So Squareup.com gives you credit card merchant services on your phone... but the reader can read any magnetic stripe... when you swipe things like drivers licences or gift cards you can read data into the square program and show the last for digits of an id or something, but what else is on there? Thats where all you internet people come in... i need some engineers who are smarter than me to give me some guidance on how to decode the signal the card reader produces. Ive found some of what I think I need here on  "A Day in the Life of a Flux Reversal" using a free spectrum analyzer app im able to see positive and negative waves as I swipe the card that seem to be alot like the flux lines the guy talks about...

But I thought my life would be much easier with data so I got a bunch of old cards and swiped them a few times each, recording the output from the square dongle so i can have some samples to decode with some known data

1. Texas-Trust-Mastercard-5105-9400-0109-1438.mp3
   
   In order to view this object you need Flash Player 9+ support!
   
   
   
2. JCPenny-Gift-Card-6006492001928534134.mp3
   
   In order to view this object you need Flash Player 9+ support!
   
   
   
3. HEB-Gift-Card-6006-49668-81060-07754.mp3
   
   In order to view this object you need Flash Player 9+ support!
   
   
   
4. Dave-Busters-94937573.mp3
   
   In order to view this object you need Flash Player 9+ support!
   
   
   
5. Carnival-Sign-Sail-05411183.mp3
   
   In order to view this object you need Flash Player 9+ support!
   
   
   
6. AMC-Gift-Card-6006491324135697820.mp3
   
   In order to view this object you need Flash Player 9+ support!
   
   
   

These are all the cards i used and the id numbers I could find

So if anybody wants to help me build an open source app to decode the data off other cards with the square reader drop me a line im @cartercole

Also: based on what ive seen from this instructable called "Magnetic stripe card spoofer" with just a little tinkering you could play back these recordings into an electromagnet and drive the reader to spoof the data you recorded. I know.. like super cool spy toys :) I now take this time to remind you that neither CarterCole.com or Carter Cole condone illegal activity and all information shared here is for curious who are people without malicious intent ( do you think that disclaimer protects me? )

I wanted to do a quick rant on this thing i found when i was installing some Microsoft stuff... i found out theres this cool new software Microsoft is putting out to help us manage our default search provider

Microsoft Choice Guard

So from what i can tell it locks in the search engine and keeps other programs from changing it... now it really does piss me off whenever firefox or chrome start asking to change the default browser but default search engine? i mean cmon, what will it really be used for? keeping bing in its place when someone tries to change to something thats not Bing

Microsoft Choice Guard is a small piece of software that's downloaded during the Windows Live installation process to carry out any changes that you choose to make to your browser settings. If you choose to change your default search engine, Choice Guard looks for any programs on your computer that might interfere with this process and works around them to let you change your default search engine. Choice Guard does this to help ensure that choosing your default search engine is as easy as possible.

The copy from their help page is above... seems like i cool tool doesnt it? i mean who wouldnt install it? I think its crazy that microsoft would put out such a tool but hey they want to keep that .1% search share they bought from yahoo

I really love the way this site came out... It runs its gallery from Picasca and allows the customer to change the pictures on the site from an easy to use web form. This type of dynamic stuff makes it possiable for me to do more projects because clients are able to manage their own sites and only call me when new functionality is required...

I also got a nice referral letter

Ill post more about it later but this is friggen crazy... this is where i make my point google is a service software company not a search company...

So there are bunches of lizards by my office and they are all having tiny little babies so i wanted to catch them and relocate them to my apartment so they will eat bugs and have babies because after reading this i didnt think i wanted to try and keep them for any period of time

How to make a lizard trap

so here is the design for the lizard trap... you get a shoebox and cut a hole in the top... the lizards can climb but cant hold onto plastic wrap... you bait them with small crickets or nats and now you have your own little lizard trap

This is way old but with liberals trying for some class warfare against the "rich" people I think its a good little story i can point to try and explain how tax cuts work...

You can see up above that they are pretty convincing... i was hoping they were real but after she checked a few places we found they were fakes, they used watermarks but it was the one for a dollar not the postal money order. The security strip is painted on and off in a dash not woven into the paper but there is some microprinting that looks pretty good...

