New tool for secret agents and the rest of us | Hacker News Reader

New tool for secret agents and the rest of us

caltech.edu

77 pointsChuckMcM19 comments

This is really cool technology. I often wish I could be a part of researching and building new cutting-edge technology, but it's usually cost-prohibitive as a solo hobby (unless you're wealthy, Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne, etc).

And even as a career, it can be tricky to get to that level-- you might need to go back to school just to get access to the research facilities. I feel like its way too easy for someone with a computer engineering degree to end up building websites and software/apps for a living instead of working on some cool futuristic tech.

I'm sure its possible to make the right moves to position yourself to get a shot... I just wish it was easier to do so.

Any one else annoyed by the menu bars that follow you around? I've noticed this trend and they just distract me from the article at hand...

Please tell me that isn't deliberate

Unfortunately it is deliberate. As a Caltech student I told them not to do this, but they thought it was edgy and hip.

Maybe you should give them the link to this discussion. They'll learn that we're not on their site to be amazed by the fact they know basic html and we'd prefer our articles more readable.

You can congratulate them on completely breaking the pagedown key then.

Why is it that I always see this posted when talking about fixed banners? I've never had one break my page-down key? I know there's something I'm missing, what is it?

Probably that when you page-down (eg spacebar on FF) the paging doesn't take in to account the fixed position element and so you miss out on that section of content

     1
     2
     3
    [4========]

4 is hidden by a fixed footer. When it pages up the next page is:

     5
     6
     7
    [8========]

and you've missed out on all the section 4 and 8 content.

So it's rather the facility of skipping by screenfuls of content rather than the key itself.

Ah okay, thanks. I figured I was missing something obvious.

I have JavaScript disabled by default, so when I see something like that, I assume some style element relies on JavaScript to run correctly. I usually put up with it for the feeling of security I get, but if it is designed to do that I can't say I like it.

Hey, quick question for you. I've got a version of Chrome with JS and plugins disabled that I use for not entirely trusted links. Do you know if there are still some exploits we're vulnerable to, especially on Win? I think I remember hearing a while back that it isn't foolproof.

Can't say for sure that anything is completely secure. JS is just one of those things that's easy to defend against, and it plugs a major attack vector. It also kills many tracking techniques. I also have a hosts file that blacklists known virus/shock/advertising sites, as well as ad blockers and "antisocial" plugins that remove Facebook "like" and other social media sharing buttons (which can aggregate your browsing history and connect it with your social profile).

If you're very paranoid, you can set up a sandbox VM for risky sites. Just make a good stable image and reload it every day in case you picked up anything bad.

I want a browser plugin that hides all position:fixed elements on all websites.

If you want to see the world change, look no further than this development. This is a pretty amazing feat, getting a terahertz transmitter and receiver on one chip. If you want to build a Star Trek style medical tri-corder this is one of the essential parts.

I guess near-infrared-opaque clothing manufacturers are really going to like that development.

Some more technical details: https://www.its.caltech.edu/~kaushiks/KS_AH_ISSCC2012.pdf

Wow, 280 GHz frequencies! I know this is not clock cycles, but still!

Does this mean X-Ray glasses for real?

Actually, yes. If you put one of these into a hand held device and had some sort of eye wear with a display on it you could use it to look through stuff. Its kind of like ultrasound though rather than light as you're looking at reflections of the RF energy of different boundary layers. No doubt you could attempt to reconstruct what that would look like but it would be imperfect, say you painted the blade of a knife white, the scanner wouldn't know that.

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