxy]

Matt's new cycling blog.

Nice way to let people browse extremely large photos with the Google Maps API.

This is a nightmare. But it's a good reminder to change your passwords if they're simple dictionary words.

"...asking users to input their email address and password from a third-party site like GMail or Yahoo Mail is completely unacceptable." This is still so true, and I'm surprised sites like Facebook haven't been shamed into changing their "Find People" features.

More photography in unusual environments: "When it thinks it's falling, the hard drive heads park themselves to prevent damage upon impact. Unfortunately, in zero gravity, the camcorder always thinks it's falling." [via waxy]

The hazards of commercial photography: "The doorway was about 12 feet away from the unit, so although I would be in the magnetic field, it wasn't strong enough to pull the camera off of my tripod."

Dam Kaminksy posted a follow-up to the Wired article on MeFi.

"'There is no saving the Internet,' he said. 'There is postponing the inevitable for a little longer.'" Amazing story of the DNS flaw discovered by Dan Kaminsky a few months ago.

Polls got you down? Sullivan offers a pep-talk: "We can only tell the truth as fearlessly and as relentlessly and as continuously as we can until November 4. We must do our duty. And if the American people want to re-elect the machine that has helped destroy this country's national security, global reputation and economic health, then that is their choice. But I am not so depressed to think that they will."

One question that Ed misses: do we want to have a group of people whose job is to sit around and solve captchas all day? If raising transaction costs works, move it to the world of money by charging a fee instead of relying on outsourced human attention.

A list of "Best City" lists that include Corvallis. [via UnderStory]

"That's the lesson. You spit in Congress's face, and they'll give you what you want." [via Schneier]

"This is going to sound a little weird at first considering what I do for a living, but I want you to stop using FTP." Agreed! [via 43Folders]

"This, no less than the defiling of the Constitution, is the legacy of an administration that not merely rationalized the immorality of torture but shackled our national security to the absurdity that torture could easily fix the terrorist threat."