My question is when it took her just a few min to find this why are there cops on facebook pretending to be 13yr olds trying to catch kids drinking when there are such bigger better scams to be going after

UPDATE: Twitter announced it last week

so looks like this was released on twitter blog a week ago but im just now seeing it. What do people think? are there users who you actually ended up following? It may help to show the last 5 tweets for a user in suggestions list so you can see the type of messages they create

Original Post

So im not sure if its a beta or twitter has already rolled it out everywhere but it seems like they are now including suggestions in the sidebar. See my screenshots below

it looks alot like Facebook's suggestions but when you click it tells you a bit more and i was able to start to infer what is driving these recommendations.
you can see it has the "followed by" and then names of people you are already following, I guess the ideas is that if multiple friends are following someone then you are likely to find that person interesting aswell... is anyone else seeing this test going on? talk to me in the comments or on @cartercole

Artificial Political Opposition
Ive had my research assistant (wife) working on mechanical turk for the past few days after she wanted some easy tasks to make money online... I have heard about the system and how it can be used as a great tool for repetitive tasks or data entry. I looked through a few of the HITs and quickly saw there was abuse... people are asked to "clear cookies" before "testing lead form" or "enter real info to test a cred app form". its obvious that these accounts are cheating other affiliate programs but i saw a very interesting one just now. Here is an excerpt from the instructions

3. Say, "Hi, I am calling to oppose bill S6873. My New York zip code is 10003. Thank you"

They are paying for political opposition to the bill S6873 in New York which has to do with sub-leasing apartments and affects hotel rentals. You can specify different qualifications (like location) and yet the creator choose not to care about who or where they were from...

Heres the copy I made of the job unless it disappears and screenshot of the active job

Im always surprised when i see these kind of blatant attacks on the internet... and im really wonder if it works or if they have already caught on to the strange volume of calls with the exact same script... reminds me allot of money mules who help the hackers get the money out of people's accounts but most dont care because they are getting a cut themselves

I like playing with security... its fun to break things (of my own or with permission) and its what makes security work. If we never tried to break the design and assumed security then the less moral of us would and they would find our code easy pickings. XSS is one of my personal favorites because they are everywhere, usually easy to find, and can be super nasty (sammy is my hero)

So when i heard that Obama was going to make the WHITEHOUSE.GOV website a Drupal site i thought it was quite dumb... i mean its the whitehouse... you need a friggen CMS? hell waste some money on an old fashion webmaster and have it all flat html (i just think that a defaced homepage for america would totally suck) with the code for the site open source I instantly now know about most of the code that whitehouse.gov runs on and i can do my own pen testing before i even try on the whitehouse.gov domain. I wasnt alone in this ha.ckers.org makes these same exact points... and i commented on it

flash forward 211 days

what happens across my RSS feed? do my eyes decieve me? zomg its an article describing how Drupal is redefining its policy to clarify it only supports security on STABLE releases
and...

The clarifications are a response to the discovery of a potentially serious XSS hole in the Drupal Context module three weeks after White House developers proudly released their own plug-in based on the buggy module.

- from The Register

i hate being right

now i haven't looked at the XSS hole myself yet but they said it was in the administrative console (they say that makes it limited i think that now i can steal the admin auth cookies) even if they caught it in time this is the exact issue i was warning about. am I crazy? what do you think? id love to spark off a good discussion on it :)

This video was freaking awesome and it shows the whole start... but i wanted to skip that so heres some extra... to start the youtube video at a certain place you just need to add &start=58 and for autoplay &autoplay=1 to make it auto start...
heres a sample of the code below... im really liking Americas Got Talent and this is ony one of the super cool acts


if your really bored you can go look at my cool share chart and get your own and later fools! lolz :)

