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1526

Living Room / Re: Blackhat thread

« Last post by Renegade on August 13, 2014, 07:45 AM »

The BlackHat Conference

 

is this ?
Seems more serious than The White House
 

-Contro (August 13, 2014, 07:34 AM)

Yep! That's it!

It's great watching some of the videos they release. Wicked amazing stuff. With an emphasis on "wicked".

And yes - infinitely better than the White House. These guys aren't delusional and thinking that they can toss chicken bones blessed by Keynes to root your phone. Hard core computer science there.

I generally need to rewind a bunch of places a few times to not miss stuff. They go pretty fast sometimes. I find it's best to download the vids & use a real video player rather than Youtube in a browser.

But even if you don't do security professionally, or even if you have no plans on doing anything with what they say, it's good to know.

e.g. Wrap your credit cards in foil unless you want to risk them being stolen electronically over the air.

Hmm... Sounds like there might be a market for a Faraday wallet!

1527

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by Renegade on August 13, 2014, 07:35 AM »

with apologies for delay ;-)
 (see attachment in previous post)
Gillette double-edged adjustable safety razor

apparently aka Fatboy

-tomos (August 13, 2014, 04:29 AM)

Heh! Nice!

When I was very young, I somehow got an old safety razor for a toy. I think I was like 9 or 10 - I forget. But it looked very similar to that one. I just remember the handle being like that. I'm pretty sure it was a butterfly. But, dim and foggy memories there...

1528

Living Room / Re: More good web comics you've discovered

« Last post by Renegade on August 13, 2014, 07:30 AM »

Diesel Sweeties is sometimes very good, I liked these two recent ones:

-tomos (August 13, 2014, 04:59 AM)

HAHAH! I really liked the FB one there.  

1529

Living Room / Re: Homebrewing

« Last post by Renegade on August 13, 2014, 07:28 AM »

Even without the alcohol, soft-carbonated (and preferably unsweetened) lemonade is a treat on a hot day.

-40hz (August 12, 2014, 12:15 PM)

It's got me thinking more about what I can do. e.g. what would this be like?

500 g Strawberries (or any fruit combo)
350 g Dark brown sugar (a heavier flavour)
150 g Organic/natural/unfiltered/lightly filtered honey (gives a more complex flavour)
Champagne yeast (half package or so)

That'd be enough for 5~10 L of beverage.

Living in SE Asia... man... that was great... I'm a fruit juice freak. I love it. When I went out to eat I'd order 4 to start. Starfruit, mango, watermelon, lime juice... so many to choose!

But basically, just sugar + yeast + flavour. Done. The only trick is figuring out a good mix.

I'm really enjoying this bottle of lemon-ginger ale.

I experimented on this batch a lot with timing, and have figured out a fair bit.

And managed to start dipping into the raw batch of beer I've got brewing... man... warm raw beer is pretty damn fine. Try warm Bud. Hint: You can't tell the difference between warm Bud & piss!

1530

Living Room / IBM develops a computer chip with one million 'neurons' that 'functions like a h

« Last post by Renegade on August 13, 2014, 02:28 AM »

Embrace your infant overlords!

http://www.dailymail...ike-human-brain.html

• TrueNorth is being hailed as the world’s first neurosynaptic computer chip because it can figure things out on its own
• Modern processors have 1.4 bn transistors and consume up to 140 watts but the IBM chip contains 5.4 bn transistors and uses just 70 milliwatts
• Richard Doherty, the research director of tech research firm Envisioneering Group, hailed IBM's chip as a ‘really big deal’

IBM has developed a computer chip which it says will function like a human brain in a giant step forward for artificial intelligence.

TrueNorth is being hailed as the world’s first neurosynaptic computer chip because it can figure things out on its own.

The chip also has one million ‘neurons’ and could cram the same power as a super computer into a circuit the size of a postage stamp.

IBM's TrueNorth processor could enable a wide variety of applications based on the human brain's computing power. For instance, it could help assist vision-impaired people to navigate through an environment

Experts said that it was as big an advance as the advent of supercomputers in the 1980.

Horst Simon, deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told the New York Times: ‘It is a remarkable achievement in terms of scalability and low power consumption’.

Modern processors have some 1.4 billion transistors and consume up to 140 watts but the IBM chip contains 5.4 billion transistors and uses just 70 milliwatts of power, meaning it is incredibly efficient.

More about your new masters at the link!

1531

Living Room / Re: Homebrewing

« Last post by Renegade on August 12, 2014, 10:34 AM »

And, knowing how to properly open a super-mega-fizzy bottle is a learned skill. I tried a few ways, and have now settled on a solid method that works for explosively wild fizziness.

