The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Zack Weinberg:

I should be interested to hear what people here think of this proposal: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care A friend of mine likes it a lot; I have serious reservations but think it might be better than the status quo or small patches thereto.

@44: I used to spend a lot of time in a building whose elevator emergency intercoms were ... telephones. The old-fashoned wall phone kind, with the handset and everything. But no dial; I assume that, like your lab, they were hardwired to call 911.

And one time, one of them rang, too. I didn't answer it, because opening the little cupboard door in front of the phone would set off the local elevator alarm (like hitting the emergency stop button), but I would bet it was a robocall.

I suspect at the time these elevators were installed, there was no such thing as a phone with no number.

I could believe California mechanics, whether consciously or not, think nobody oughta be doing more than 85 on our crowded highways, and don't bother tuning the wheels for anything faster.

Here in the states we do get the long stretches of open flat road with nobody on it, and I've more than once tried to see just how fast my car could go on one of them, when it seemed safe. Every car I've tried this with, driving faster than 85mph was really seriously unpleasant -- noise, vibration, and steering wobble all dramatically increased at that speed.

What's different about the autobahns that mean you can sustain 100+? Or is it the cars?

As of about ten minutes ago, the site is not clean: there is still a Javascript fragment on the top-level index.html that pulls malicious code from 91.212.65.148. It is obfuscated to look like it has something to do with Google Analytics, but if you actually decode it it proves to be nothing of the sort.

I also see a very large number of spam links in /LEGEND.html, and further obfuscated Javascript that may also wind up triggering virus attacks (it is not as easy to decode as the stuff in index.html, so I haven't bothered).

The other HTML pages that are reachable from index.html (EXPEDITION.html, MESSAGE.html, NEWS.html, TRAILER.html) do not appear to contain any malicious code. They do have other problems: broken links (including not a few references to files on the website designer's local hard drive), and use of Javascript instead of CSS :hover styles for image rollovers (breaking the site for people who turn JS off).

As noted, the site is very Flash-heavy. I don't have the tools or skills to inspect Flash files for malware.

James: NoScript would totally block this attack; if you don't execute javascript it doesn't even get as far as reaching out to 91.212.65.148 to grab the malicious script that grabs the malicious PDF.

Following up to myself to say that I can't actually find any contact info for the people responsible for that website. Neither CONTACT.htm nor CONTACT.html actually exists, there doesn't seem to be contact info anywhere else on the site, and their whois listing points to a very large hosting provider, midphase.com. I have emailed that provider's technical contact address, but I doubt that will have any effect.

Yeah, when I loaded that site, it tried to redirect me to a PDF containing javascript that tries to exploit heap-overflow bugs in Adobe Acrobat. It's quite a bit less obfuscated than the last time I saw this, and has amusing comments in it like

//so the exploit jumps actually to 0x90909090. Place a very long 'AAAA' at the second param to go to 0x41414141 ;)

and

//adobe reader 8 works also with app.setTimeOut?

Should contact the owners of the site and tell them they need to clean it up. I've saved the malicious PDF and the decoded javascript in case anyone wants to see them.

There is a restaurant not far from the San Diego airport that is, simultaneously:

1. A Denny's.
2. A steak house.
3. A Chinese restaurant.

We have never dared go in.

@349 What is your definition of porn?

I would go by this rule: exclude from search if and only if (the cover art, or the title) would get you fined if broadcast as advertising on USA-national television in the daytime. With a tickybox to turn this off, as for Google Safe Search.

That should avoid the "I was browsing in a cafe and now the cute person at the next table thinks I'm a pervert" and "you goatse'd my five year old" scenarios, but wouldn't hit any of the titles that were hurt by this fiasco.

Theoretically one can write &#x....; with the dots replaced with the hexadecimal code, but ISTR that doesn't work universally. But then, neither do the combining characters work universally in the first place (that's much better than it used to be, but still not great, e.g. for me the word "dȯt" from Ralph @34 appears with the dot well to the right of where it ought to be).

Carrie S @32: Yep! Combining macron is U+0304 / &#772; and combining dot above is U+0307 / &#775;. You can find tables of these things at <http://www.unicode.org/charts/symbols.html>.

#23: If you absolutely must have a heavy metal umlaut (as in This Is Spin̈al Tap) you may be able to get one by putting &#776; after your letter of choice; that's the code for U+0308 COMBINING DIAERESIS. Results may vary, void where prohibited.

Sam Kelly @27: yes, that's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks! I think my parents must've used the "related(?) nonsense" as an alphabet trainer.

There's this word I know. It is some variation on "Aldibarantiphoskiphorniostikos". I don't know how it was originally spelled. I think it is someone's name, from a story for very young children (less than three, probably). Because I don't know how to spell it, I have had no luck finding the actual story. Does anyone else recognize it?

#9 where does vomiting fit on there? Is it just not that common a symptom for flu?

I have the impression that digestive upset is not a primary symptom of influenza, but can easily be a complication due to a secondary infection, or because your electrolytes have gotten that far out of whack, or just because your intestines have partially shut down to conserve energy (digestion is expensive).

The disease commonly referred to as “stomach flu” has a completely different cause.

I'm curious why you don't recommend NSAIDs for flu as well. The last time I had it, regular doses of ibuprofen made it possible to sit up in bed and read books instead of just being miserable and failing to sleep all day.

#69, #70: What the heck do you store these exotic oxidizers in, if they eat glass and stainless steel?

I live in a sleepy suburb of San Diego; I mailed my ballot in a bit more than a week ago, but my SO voted in person this morning on her way to work, and reports no line at all. I did have to wait on hold for about half an hour last night when I called the county elections office to confirm that they'd received my ballot, though.

I'm feeling pretty calm. I'll probably look at the news around 10pm tonight, and again in the morning if it's still up in the air.

I have read that, although there is no compelling theoretical reason why it shouldn't, it is an open question whether antimatter responds to gravity the same way that terrene matter does.

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