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There’s been discussion about the changes to Google Reader (some of which was – wow, people are still using Google Reader…) and how it was going to have its social sharing features moved to Google+. I honestly didn’t have a strong opinion, because I have never used the social features of Google Reader and so long as I would still be able to keep my RSS feeds organized. In fact, I was fairly puzzled that Google+ and Google Reader played so poorly with each other so figured the move would be positive.

However, now I am seeing comments about how nice and sleek the new design is and I have to say, I hate it. It has rendered Google Reader almost unusable under my usual practice of having it up in a browser window sized to let me easily tab between it and a few other windows on my laptop. I used to be able to easily hide and expand the navigation structure on the left hand side, allowing me to have maximum reading space within my window. But with this new, sleeker, less crowded looking design, I essentially have to maximize my browser to use Google Reader on my laptop. And I loathe maximized windows – my applications shouldn’t get to dictate by design that I must give them my undivided attention.

There you go Google Reader – it’s a sign of how much I have liked you that I’m more upset about this than any of the Facebook interface changes over the years. So do me a favor and stop assuming everybody sits around doing their computing in front of massive displays all the time.

I absolutely love these hacking tricks where you snoop passwords from information leakage – this one from Georgia Tech using a smartphone’s accelerometer is an awesome addition. Short version: if your smartphone has malicious software on it, and you put it on the same desk as your keyboard, the phone can deduce what you’re typing from the vibrations. Yes, even if you don’t type as vigorously as I do (though only at close range – no need to panic).

The press release notes that using the accelerometer is an improvement over using the microphone because, even though it is less sensitive, the user is generally not asked whether to allow access to the accelerometer the same way they are the microphone when installing apps. But, I also think that even security minded users who might hesitate at allowing access to the microphone out of concern for being recorded would be less likely to see the risk of information leakage through accelerometer data.

I have forwarded the link to this article that I got via Slashdot about how social media could render covert policing impossible to a number of people and somehow didn’t think to post it here (I must have pre-semester brain…). The idea is simple once you see it – with good quality facial recognition software, we know anonymity becomes challenging, and that is particularly true for careers, like undercover police work, that require strong anonymity and yet for which there is strong incentive to discover true identities, and high risk if they are found out. Though I do think the article title gets it a bit backwards – it is the facial recognition that are the tool of the problem, with photos that are searchable on the internet supporting the effective use of that tool. Social media sites are, of course, one major source of photos of individuals, but a group photo of your college’s sports team on the college website, an engagement photo in the local newspaper that also has an internet edition, or any number of other sources will also contribute. Perhaps we will see the rise of plastic surgery designed not to make you look more attractive, but to make facial recognition fail with the minimal necessary physical changes.

I love stories of unexpected weak spots, like the discovery that Apple laptop batteries can be hacked to store malicious code and brick the battery. The weakness revolves around cracking a couple of passwords, one of which is a factory default – with the protection being patches that will reset the password and lock the battery’s firmware. From there, it doesn’t seem like the researcher who discovered the weakness has found any particularly damaging holes from the battery back to the rest of the system, besides having the battery lie about its state, so this probably won’t be the root of the next big espionage incident. But it is awfully clever, and a good reminder of how even the most minor systems can end up as points of vulnerability.