• Die, Hollywood, die!
  A voice of reason in the “Kill Hollywood” discussion.
• The New French Hacker-Artist Underground
  The French group UX sneaks into places to restore them (or the art inside them). A fascinating read.
• Die Opfer von Niklaas und Perrine
  Granted, this article makes most sense if you were born in the 1970s (or early 1980s) and grew up in Austria, but I still wanted to include it here (in German).
• A tale of new censors - Vodafone UK, T-Mobile UK, O2 UK, and T-Mobile USA
  If you think only China and dictatorships in the Middle East censor the internet, think again.
• Public speaking for normal people
  Public speaking is a difficult topic for me. I like doing it, but tend to be rather nervous. Once I’m done I always feel like my talks were horrible, but feedback usually suggests they weren’t. This post has some interesting ideas which I’m eager to try out.
• An Investment Manager’s View on the Top 1%
  Seems like the “Occupy” movement should have adopted we are the 99.9% as a slogan.
• Information Security Interview Questions
  If you want to get into information security, you should read this article for a little self assessment.
• Mega-man: The fast, fabulous, fraudulent life of Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom
  Interesting portrait of Kim Dotcom, the man who’s all over the news again.
• Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split
  This mailing list post is an interesting bit of Unix trivia.
• How Much Is an Astronaut’s Life Worth?
  Some interesting points on a controversial topic.

We defeat SOPA today, only to face it again tomorrow. It’s like trying to stop a cold by blowing your nose. It’s time we go after the virus.

• Blue cabinet
  A project that wants “to name, shame and expose those who profit on selling the surveillance equipment that enables the intimidation, harassment and killing of innocent people”.
• Making Love To WebKit
  Acko.net always had awesome design, but his newest one is absolutely mindblowing.
• said the pot to the kettle
  This PDf subtitled “feminist theory for anarchist men” is a good read for everyone who’s interested in overcoming antiquated gender stereotypes, be they male or female.
• I hope SOPA passes
  Typical Maddox style.
• Behavioral economics and facebook conspiracy theories
  While the author talks about a conspiracy theory, I think it’s fair to assume that the big web companies do use behavioral psychology when trying to get us to click on ads.
• An Iran war is brewing from mutual ignorance and chronic miscalculation
  I still have the naive hope that war is evitable.
• US-Copyright-Cops greifen weltweit zu
  If you have German speaking friends who you want to educate about SOPA/PIPA, point them to this article by “Der Spiegel”.
• Paredit - emacs minor mode
  A neat presentation on Paredit, a great Emacs minor mode for Lisp hackers.
• In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WIFI And Am Hailed As A Conquering Hero.
  We’ve all been there, but this is brilliantly told.
• People Are Awesome: The Coffee Shop Where Everyone Pays for Everyone Else’s Drinks
  It’s not often enough that I get to post something nice here.

As Reuters points out, diplomats are particularly upset by assassination plots against … diplomats.

• Twitter: The New Frontline In Global Cyber Jihad”
  I despise terminology like “cyber war” and “cyber jihad”, but the article is still rather interesting.
• Your body wasn’t built to last: a lesson from human mortality rates
  I’ve never heard of Gompertz’ law before, but it’s rather intriguing.
• A Murder in Tehran
  Being a scientist in Iran can be dangerous if you work in the “wrong” field.
• The Google-Kenya ripoff
  I can’t believe that Google would be this stupid, but I’ll keep an eye on this. Here’s the blog post by the company that raised the allegations.
• “The Zambezi Valley: China’s First Agricultural Colony?” Fiction or Fact?
  I don’t know all the research, but this seems like an interesting topic to investigate.
• Nicht Fisch! Nicht Fleisch!
  This article about the various problems related to meat consumption is 2 years old and at least as relevant today as it was back then (in German).
• Secrets from the city under siege
  Smuggled pictures from the Syrian city of Homs and an interesting article to go with them.
• TVShack’s student founder can be extradited to US, court rules
  Whatever became of protecting your citizens? If he broke UK law try him there.
• Why Did TSA Pat Down Kids, Adults Getting Off Train?
  Welcome to the police state. Terrorists win.
• The Rise of the New Groupthink
  I’m always in favor of pro-introvert artciles.

[I]ntroverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation.

