May 24 2012

IISE Top 10 New Species for 2012

Each year, the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University chooses the top ten new species found throughout the previous year. The Top 10 for 2012 have been chosen, and posted to the website. This year, there were some really neat plants and animals that made the cut, including the Walking Cactus and the Brazilian blue Sazima’s Tarantula.

My personal favourite, however, was a mushroom that inherited its name from a contemporary cartoon–not only is the common name the “Spongebob Squarepants Mushroom,” but the binomen is Spongiforma squarepantsii. The latter, to me, is absolutely fantastic as it manages to bring something modern to the so-called ‘Dead Language.’

Anyway, you can see all of the other species that made the list this year by visiting the site linked above. There you can find additional information like the rationale for each making the Top 10, the etymology of the name, the family, and the native locality.

Cheers,
Zach

May 23 2012

Concept cars and Chromium exploits?

You may ask yourself, “What do those two topics have to do with one another?,” and you’d be completely justified in your confusion. However, they went together in a strange way in my brain. Firstly, let’s get the ‘concept cars’ portion out of the way. There was an article on SlashGear today about the possibility of Fiat, Alfa Romeo, and Mazda coming together in order to work on a new sports car. This article was one of the most poorly written under-proofed pieces of garbage that I’ve seen in the news in quite a while (which is saying a lot, given that there are news sources like Fox out there ;)). Anyway, I’ve placed a screenshot of the article below (just in case they catch the goofs, and decide to change them):

Alfa Romeo proofreading

Did you catch all of the amazing errors?

  • “Alpha Romeo” instead of Alfa Romeo — the first sign that the author (Shane McGlaun) has no understanding of the topic about which he is reporting.
  • “Must is now set for another partnership…” instead of “Mazda” (this seems like he was typing the article on a mobile with auto-correct).
  • “The car be constructed at Mazda’s Japanese plant…” — either Shane decided to incorporate some quasi-Ebonics into his article, or simply omitted the helping verb.
  • “The vehicle will be a two-seat, reward drive car…” — Subaru’s claim to fame is all-wheel drive on all of their vehicles, but they don’t have ANY with reward drive!

Incredible work, Shane.

Secondly, the ‘Chromium exploits’ portion is an incredibly fascinating topic. The Chrome developers at Google announced yesterday that two individuals had found methods of full remote code execution from within the browser. They go into depth about the six seemingly minor exploits found by a user going by the pseudonym “Pinkie Pie,” which, when chained together, allowed for the full exploit. The level of understanding and investigative work performed by this person is staggering, even to those with significant experience in computer security and programming. The process involved the prerendering engine, GPU command buffers, buffer overflows, tree structures via pointers, an ROP chain, and more.

So now that you have the background on these two stories, I can finally explain how my warped brain put them together. I started thinking about the myth of meritocracy, and realised that Shane McGlaun (the reporter for SlashGear) is employed, and making what is likely a decent salary as a technology writer. At the same time, “Pinkie Pie” understands the importance of security in programming to a degree that many can’t even comprehend the high-level explanation thereof. If he’s employed, it is a somewhat strong probability that he is highly underpaid in comparison to his knowledge and ability.

There you have it, my very odd connection between two seemingly unrelated topics. 🙂 Whether or not you agree with the connection, hopefully you enjoyed the articles themselves.

Cheers,
Zach

May 22 2012

Massage and relaxation

Today was the first time in well over five years that I went for a full-body massage. I was a little hesitant given that I’ve lost a lot of weight, and don’t exactly have a lot of muscle mass–I guess I was worried that the pressure might be a bit too deep for comfort. However, it was wonderful! I told the massage therapist that the troublesome areas were along the underside of my shoulder blades (especially my left), and in my legs (probably from the running), and those were the areas on which she focused.

I can’t believe that 60 minutes went by so quickly, but I think that it was the right amount of time given that I haven’t had one in ages. I left feeling completely relaxed, and didn’t have any of the sore pressure points that I usually have a couple hours after a run. Next time, I’m either going to add hot stones (which allow for deeper tissue work, and could help with my middle back), or go for acupuncture. The latter is performed by a woman who has multiple degrees in Oriental Medicine and Massage Therapy. Anyway, it was a wonderful experience that was well worth the money.

Cheers,
Zach