Jutta Degener

"The team gained control of almost 76,000 hijacked machines and ran what they say was the first large-scale quantitative study of spam conversion...After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted — a conversion rate of well under 0.00001%. Of these, all but one were for male-enhancement products and the average purchase price was close to $100. Taken together, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of $2,731.88." - Jess Lee via Bookmarklet

I went to school with Stefan Savage, the guy credited with leading this project. I am *consistently* impressed with his work. Check out some of his previous work - for example, the TCP hacks are really cool. - Chris Prince

See section 4.5 for the ethics background. "... we strictly reduce harm. First, our instrumented proxy bots do not create any new harm. [..] Second, our proxies are passive actors and do not themselves engage in any behavior that is intrinsically objectionable; [....] Finally, where we do modify C&C messages in transit, these actions themselves strictly reduce harm." - Jutta Degener

Wow these guys are fast! Voter- and EV-scaled maps of last night's presidential election. [hat tip to Stephen Mack!] - Kevin Fox via Bookmarklet

also, health care, another unnecessary item in rural areas. - ⓞnor

Public transportation makes less sense in rural areas. I should have come up with some better examples. A few others: sewer systems, curb-side recycling. Fortunately though, we have different levels of government, which helps eliminate some of these problems. - Robert Felty

(just for the picture) - ⓞnor via Bookmarklet

Direct link to img: http://i163.photobucket.com/al... - Michael Leggett

a heart made of gears - joshua schachter

Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. - joshua schachter

Awwwww. - Jutta Degener

<a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=..." attribute="value">are we here?</a> - Ian Tindale

Eukor specializes in transporting vehicles. Impressive? http://maps.google.com/maps?hl... - torque

How come your camera is wrapped in a layer of blue saran wrap? - j1m

It lets me disguise a cloudy day like today as if it were nice and sunny. - ⓞnor

statue of liberty! - David Vasileff

Oh. My guess was that you were riding a hadron at 99.999999% the speed of light under the Alps. Whee! - DeWitt Clinton

Black Mesa? - Steve Lacey

zomg tetris bathroom tiles - joshua schachter

"Four weeks ago you had the best week of your campaign, followed — granted, inexplicably — by the worst week of your campaign. And you’re still in a statistical dead heat. You’re a 47-year-old black man with a foreign-sounding name who went to Harvard and thinks devotion to your country and lapel pins aren’t the same thing and you’re in a statistical tie with a war hero and a Cinemax heroine. To these aged eyes, Senator, that’s what progress looks like. You guys got four debates. Get out of my house and go back to work." - ⓞnor

"Plus, if you had a black daughter — OBAMA I have two. BARTLET — who was 17 and pregnant and unmarried and the father was a teenager hoping to launch a rap career with “Thug Life” inked across his chest, you’d come in fifth behind Bob Barr, Ralph Nader and a ficus." - Paul Buchheit

I almost hate when something this acerbic resonates so deeply with me. It is a wonderful piece. - Christopher Sacca

although it could backfire and make you not want to eat it just the same - Josh Haley

or make you eat something you don't want to... - Paul Haahr

when I was younger this was much simpler. you'd just lick all of your french fries while everyone was looking. - Keith Coleman

amusing physics games - joshua schachter

neon signs - joshua schachter

"Arnd Drossel appears to have at least baffled the beasts, if not tamed them, with his spherical steel enclosure." - bob via Bookmarklet

kitty toy! - ⓃⓄⒶⒽ ⒹⒶⓋⒾⒹ ⓈⒾⓂⓄⓃ

Wow, claws' encounters of the reckoned kind. - j1m

The example video accompanying this paper is astounding. Any one of the video reconstruction effects in this paper/video would be great in itself, but together it's just astounding for a research project. Expect great things from these folks. They need to join a production house or get a director stat. - Kevin Fox

Hey, Harold! something you could use the multiple shots for maybe? - Kamilah Gill

oh, so cool... I so want to try this with a few videos where I took pics at the same time... - Harold

architect secretly installs complex puzzle hunt in an apartment - seth