I rule teh interwebz

UPDATE

Matt Cutts did his own little debunk here

Original Post

earlier i wrote a post in which I explained "Facebook divulging your identity to advertisers" and again now poor Facebook has another one. This one stems from Google loving Facebook too much... well its kinda like that.They were indexing pages that have no value but have email addresses displayed on them, when you enter your password and it scans your email account address book you choose to have Facebook send them an email on your behalf. now some people may want nothing to do with Facebook and they consider the message spam. So to provide a good experience for these people they give them an opt out link (thanks i really hate those emails) because this is sent to an email address it really should never become public, unless someone intentionally releases it. Here on hacker news a Facebook employee unofficially points out one of the pages that was leaking information (they have removed the address now i think its useful to make sure im removing the right address) but this links should have never been found and crawled... how did they find it? because it was publicly published oh now I get it... Yes Facebook could have done <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> but like other issue its small... quick fix... and those pages even seem to be gone from index already so again we have a minor data leak caused by user themselves that probably never could have been thought of. we dont just sit around and go oh i know some weirdo has no privacy anyways and will post the link publicly spiders will crawl and then people will be able to pull emails out of the search engines index oh noes! im mean we are nerd but we aren't psychic welcome to the digital world. Stay off the interwebz if you dont like it

just my opinion

the infamous

- Carter Cole

leave me your comments id love to agree or disagree with you :)

so i have had this ideas for a strip in my head ever since i saw Iron Man 2... i thought it was pretty funny but then today after a certain video started going viral i knew i had to make it :)


Created with Pixton it was totally awesome editor i may actually start an ongoing strip after i found it. i want to know what you think so leave me comments!

Lets say your spending thousands of dollars on advertising by doing a PPC campaign and people are clicking those links... and when they hit your server your browser passes the page your asking for (URI) and the HTTP REFERRER which is sent by your browser about where you came from (you cant even trust these they are trivial to spoof) heres the image from the wsj http://j.mp/dntZi4 you see how it identifies you? its because they dont scrub referrer and it has a ref=profile that means it only tells them when your on your own profile page and click on an add. They probably never thought of it... its in the HTTP protocol that all browsers and websites use and is mostly an afterthought used as a lax security measure. If they did they were like well some may abuse it but for the majority its helpful... why? because they dont care about you as a person they are running aggregate stats to help improve user experience and help provide you with better product. like seriously is there any proof that someone has had their name found and gotten a sales call from it? im all for privacy and control of my online life but this isn't a huge risk... close the hole and move on. i just hope all the referrer data from Facebook doesn't end completely and im not able to track visits to my blog from my Facebook fan page... (isn't that what it was for track community and drive traffic)

So i saw this ad the other day and signed up... its been a couple weeks and now my free condoms are here! i got like 40 boxes... they say all kinds of funny things like "Hump smarter... save the snail darter", "Wear a jimmy hat... save the big cat" or "cover your tweedle... save the burying beetle".

so if you want your own endangeredspeciescondoms.com

I was a Blimpie fan... i hated the way that Subway cut their sandwiches, i mean what the hell why would i want a trench dug out of my bread instead of just cutting it in half like the rest of the world. That changed and Subway got better for me... then they released the $5 footlong and their now famous "eat fresh", which btw is what my son screams whenever we pass one "daddy daddy eat fresh" but now after the King has stolen McDonald's egg sandwich for a dollar Subway with its thousands of locations thinks its loosing money by not offering breakfast and is trying its had at the morning meal.

i decided to try it (hey they did enough advertising ill give it a shot and see if they pass snuff...) i walked over to my office park subway and its empty, which is a change because at lunch that place has a line out the door from 11:50 to 1:20. apparently nobody else got the word so i take a look at my choices and decide on a flat bread double bacon and egg toasted thing (see picture below) its kinda cool because they try and make it like a build your own breakfast but theres really only a couple  things that go with an egg, bacon and cheese sandwich... so i also got the green peppers and onions. the english muffin version is like 2$ but its too small... it was decent but not that impressive, i may go back and try something else but theres not much of a choice (beef or ham something like that) but thats my useless post for the day :)

I use these all the time and alyase end up looking them up... now we have a cheat sheet....
 

