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1376
Living Room / Android security mystery – ‘fake’ cellphone towers found in U.S.
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 12:05 PM »
Android security mystery – ‘fake’ cellphone towers found in U.S.

http://www.welivesec.../android-security-2/

Seventeen mysterious cellphone towers have been found in America which look like ordinary towers, and can only be identified by a heavily customized handset built for Android security – but have a much more malicious purpose, according to Popular Science.

The fake ‘towers’ – computers which wirelessly attack cellphones via the “baseband” chips built to allow them to communicate with their networks, can eavesdrop and even install spyware, ESD claims. They are a known technology - but the surprise is that they are in active use.

The towers were found by users of the CryptoPhone 500, one of several ultra-secure handsets that have come to market in the last couple of years, after an executive noticed his handset was “leaking” data regularly.

Its American manufacturer boasts that the handset has a “hardened” version of Android which removes 468 vulnerabilities from the OS.

Uh, yeah. Ok. More at the link.
1377
Living Room / Re: Game (& reviews) industry's silent scandal
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 11:43 AM »
As an insider for some games, I can tell you that the entire feminist crap is just that - crap.

I've worked on games with far, far worse themes than most people would imagine. Slavery. Torture. Really, really sick stuff.

But the underlying themes have nothing to do with any of the nonsense some people complain about. I get to see the entire theme and story -- everything.

But... meh... whatever.

The SJWs need to STFU.
1378
Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 11:07 AM »
I listen to this and watch it regularly.



Lyrics are from Saul Williams.
1379
Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 11:05 AM »
A long solo by Zakk Wylde:


-Giampy (August 24, 2014, 04:04 PM)

Guitar solos are total circle jerks for guitarists (the real work horses - gotta let them shine a bit, eh?), but they're damn cool! 8)  :Thmbsup:

Zakk is damn good too!  :Thmbsup:

He works in a truckload there. You can hear a lot. Jimi and Randy included.

And that's a damn fine beard!  :Thmbsup:

1380
Living Room / Re: Beyond The Basement
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 10:47 AM »
HA! More danger! But only to the police state. ;)

Activist apps! 8)

I saw this a while back, but didn't want to post it because it would most likely get sent to the Basement. However, there's a new interview out with the app creator that justifies it being sent upstairs here. But... again... in its own thread might be a bit too much. So, thanks 40! You've given me the opportunity to actually get this out into the daylight! :P

Sidekik - An app to get you a lawyer on your mobile phone immediately if you are confronted by costumed thugs with guns that think they're better than you.

Here's an interview with the creator:



http://sidekik.co/

It's currently being crowd funded.

1381
Living Room / Re: Beyond The Basement
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 09:56 AM »
Hehehe - Just saw this. Like danger? This idea is very dangerous for statists:

http://www.bitnation.co

Now, as far as how much faith I have in that right now... well... we'll see (not a lot). But the idea itself is a nova bomb on the state.

1382
Living Room / Re: Beyond The Basement
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 09:03 AM »
Look how many "good" ideas turned out to be "not very" once we uncovered the hidden agendas behind them and suddenly realized just how ugly and batshit crazy their chief proponents really are. (ref: The Patriot Act, FISA, Libertarianism, etc.)
-40hz (September 01, 2014, 11:17 AM)

You remind me of this:

large image
Freda Libertarians RUN!.jpg


:)

My feeling is that one good thing about publicly discussing "dangerous" ideas is it gets them out in the open where you can often see the clear difference between "bad dangerous" and "good dangerous."
-40hz (September 01, 2014, 11:17 AM)

It all depends on who you ask. Case in point above. ;) (But just to be clear, I'm anti-state.)

Very, very few ideas are universally dangerous.

But even then, a lot of people consider universally dangerous ideas "good", like the state. :P 8)

Risk always needs to be assessed against the potential benefit(s) to be gained. Almost everything worth having comes at a price. The question is how much risk and how high a price you're willing to pay to attempt to gain something. That's where common sense, economic reality, and ethics come in. And those are much harder criteria to apply in a rational manner.
-40hz (September 01, 2014, 11:17 AM)

Most days I wonder if rationality matters in the least.

I have never seen a decent critique of Immanuel Kant. They all run off to "damed if you do, damned if you don't" situations. Yeah? So? You're damned. Big deal. But Kant has probably the single best theory out there. Here's a very quick summary:

http://people.wku.ed...rett/ethics/kant.htm

Yet if we were to act ethically rationally, we would all be Kantian in our actions. This isn't the case. Rationality is rare.

