Month: January 2017

January 06 2017, 08:35

I recently saw this devilish machine on the road to Washington. It’s a road zipper, which moves concrete blocks in such a way as to change the number of lanes during rush hour, using the opposite lanes where traffic is significantly less. This is particularly effective on bridges, as you can’t easily widen the road there, creating a bottleneck (photo from the Roosevelt Bridge from our side in DC)

It was a revelation to me that this is not at all an innovation: barriers have been moved this way on this bridge for already 18 years. And another thing, there are magnetic guides under the asphalt to make it very easy for the drivers of these devices.

January 04 2017, 03:17

I wonder how soon we’ll learn to control living birds? Using the same principle as RoboRoach. Only it’ll be more complicated with birds, with electrodes and electronic devices attached somewhere… But nothing is impossible, technology has come quite close. And consider just the military applications – like reconnaissance. Some birds spend almost their entire lives in flight, never landing – from swifts to albatrosses. It would be an interesting concept. It’s quite possible that animals will be the first to wear Google glasses.

January 03 2017, 00:41

I have over 10 services that I would like to share access to with my wife. For instance, internet service provider, electricity, mobile phones, and so forth up to joint accounts. Almost always, the services themselves do not offer the ability to combine accounts, and the only solution is to use a common password. Since the passwords are complex and sometimes need to be changed, since the passwords differ across all services, just sending an Excel file with the password is not secure at all, plus, in case of a password change, one must not forget to update and resend it.

In its simplest form, I envisioned a password manager that would allow sharing access to passwords with other service users. The manager could be cloud-based or not. If I change a password, it would change in my account and in everyone else’s. But I was unable to find any free service with such a feature. Paid services seem to have it but are usually unreasonably expensive: because this feature is in demand by companies, not private individuals. Maybe someone knows of one?

While looking for a solution, I stumbled upon an interesting service 1uapps. You install an app on your mobile device, which works in tandem with a browser plugin. If you authenticate in the app and then tap on the COX icon on your mobile device, COX.com automatically opens in the browser with the login and password already entered in the authorization form. That is, the site only opens if the system is sure that the command to open it was given by the owner. Here there are no shared passwords, so you have to manually update, but at least there’s no copy-pasting and open passwords. This gadget inputs the password into the browser by itself (of course, still security, but better than copy-paste from anywhere). Interestingly, 1U requires biometric authentication. On my phone, I set up fingerprint authentication, while on another iPad that has no sensor, facial recognition authentication works (works quite well).

In the end, the problem is solved by 50%. Significantly better than copying passwords from mail or an Excel file, plus I can change them regularly, passwords can be of any complexity, and protection is generally decent.

http://1uapps.com/