Viewport width can be obtained via CSS, e.g. by using a media query for every screen width:

    @media (min-width: 400px) {
      .thing {
        background-image: url(size-400.png);
      }
    }
    @media (min-width: 401px) {
      .thing {
        background-image: url(size-401.png);
      }
    }

You could combine this with pixel density for even more specificity.

The tor browser bundle does have settings to disable media queries for this reason, but it is still conceivable to be identified by browser size unless you completely disable all embeded media (including images). Perhaps the browser delays loading images that aren't visible on the screen.

This seems almost trivial for the browser to fix. Just load all CSS resources, regardless of media query matching.

IIRC TOR is already slow. I am now sure you want to do this.

Yeah, it's speed for anonymity, just like everything else about TOR.

Well, the idea was to do stuff like

    @media(max-size: 200px) { #container { background: url(tiny_mobile.png); } }

    @media(max-size: 400px) { #container { background: url(small_mobile.png); } }

    @media(max-size: 800px) { #container { background: url(medium_tablet.png); } }

    @media(max-size: 2000px) { #container { background: url(large_desktop.png); } }

    @media(min-size: 2000px) { #container { background: url(retina.png); } }

Not always loading the same image is a good idea on mobile.

See my reply elsewhere. Background images are bad meaning this isn't a very compelling argument.

Often these aren't really background images, they're just using that to set image sources via CSS. These days you can do the same thing with srcset, which also allows someone to learn your screen resolution.

It's almost as if when your goal is to track someone you can use widely available, generally innocuous means to do so.

People being smart is the horse, and programmers colluding with "advertisers and spies" in a massive fashion is the zebra.

There's kind of a long-term issue about the web platform changing in ways that increase trackability, often without people thinking about it (or maybe in a few cases without people admitting that they thought about it).

There is a W3C TAG document that touches on this at

http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/unsanctioned-tracking/

One problem is that there are so many ways of tracking user-agents in the web platform today that it can be hard to convince anyone that addressing one of them will improve the situation. :-(

You're the one who sent an HTTP request to a web server. They're only "tracking" requests your browser makes to them. If you don't want a site tracking you, stop sending them data.

I can and do control many of the requests a website tells my browser to make. I deny javascript. I deny cookies (strictly speaking I have cookies deleted when I close the page). I deny flash. I deny third-party objects. I do this because I have knowledge about them (and just the right amount of paranoia about other parties). I lament the fact that other people don't and bitch about it when appropriate.

Don't put HD background images on your website! Desktops have bandwidth caps too and most people are only interested in the page text not frilly multimedia.

Indeed. Background images were bad in the geocities age, background images were bad in the myspace age, background images are bad in the current tumblr age.

There are two advantages to using www.* for a main web site.

1. As luaks points out, you can use a CNAME to alias just the webserver, without affecting MX configuration, etc.

2. You can have use alternate subdomains (like static.example.com or cdn.example.com) for handling static content and prevent cookies from being sent with those HTTP requests. This is a slight performance gain.

Good summary. I tended to go without the www. Now I'm not so sure anymore.

Yep, here's the amplifier:

http://spacecollege.org/isee3/isee-3-reboot-amplifier-instal...

It is an AR 700S1G4 with rated minimum output power of 700W, and will be used in S-band. Here's the datasheet:

http://www.arww-rfmicro.com/post/700S1G4.pdf

At these frequencies, the Arecibo dish has a gain of around 72dBi, putting the EIRP at about 7 gigawatts.

For scale, a typical wifi router has an EIRP of around 50 milliwatts, so this is about 140 billion times more powerful.

Thanks for digging that up!

Just to toss out a few ideas: software defined radio, high-throughput DSP (like audio processing or machine vision), MITMing of fast protocols, packet inspection, CPU emulation.

I found http://opencores.org/projects nothing is a killer app right now.

At work I use an FPGA as async real time controller. Not sure what utility that would have if not connected to specialized hardware.

You are correct, the 4GB SD card is mostly about having a quick start ready-to-roll image.

Bootstrapping SoCs gets really tricky when you don't have a JTAG device. The newer chips that let you boot directly from SD have been a great leap forward in development speed.

So wish I could upvote you multiple times. People these days are spoiled with their precompiled ROMs and precompiled software that runs on mainstream desktops to load those ROMs over universal standards (USB). Even with JTAG embedded programming was a PITA.

You want to talk about the days of erasing EPROMS in a UV oven and waiting 15 minutes for a 27C512 to burn? =) Because that sucked.

All of the enclosure design files will be published on the Wiki shortly, so you'll be able to make your own. The desktop/laptop versions ship with a spare bezel, as well, so you have one to modify. You could happily make your own case or pay a fabricator to do so, but the case in the campaign is injection molded, so you'd likely pay a lot more to do so.

The focus of this laptop is really on versatile and hardware-hacking-power, not on raw performance. There are a number of flagship features that you won't find in a typical laptop, and gobs of expandability.

For example, there's an onboard FPGA, for when you're at the coffee shop and you need to MITM a high-speed / low-latency protocol.

