Technology

Why Printers Add Secret Tracking Dots

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Why Printers Add Secret Tracking Dots

These “microdots” are well known to security researchers and civil liberties campaigners. Many colour printers add them to documents without people ever knowing they’re there.

Dots from a HP Laserjet printer, illuminated with blue light. Credit: Florian Heise/Wikipedia.

In this case, the FBI has not said publicly that these microdots were used to help identify their suspect, and the bureau declined to comment for this article. The US Department of Justice, which published news of the charges against Winner, also declined to provide further clarification.

Post No. 195212

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There is no reason to be sadistic when it comes to coding… 👿

If something can be implemented at the command line using PHP and its easy and fast to do it that way, I might as well do it that way. 

In The 2010s, We All Became Alienated By Technology

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In The 2010s, We All Became Alienated By Technology

I’ve spent six years reporting on deeply alienated people on the internet, during which time I’ve come to see conditions of disconnection and frustration everywhere the Digital Nation touches: on social media, in search algorithms, in the digital economy. In myself. The feelings of powerlessness, estrangement, loneliness, and anger created or exacerbated by the information age are so general it can be easy to think they are just a state of nature, like an ache that persists until you forget it’s there. But then sometimes it suddenly gets much worse.

Here’s How to Teach Yourself

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Learning to Code is Easy: Here’s How to Teach Yourself

Few skills scare people away like coding. Television portrayals make it seem like writing computer code is a genius-level activity, as weird symbols race across the screen and techno music blares in the background.

But the truth is that coding is actually pretty easy.

I’m not saying this to dismiss the work of brilliant programmers. A skill can simultaneously be fairly easy to get the basics in, while also being really difficult to master. Everyone learns to write, few people learn to write well. There’s no contradiction, therefore, in saying that basic literacy is an “easy” skill to acquire (in that the vast majority of us are able to do it), without dismissing the efforts of talented writers.