1383
General Software Discussion / Re: web automation
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 08:43 AM »
is there any other option?

I want to create my own standalone programs that automate webpages and secure them with password so that the source won't be visible! and sell them!

as I can do with AutoHotKey for desktop automation programs!
-kalos (September 02, 2014, 07:39 AM)

I've done a lot of web automation in the past using Visual Studio. I don't know if that's an option for you. There are a few tricks that you need to know to get things smooth, but it does work.
1384
Living Room / Re: The Movie and Book Writing Thread
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 03:51 AM »
If you figure out something interesting and non-trivial to use The Brain for, be sure to let me know?
-40hz (September 01, 2014, 08:51 PM)

It's useful for pretty much any set of complex, related information.

Richard Grove uses it extensively at Tragedy and Hope. Here's a cued up bit with it onscreen. You'll likely want to pause:

http://youtu.be/pwwYuW2tzUo?t=3m50s

I've seen him use much more complex mappings. I just grabbed that at random.

Richard is really big on the Trivium method of education, and uses the tool in that.

From the link above:

The HISTORY BLUEPRINT is a tool for auto-didactic learning, allowing anyone to begin developing a comprehensive understanding of where we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going as Humanity.

So, it's excellent for history. You can map events, organisations, people, places, ideas, URLs, or pretty much anything you can imagine. You can then get that feel for the relationships there in a more visual and interactive way.

But the same goes for tracking news topics or other kinds of events, e.g. a political campaign, sporting events, etc.

Also, for academic purposes, it's ideal for doing research as you can pin down those connections and relations nice and visually.

It would also work very well for personal research and discovery. You can continually add nodes, so it would work very well for planning.

I suppose that you could use it to design arguments/syllogisms as well.

But, I'm not sure any of that is non-trivial.

1385
General Software Discussion / Re: SIGIL, free ePub editor
« Last post by Renegade on September 02, 2014, 01:21 AM »
From Sigil's Spiritual Successor @ Making epub happen:
-ewemoa (September 01, 2014, 11:27 PM)

That's too bad. Sigil was really good.
1386
Living Room / Re: The Movie and Book Writing Thread
« Last post by Renegade on September 01, 2014, 08:05 PM »
Wow. That's a lot of tools in there.

There's one mind mapping tool that I've seen used that looks pretty good:

http://www.thebrain.com

It's cross platform, and would make a good addition there.

I found out about it here:

https://www.tragedya...dhope.com/the-brain/

Richard uses it in a lot of his videos.
1387
Living Room / Re: Beyond The Basement
« Last post by Renegade on September 01, 2014, 10:03 AM »
^The degree of "tameness" (is that an actual word?)
-40hz (September 01, 2014, 09:51 AM)

It actually is. :)


Not for everybody. But since I'm most comfortable, and at my mind seems to function at its best whenever I'm outside my 'comfort' zone, I think FODI has a role in the world of ideas.
-40hz (September 01, 2014, 09:51 AM)

Heck yeah!

I probably should have qualified myself above. **I** didn't find too many things "dangerous". But quite a few of the topics would certainly piss off a lot of people. e.g. The topics addressing free speech are extremely dangerous to a lot of people. As an example of that, the UN is currently trying to coax Japan into creating "hate speech" laws. Speech is inherently dangerous because some people are just... uh... Let me just *not* devolve into a blithering rant. ;) ;D

I would like to see things like FODI gain greater publicity with a broader range of dangerous ideas. It's good to shock people that have gotten comfortable.

And it's ok to reject ideas too. Without becoming violent. People forget that sometimes.

I'm dying to blurt out some things... sigh... nope. Sometimes it pays to be quiet. :)
1388
Living Room / Re: Beyond The Basement
« Last post by Renegade on September 01, 2014, 09:38 AM »
Think the Basement can get a little over the top at times?
-40hz (September 01, 2014, 07:07 AM)

Over the top? I think we mostly keep it bottled up downstairs. ;)

For the festival, browsing through some, they all seem fairly tame.

Less tame
A lot are pretty much mainstream or typical left-wing or collectivist ideas... oh, that's right... those were responsible for the vast majority of the over 250 million people in the 20th century that perished from democide. Well, aside from those... A few are off the beaten path a bit, but not much from what I saw. Good marketing I suppose.