The schematics are full of attention to detail and fantastic surprises: http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_PVT_Design_So...

As you've pointed out, it seems like a big price jump to go from the bare board to the desktop and from the desktop to the laptop, but you're actually getting a lot of components there, including: very flexible battery charge controller (runs ChibiOS on an ARM7), speakers, speaker mounts, machined SSD mounting rails, and cabling. The screen is a gorgeous IPS panel.

Also, regarding the airplane tray table: it's actually designed to be hung off the seat in front of you, so you've got the entire table free.

It's amazing to me that Kickstarter allows delinquent creators to start another project.

I don't know how they'd track it when it's not the same account.

I pledged to the Kikori Kickstarter (which, btw, means I've got some bias in this although I wasn't up for any rewards) so I knew who the guy was, and I happened to notice that he was involved in this one. Even a human reviewer wouldn't have caught that. Well, you could do simple name matching but I don't think that's good enough -- compare this to the no-fly list, for example.

So I'm OK with word of mouth being the governor here. It's also a good indicator that you should research before you pledge. I do a quick web search if I'm backing something from someone I don't know. It helps set my expectations.

Kickstarter campaigns do have to be submitted for approval, so theoretically there is a human reviewer. I'd assume step 1 would be "Google the names of the project founders".

Sure, but then you have the false positive problem that plagues the no-fly list or any other string based name matching system. It'd work for Judah Sher since that's a fairly uncommon name (his Kickstarter is in the top ten results). It wouldn't work for plenty of other people.

Yes, and they do. For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillan...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Communications_Addres...

These systems were manually disabled.

>These systems were manually disabled.

it isn't a type of the system i was talking about as ability, in flight, to disable a system excludes the system from the "security" category. Just for the sake of example, placing a battery powered device like always-connected satellite phone into unreachable in flight part of the plane (end of wing for example) would be like something alone the lines of "a security satellite system"

Point is a $100 spot device could be added (powered by Li AA's) as a backup system. This would have independent power supply and obviate the "need for cicuit breakers" being accessed. Or something like a lo-jack or whatever. Its completely embarassing to Boeing. Almost as bad as the pilot has a 64mb i phone and the [edit: voice recorders] holds only 2hrs? WTF. An Iphone might not itself survive, but the media allocations for the seem absyrdly low.

> Point is a $100 spot device could be added (powered by Li AA's) as a backup system

Li AAs... without a means of isolating them from the circuitry?

How many aircraft are you prepared to lose through in-flight fires for this 'benefit'? Reference: Ethiopian Airlines 787 fire at Heathrow originating from lithium cells in the ELT.

Who is going to check the battery status at regular intervals?

Who is going to certify and sign-off those checks?

Who is going to be qualified to change those cells?

What interfaces will there be with the aircraft avionics to relay data such as call sign and flight code? How do we protect those connections from overload? There's a reason every single electrical circuit on an airliner can be isolated.

$100 is, frankly, a laughable estimate.

Laugh all you want, but the tech is pretty simple. You need to look at what it is doing. Replacing a transponder with something that is much simpler than an epirb. The example I gave is a $100 dollar current piece of tech that weigs 150 grams including power-source, and if it was available to LOS througha window could track the plane for 4-7 hours off a single set of batteries. If you want to raise the budget for an order of magnitude or two, for 10k dollars you could surely create a redundant system for the transponder.

The larger point is that any "real situation" that would need the transponder turned off (power/fire/corruption) would have almost no bearing on the operability of such a simple system.

FYI the imarsat pings are not all that different, are they? Its just a simple ping with some data that including headers is going to be very minimal payload...like SMS text type level of data.

Yes, but the FDR is designed to survive multi-g impacts - how well would that smart phone survive?

The spot device doesn't need to survive a crash, just needs to send out a GPS ping once every 10 minutes. ie to give a fix on where the crash is would be sufficient.

10 minutes isn't nearly enough. Remember you're talking about something moving at 8-10 miles per minute, 10 minutes, so worse case your solution will give a range about the size of Iowa.

You could increase the ping rate somewhat trivially. Look at what the trucking industry does to keep an eye on cargo. And in any event, the current 777 search area is how big?

Solid state storage is pretty resilient.

Where do you get the 2 hour FDR capacity from? I've found references for 17-25 hours.

"And because the recorders keep only the last two hours of cockpit conversation..." (NY Times)

my mistake, meant the CVR [edited above to conform]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/asia/series-of-error...

Not to buy a primary residence: to buy a (5th) investment property with bank financing. This is noted in the first few paragraphs of the article.

Not to do any of that actually, it would be to take equity out of a property that is owned free and clear (just like all the other properties owned by the author):

> I own four properties free and clear. I have no debt.

> Not just any mortgage, but a cash-out refinance of less than six figures on a foreclosure I bought for cash, rehabbed and turned back on the market as a rental.

It's very similar to a "Hibernate for Python", and I believe it started out that way. However, it has since surpassed Hibernate in capabilities, and presents elegant APIs that cover a more substantial fraction of "things you'd want to do in SQL".