Character	Entity	Decimal	Hex	Rendering in Your Browser
				Entity	Decimal	Hex
Latin small f with hook=function=florin	ƒ	ƒ	ƒ	ƒ	ƒ	ƒ
Greek capital letter alpha	Α	Α	Α	Α	Α	Α
Greek capital letter beta	Β	Β	Β	Β	Β	Β
Greek capital letter gamma	Γ	Γ	Γ	Γ	Γ	Γ
Greek capital letter delta	Δ	Δ	Δ	Δ	Δ	Δ
Greek capital letter epsilon	Ε	Ε	Ε	Ε	Ε	Ε
Greek capital letter zeta	Ζ	Ζ	Ζ	Ζ	Ζ	Ζ
Greek capital letter eta	Η	Η	Η	Η	Η	Η
Greek capital letter theta	Θ	Θ	Θ	Θ	Θ	Θ
Greek capital letter iota	Ι	Ι	Ι	Ι	Ι	Ι
Greek capital letter kappa	Κ	Κ	Κ	Κ	Κ	Κ
Greek capital letter lambda	Λ	Λ	Λ	Λ	Λ	Λ
Greek capital letter mu	Μ	Μ	Μ	Μ	Μ	Μ
Greek capital letter nu	Ν	Ν	Ν	Ν	Ν	Ν
Greek capital letter xi	Ξ	Ξ	Ξ	Ξ	Ξ	Ξ
Greek capital letter omicron	Ο	Ο	Ο	Ο	Ο	Ο
Greek capital letter pi	Π	Π	Π	Π	Π	Π
Greek capital letter rho	Ρ	Ρ	Ρ	Ρ	Ρ	Ρ
Greek capital letter sigma	Σ	Σ	Σ	Σ	Σ	Σ
Greek capital letter tau	Τ	Τ	Τ	Τ	Τ	Τ
Greek capital letter upsilon	Υ	Υ	Υ	Υ	Υ	Υ
Greek capital letter phi	Φ	Φ	Φ	Φ	Φ	Φ
Greek capital letter chi	Χ	Χ	Χ	Χ	Χ	Χ
Greek capital letter psi	Ψ	Ψ	Ψ	Ψ	Ψ	Ψ
Greek capital letter omega	Ω	Ω	Ω	Ω	Ω	Ω
Greek small letter alpha	α	α	α	α	α	α
Greek small letter beta	β	β	β	β	β	β
Greek small letter gamma	γ	γ	γ	γ	γ	γ
Greek small letter delta	δ	δ	δ	δ	δ	δ
Greek small letter epsilon	ε	ε	ε	ε	ε	ε
Greek small letter zeta	ζ	ζ	ζ	ζ	ζ	ζ
Greek small letter eta	η	η	η	η	η	η
Greek small letter theta	θ	θ	θ	θ	θ	θ
Greek small letter iota	ι	ι	ι	ι	ι	ι
Greek small letter kappa	κ	κ	κ	κ	κ	κ
Greek small letter lambda	λ	λ	λ	λ	λ	λ
Greek small letter mu	μ	μ	μ	μ	μ	μ
Greek small letter nu	ν	ν	ν	ν	ν	ν
Greek small letter xi	ξ	ξ	ξ	ξ	ξ	ξ
Greek small letter omicron	ο	ο	ο	ο	ο	ο
Greek small letter pi	π	π	π	π	π	π
Greek small letter rho	ρ	ρ	ρ	ρ	ρ	ρ
Greek small letter final sigma	ς	ς	ς	ς	ς	ς
Greek small letter sigma	σ	σ	σ	σ	σ	σ
Greek small letter tau	τ	τ	τ	τ	τ	τ
Greek small letter upsilon	υ	υ	υ	υ	υ	υ
Greek small letter phi	φ	φ	φ	φ	φ	φ
Greek small letter chi	χ	χ	χ	χ	χ	χ
Greek small letter psi	ψ	ψ	ψ	ψ	ψ	ψ
Greek small letter omega	ω	ω	ω	ω	ω	ω
Greek small letter theta symbol	ϑ	ϑ	ϑ	ϑ	ϑ	ϑ
Greek upsilon with hook symbol	ϒ	ϒ	ϒ	ϒ	ϒ	ϒ
Greek pi symbol	ϖ	ϖ	ϖ	ϖ	ϖ	ϖ
bullet=black small circle	•	•	•	•	•	•
horizontal ellipsis=three dot leader	…	…	…	…	…	…
prime=minutes=feet	′	′	′	′	′	′
double prime=seconds=inches	″	″	″	″	″	″
