5 Things You Should Know – Part 433

Here are 5 things you should know.

1. A crash at 30mph is not twice as bad as 15mph, it’s 4x as bad. Similarly, a crash at 60mph is 16x as bad. This is because kinetic energy is proportional to squared velocity.

The dangers of speeding are worse than you might expect, and, on the same note, your odds of surviving a crash increase greatly at lower speeds.

This is because kinetic energy is proportional to velocity². So, when you double your speed, you quadruple your kinetic energy.

When your car speeds up, it converts chemical energy (in the gas or battery) to kinetic energy. The car and your body gain kinetic energy. All that energy needs to go somewhere, be it heat (from braking) or permanent deformation of the body.

Generally, you want that deformation to be in the car, and not in you, and you want to slow down gradually.

Here’s an example table that you can compare values with:

E.g. If you’re on the highway, going 70mph instead of 85mph cuts your kinetic energy by about 1/3rd.

Of course, how you crash will impact how severe the crash is too, and at very high speeds, it’s less a question of if you will “survive” and more “how fine of a mist your body will become”.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy

2. If your Apple device doesn’t bring you to your WiFi login website page (such as at the airport or school), you can type captive.apple.com and it’ll bring it up.

Sometimes your Apple device doesn’t bring up the WiFi login portal.

3. There is a way you can opt out of pre-approved credit card offers to significantly reduce your junk mail.

If you are sick of receiving pre-approved credit card and personal loan offers, then there is an easy online tool that will prevent these companies from being able to send you these daily/weekly advertisements. You can find this tool online by running a search for OptOutPrescreen. The tool gives you the option to permanently block these offers or to block them for a period of 5 years. It also appears that if you select either option you are able to opt back in at any time.

You should also know a few things before making this decision:

Blocking these offers could cause you to miss out on promotional offers that are only offered through the mail.

There are phishing scams with similarly named websites that try to steal your information. Make sure you research on your own the legitimacy of this tool and understand the risks involved with sharing your personal information online.

4. A lot of newer cars have a ‘soft’ turn signal for lane switching and other short-term direction change notifications.

The ‘soft’ signal is when you pull the turn signal before it clicks and it blinks just a few times (versus when you pull the lever fully you need to turn for it to stop).

Signals are really helpful to alert other cars and pedestrians that you’re going to change direction, which helps mitigate accidents.

5. There is a file called rockyou.txt that contains the most common passwords in the world. If your password is on it, you should change it asap.

Origins of the file: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RockYou#Data_breach

Link to download the text file (133 MB): https://github.com/brannondorsey/naive-hashcat/releases/download/data/rockyou.txt

When trying to brute force your password, hackers will resort to lists of common passwords, and rockyou.txt is the most exhaustive and well-known source. Those lists allow hacking a ton of accounts in a short time thanks to the limited amount of trials necessary for statistically good results. If a hacker is going to try and get into your account, this list will be used. If your password isn’t on it, he will most likely not try further and your account should be safe from brute force attacks.

This is the best thing you can do to prevent your account from randomly getting hacked. To note that your password should still be long enough to prevent brute-forcing with all character combinations (recommended 8+ characters) and that will not prevent social engineering attacks.