These are probably a few ideas more dangerous than most listed (I'm avoiding some topics that are better in The Basement ;) ):

  • The Internet
  • Cody Wilson - 3D printed guns
  • Bram Cohen - Bittorrent
  • Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström - The Pirate Bay
  • Adam Back - Hashcash
  • Satoshi Nakamoto - Bitcoin
  • John Hutchison - The Hutchison Effect (named after him)
  • John Hutchison - Antigravity
  • John Hutchison - Yeah... A lot more...
  • Jesus Christ - The ultimate anarchist. :P

I could dig up some more. :) The last few are probably less familiar for most people.



But it would be nice to seem some more dangerous ideas pop up. The question remains though, who is it dangerous for?

Nice find. :)
1389
Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]
« Last post by Renegade on August 31, 2014, 11:37 AM »


1390
Living Room / Re: Get ready to be unemployed - "Humans Need Not Apply" - CGP Grey
« Last post by Renegade on August 31, 2014, 09:09 AM »
Pessimistic? More like 'lacking in hubris' I think.  :P
-40hz (August 31, 2014, 08:35 AM)

Hahaha! That's a good one!  :Thmbsup:
1391
Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process
« Last post by Renegade on August 31, 2014, 08:06 AM »
There's nothing especially new about it per se, except that it has been reported on by the BBC - infamous for promulgating their religio-political bias and for pushing pseudo-science (e.g., Rotherham, 28Gate, etc.). I suspect they produced the programme by mistake - it probably missed going through their usual internal censorship gate.
-IainB (August 30, 2014, 10:10 PM)

Hahah! ;D

Yep. Probably.

My favourite BBC gaffe is them reporting WTC 7 collapsing well before it did with WTC 7 still standing in the background.

But, Russia and China have "state run media" and we over here in freedom-land have "public television". Let's all repeat that now...
1392
Living Room / Re: Get ready to be unemployed - "Humans Need Not Apply" - CGP Grey
« Last post by Renegade on August 31, 2014, 08:02 AM »
There are many critics of Malthus out there, and he's been pretty much laid to rest.
-Renegade (August 30, 2014, 09:09 PM)

Not really.  :)
-40hz (August 30, 2014, 11:11 PM)

And then there are those that still adhere to Malthus. ;)

There are new methods of agriculture that are 10x to 100x more productive per acre than modern conventional agriculture. And they are unencumbered by patents. :)

Most human population predictions that I've seen predict a peak of 9 to 10 billion this century. Here's one resource:

http://www.worldomet...fo/world-population/

And a quick snippet:

The annual growth rate is currently declining and is projected to continue to decline in the coming years. Currently, it is estimated that it will become less than 1% by 2020 and less than 0.5% by 2050.

GRAPH OMITTED

This means that world population will continue to grow in the 21st century, but at a slower rate compared to the recent past. World population has doubled (100% increase) in 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion). It is now estimated that it will take a further 43 years to increase by another 50%, to become 9 billion by 2042.

The latest United Nations projections indicate that world population will nearly stabilize at just above 10 billion persons after 2062.

Not very geometric.

Systems tend towards some kind of equilibrium. For AIs, robots, and human (un)employment, we'll likely see the same kind of thing.
-Renegade (August 30, 2014, 09:09 PM)

Systems also tend towards extinction - extinction being the ultimate state of equilibrium. 8)
-40hz (August 30, 2014, 11:11 PM)

The eternal pessimist! :)

1393
Living Room / Re: Youtube stepping up video size again?
« Last post by Renegade on August 31, 2014, 07:51 AM »
I assume you mean 1280x720?

I ask this because...well...as long as it is 16:9 (1.78:1)...you can view in 720p at well...any resolution that is 16:9...Right now, I have a small youtube window open...on my phone...running at 1080p...yes it is full screen...but seeing as that screen is tiny...it is...well...tiny?

720p = 720 horizontal scan lines (Not a depiction of actual size as such)
-Stephen66515 (August 30, 2014, 11:57 PM)

Yes. I meant what I said literally. It is playing at 480p resolution (bandwidth) in a 720p sized frame. Yeah. Go figger. I was like "WTF?!?" too.
1394
Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately
« Last post by Renegade on August 31, 2014, 07:44 AM »
It covers from his beginning up until the mid-80's, after he beat his addictions.
-4wd (August 31, 2014, 07:23 AM)

What's even more surprising is AC since then. Along with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, Brian Welch of Korn, Nicko McBrain of Iron Maiden, and Dan Spitz of Anthrax, and Blackie Lawless of WASP, they have all converted to Christianity. THAT bit in a documentary I would like to see.