overline=spacing overscore	‾	‾	‾	‾	‾	‾
fraction slash	⁄	⁄	⁄	⁄	⁄	⁄
script capital P=power set=Weierstrass p	℘	℘	℘	℘	℘	℘
blackletter capital I=imaginary part	ℑ	ℑ	ℑ	ℑ	ℑ	ℑ
blackletter capital R=real part symbol	ℜ	ℜ	ℜ	ℜ	ℜ	ℜ
trade mark sign	™	™	™	™	™	™
alef symbol=first transfinite cardinal	ℵ	ℵ	ℵ	ℵ	ℵ	ℵ
leftwards arrow	←	←	←	←	←	←
upwards arrow	↑	↑	↑	↑	↑	↑
rightwards arrow	→	→	→	→	→	→
downwards arrow	↓	↓	↓	↓	↓	↓
left right arrow	↔	↔	↔	↔	↔	↔
downwards arrow with corner leftwards=carriage return	↵	↵	↵	↵	↵	↵
leftwards double arrow	⇐	⇐	⇐	⇐	⇐	⇐
upwards double arrow	⇑	⇑	⇑	⇑	⇑	⇑
rightwards double arrow	⇒	⇒	⇒	⇒	⇒	⇒
downwards double arrow	⇓	⇓	⇓	⇓	⇓	⇓
left right double arrow	⇔	⇔	⇔	⇔	⇔	⇔
for all	∀	∀	∀	∀	∀	∀
partial differential	∂	∂	∂	∂	∂	∂
there exists	∃	∃	∃	∃	∃	∃
empty set=null set=diameter	∅	∅	∅	∅	∅	∅
nabla=backward difference	∇	∇	∇	∇	∇	∇
element of	∈	∈	∈	∈	∈	∈
not an element of	∉	∉	∉	∉	∉	∉
contains as member	∋	∋	∋	∋	∋	∋
n-ary product=product sign	∏	∏	∏	∏	∏	∏
n-ary sumation	∑	∑	∑	∑	∑	∑
minus sign	−	−	−	−	−	−
asterisk operator	∗	∗	∗	∗	∗	∗
square root=radical sign	√	√	√	√	√	√
proportional to	∝	∝	∝	∝	∝	∝
infinity	∞	∞	∞	∞	∞	∞
angle	∠	∠	∠	∠	∠	∠
logical and=wedge	∧	∧	∧	∧	∧	∧
logical or=vee	∨	∨	∨	∨	∨	∨
intersection=cap	∩	∩	∩	∩	∩	∩
union=cup	∪	∪	∪	∪	∪	∪
integral	∫	∫	∫	∫	∫	∫
therefore	∴	∴	∴	∴	∴	∴
tilde operator=varies with=similar to	∼	∼	∼	∼	∼	∼
approximately equal to	≅	≅	≅	≅	≅	≅
almost equal to=asymptotic to	≈	≈	≈	≈	≈	≈
not equal to	≠	≠	≠	≠	≠	≠
identical to	≡	≡	≡	≡	≡	≡
less-than or equal to	≤	≤	≤	≤	≤	≤
greater-than or equal to	≥	≥	≥	≥	≥	≥
subset of	⊂	⊂	⊂	⊂	⊂	⊂
superset of	⊃	⊃	⊃	⊃	⊃	⊃
not a subset of	⊄	⊄	⊄	⊄	⊄	⊄
subset of or equal to	⊆	⊆	⊆	⊆	⊆	⊆
superset of or equal to	⊇	⊇	⊇	⊇	⊇	⊇
circled plus=direct sum	⊕	⊕	⊕	⊕	⊕	⊕
circled times=vector product	⊗	⊗	⊗	⊗	⊗	⊗
up tack=orthogonal to=perpendicular	⊥	⊥	⊥	⊥	⊥	⊥
dot operator	⋅	⋅	⋅	⋅	⋅	⋅
left ceiling=APL upstile	⌈	⌈	⌈	⌈	⌈	⌈
right ceiling	⌉	⌉	⌉	⌉	⌉	⌉
left floor=APL downstile	⌊	⌊	⌊	⌊	⌊	⌊
right floor	⌋	⌋	⌋	⌋	⌋	⌋
left-pointing angle bracket=bra	⟨	〈	〈	⟨	〈	〈
right-pointing angle bracket=ket	⟩	〉	〉	⟩	〉	〉
lozenge	◊	◊	◊	◊	◊	◊
black spade suit	♠	♠	♠	♠	♠	♠
black club suit=shamrock	♣	♣	♣	♣	♣	♣
black heart suit=valentine	♥	♥	♥	♥	♥	♥
black diamond suit	♦	♦	♦	♦	♦	♦

