Recent Posts

1601

Living Room / Re: Seagate starts shipping 8TB hard drives, with 10TB and HAMR on the horizon

« Last post by Renegade on August 02, 2014, 09:42 AM »

10 TB drives would be very sweet for my NAS, but I don't think my hardware/OS will support it. Officially, 2 TB is supported IIRC. (FreeNAS)

But it would give me soooooooooooo much space... I'm actually starting to run out, and will need to delete some stuff. The question now is can I hold off long enough?

Gear lust is in overdrive now!

1602

General Software Discussion / Bleep… Bittorrent unveils serverless & encrypted chat client

« Last post by Renegade on August 02, 2014, 08:28 AM »

Looks like communications are about to be decentralised. 

https://torrentfreak...-chat-client-140730/

Encrypted Internet traffic surged worldwide after the Snowden revelations, with several developers releasing new tools to enable people to better protect their privacy.

Today BitTorrent Inc. contributes with the release of BitTorrent Bleep, a communication tool that allows people to exchange information without the need for any central servers. Combined with state of the art end-to-end encryption, the company sees Bleep as the ideal tool to evade government snooping.

Bleep’s main advantage over some other encrypted messaging applications is the absence of central servers. This means that there are no logs stored, all metadata goes through other peers in the network.

“Many messaging apps are advertising privacy and security by offering end-to-end encryption for messages. But when it comes to handling metadata, they are still leaving their users exposed,” BitTorrent’s Farid Fadaie explains.

“We reimagined how modern messaging should work. Our platform enables us to offer features in Bleep that are unique and meaningfully different from what is currently available.”

More at the link.



http://blog.bittorre...vite-only-pre-alpha/

BitTorrent’s Chat Client Unveiled: BitTorrent Bleep Now in Invite Only Pre-Alpha

Speak Freely – It’s Person to Person.

The BitTorrent Bleep Pre-Alpha will be available on Windows desktop to start. Easy to use, Bleep offers freedom to communicate over text and voice, person to person.

Hoping for early access to BitTorrent’s first serverless chat client? We have good news. Today, we will begin letting testers try out the Pre-Alpha. We are also unveiling its name: BitTorrent Bleep.

Why Bleep, you might ask? Well, basically, we never see your messages or metadata. As far as we’re concerned, anything you say is “bleep” to us.

And with the susceptibility of communications platforms to snooping and hacking, reminders of which seems to surface every week, we realized that we were uniquely qualified to build a better platform and application.

More at that link.

In other news, the NSA has redesignated the name of its largest surveillance division "Whack-A-Mole".

1603

Living Room / Re: "Russia enacts 'draconian' law for bloggers"

« Last post by Renegade on August 01, 2014, 11:36 PM »

From the BBC:
Russia enacts 'draconian' law for bloggers and online media

If you get over 3,000 visits per day in Russia:

• you will have to register (you cannot remain anonymous)
• you must "conform to the regulations that govern the country's larger media outlets" (not sure what exactly they are)

On the radio here they were saying that you will also be held responsible for comments made on your site (not sure what consequences involved) - I dont see this mentioned in the BBC article, but maybe that's covered by the "regulations that govern the country's larger media outlets".

^ This last bit ties in with Ren's recent post about the trial of Ross Ulbricht (the "Dread Pirate Roberts"):

tl;dr - This fight is about the transfer of intent, e.g. I post something potentially illegal on your site, then you get charged for it. Good discussion there though, and worth a listen.

-Renegade (July 24, 2014, 09:58 AM)

-tomos (August 01, 2014, 12:41 PM)

You got my comment on the matter exactly right!

This will allow the FSB to post kiddie porn links on someone's blog then arrest them "for the children".

And again, this is why people should support Ross.

Communist Party or no Communist Party - Russia is Russia. It's "business as usual."

And that "business" never changes. No matter which 'legal' framework it operates under.
 (see attachment in previous post)
(Being of Russian descent, I can say that. )

-40hz (August 01, 2014, 03:05 PM)

Good point. To follow up a bit on that...

Russia is a fundamentally different civilisation than that of Western Europe. It's descended in part out of the Byzantine empire.

From one top historian:

https://archive.org/...s/TragedyAndHope_501

Part Three — The Russian Empire to 1917

Chapter 7 — Creation of the Russian Civilization

In the nineteenth century most historians regarded Russia as part of Europe but it is
now becoming increasingly clear that Russia is another civilization quite separate from
Western Civilization. Both of these civilizations are descended from Classical
Civilization, but the connection with this predecessor was made so differently that two
quite different traditions came into existence. Russian traditions were derived from
Byzantium directly; Western traditions were derived from the more moderate Classical
Civilization indirectly, having passed through the Dark Ages when there was no state or
government in the West.

