From TEDBlog (via The Daily Sourcecode podcast) comes Jeff Han’s presentation of a Multi-Point Touch Sensitive User Interface. You have to check this out!

Wired has an article showing a traceroute output claiming they can see the NSA wiretap in San Francisco. I did the same traceroute to nsa.gov from New York City and have a strangely similar line in my output.

From the Wired post:

If you’re a Windows user, fire up an MS-DOS command prompt. Now type tracert followed by the domain name of the website, e-mail host, VoIP switch, or whatever destination you’re interested in. Watch as the program spits out your route, line by line.

C:\> tracert nsa.gov

1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms [12.110.110.204]
[...]
7 11 ms 14 ms 10 ms as-0-0.bbr2.SanJose1.Level3.net [64.159.0.218]
8 13 12 19 ms ae-23-56.car3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.123.173]
9 18 ms 16 ms 16 ms [192.205.33.17]
10 88 ms 92 ms 91 ms tbr2-p012201.sffca.ip.att.net [12.123.13.186]
11 88 ms 90 ms 88 ms tbr1-cl2.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.10.41]
12 89 ms 97 ms 89 ms tbr1-cl4.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.10.29]
13 89 ms 88 ms 88 ms ar2-a3120s6.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.123.8.65]
14 102 ms 93 ms 112 ms [12.127.209.214]
15 94 ms 94 ms 93 ms [12.110.110.13]
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * *

In the above example, my traffic is jumping from Level 3 Communications to AT&T’s network in San Francisco, presumably over the OC-48 circuit that AT&T tapped on February 20th, 2003, according to the Klein docs.

The magic string you’re looking for is sffca.ip.att.net. If it’s present immediately above or below a non-att.net entry, then — by Klein’s allegations — your packets are being copied into room 641A, and from there, illegally, to the NSA.

Now here is MY output from NYC:

PB-G4-17:~ patrick$ sudo traceroute whitehouse.gov
traceroute to nsa.gov (63.161.169.137), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets

1 * * *
[...]
5 pos3-0.nycmnyg-rtr1.nyc.rr.com (24.29.101.201)
6 pos0 (24.29.98.5)
7 24.29.97.25 (24.29.97.25)
8 so-7-1.car2.weehawken1.level3.net (63.208.104.41)
9 ge-7-0-0.mp1.weehawken1.level3.net (4.68.125.137)
10 so-4-2-0.bbr1.newyork1.level3.net (64.159.1.65)
11 ae-13-55.car3.newyork1.level3.net (4.68.97.146)
12 192.205.33.93 (192.205.33.93)
13 tbr2-p032301.n54ny.ip.att.net (12.123.3.110)
14 gbr5-p40.n54ny.ip.att.net (12.122.11.26)
15 12.123.214.57 (12.123.214.57)
16 12.126.221.90 (12.126.221.90)
17 12.110.110.132 (12.110.110.132)
18 * * *
19 * * *
20 * * *

Is this actually evidence of the NSA tapping the internet?

I guess it really comes down to the fact that these are traceroutes to nsa.gov and we may just be seeing the routing to that network. I don’t see this node when I traceroute any other address.
Here is my traceroute to whitehouse.gov:

PB-G4-17:~ patrick$ sudo traceroute whitehouse.gov
traceroute to whitehouse.gov (63.161.169.137), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets

1 * * *
[...]
5 pos3-0.nycmnyg-rtr1.nyc.rr.com (24.29.101.201)
6 pos0 (24.29.98.5)
7 24.29.97.25 (24.29.97.25)
8 so-7-1.car2.weehawken1.level3.net (63.208.104.41)
9 ge-7-0-0.mp1.weehawken1.level3.net (4.68.125.137)
10 so-4-2-0.bbr1.newyork1.level3.net (64.159.1.65)
11 ge-6-0-0-55.gar3.newyork1.level3.net (4.68.97.132)
12 4.68.110.70 (4.68.110.70)
13 sl-bb23-pen-4-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.20.123)
14 sl-bb22-pen-14-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.8.178)
15 sl-bb21-pen-15-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.16.29)
16 sl-bb23-rly-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.20.32)
17 sl-gw19-rly-10-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.14.42)
18 sl-fema-1-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.184.78)
19 205.160.212.222 (205.160.212.222)

I certainly don’t profess to be an internet routing guru so you’ll have to decide for yourself.

WooHoo!! My favorite US government employee delivered my ValleySchwag package today! I got a great t-shirt from Rubyred labs, stickers from Goatsesighting, Riya, Feedburner and more… (Honestly, I probably wont be using the temporary tattoo. but it’s cool anyway.)

All this otherwise free stuff for only $15 a month! But just think of all the money you’ll save on the airfare of going to all those internet conferences. And it’s still less than just 3 of those triple-venti-half-caff-hazelnut-lattes at Starbucks!

C’mon you know you want one of your very own! Admit it! So get on over to ValleySchwag and sign up for yourself!

Linatree is offering a downloadable camera. The pinhole camera comes in the form of a PDF for you to print out and a flash animated guide to help you assemble it.

This is so cool, you have to check it out!

[Via: Lifehacker]

I haven’t been able to reach feedlounge.com all day. Are they down?

Geek Rapper MC Plus+’s album Algorhythms is available for download. I heard a track on Adam Curry’s podcast last week but when Crypto-Gram had blurb about it I went to the site and checked it out. I’m not much into rap but you’ve got to give these guys credit. This is pretty good stuff. Here’s a bit obout them from the bio page:

MC Plus+ - MC Plus+ is the founder and indisputably the #1 greatest computer science gangsta rapper ever. He is to CS gangsta rap what a blue screen is to Windows, what Vaseline, maple syrup and sour cream are to a good time. He’s putting CS on the map, producing raps for students from computer science departments around the world. With another 4 years still at Purdue, trying to get that PhD, he has promised to keep producing CS hip-hop for all the grad students in the struggle.

Spill Beers - Claims to be the producer of the album but the only thing we’ve seen him produce is his own beer. He helps with the raps and bitches at the beats. Someone told us he’d worked on a record before, no one told us it was a database record.

Lord Illingworth - He rocks unorthodox in flip-flops and D-latches. He processes you with batches and sons of batches. Lord Illingworth has 24 inch rims on his turntables. All that skratching is making him, well, no, there really isn’t all that much skratching. The one thing that’s certain is that his shit is blowing up, and that’s because he has a spastic colon. Even that won’t stop him. After all, he’s got more beats than a vegetable garden.

(Via Daily Source Code and Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram Newsletter)