• New Year’s Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
  The EFF has a great suggestion for a New Year’s resolution.
• My Favorite Strange Number: Ω
  Yeah for obscure math.
• Richard Stallman Was Right All Along
  It’s not often enough that one reads something positive about RMS, which frankly speaking is a shame.
• Zukunft in Selbstverwaltung
  People in Venezuela’s capital are organising themselves in order to take care of things the state fails to provide (in German).
• Uncloaking a Slumlord Conspiracy with Social Network Analysis
  Using social network analysis for social justice.
• U.S. Government Calls to Censor Twitter Threaten Free Speech
  Yes, that’s 2 articles by the EFF in one issue of the Information Overload. It’s not my fault they write so much sensible stuff…
• Learning From The Masters: Level Design In The Legend Of Zelda
  See this as a kind of follow-up to another Zelda related article I posted not so long ago.
• Mathematicians Solve Minimum Sudoku Problem
  Unfortunately this was proven by using a computer to brute force the problem space, much like the Four Color Theorem. A “proper” proof would be nice and I’m sure it would make for an interesting read.
• An Optimistic History of the Next 40 Years
  That’s certainly a more optimistic guess than anything I can come up with. Unfortunately I’m afraid this will stay the stuff for SciFi novels…
• David Lynch: Why brutality makes me laugh
  An interview with David Lynch about his latest musical project.

The Information Overload series started in August 2010 and I’m surprised that I really managed to keep it going on a weekly basis (I only skipped a couple of issues because of traveling). So here we go for the first post of 2012.

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. “There’s no word for accountability in Finnish,” he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. “Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.”

• Time to end the war on drugs
  Richard Branson. Founder of Virgin Group, speaks out against the war on drugs.
• „Wo war mei Leistung?“
  If you are not from Austria but can read German, this is a good summary of the rampant corruption in our country.
• A Few of Kim’s Favorite Things
  Foreign Policy published this article on Kim Jong-Il’s special tastes.
• The Facebook Resisters
  Some people live fine without Facebook, who’d have thought?
• How India is winning the future with solar energy
  A summary of India’s plan to generate lots of solar power by 2020, including links to the source articles for further reading.
• President Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Into Law
  Not the best news to start a new year with.
• What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success
  Not only Americans keep ignoring this…
• An Introduction to Programming C-64 Demos
  The C-64 is the first computer I programed on, and since I just saw an awesome presentation about writing demos for it, I’m getting a bit sentimental.
• 2011: The Year Intellectual Property Trumped Civil Liberties
  Unfortunately this is a trend that can be seen world-wide, not only in the US.
• Grief and fear
  Some thoughts on Korea after Kim Jong-Il’s death.

China, the only power with much influence over the country, is less troubled by the long-term grinding suffering of the North Koreans than by the prospect of a leadership vacuum leading suddenly to economic collapse and a flood of refugees. Such a prospect threatens to cause wider instability.

• Antiforensik
  How to work against forensics. Nothing revolutionary, but a solid talk.
• bup: Git for backups
  An interesting backup project using git, this is open source and still needs help in case you are looking for something to work on.
• The engineering part of social engineering
  I wasn’t entirely convinced by this talk. While there were some interesting points, the speaker was quite full of himself and frankly the talk wasn’t so different from other SE talks that I’ve seen before.
• Smart Hacking For Privacy
  This started off rather bad when one of the 2 speakers couldn’t get over this nervousness, but ended up being a really funny and interesting talk, which was later joined by the CEO of the company whose product got hacked.

• Security Log Visualization with a Correlation Engine
  Nothing too special, but still rather interesting, especially since I need this for work at the moment.
• Bitcoin - An Analysis
  This was a great talk about the current state of Bitcoin, highly recommended if you have any interest in the topic.
• Cellular protocol stacks for Internet
  Harald Welte’s talks on mobile related stuff are usually great, but I didn’t get much out of this one, which felt a bit like acronym bullshit bingo (which is not Harald’s fault of course).
• Print Me If You Dare
  One of my favorite talks of this year’s congress, you definitely want to watch this. Update your printer firmware first though ;-)
• Behind the scenes of a C64 demo
  The C64 is the reason I became a software developer, so obviously I really enjoyed this talk. The demo is really good too!
• Fnord-Jahresrückblick
  Fun as always.

• Don’t scan, just ask
  This sounded a lot more interesting than it actually was, especially since the tool that was introduced is not publicly available (as far as I know that is).
• Effective Denial of Service attacks against web application platforms
  Great talk, solid presentation, this is the type of talk you want to download the video for.
• The Science of Insecurity
  Another great presentation, another definite recommendation.
• How governments have tried to block Tor
  An inspiring and insightful presentation about government surveillance and Tor.
• Apple vs. Google Client Platforms
  A security comparison of iOS and Android and the repective vendor’s app markets.
• Quantified-Self and OpenBCI Neurofeedback Mind-Hacking
  One big WTF and I definitely would have left, but unfortunately one of the 2 speakers had to borrow my ThinkPad power supply so I was stuck in this talk until the bitter end.
• Hacker Jeopardy
  Fun as always, but this year’s questions seemed a lot easier than the ones I remember from previous years.