Russian civilization was created from three sources originally: (1) the Slav people, (2)
Viking invaders from the north, and (3) the Byzantine tradition from the south.

And...

In time the ruling class of Russia became acquainted with Byzantine culture. They
were dazzled by it, and sought to import it into their wilderness domains in the north. In
this way they imposed on the Slav peoples many of the accessories of the Byzantine
Empire, such as Orthodox Christianity, the Byzantine alphabet, the Byzantine calendar,
the used of domed ecclesiastical architecture, the name Czar (Caesar) for their ruler, and
innumerable other traits. Most important of all, they imported the Byzantine totalitarian
autocracy, under which all aspects of life, including political, economic, intellectual, and
religious, were regarded as departments of government, under the control of an autocratic
ruler. These beliefs were part of the Greek tradition, and were based ultimately on Greek
inability to distinguish between state and society. Since society includes all human
activities, the Greeks had assumed that the state must include all human activities. In the
days of Classical Greece this all-inclusive entity was called the polis, a term which meant
both society and state; in the later Roman period this all-inclusive entity was called the
imperium. The only difference was that the polis was sometimes (as in Pericles's Athens
about 450 B.C.) democratic, while the imperium was always a military autocracy. Both
were totalitarian, so that religion and economic life were regarded as spheres of
governmental activity. This totalitarian autocratic tradition was carried on to the
Byzantine Empire and passed from it to the Russian state in the north and to the later
Ottoman Empire in the south. In the north this Byzantine tradition combined with the
experience of the Northmen to intensify the two-class structure of Slav society. In the
new Slav (or Orthodox) Civilization this fusion, fitting together the Byzantine tradition
and the Viking tradition, created Russia. From Byzantium came autocracy and the idea of
the state as an absolute power and as a totalitarian power, as well as such important
applications of these principles as the idea that the state should control thought and
religion, that the Church should be a branch of the government, that law is an enactment
of the state, and that the ruler is semi-divine. From the Vikings came the idea that the
state is a foreign importation, based on militarism and supported by booty and tribute,
that economic innovations are the function of the government, that power rather than law
is the basis of social life, and that society, with its people and its property, is the private
property of a foreign ruler.

The book is a stunning read. It lays out all the history "behind the scenes" that you never learned in school.

The mode of thinking and approach to issues of society and the state are radically different.

So, what "makes sense" in one mode of thought, doesn't in another.

"Draconian" just means "traditional".

Or... Putin is just a romantic at heart.

1604

DC Gamer Club / "Crawl" release date delayed - awesome blog post!

« Last post by Renegade on August 01, 2014, 06:36 AM »

This is a laugh & a half:

http://www.powerhoof.com/release/

They did up a GIF to explain the situation:



 

1605

Living Room / Re: I bought a pineapple today...

« Last post by Renegade on July 31, 2014, 10:20 PM »

I hope you paid for it in Dogecoin!

























And have a song too!

1606

Living Room / Re: To Hell with Net Neutrality: Sprint to charge extra for Facebook access

« Last post by Renegade on July 31, 2014, 10:13 AM »

It strikes me more as what they see as a way to put a partial "unlimited" data plan in place.

-40hz (July 31, 2014, 07:28 AM)

Strikes me as a New Speak small step in changing how service terms are to be understood. They're acting like it's an increase in the "Data Plan" implying more bandwidth/traffic/access as we know and understand things now. When it really is a incremental step towards the cable TV provider-esq Social Network and Entertainment Channel Package.

...And all the horrors we've long feared and suspected will manifest true.

-Stoic Joker (July 31, 2014, 08:26 AM)

^ Yeah... That.

I have one too... and am about to give it up.  I don't use anywhere near 2GB... and the family plan gets us all 10GB to share for a lot less than holding on to my unlimited I never use.

-wraith808 (July 31, 2014, 09:11 AM)

Dunno. Boiling frogs?

1607

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Renegade on July 31, 2014, 10:09 AM »

@Ren:
 (see attachment in previous post)
 

-40hz (July 31, 2014, 06:41 AM)

XKCD is a lot of fun!

There are a lot of conspiracy facts out there, and conspiracy history, and conspiracy theories. The facts and history are often denied by people who simply refuse to accept reality. Which isn't very interesting - they're just foolish. (e.g. Gulf of Tonkin, The USS Maine, etc.)

But the theories are a lot of fun! There are some very good theories with mountains of evidence, but no smoking gun. Those are the most interesting, e.g. JFK.

