I never realized the it was even easier to replace a lost (or to hack a machine given you have physical access) a Linux machine. Jason Striegel posted this example over at Hackszine.com on how to reset a lost Ubuntu password. It’s surprisingly simple to reset, simply follow the steps outlined below. Here’s how to do it on a typical Ubuntu machine with the GRUB bootloader:

Boot Linux into single-user mode

1. Reboot the machine.
2. Press the ESC key while GRUB is loading to enter the menu.
3. If there is a ‘recovery mode’ option, select it and press ‘b’ to boot into single user mode.
4. Otherwise, the default boot configuration should be selected. Press ‘e’ to edit it.
5. Highlight the line that begins with ‘kernel’. Press ‘e’ again to edit this line.
6. At the end of the line, add an additional parameter: ’single’. Hit return to make the change and press ‘b’ to boot.

Change the admin password
The system should load into single user mode and you’ll be left at the command line automatically logged in as root. Type ‘passwd’ to change the root password or ‘passwd someuser’ to change the password for your “someuser” admin account.

Reboot

That’s it, just reboot into your normal configuration with the new root password.

I’m a PC user but I gotta hand it to Apple’s advertising department… those ads are hilarious. I actually stop fast forwarding my DVR when I see one.

So the first Gates/Seinfeld ad has come out and it’s… well… underwhelming?! See for yourself:

Here are the results from head-to-head SunSpider on Windows XP on a Mac Mini and Windows Vista on a MacBook Pro, testing against last night’s Firefox automated build and yesterday’s Chrome beta:

The entire results of the test are worth looking into as they provide where V8 (Chrome) excels versus TraceMonkey (FireFox) in JavaScript performance.

Get the full scoop here.

Yup, the blogosphere is on fire with concerns over privacy, the EULA, what information Google will/can collect when you use their new Chrome browser, etc (ok it’s also on fire over the release of this thing in general).

Matt Cutts who is a software engineer at Google and currently the head of Google’s Webspam team wrote up a great article detailing questions about privacy and how/when Google Chrome communicates with google.com. Should you be concerned?

The short answer is no. For the long answer, read on.

To read the detailed list visit Matt’s site for his article Preventing paranoia: when does Google Chrome talk to Google.com? For the shorter list, read on:

• If you’re just surfing around the web and clicking on links, that information does not go to google.com.

• If you are typing a search or url in the address bar, Google Chrome will talk to the current search service to try to offer useful query/url suggestions.

• By default, crash reports and other anonymous usage statistics (e.g. which features are used most often) are not sent to Google.

• I believe if Google Chrome sees a very short, stock 404 page (less than 512 bytes), it talks to Google in order to try to suggest other possible pages and options.

• Google Chrome checks for automatic updates every 25 hours.

• Every 30 minutes, Google Chrome downloads a list of 32-bit url hashes of urls thought to be dangerous (malware or phishing). That is a download of data from google.com, not to google.com.
• When you choose your language in the user interface, Google Chrome downloads a spellcheck dictionary. Again, that is a download of data from google.com, not to google.com.

In short it doesn’t appear the is much to worry about and the conspiracy theorists are just freakin out. Not that the almighty Google doesn’t already have enough power and we shouldn’t ever be concerned. However, it appears the initial freak out by those on the net are just inflated conspiracy worries. Another bonus of this browser is that it’ll be open-sourced so any fears can be double checked by reviewing the source code.

Again, this is just the summary, check out Matt’s post for the full low down and more detailed information for each item.

Harrison Hoffman, co-founder of LiveSide.net and contributor to the CNET Blog Network is reporting that Google’s Chrome browser is outperforming the latest “stable” builds of both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 in the popular Acid3 test. All the browsers tested pass the Acid2 test. However, the only currently released browser to beat Google’s Chrome browser was Opera, which scored an 83. FireFox scored 71 and IE scored 14, whereas Google’s Chrome (which is still beta) hits a 78 out of 100.

Developer builds however, including Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 (85), Opera (91), and Safari 4 (100) do beat out Chrome.

Read the full details over at CNET.

Here’s the site description of the speed tests:

• Richards: OS kernel simulation benchmark, originally written in BCPL by Martin Richards (539 lines).

• DeltaBlue: One-way constraint solver, originally written in Smalltalk by John Maloney and Mario Wolczko (880 lines).

• Crypto: Encryption and decryption benchmark based on code by Tom Wu (1,689 lines).

• RayTrace: Ray tracer benchmark based on code by Adam Burmister (3,418 lines).

• EarleyBoyer: Classic Scheme benchmarks, translated to JavaScript by Florian Loitsch’s Scheme2Js compiler (4,682 lines).

Get the full scoop over at CNET.

According to Crunchbase the features include:

• Tabbed browsing where each tab gets its own process, leading to faster and more stable browsing. If one tab crashes, the whole browser doesn’t go down with it
• A distinct user interface that places tabs on top of the browser window instead of right below the address bar
• An “incognito” mode that lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn’t record any of your activity
• A new JavaScript engine built from the ground up for speed
• Malware and phishing lists that automatically update themselves and warn you of bad websites
• A default homepage that displays your most commonly used sites and other personalized information

The official Google blog provides at a high level some of their intentions for the new browser.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

I first noticed this on Blogscoped yesterday, and they have a rather lengthy breakdown of the feature (in detail) of what Google plans to implement in their new browser.

According to Arstechnica:

One of the most impressive technical innovations that Google has brought to Chrome is a multiprocess design. Each individual browser tab runs within its own isolated process, much like the way that processes work in an operating system. This will massively increase the robustness of the browser by insulating the application from bugs that cause crashes within individual tabs. The tab will go down, but the rest of the browser will remain unaffected. The multiprocess design also reduces the impact of memory fragmentation by ensuring that the memory used by a tab can be reclaimed completely when the tab is closed.

Another unique advantage of the multiprocess design is that it will allow users to see the distribution of memory between the various tabs and plug-ins used by the browser. Users will be able to use Chrome’s built-in process manager to see how much memory is being used by each individual tab so that they can properly identify the real culprit when the browser begins to hog resources. Google has a few other strategies for reducing memory consumption too, like extremely aggressive and heavily-optimized garbage collection.

They also provide this handy diagram on how the process manager will work.

Of course the development of a Google Browser could have implications for the “new” kid on the block, FireFox. Apparently, Mozilla isn’t too concerned at this point despite the fact they get a large portion of their funding from Google (the pair recently renewed the deal to last through 2011). This tussle between Mozilla and Google is going to get more gripping in coming years. Mozilla has a services strategy — Project Weave – that could eventually compete with Google’s suite of services.

Adam and Jamie, hots of the known MythBusters show compared a CPU vs a GPU to explain parallel processing and the GPU drew an ACTUAL mona lisa drawing using paint balls in 80 milliseconds!!!!!!!

I’m a fan of both paintball and having a beefy GPU. This video was so right up my alley. Plus how wicked is it to see paintballs blast a Mona Lisa in 80 milleseconds? The GPU vs CPU display was done as part of NVision08. NVision08 was a kind of mega event described as “Featuring over 55 hours of jaw-dropping visual wonderment - from today’s hottest games and movies, video, science, mobile and computer technologies - you will get to experience, touch and feel the latest visual technologies that will change your life. And let you see into the future.”

Others who are probably doing well these days include unemployment-office workers, squatters, pan-handle makers, trashcan-fire emporiums, tumble-weed manufacturers and super-villains.