2013-05-07
On Google Glass and Rooting
2020, via notational
Google Glass has been hacked and rooted:
Once the attacker has root on your Glass, they have much more power than if they had access to your phone or even your computer: they have control over a camera and a microphone that are attached to your head.
It’s worthing noting that this part of Jay Freeman’s post is more about a potential future exploit than the rooting he achieved, which requires physical access, a Debug Mode that the Glass staff were surprised was in a publicly* available build, knowledge of the adb Android debugger, and also repeated user interaction to execute various parts of the process.
Google aren’t always as open** as they could be, but generally their products are relatively friendly to hackers*** who want to extend and modify the way the things they own work. That said, Freeman is probably right to warn of the issues down the road, and note that a future root exploit would be troubling to say the least.
* where by “publicly” I mean “those who attended Google I/O 2012 or who were lucky in the #ifihadglass giveaway”.
** I know this is a problematic term, but it feels right.
*** to be read in the old MIT sense as “playful manipulators”.
2013-04-16
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Google Street View, captured at night. If you move one step forward, it goes back to the usual day view.
Has anyone else seen an outdoors Street View captured at night?
2013-04-12
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Sven Eberlein paraphrasing the large companies in his post / open letter What’s the matter with “The Google Bus”? (via)
I’ve noticed more and more people (and I have a lot of sympathy with them) saying “if these kids want to work at Google, then they should live in Mountain View”. It’s either that, or Google (and Facebook et al) should set up headquarters (or at least large satellite offices) in San Francisco.
Within the last year Twitter’s proved you can house 1,500 odd employees here, and I’d be amazed if they don’t have contingency plans to at least double that. It’d be so much better than these “invasive species”, as Sven puts it.
2013-04-10
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“Earl’s Court was an embarrassment”.
Google Street View screenshot from Maps on iPad, iOS 5. See also.
2013-03-20
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2013-03-19
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The Labor Department has no authority to release [diversity] reports for companies that aren’t federal contractors. That knocked out 10 companies: Amazon, Facebook, Groupon, Hulu, LinkedIn, LivingSocial, Netflix, Twitter, Yelp and Zynga.
But even contractors may block the release of their data. Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft all submitted written objections, successfully petitioning the Department of Labor for their data to be excluded on the basis that doing so would cause “competitive harm.”
”Julianne Pepitone for CNN: Diversity in Silicon Valley - black, female, and a Silicon Valley ‘trade secret’ (via).
That excuse is almost on the “my dog ate the homework” level. Sigh.
2013-03-18
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theartofgooglebooks (via notational)
An employee’s fingers, a transformative gutter, and color samples.
From p. 16 of Index of Colours and Mixed Tints by Theodore Henry A. Fielding (1830). Original from Oxford University. Digitized March 31, 2006.
So good.
2013-01-15
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2013-01-09
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Google UK’s doodle noting the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Metropolitan line, the first component of the London Underground, which was itself the first underground / city-scale railway in the world.
Previously: LU150 two pound coins.