Then there are theories with a bit of evidence, and a lot of speculation. These are even more fun!

In "The Conspiracy", they quickly mention a bunch of facts, history, and theories across the spectrum,

Mild "meta" spoiler - no details

then proceed to make up their own entirely new fictional "conspiracy theory". It was quite well done and very entertaining. They did a great job of it, and kept it up right until the ending credits rolled.

Definitely some very good writing there.

1608

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Renegade on July 30, 2014, 08:22 PM »

The Conspiracy

Clever little faux(???) documentary that transitions rather nicely from the usual "found footage" to a pretty decent thriller. I found it really entertaining throughout - and even thought-provoking at times - despite how little is "new" in this picture.

...

Good flick! Recommended.

-40hz (July 30, 2014, 12:54 PM)

+1

I just saw this the other day. I get a lot of recommendations from here, but came across this one through Mark Dice.

1609

Living Room / Re: Moore's Law Dead by 2022, Expert Says

« Last post by Renegade on July 29, 2014, 12:37 AM »

And as a result, the future limits of this technology will be increasingly determined by politics rather than genuine "technical" roadblocks.

-40hz (July 28, 2014, 05:13 PM)

Sadly, that is likely to happen.

I think most big companies, and government in general, would be very happy if the personal and open computing platform - as we have heretofore known it -  just went away. Far too much power in the hands of the masses. And far too many opportunities for innovation - which then leads to competition against established mainline firms from 'untrusted' and 'upstart' competitors.

-40hz (July 28, 2014, 05:13 PM)

It will likely go the same way as the automobile with incremental regulation a drop at a time. It will resemble one of those "pen dot" drawings where the artist merely makes dots on the paper. Each dot is nothing more than a dot until you zoom out far enough to see the entire picture.

Any for those of us that scream and kick and fuss about each dot, we'll be ridiculed because "it's only a dot" and we're "conspiracy theorists"... until the picture is made full and people finally wake up and realise that they are looking at their own prison funeral.

Death by a thousand pin pricks.

1610

Living Room / Re: Moore's Law Dead by 2022, Expert Says

« Last post by Renegade on July 29, 2014, 12:30 AM »

Right now I have 13 processes taking up more than 100 MB of RAM. This is just crazy.

-Renegade (July 27, 2014, 08:29 PM)

That would be nice...
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Deozaan (July 28, 2014, 03:52 PM)

Hahaha!

It's called 'closing tabs'. Try it sometime!

I used to be really bad at that, but finally managed to discipline myself to start closing tabs and windows. 15 Chrome windows open with 10, 20, 50 tabs open? Nuts. But, but... I might NEED to open one of those again! And... I found myself searching through countless windows & tabs to actually find something when it would have been faster to just open a new tab and navigate back to the page. I still have 30 tabs open right now, but I'm a heck of a lot better than I used to be.

Chrome will suck up every bit of memory that it can. It's just a greedy memory hog.

1611

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on July 28, 2014, 12:04 PM »

This could be in the humour thread...

Yeah... Something like that.

1612

General Software Discussion / Re: MaidSafe - The new decentralized Internet

« Last post by Renegade on July 28, 2014, 08:27 AM »

...have a look at the colour scheme at the top... very clever metaphor...

-Renegade (July 27, 2014, 10:07 PM)

What - you mean the way the colour scheme shifts from one side of the page to the other through the 7 colours of the rainbow against a black background? As in "SPECTRUM" of electromagnetic radiation? How is that clever? Maybe I am missing something. The screws have been coming loose for years...

-IainB (July 28, 2014, 07:55 AM)

The US military often refers to "full spectrum domination". DARPA lists their work "across the full spectrum". Everything from, well, as they have it:
 

AEO - Technology, Adaptability & Transfer
BTO - Biology, Technology & Complexity
DSO - Discovery, Modeling, Design & Assembly
I2O - Information, Innovation & Cyber
MTO - Electronics, Photonics & MEMS
STO - Networks, Cost Leverage & Adaptability
TTO - Weapons, Platforms & Space

It's a full spectrum for dominance.

1613

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on July 28, 2014, 03:48 AM »

A keynote speach by Patrick Byrne - CEO of Overstock.com. Cued up:

#Bitcoin2014 - Keynote Address, "500 Years of Liberalism" by Dr. Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com

http://youtu.be/l--zHVO3Cik?t=14m50s - Intro
http://youtu.be/l--zHVO3Cik?t=16m - Direct to keynote.

Interesting as he goes over the background, history and philosophy behind Bitcoin.