-Renegade (August 12, 2014, 09:37 AM)

you want to be careful you dont have exploding bottles

-tomos (August 12, 2014, 09:50 AM)

I've got good strong bottles.

And I have a lot of faith in them... Especially after opening a few and seeing the pressure first hand... Holy mother... They sound like a high-caliber rifle.

One last thing... Using a fermenter is way better than just doing it in bottles.

-Renegade (August 12, 2014, 09:37 AM)

no understand -
you mean instead of 'bottle-conditioned'? does a 'fermenter' make it like in a barrel?

Ren's Draught Ginger Ale

-tomos (August 12, 2014, 09:50 AM)

Oh, for the ginger ale (or really with this batch, lemonade-ginger ale), I fermented them in the bottle then capped them.

A fermenter is just a glorified barrel. They're better to work with.

1532

Living Room / Re: Homebrewing

« Last post by Renegade on August 12, 2014, 09:37 AM »

Well, some more lessons learned...

I need to filter my syrup more. I don't mind sediment, but I got way too much particulate matter in this batch of ginger ale. Like, nearly lemonade with pulp.

I've also concluded that I should probably simmer the syrup a bit more.

I think much finer filters are needed coffee filters.

Also, I need to be more patient in letting it ferment. I opened some 2, 4 days after starting, and that's not long enough.

Also, probably a bit less lemon. I used 5 in this batch. It's good - no mistake about that, but it's more like ginger-lemonade with too much lemon. Just a matter of taste there... which brings me to...

So many more ideas! Just mash up some strawberries and go wild! It's just flavour anyways. It's the yeast & sugar that give it the alcohol & fizz. So, that overdose on lemon has me thinking in a much broader sense now.

And, knowing how to properly open a super-mega-fizzy bottle is a learned skill. I tried a few ways, and have now settled on a solid method that works for explosively wild fizziness.

One last thing... Using a fermenter is way better than just doing it in bottles.

1533

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on August 12, 2014, 03:17 AM »

Some really good doge jokes here:

http://imgur.com/gallery/krnJ5

Here's one (more at the link):

1534

Living Room / Re: Blackhat thread

« Last post by Renegade on August 11, 2014, 09:16 PM »

RFID is another scary can of worms in and of itself. If you even get close to being able to manipulate it without all kinds of licensing red tape, they are really quick to lawsuit you to death. Its inherently flawed in a very serious way, one that enables anyone with the right kind of equipment to read it at will. And its only a matter of time until viable designs for that equipment become well known to the public, rendering RFID a completely worthless concept.

-SeraphimLabs (August 11, 2014, 09:25 AM)

Yes - Chris Paget's Blackhat presentation shows how anyone can steal credit cards from up to 250 feet or so using RFID.

The Blackhat conference videos are really good for anyone interested in technology to watch. They really get down into the tech at a very low level and show some pretty surprising things.

I'm going to try to watch some over time and then post a tl;dr for people here.

1535

Living Room / Re: R.I.P. Robin Williams

« Last post by Renegade on August 11, 2014, 09:10 PM »

Insightful, but deeply disturbing:

“I used to think the worst thing in life is to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.”
― Robin Williams

1536

Living Room / Re: EFF's "Stupid Patent of the Month" raises awareness, shames patent trolls

« Last post by Renegade on August 11, 2014, 02:49 AM »

That was an excellent patent!

I'm really looking forward to more of them.

Here's one classic patent:

https://encrypted.go...om/patents/US6360693

A stick. For a dog.

And another.

https://encrypted.go...om/patents/USD461025

This patent could be used for both of them:

http://patft.uspto.g...%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2F
srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,090,268.PN.&OS=PN/7,090,268&RS=PN/7,090,268



Really? A bag on a stick? For dog poop? Like I said, better used to dispose of patents.

1537

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on August 11, 2014, 02:42 AM »

More strange Government logic=silly humour:

During the Africa Summit “Resilience and Food Security in a Changing Climate” panel, Secretary of State John Kerry told an audience that “8,000 children die every day” and in sub-Sahara Africa, one in four suffer from chronic hunger.
Then a few minutes later, he stressed how creating new farms would cause too much carbon pollution so they need to discourage more farm land.
Top 5 Africa Summit Highlights | The Daily Caller

-IainB (August 11, 2014, 02:05 AM)

That boy is one of the funniest every time he opens his mouth. I wonder if he ever listens to what he says.

And thanks for the laugh!

1538

Non-Windows Software / Re: No time for Man pages? Cheat!

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 11:56 PM »

Which should I run first?

• cheat cheat
• cheat -help

 

1539

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 12:30 PM »

It's in the same place as that proof of WMDs...