These entities are all new in HTML 4.0 and may not be supported by old browsers.Support in recent browsers is good.

I really like this tool it creates cool word graphics from RSS feeds or a word list whatever and has a bunch of options and fonts... i created this one based off the text from all my blog posts in 2009 (it broke trying to pull all of them)

you should go try it out and create your own... post links in comments i want to see them :)

thats it theres my personal post for the month... im workign on creating new content for all my sites but with custody of my son (awesome thats now handled) and my upcoming wedding i have a bunch on my plate... not to mention the like 9 open projects i have at work ugh!

This policy governs the publication of and commentary on social media by employees of CarterCole.com and its related companies ("CarterCole.com"). For the purposes of this policy, social media means any facility for online publication and commentary, including without limitation blogs, wiki's, social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, flickr, and YouTube. This policy is in addition to and complements any existing or future policies regarding the use of technology, computers, e-mail and the internet.

CarterCole.com employees are free to publish or comment via social media in accordance with this policy. CarterCole.com employees are subject to this policy to the extent they identify themselves as a CarterCole.com employee (other than as an incidental mention of place of employment in a personal blog on topics unrelated to CarterCole.com).

Publication and commentary on social media carries similar obligations to any other kind of publication or commentary.

All uses of social media must follow the same ethical standards that CarterCole.com employees must otherwise follow.

Setting up Social Media
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Customers, partners or suppliers should not be cited or obviously referenced without their approval. Never identify a customer, partner or supplier by name without permission and never discuss confidential details of a customer engagement. It is acceptable to discuss general details about kinds of projects and to use non-identifying pseudonyms for a customer (e.g., Customer 123) so long as the information provided does not violate any non-disclosure agreements that may be in place with the customer or make it easy for someone to identify the customer. Your blog is not the place to "conduct business" with a customer.

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Be the first to respond to your own mistakes
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Once again, it's all about judgment: using your blog to trash or embarrass CarterCole.com, our customers, or your co-workers, is dangerous and ill-advised.

Disclaimers
Many social media users include a prominant disclaimer saying who they work for, but that they're not speaking officially. This is good practice and is encouraged, but don't count on it to avoid trouble - it may not have much legal effect.

Wherever practical, you must use a disclaimer saying that while you work for CarterCole.com, anything you publish is your personal opinion, and not necessarily the opinions of CarterCole.com.

Carter can provide you with applicable disclaimer language and assist with determining where and how to use that.

Don't forget your day job.
Make sure that blogging does not interfere with your job or commitments to customers.

Social Media Tips
The following tips are not mandatory, but will contribute to successful use of social media.

The best way to be interesting, stay out of trouble, and have fun is to write about what you know. There is a good chance of being embarrassed by a real expert, or of being boring if you write about topics you are not knowledgeable about.

Quality matters. Use a spell-checker. If you're not design-oriented, ask someone who is whether your blog looks decent, and take their advice on how to improve it.

The speed of being able to publish your thoughts is both a great feature and a great downfall of social media. The time to edit or reflect must be self-imposed. If in doubt over a post, or if something does not feel right, either let it sit and look at it again before publishing it, or ask someone else to look at it first.

Enforcement
Policy violations will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination for cause.

Built with Social Media policy Tool

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