He also goes over why he was the subject of 6 federal investigations. (Yep - He tried to expose criminality on Wall St., etc.)

1614

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 11:05 PM »

Oooo! Rick Falkvinge!

Rick gets into some history of information and properties of information going back to the times when monks transcribed books and acted as the gatekeepers of information/culture, Martin Luther, etc.

Jan. 13, 1535 - Punishment for using a printing press in France is DEATH! 

The origins of copyright! (1557)

Red flag act of 1865?!? Pushed by who?

Information war! (cued at 10:30)

15:55 - "...information wars..."

Ice boxes? Largest industry? Huh?!?

Snail mail. Hmmm...

1615

Living Room / Re: Does google have to be *everywhere*?

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 10:16 PM »

Updating software to cripple it is below low. It's kind of hard to believe. Is that right? Am I reading wrong?

-Renegade (July 27, 2014, 08:14 PM)

Nope. You're just being shown (the hard way) what that "terms of this service are subject to change without notice" clause is all about.

-40hz (July 27, 2014, 09:00 PM)

I'm not sure that a locally running application is a service.

But, once again, this only fuels my hatred and loathing major psychotic f**king hatred of SaaS, web services, "online blah blah", and the entire mentality behind all of that. *)

1616

Living Room / Re: Does google have to be *everywhere*?

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 10:13 PM »

But to actively cripple something that people paid for?  And release a less robust version?

-wraith808 (July 27, 2014, 12:43 PM)

Wait a second... Is this a push to cripple the app? I also bought QuickOffice, but rarely use it. I simply bought it for that one rare occasion in the future when I'll "need it right bloody now!"

Updating software to cripple it is below low. It's kind of hard to believe. Is that right? Am I reading wrong?

-Renegade (July 27, 2014, 08:14 PM)

Nope, you're not reading wrong.  And yes, they crippled it.  Look at the review page for the google version of QuickOffice.  QuickOffice Pro HD isn't available anymore.  And I was in that same boat... I rarely used it, but when I needed it, it was good.  Not anymore.

-wraith808 (July 27, 2014, 08:53 PM)

Ooops. My mistake. I just checked... I did have the trial of QuickOffice before, but went with Documents To Go and Polaris Office instead. I forget why I didn't buy QuickOffice. Still, doesn't make what they did any less douchey.

1617

General Software Discussion / Re: MaidSafe - The new decentralized Internet

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 10:07 PM »

If 'war' does come to the cyber frontier, you'll know. And in no uncertain terms.

-40hz (July 27, 2014, 09:10 PM)

*cough* NSA *cough* DHS *cough* DARPA (have a look at the colour scheme at the top... very clever metaphor) *cough* DEPS *cough* BCND *cough* TechDirt *cough* TorrentFreak *cough* EFF *cough* Falkvinge *cough* The Pirate Party *cough* Chris Paget & RFID *cough* 

Man... That's totally the beginning to Sweet Leaf!

Agree. Tom Jennings's Fidonet  had something very similar to that back (somewhat ironically) in 1984.

-40hz (July 27, 2014, 09:26 PM)

Some things are just ahead of their time. It happens.

1618

General Software Discussion / Re: MaidSafe - The new decentralized Internet

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 09:52 PM »

The post about MaidSafe is very heartening news to me.

-IainB (July 27, 2014, 07:31 PM)

It is very good news!

However, I am skeptical, not so much about MaidSafe per se (which appears to be a slam-dunk that has been operationally tested/proven, in prototype mode, at least), but about the Establishment's potential for aborting/euthanising MaidSafe through "necessary" legislation under (say) the "Prevention of Terrorism Act", or something, simply because it offers some potential threats to the Establishment on several fronts, including:

-IainB (July 27, 2014, 07:31 PM)

Which is what 40hz has been saying for a long time.

Sic semper tyrannis.

I suppose that's the end game in that scenario.

• Crypto-currency: The coupling of MaidSafe with crypto-currencies (including mastercoin and bitcoin, and the MaidSafe proprietary Perpetual Coin + safecoin).
  
  
• Disruptive technology - Commercial: The original Web/Internet as probably envisaged by Vint Cerf, would be a very different creature to what we seem to have today, which has become a fiercely capitalist profit/money-making scheme for those corporations that have been on the leading edge of using the Internet as a mass-marketing demographic data collection and vending system. Google's huge market dominance in this area could be a major victim of this disruptive technology, as it could sever the value-chain that provides their lifeblood and which drives their business model. As we are aware, there would seem to be a strong working relationship and interdependency between US Government/NSA/Google.
  