-wraith808 (August 10, 2014, 12:06 PM)

Don't forget the leprechauns!

1540

Living Room / Re: Wikimedia refuses to remove animal selfie because monkey ‘owns’ the photo

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 12:24 PM »

Incidentally, I'm trying to point out that in a limited number of words, it's only a matter of time before any given set meets an innocent variation or repetition.

And that will just... make my day.

1541

Living Room / Re: Wikimedia refuses to remove animal selfie because monkey ‘owns’ the photo

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 12:22 PM »

I think you meant:

take the money and move on run.

-40hz (August 10, 2014, 11:48 AM)

  

1542

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 12:01 PM »

My GF (much to my surprise ) brought this utterly tasteless one to my attention. (Go figure! ) Definitely NFC and NSFW:

-40hz (August 10, 2014, 11:54 AM)

BWAHAHAHAHA~!

That was hilarious!

1543

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 11:58 AM »

Hah, you got in ahead of me Ren -
I wanted to post yesterday about my latest aquisition but the connection went:
it's a similar adjustable safety razor from Gillette. They were made from 1959 up to '86. Not sure how old my one is - I got to say I was amazed by the shave - clean, easy, very smooth; I'd have to try hard to cut myself with the thing (I used use an older similar style no/unknown-brand non-adjustable razor, if you didnt 100% focus while shaving, you'd take a chunk out of yourself...)

(Took a nice pic of it but it's on main machine, will post tomorrow or sometime.)

-tomos (August 09, 2014, 01:57 PM)

Tomos! You're a *sharp* guy! Still waiting for those photos!

1544

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 11:54 AM »

Getting a real shaving kit is an idea I've been toying with, though my facial hair is so sparse as to be just a level or two above peach fuzz.

-mwb1100 (August 09, 2014, 11:19 PM)

Must be nice!

But you might just enjoy it. Think of it as entertainment at that point.

Real shaving cream is simply fantastic... The stuff you get at a good barber? Yeah - better.

As far as extending the life of your blades: when I was a kid you could get a small pyramid that you'd put your razor blades inside in order to keep them sharp through 'pyramid power'.  I imagine that Gillette did something to suppress that technology.  I think you should test it out.

-mwb1100 (August 09, 2014, 11:19 PM)

While I do love a good conspiracy and whatnot, I'm thinking that pyramid crystal new age power is bit off the beaten track for me.

Also, your post reminded me of this SNL parody from the very first show, back in 1975 (starring current US Senator Al Franken as "the Caveman"):

     http://snltranscript...g/75/75atriple.phtml

-mwb1100 (August 09, 2014, 11:19 PM)

Heh! I'd not see that before.

But really... more blades in disposables is better. A lot better. And a lot more expensive.

Quite literally, I'll go through multiple multi-blade disposable razors for 1 shave if I let my beard go too long. And that's when I buzz it off with clippers beforehand.

But multi-blade disposables are darn good.

Renegade, when I was using double-edged blades - Gillete, Shick - it was common practice to strop the blade against a bathroom mirror.  That realigned the edges, smoothing out the parts that had been realigned/misaligned by the act of shaving.  Dunno that might help ya, but it's worth a try.  Saved me a great deal of discomfort when I couldn't afford a new blade every day.

-barney (August 10, 2014, 01:05 AM)

Hmm... Mirrors... I'll have to give it a shot. Can't hurt.

Well, yeah - it could hurt. I'll hold the blade with a towel or take other precautions. I've worked with blades for far too long to take anything for granted. Razors? God... Deep razor cuts are sick - been close enough there.

1545

Living Room / Re: Wikimedia refuses to remove animal selfie because monkey ‘owns’ the photo

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 11:25 AM »

The problem is that we are a bunch of engineers trying to define art.
Lots of art students spend many years studying this (paid by the government in a lot of places in the world) and none of them know either. (I have spent many hours listening to pretty girls who study art tell me all about it while I study 'natural art')

In the building trade, the problem is 'gentleman's agreements' all the time. If I draw the plans, I keep the copyright, if I design a unique (for example) timber floor artistic pattern which I simply ask "how about this?" and do then do the job, it's not clear. If I had said: "I'll design a custom flooring system" and drawn it up and the client signed that he had selected my design, then I keep it. Even if I was paid for the time I drew it, that's simply the cost of using my design.

However, the question is: did he make the overall finish by choosing the design, or did I design floor to make the overall finish?
Maybe consider the case of someone hanging a Picasso on the wall and that made the room look good. Who is the artist if the room is considered the artwork?

