Interesting science and technology

1.   Here's a handy potential plot device if you are writing a spy or crime story:

The cold boot attack is possible because of a little-known property of the random access memories used in computers to store and read data quickly. Random access memory is volatile meaning that it has to be constantly rewritten over periods measured in milliseconds. This property means that anything stored in random access memory is temporary–when the machine switched off and the memory loses power, the date is soon lost.

At least that’s what everyone thought. In 2008, the Princeton group showed that data stored in the random access memory turns out to be preserved over a period of many seconds after it loses power. What is more, cooling the memory can extend this period to many minutes and possibly hours. (One way to cool random access memory is to spray it with an upside down can of liquid air, which releases cold liquid rather than gas.)

During this short period after power is lost, any information in the random access memory is there for the taking. And this is exactly how the cold boot attack works.

The idea is to cut the power to the device and then immediately reboot it to a USB flash drive so that the operating system does not immediately overwrite the contents of the random access memory. Next, search the random access memory for sensitive material, download it and be gone.

Speaking of USB flash drives, using one of the them with a "portable" version of a browser would have to be one of the safest ways a teenager could browse the web with no risk of browsing history being detected by parents.   Maybe even safer to boot a simple version of Linux, I guess?   I wonder how commonly this is known amongst teenagers.   (Mine doesn't read this, and working on the assumption that children don't care to read their parent's writings, it will likely be years before he does.)

2.    An interesting laser experiment that may, or may not, indicate that we are all holograms has started working.    (Actually, I think physicist Bee is skeptical that it is really relevant to the holographic idea, but she thinks it worth doing anyway.)

3.    Feynman's famous book version of his lectures is now fully available on line.