  
• Disruptive technology - State: The US and allied governments have apparently already invested many billions of dollars on developing internet surveillance systems (revelations re NSA/SS, SnowdenGate refer), all in the name of "National Security". MaidSafe could seem to have the potential to defeat a greater part of that.
  

-IainB (July 27, 2014, 07:31 PM)

The potential for disruption is far reaching. Heck, it could take the state back 100 years in terms of its ability to spy on people.

The rise & fall of Big Data?

When you think about it, these are some pretty wild times we live in!

1619

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 09:24 PM »

@40hz - More ammo for you to chuck it at me!

1620

General Software Discussion / Re: Open Source, P2P Decentralised Market Released

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 08:38 PM »

Here's a fun video for BitXBay:

It also gives a bit of flavour for what it's about. Sweet!

1621

Living Room / Re: Moore's Law Dead by 2022, Expert Says

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 08:29 PM »

I remember, perhaps 15 years ago, my older brother telling me that someday we'd reach a point where the CPU's hz wouldn't matter anymore because it would eventually be so high that any further increase wouldn't give us any practical improvement. He guessed that advances in RAM (both amount of RAM and speed of RAM) would be the next deciding factor in PC speeds for the consumer.

It seems we've pretty much met his first prediction. IMO RAM is approaching that point as well. What I mean by that is it seems it won't be long until we can have so much RAM in our systems that we won't do ourselves any good to put more in them. At least for desktop machines. Mobile devices still could use more.

-Deozaan (July 26, 2014, 03:03 PM)

I wonder about that. Developers seem to love soaking up more and more resources as they become available. Take Chrome or Firefox for example... 1 GB for 1 process? Really? I only wish I were kidding... Just for example, I checked right now... not doing anything special and not trying to use memory - just as things are...



1.7 GB!?!

Right now I have 13 processes taking up more than 100 MB of RAM. This is just crazy.

1622

Living Room / Re: Does google have to be *everywhere*?

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 08:14 PM »

But to actively cripple something that people paid for?  And release a less robust version?

-wraith808 (July 27, 2014, 12:43 PM)

Wait a second... Is this a push to cripple the app? I also bought QuickOffice, but rarely use it. I simply bought it for that one rare occasion in the future when I'll "need it right bloody now!"

Updating software to cripple it is below low. It's kind of hard to believe. Is that right? Am I reading wrong?

1623

General Software Discussion / Re: MaidSafe - The new decentralized Internet

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 08:09 PM »

For a badass example of Maidsafe:
.
.
.
You can see file storage, file sharing, and real time chat there. :O Yeah... bad. ass.

-Renegade (July 27, 2014, 10:15 AM)

Less "bad ass" to my eyes than it is more the ever predictable kiddie bad-boy behavior you tend to see with this sort of thing. Oh well...let the food court and coffee shop 'revolutionaries' have their fun I suppose.

-40hz (July 27, 2014, 12:10 PM)

Aaaannd... cue the pessimism! 40hz is back~!

Given it's not in widespread use yet, so any victory cries are premature...

But if it does go mainstream, it will again revolutionise how modern communications work. Decentralised communications? That's a big deal.

Crypto-anarchy is winning, and will win.

-Renegade (July 27, 2014, 10:15 AM)

Um...not to be a downer, but I think that's a little premature. Crypto-anarchy (as a movement) has yet to fight it's first real battle, let alone see hope for a lasting victory. Right now, it's little more than a minor annoyance to the powers that be, and not much more than an RPG for most of those who style themselves crypto-anarchists.

But not to fear. It will start getting seriously interesting soon enough.

-40hz (July 27, 2014, 12:10 PM)

Ok, yes - it is premature. But it's getting there.

Bittorrent revolutionised file sharing.

Bitcoin is revolutionising currency (and finance and contracts in general).

Maidsafe could revolutionise file storage, file sharing, and modern communications.

Code: Perl [Select]

1. #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
2. $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
3. lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)

This is an information war.

1624

Living Room / Re: Director wants his film on The Pirate Bay, pirates deliver…

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 11:07 AM »

Does anyone see the insanity here yet?

1625

Living Room / Re: Kidney stones and Beer!

« Last post by Renegade on July 27, 2014, 11:05 AM »

"On the other hand, people who reported drinking beer and wine frequently had a 41 percent and 33 percent lower risk of developing stones respectively than people who did not consume the alcoholic beverages."

-Cuffy (July 26, 2014, 02:54 PM)

Shit, in that case I'll never get one.

-Stoic Joker (July 26, 2014, 04:19 PM)

Make that one more! 

Hic!

In this lifetime or the next!

Actually, I think I've probably had enough to drink for a few lifetimes already...