1395
Living Room / Re: Searching for 'Love' on YouTube
« Last post by Renegade on August 30, 2014, 09:18 PM »
+1 for using "-" to limit searches. And yes... the lists can get long sometimes.
1396
Living Room / Re: Get ready to be unemployed - "Humans Need Not Apply" - CGP Grey
« Last post by Renegade on August 30, 2014, 09:09 PM »
Malthus also thought that food production was arithmetic. He didn't see the tractor or combine coming. He also ignored the possibility that population growth could be affected by other factors. There are many critics of Malthus out there, and he's been pretty much laid to rest.

Systems tend towards some kind of equilibrium. For AIs, robots, and human (un)employment, we'll likely see the same kind of thing.

The interesting part will be in how the system gets disrupted, similar to how tractors and combines disrupted agriculture.

Anyone that gives any serious thought to a solution to this problem, will ultimately come up with something that would be considered Utopian. There really isn't a way around that. Anything that would get around that wouldn't really be a solution, would it?

And if a Utopian solution really is the only viable solution, then we have a ton of work ahead of us before we could even begin to seriously entertain the thought of actually solving the problem.
-app103 (August 30, 2014, 11:51 AM)

I certainly hope there's no Utopian solution. They never work and often make everything much, much worse.

But, the current system we have now isn't going to work. It will collapse. Preventing a collapse is probably out of the question at this point though. The rot and corruption at the top preclude any kind of cure. e.g. Government spending that requires taxation at or above current levels will collapse as debts come due. Merely servicing debts now is onerous, as Argentina keeps proving time and time again with the same solutions to the same problems that didn't work before, aren't working now, and won't work tomorrow.

I'm betting that black markets will become more and more popular. ("Black market" is such a horrible term. It's only a market that excludes government intervention.)
1397
Living Room / Re: Get ready to be unemployed - "Humans Need Not Apply" - CGP Grey
« Last post by Renegade on August 30, 2014, 10:52 AM »
We will eventually have to rethink this idea that everyone needs to "earn a living" to obtain the money needed to acquire the basic necessities of life,
-app103 (August 30, 2014, 07:27 AM)

That's never going to go away. Unless the world goes full commie. Which has never worked out. Unless anyone considers mass murder as a wonderful outcome. "Useless eaters" and all that.


We will eventually have to rethink this idea that everyone needs to "earn a living" to obtain the money needed to acquire the basic necessities of life, or face the violent consequences, as more people end up jobless, homeless, and penniless, with too much time on their hands to think of nothing but destructive revolution, terrorism, etc. as the only viable solution to their problems. We will either have to rethink it or prepare to put most of the world's population in prisons. And if we are not careful with this, how we decide to proceed, it could lead to our downfall as a species, causing our own extinction, leaving behind an army of bots that serve nobody and no real purpose, like pets waiting for their masters that will never return home.
-app103 (August 30, 2014, 07:27 AM)

Given the general disregard for consequences that we see in "modern science" now, it could get pretty grim.

I do wonder how bloody it will get. Given the control structures in place now, my guess is people will be drowning in blood.

Then again, who knows? I've not really thought about this too much. It's an interesting question.

1398
Developer's Corner / /r/ShittyProgramming
« Last post by Renegade on August 30, 2014, 09:12 AM »
http://www.reddit.co.../r/ShittyProgramming

I think a few people here will get a few laughs. :)

e.g. http://www.reddit.co.../18_arguments_later/

Code: C [Select]
  1. void part3( __global struct triangle *triangles,__global uint *tri_num, __global float4 *c_pos, __global float4 *c_rot, __global uint* depth_buffer, __read_only image2d_t id_buffer,
  2.        __read_only image3d_t array, __write_only image2d_t screen, __global uint *nums, __global uint *sizes, __global struct obj_g_descriptor* gobj, __global uint * gnum,
  3.        __global uint *lnum, __global struct light *lights, __global uint* light_depth_buffer, __global uint * to_clear, __global uint* fragment_id_buffer, __global float4* cutdown_tris)
I'd like to thank firstly myself for being an amazing programmer, and secondly OpenCL for being literally hitler


More good stuff there as well. :)
1399
Living Room / Get ready to be unemployed - "Humans Need Not Apply" - CGP Grey
« Last post by Renegade on August 30, 2014, 03:07 AM »
I suppose this is no surprise to anyone, but CGP Grey has another short film that some may find entertaining:



Kiss your job good-bye?

1400
Living Room / Re: Hack Your VCR!
« Last post by Renegade on August 29, 2014, 10:15 PM »
I just got back from the hospital. Over 200 stitches & I'm now typing with 1 finger.

DO NOT FORGET THE MARSHMALLOWS!
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