Common Paradox Tech Blog

A company named CEVA Logistics was housing somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 iPhones in a warehouse when intruders climbed up a fire ladder and sliced a hole through the roof.

The hole was conveniently cut directly above the crates of iPhones.

An unknown amount of burglars managed to walk away with roughly 2 million euros worth of iPhones. And while they’re almost sure to make a decent buck off the black market sale, carrier Mobsistar has revealed that they have a list of all serial numbers from the caper and will be deactivating the phones accordingly.

In other words, don’t buy an iPhone in a back alley of Belgium. [De Standaard via AppleInsider]

When I bought a webcam for my front door – mine is the Linksys WVC54GCA – I was faced with a predicament. The built-in motion detection software bombarded my email inbox with images of an empty frame. It was set off by the motion of a leaf or a reflection, rendering one of the most important aspects – notification of trespass – ineffective.

At an impasse, I decided to build a cyberbiomimetic AI using a cockroach brain and a vat of amino acids. The resulting system, while effective at spotting intruders, eventually threatened to become self-aware and so I had to shut it down. Finally, I tried Vitamin D.

Problem, as they say, solved.

This week Lifehacker has some great tips to overcome the piggy flu, protect yourself from intruders at open airport Wi-Fi spots and a guide to wire your house with Ethernet.

• Polish your shoes with a banana (This is a winner of a headline if I ever saw one)
• The Gaia Desktop, shown above (This is a winner of a desktop too, except that it would be even better if they were reading Gizmodo)
• Find nearby flu shots with Google Maps

• Intro to coding
• Protect your Wi-Fi connection at airport hotspots
• Firefox 3.6 beta 2 download is live

• AVG is Lifehacker’s favorite antivirus (It’s mine too)
• Microsoft’s security tools are good enough to get you to not pay for other apps
• Google Wave’s look and feel might be coming to other Google apps

• Paint.NET has a big update
• Put on a duvet cover without losing your mind, or sweating through your shirt
• How to wire your house with Ethernet

• Five good addons to power your Windows Home Server

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Help Net Security: “In the never-ending battle to protect computer networks from intruders, security experts are deploying a new defense modeled after one of nature’s hardiest creatures — the ant. Unlike traditional security devices, which are static, these ‘digital ants’ wander through computer networks looking for threats … When a digital ant detects a threat, it doesn’t take long for an army of ants to converge at that location, drawing the attention of human operators who step in to investigate. ‘Our idea is to deploy 3,000 different types of digital ants, each looking for evidence of a threat,’ [says Wake Forest Professor of Computer Science Errin Fulp.] ‘As they move about the network, they leave digital trails modeled after the scent trails ants in nature use to guide other ants. Each time a digital ant identifies some evidence, it is programmed to leave behind a stronger scent. Stronger scent trails attract more ants, producing the swarm that marks a potential computer infection.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.