Want To Work Without Prying Eyes? Try Wearing a Body Sock

Nerval's Lobster writes The "Compubody Sock," which anyone with knitting skills can make at home, is a giant sock-hoodie-bag in which you place your laptop or tablet, along with your head and hands, giving you total privacy while freaking out anyone who happens to be sitting next to you. Designer Becky Stern told Forbes' Kashmir Hill that the Sock was meant more as commentary on privacy and device addiction; even so, considering how NSA employees reportedly drape themselves in hoods in order to thwart hidden cameras while typing in passwords, it's not outside the realm of possibility that an ultra-paranoid someone could find a practical use for a body sock. But that paranoid android better have expert knitting skills: putting together the Sock necessitates a whole lot of steps ("Purl 5, purl 2 together, purl 1, turn the work," etc.). Your other option, of course, is to simply avoid working on sensitive stuff in public.

Comments

Alternative plan

[HornWumpus]

Yoga pants. Given the typical /.er most normal people would run screaming from the room, the rest will gouge their eyes out.

Re:Alternative plan

[PopeRatzo]

Imagine ten pounds of bologna in a five-pound bag.

Re:There's this thing called a

[stranger_to_himself]

I was hoping you were going to say Thneed.

I was disappointed.

You need a Thneed!

Re:That anyone can knit at home?

[Quirkz]

I thought everyone on Slashdot knew Perl.

Ewww.

[PopeRatzo]

It had better be washable. If you catch my drift.

haven't they heard of knithub.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody knits from scratch anymore. First you get the GoodHood Framework, spend a few days learning how it works and trying the samples. Then you realize it depends on the Backpurl and Emblazon knitting frameworks , so you Google for those and realize you can only get it in pink but you need the red version. Oh, but you can go back one point release on the GoodHood framework and then pink will work ok, even if it looks like shit.

Then you need to have Needles 2.0 to stitch it all together, but your knitting room is outfitted with Needles 1.5 that your still using for another unfinished knitting masterpiece. Damn! You realize you're going to need to create a whole new knitting room just for this project.... and now you're already delayed. ..

Re:haven't they heard of knithub.com

[jhantin]

Sounds like you've descended into yak shaving. On the plus side, that does get you some hair to spin into yarn, but that means you also need a spinning wheel, a compatible shade of pink dye, a tub to dye the stuff in, maybe a mordant to set the dye... by the time you're done, you'll probably have a complete textile production framework.

Re:There's this thing called a

[mythosaz]

That's why I've got a trace buster buster

Re:There's this thing called a

[TWX]

That's a different kind of sock...

Re:That anyone can knit at home?

[TWX]

knit picking doesn't count...

Re:are there enough

[HiThere]

Not tinfoil per se, be it think metalic fibres might be needed. Copper or aluminum should probably suffice, but perhaps it needs to be ferromagnetic. The question is, does it need to be grounded? It seems to me, though, that a knitted antenna would broadcast so many signals out of phase with each other that it couldn't be decoded.

Original link

[chihowa]

Here's the original post on Sternlab (from 2008). The "Ski Mask for Eating a Sandwich" is awesome. I think I need one of those first!

Re:There's this thing called a

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

THNEED! Everyone NEEDS a THNEED!

Everybody needs a Thneed!
A fine thing that all people need!
The Thneed is good, the Thneed is great,
Let's hope we're not too late!