A list of the books I read in 2011, sorted by finishing date (oldest to newest). According to Goodreads that’s roughly 16.2k pages, less than the last few years. I also have a couple of unfinished books, read several papers and a couple of chapters of a book on Ruby and MongoDB that I’m the technical reviewer for.

Terry Pratchett: Hogfather
Michael Köhlmeier: Sunrise
Terry Pratchett: Eric
Audrey Niffenegger: Her Fearful Symmetry
Conrad Barski: Land of Lisp
Arthur Nersesian: The Fuck-Up
Ryszard Kapuściński: The Shadow of the Sun
Jacqueline Rayner: Doctor Who: The Sontaran Games
Gregory Brown: Ruby Best Practices
L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Paolo Bacigalupi: The Windup Girl
Cory Doctorow: Eastern Standard Tribe
Canol Gökel: Computer Programming using GNU Smalltalk
Jeremy Leipzig: Data Mashups with R
Lana Citron: Transit
Suzanne Skublics: Smalltalk With Style
Russ Olsen: Eloquent Ruby
Dennis Lehane: Shutter Island
Terrance Dicks: Doctor Who: Made of Steel
Christian Bök: Eunoia
Chuck Palahniuk: Invisible Monsters
Radek Knapp: Franio
Michael Fogus: The Joy of Clojure
Terry Pratchett: Mort
Dan Cederholm: Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design
Paolo Perrotta: Metaprogramming Ruby
Mark Bowden: Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw
Cormac McCarthy: The Road
Charles Stross: Accelerando
Gautam Malkani: Londonstani
Armin Risi: Vegetarisch leben - Die Vorteile einer fleischlosen Ernährung
Miran Lipovača: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!: A Guide for Beginners
Robert J. Chassell: An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp
Hunter S. Thompson: Hell’s Angels
Lauren Beukes: Moxyland
Raphael Selbourne: Beauty
Zed A. Shaw: Learn Python The Hard Way
David Kennedy: Metasploit: The Penetration Tester’s Guide
Paolo Bacigalupi: Pump Six
Michael Moorcock: The Nomad of Time
Russ Olsen: Design Patterns in Ruby
David Mark: Beginning iPhone 4 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK
Reijo Mäki: Tango Negro
David Sedaris: Me Talk Pretty One Day
Kurt Vonnegut: Breakfast of Champions
Mario Vargas Llosa: Der Geschichtenerzähler
Kyle Banker: MongoDB in Action
Scott Kenemore: Zombie, Ohio: A Tale of the Undead
Leopold Kohr: The Breakdown of Nations
Carlos Bueno: Lauren Ipsum
Henning Mankell: Mannen på stranden
Garrison Keillor: Was ist eigentlich Anarchie?
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow
Norman Matloff: The Art of R Programming
Stéphane Hessel: Empört Euch!
Fabian Kruse: Beyond Rules
Dario Tonani: Cardanica (A Steampunk Nightmare)
Ryū Murakami: In The Miso Soup
Kaaron Warren: The Grinding House

Just a quick summary of the talks I saw on day 1 (powered by Flora Power, since I already started this year’s congress with a lack of sleep).

• Marriage From Hell
  Authoritarian governments using surveillance technologies provided by Western companies is not exactly news. Not a bad talk, although it was a bit from the “No shit, Sherlock” department. Not worthy of a keynote in my opinion.
• The Atari 2006 Video Computer System
  Since I love hearing about old hardware and its limitations, this was an awesome talk. The speaker definitely knew what he was talking about and the presentation was very solid.
• Can trains be hacked?
  Another good talk, but understandably there was no information on actually hacking the train system. If you want more info on this topic, listen to Chaos Radio Express #171 from December last year.
• SCADA and PLC Vulnerabilities in Correctional Facilities
  Since I wanted to charge my notebook, I watched this one as a stream. This of course led to web surfing and IRC, so I didn’t pay as much attention as this talk would have deserved.
• Almighty DNA?
  Why collecting DNA is also a form of data retention. If you’ve been to similar talks before you probable knew most of the stories they told, if not the video and Chaos Radio Express #143 should be good resources to catch up.
• What is in a name?
  The history of names and identity regimes from 1500 until today. Pretty interesting, but unfortunately I was in a bit of a post-dinner food coma.
• Defending mobile phones
  This talk was really full and unfortunately the stream didn’t work either, so I ended up watching the second half of Macro dragnets: Why trawl the river when you can do the whole ocean which had some interesting info on avoiding face recognition and other things.
  
• String Oriented Programming
  A talk about evading ASLR, DEP and other security measures with printf exploits.