For about 2 weeks now, I am every day alerted of the suspicious behavior of some computer/server from the Google’s IP range:
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A nice report on the cost of bruteforcing variable-length and variable-complexity passwords using cloud computing services (e.g. Amazon’s EC). There’s a kind of a tutorial in their previous post.

Slow DoS attack with just 1 computer against a number of web servers, including Apache: slowloris. There is a solution for Apache, packaged for RedHat and also available for Debian.

Finally, there’s Go programming language. The most inspiring promise to me personally is the ease of execution parallelization with language’s built-in syntactic constructs. That is something highly desired. Also, I like that it is a compiled language. However, it might be 10%-20% slower than pure C. Let’s see how it grows.

Starting October, 30, there is a 3-week quarantine in all primary and higher bodies of education in Ukraine – to limit the spread of the infection.

A total of 80k people were registered with respiratory infections (not classified by flu type). Several small samples tested for A/H1N1 (which is the cause of swine flu pandemic) indicate that 30-50% of all cases could be swine flu (with other cases being “seasonal flu” – that is, previously known influenza types and subtypes). It is reported that ~37 died since Monday, with symptoms matching those of swine flu. Most of the statistics come from the Western regions of Ukraine, which were the first to face rapid daily temperatures decrease – which could have been the trigger of massive infections.

Today I’ve seen a number of people in Kyiv’s underground railway wearing medical face masks (or just pulling their scarfs up to cover noses). Drug stores were literally stormed for anti-virus medications, immune system stimulators, medical face masks, vitamins, etc.

If not the virus, then panic is definitely in the air. I do not recollect seeing something like that before.

Today Google celebrates the invention of the barcode.

To help in this celebration, you can make a barcode with your site’s address (there is at least one more at barcodesinc, but at the moment of writing it is painfully slow).

I find these parameters nearly optimal:

• Type: Code 128-B
• Styles: Draw value text
• Size: 234×60 (half-banner size)
• Xres: 1
• Text font: 5
• Value: bogdan.org.ua

If you wish, you can also exactly replicate today’s Google logo – which says “Google”, as you could have guessed.

You can place this barcode on your “souvenirs” – pens, cups, t-shirts. Many phones now have barcode scanners (e.g. Nokia E71), so put this code onto your namecard.

Read on to learn about matrix barcodes.
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DIYbio is

an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety.

DIYbio also has a google group, where a wide range of questions – from bio-patents to DIY gel electrophoresis shopping list and model organisms is dicussed. There is also a DIYbio/biohacking FAQ.

Today for me is the day of discoveries. I learned about the International Open Space Initiative (to give robotics enthusiasts a way to send their tele-controlled and/or intelligent robots to the Moon and Mars), about the DIYbio and biohackers, about OpenManufacturing (which doesn’t seem to have produced enough content to link to), Open Source Medicine (ouch!), BioBrick Assembly Kit (with an assembly manual), OpenWetWare, and a whole bunch of other awesome and inspiring community efforts, which do not belong here.

Do you feel the wind of change?

This will be the 2nd DrupalCamp in Kyiv. Please click the logo to visit the official web-site to learn more.

Recently, I have come across an excellent piece of advice called Ten simple rules for getting published. The only thing I have to add is that final rule #10 should be kept in mind while checking through all the previous rules – e.g. when editing someone’s submission, make sure that you are in position to be the editor for that article, and make sure your decision will influence chief editor’s decision – otherwise there’s no use reviewing.

PLoS Computational Biology, where the “simple rules” were published, has a Ten simple rules collection, which includes a handful of other useful advice articles, like 10 simple rules for selecting a postdoctoral position.

Here’s the ultimate proof :

One can clearly see that on weekends the number of unique visitors of my blog drops drastically to about 40-50% of the working week average.

And yes, that is an almost perfect 5+2 pattern, which I’m observing for many months, like a week-long circadian rhythm. “Almost perfect” must be due to the differences in time zones.

I wonder if the same pattern is characteristic for most web-sites… That is, if people mostly do the browsing at work, and not at home.

Anybody wants to share the secret cycles of one’s blog audience?

In my childhood, I greatly enjoyed the series of novels by Roger Zelazny about the Amber multiverse. I also did enjoy the book by JRRT.

Many of the epic and thrilling worlds have been brought to the wide screen in recent decades. So today I came to IMDB looking for just any film adaptation of the excellent novel series by Roger Zelazny, and found… nothing! Roger himself is accurately catalogued, though.

The Amber multiverse seems to me even bigger than that of JRRT’s world, yet the LoTR has a screen version, and Amber doesn’t. That’s unfair! I want a screen version of Amber world!

I’ve found a thread at IMDB, which asks for the movie, so I’m not alone in that.

P.S. Inspired by the recently re-viewed episodes of SW, including the CW animation series.

Linux users are not affected with a plethora of autorun.inf “viruses”, but that seems to be a real plague for Windows users.

Ideologically correct solution is offered by Panda software – a free Panda USB and AutoRun Vaccine. It can do two things for your Windows box:

1. with a single click disable auto-execution of programs from USB sticks and CDs/DVDs, and
2. with one more click – make the autorun.inf file on your pendrive inaccessible, so as to prevent infecting your USB stick with an “autorun.inf virus”.

Program does not require installation, but requires Administrator privileges. It supports FAT/FAT32 pendrives, but NTFS-enabled version is being tested and should be made available shortly.

Note, that if you perform step 2, re-enabling access to autorun.inf may require pendrive formatting. Also, after step 1 your favourite CDs and DVDs won’t start automatically anymore – but you will be able to start them manually.

And, of course, Linux users have nothing to worry about (yet).