Chad’s News

Many companies send out bulk email with a bogus reply address, and it’s not unusual for that reply address to be <something>@DoNotReply.com. It turns out that someone actually owns the DoNotReply.com domain, and he gets some interesting stuff in his inbox—stuff that he posts on his website at www.DoNotReply.com.

Link: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/…
(via Slashdot)

The linked site converts your email address into an image file, which you can use in place of your email address, to keep spammers from harvesting it. On the downside, legitimate users can’t click on it to open a new message; rather, they have to type it in. The quick and easy method of obfuscating email addresses is to encode them as HTML character entities. Probably the best method, however, is to set up a submission form on your website–but this can’t be used in every situation where you want to publish your email address.

Link: http://www.spam-proof-email-generator.com/

Here’s a short story that combines time travel with chat room etiquette.

Link: http://www.abyssandapex.com/…
(via Bureau42)

I’m not sure how useful this would be in an emergency, except for perhaps the matches. But you’ve got to admit that it’s light and completely waterproof.

Link: http://www.thinkgeek.com/…
(via The Presurfer)

A recent study found, among other things, that people thought more creatively if they viewed the Apple logo before performing a task. This is an example of priming, and it really seems to work. I remember hearing of a study where women were reminded of the stereotype that females can’t do math, and they performed worse on a math test than women who had not been reminded of the stereotype. The interesting thing about the current study is that the subjects were exposed to brands—apparently the huge amount of money put into brand awareness is having an effect.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

This little dog is really living the high life. Notice how he waits for the machine to pull back before he takes off.

Link: http://www.neatorama.com/…

This Lifehacker poll provides a nice list of free Windows firewalls and their relative popularity. I used ZoneAlarm for a while but gave up on it because it didn’t allow me to unblock specific incoming ports. (Or at least, I couldn’t figure out how to unblock them.)

Link: http://lifehacker.com/…

In an update to this Chad’s News article, it turns out that, yes, a boomerang does work in zero gravity. Although the boomerang he used is not your standard bent piece of wood.

Link #1: http://www.news.com.au/…

Link #2: http://www.newscientist.com/…

If you’re looking forward to your economic stimulus payout, The Consumerist has details on when your deposit/check should arrive.

Link: http://consumerist.com/…

My friend Josh received an ingenious type of spam that uses banner art to spell out the message (and thus circumvent spam filters):

xe    dl  no
ip    jc
 vc  kr
 hc  rv   vv   xjmq    fmltv  wsfm   jbst
 ci  wg   vi      qe  qw  td  ugx       dg
  ixbl    oj   zwxwy  ru  yh  ut     cwxtg
  kqfo    eq  yf  yx  ue  do  gl    om  rb
   wb     vl  jj  il  dz  es  gy    hj  kg
   ke     xl   vdjzj   cerlk  hp     ozkwz
                          mr
                      tlilb

If you look closely, you’ll see that the message is actually made up of text characters:

xe    dl  no
ip    jc
 vc  kr
 hc  rv   vv   xjmq    fmltv  wsfm   jbst
 ci  wg   vi      qe  qw  td  ugx       dg
  ixbl    oj   zwxwy  ru  yh  ut     cwxtg
  kqfo    eq  yf  yx  ue  do  gl    om  rb
   wb     vl  jj  il  dz  es  gy    hj  kg
   ke     xl   vdjzj   cerlk  hp     ozkwz
                          mr
                      tlilb

Here’s a useful site for those times when you wonder if a site is down for everyone, or if it’s you that’s having the problem.

Link: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
(via The Presurfer)

For those unfortunate Chad’s News readers who are running Windows Vista, Microsoft officially released Service Pack 1 today. It should be available via Windows Update, or you can get it from the link below.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/…
(via Lifehacker)