In the case of the holiday photo, if the person asking did not expect the person taking to do any more than just point and shoot (i.e. an amateur under instruction) then the tourist owns the picture. If the tourist asks a professional thinking that he/she is an amateur, then the professional can
a: take the photo and say nothing
b: first warn the people that this is his job and his work is copyright (kind of like if you ask a signed recording artist to play happy birthday and want to record it).
If the professional says nothing and then claims the photo, the tourist could claim that the photographer had the camera under false pretences and that would open up another can of worms.

If there is an accidental historic photobomb, the professional could claim the photo, but the tourist could countersue for lost revenue that the camera was borrowed under false pretences and the tourist could have made the shot and got the royalties.

That's my opinion.

Oh, and as for hobbyists: a lot of that comes back to licencing and liability. You can ask old Jim how to build a shed and he is not licenced to charge for his information, and if it falls down that was your fault. If you ask me, I can charge for it and I have to pay insurance because you can sue me if I told you wrong information.
A professional photographer would be one who could be reasonably expected to charge for such a service. e.g. has a history of working as such, has a lot of images sold under copyright etc.

-Fred Nerd (August 10, 2014, 09:54 AM)

Again - great points.

I think you've nicely muddied the waters even more!

Case A & B above really put forward some good stuff. The question posed there is bang on.

I don't think that we'll ever have copyright that makes sense though. The edge cases just push too hard.

1546

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Independent web page about security (fight against viruses, pc security...)

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 11:15 AM »

The Blackhat conference is good to keep track of.

-Renegade (August 09, 2014, 10:41 AM)

Blackhat ? What's that ?
It means what i see in the wiki not sound very good
 

-Contro (August 10, 2014, 06:03 AM)

It's a formal security conference. I've started a thread for blackhat issues & stuff.

1547

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 10:25 AM »

I wonder what logic caused them to draw the line at IE v3.0 ... Was that even a Windows program, or did DOS have a browser??

-Stoic Joker (August 10, 2014, 09:16 AM)

Govt. logic is silly humour!

1548

Living Room / Blackhat thread

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 09:08 AM »

There's a lot of very cool stuff out there with a huge amount of educational value in the blackhat arena. I figure that it might be good to have 1 thread for it.

I posted Chris Piaget's RFID hacking presentation a while back in another thread, but let's start with another:

Black Hat USA 2013 - Hiding @ Depth - Exploring, Subverting and Breaking NAND Flash memory

Layman's Summary:

You can create bad blocks then store data there (NAND memory). Bad blocks are ignored, so you are effectively invisible.

Utterly. Terrifying.

At one point he says, "which I'm not making public." Yeah... uh, we already got the point.

It's a great presentation, and well worth a watch for anyone interested in mobile security.

Linux and Android devs will find this interesting. He also makes reference to the panic_write() call, which is really wild. I had no idea that existed.

1549

Living Room / Re: Wikimedia refuses to remove animal selfie because monkey ‘owns’ the photo

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 08:13 AM »

@Fred Nerd - You make some interesting comments.

If you get someone to help take a photo, and they do no more than a 'reasonable' job, then you own it. BUT if you hand the camera to a professional to take and he uses his skill to achieve a better photo, then he could lay claim to it.

-Fred Nerd (August 10, 2014, 07:25 AM)

I don't see why amateur vs. professional should make difference. That's an arbitrary distinction based on whether or not someone regularly is paid for an activity.

As an example, there are "amateur" wine makers out there that make wines far superior to what you will find in your local store.

There are many hobbyists out there that do superb work. The monetary distinction doesn't seem to be a good one.

The important part there is the actual quality of the photo, but that relies on both objective and subjective criteria, and the subjective are the most important for "art". (It's not that hard to meet the objective criteria with point & shoot cameras.)

Likewise if you ask an amateur to help build a shed, he only puts in work. But if you ask me, I can add to the normal shed design and claim that as my copyright.

-Fred Nerd (August 10, 2014, 07:25 AM)

I think that it's unlikely that for the shed example anyone can come up with anything sufficiently unique to warrant a copyright. Unless there's some significant deviation from what a normal shed is (see below).

Let's pretend this shed won best shed in a building competition and we wanted to know who gets the prize.

-Fred Nerd (August 10, 2014, 07:25 AM)

Now... there's the interesting part!

That actually has come up in the past in a few cases.

There was one that I vaguely remember where an interior designer was hired, then the owner entered her home into a contest and won. The designer was pissed. I don't have a reference for that though.

Does anyone else remember that case? It was inside of the last few years.

It was about "work for hire"...

1550

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on August 10, 2014, 07:27 AM »

Y'all ready for this?

https://appext20.dos...e_biennial.main_page



 

BWAHAHAHAHAHA~!