The Weekly Weird - 2014-08-28

(I wasn't actually intending to make this actually weekly but due to popular demand here we go)

• I was worried I wouldn't have anything weird for this email (and have to provide a refund!) but Disney saved my bacon with the word 'puppetcopter': http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/disney-research-patents-eth-zurichs-puppetcopter
• A good LWN article on tracing kernel performance issues. I'd never heard of any of these tools: http://lwn.net/Articles/608497/#Comments
• If you're not following the Rust language you might want to. I think I'd describe it as OCaml for C++ programmers and it's what Mozilla is writing its next browser in. Here's a nice article on how they're using strong typing to smooth the interaction between the low-level Rust code of their browser (Servo) and the javascript engine's garbage collector: https://blog.mozilla.org/research/2014/08/26/javascript-servos-only-garbage-collector/
• The next generation of Intel server NICs is the X710 and that's going to have two 40-gigabit ports on one card. Since a 40-gig port is literally four bonded 10-gig ports that's 8 10-gig ports on one PCI card. It's actually faster than the underlying PCIe bus. http://www.servethehome.com/40gbe-intel-fortville-xl710-networking/
• That obscure, tiny, "no way is it exploitable" bug you found? It's exploitable. http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.co.nz/2014/08/the-poisoned-nul-byte-2014-edition.html