Recent Posts

1801

Living Room / By 2045 'The Top Species Will No Longer Be Humans,' And That Could Be A Problem

« Last post by Renegade on July 05, 2014, 11:06 PM »

Resistance is futile...



http://www.businessi...e-singularity-2014-7

“Today there’s no legislation regarding how much intelligence a machine can have, how interconnected it can be. If that continues, look at the exponential trend. We will reach the singularity in the timeframe most experts predict. From that point on you’re going to see that the top species will no longer be humans, but machines.”

More at the link.

1802

Living Room / Re: Linux User Are Evil TERRORISTS! Shame on you all! :P

« Last post by Renegade on July 05, 2014, 09:21 PM »

What would be really cool is for massive numbers of web sites to include an iframe of the Linux Journal (and others) to spam the NSA and create massively larger data storage requirements for them - just drown them in data!

-Renegade (July 04, 2014, 11:16 PM)

Wouldn't that effectively DDOS the Linux Journal?

-Deozaan (July 05, 2014, 10:48 AM)

Yes. (It was a joke - it's not remotely practical.)

What would be really cool is for massive numbers of web sites to include an iframe of the Linux Journal (and others) to spam the NSA and create massively larger data storage requirements for them - just drown them in data!

-Renegade (July 04, 2014, 11:16 PM)

Too easy to filter. I doubt it would slow them down at all.

And if you ever did drown them with data, they'd just get another appropriation and build a bigger data center.

This is not the sort of problem where you can efficiently fight technology with more technology.

-40hz (July 05, 2014, 10:59 AM)

It totally works in the techno version of Wonderland.

What's needed is a change in the infrastructure and the people that are behind it. Because as long as things like Prism and the NSA and FISA exist, there will be ongoing abuses of civil liberties. A complete disregard for legal process is intrinsic to the attitude and mindset that created such things in the first place.

-40hz (July 05, 2014, 10:59 AM)

It's a people problem. It's always a people problem. There's nothing "wrong" with the technology. The infrastructure is just a horrible misapplication of the technology.

Let me just leave this here: Linux users are super villains

-Josh (July 05, 2014, 11:01 AM)

That was very cute!

1803

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on July 05, 2014, 09:10 PM »

^ The US govt. stealing funds is a separate issue, though it did contribute to it. Mt. Gox is in Japan, and the DHS has no authority there and can't force Japanese courts to be their thugs. (Theoretically... )

1804

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on July 05, 2014, 04:44 AM »

And that shows me what?  No evident links, no - well, minimal - explanation.  In fact, not much at all other than a page w/o true purpose.  Or is it a placeholder while the site is being established?  Even that, no explanation beyond intuition that I do not possess at the moment.

-barney (July 05, 2014, 01:11 AM)

Scroll down. It's there.

1805

General Software Discussion / Re: Tizen OS declared 'dead in the water'

« Last post by Renegade on July 05, 2014, 04:43 AM »

Tizen in your car:

http://www.techrepub...car/#ftag=RSS56d97e7

Linux is nothing if not flexible. The open source operating system can be found on phones, servers and PCs throughout and beyond this world.

Now the OS is being manoeuvred to seize pole position in the car. Not only is Google planning to launch its Google Voice-controlled Android Auto in-car system – but this week saw the release of the in-vehicle infotainment system in the Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) stack.

AGL is built on top of Tizen In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) software, a version of the Tizen Linux-based phone OS modified to interact with in-vehicle electronics.

More at the link.

1806

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on July 05, 2014, 12:00 AM »

Decentralised exchange:

http://blackhalo.info/

 

Things are moving pretty fast now. The level of innovation and the speed of technology increase are accelerating.

1807

Living Room / Re: Linux User Are Evil TERRORISTS! Shame on you all! :P

« Last post by Renegade on July 04, 2014, 11:16 PM »

Just for more kicks & giggles...





http://memegenerator...et/instance/52140332

What would be really cool is for massive numbers of web sites to include an iframe of the Linux Journal (and others) to spam the NSA and create massively larger data storage requirements for them - just drown them in data!

1808

Living Room / Re: Linux User Are Evil TERRORISTS! Shame on you all! :P

« Last post by Renegade on July 04, 2014, 10:21 PM »

For reference, here's the code snippet:

http://daserste.ndr....keyscorerules100.txt

Code: C++ [Select]

1. // START_DEFINITION
2. /*
3. These variables define terms and websites relating to the TAILs (The Amnesic
4. Incognito Live System) software program, a comsec mechanism advocated by
5. extremists on extremist forums.
6. */
7.  
8. $TAILS_terms=word('tails' or 'Amnesiac Incognito Live System') and word('linux'
9. or ' USB ' or ' CD ' or 'secure desktop' or ' IRC ' or 'truecrypt' or ' tor ');
10. $TAILS_websites=('tails.boum.org/') or ('linuxjournal.com/content/linux*');
11. // END_DEFINITION

1809

Living Room / Re: Linux User Are Evil TERRORISTS! Shame on you all! :P

« Last post by Renegade on July 04, 2014, 10:16 PM »

The Linux Journal has chimed in:

http://www.linuxjour...d-extra-surveillance

A new story published on the German site Tagesschau and followed up by BoingBoing and DasErste.de has uncovered some shocking details about who the NSA targets for surveillance including visitors to Linux Journal itself.

While it has been revealed before that the NSA captures just about all Internet traffic for a short time, the Tagesschau story provides new details about how the NSA's XKEYSCORE program decides which traffic to keep indefinitely. XKEYSCORE uses specific selectors to flag traffic, and the article reveals that Web searches for Tor and Tails--software I've covered here in Linux Journal that helps to protect a user's anonymity and privacy on the Internet--are among the selectors that will flag you as "extremist" and targeted for further surveillance. If you just consider how many Linux Journal readers have read our Tor and Tails coverage in the magazine, that alone would flag quite a few innocent people as extremist.

While that is troubling in itself, even more troubling to readers on this site is that linuxjournal.com has been flagged as a selector! DasErste.de has published the relevant XKEYSCORE source code, and if you look closely at the rule definitions, you will see linuxjournal.com/content/linux* listed alongside Tails and Tor. According to an article on DasErste.de, the NSA considers Linux Journal an "extremist forum". This means that merely looking for any Linux content on Linux Journal, not just content about anonymizing software or encryption, is considered suspicious and means your Internet traffic may be stored indefinitely.

One of the biggest questions these new revelations raise is why. Up until this point, I would imagine most Linux Journal readers had considered the NSA revelations as troubling but figured the NSA would never be interested in them personally. Now we know that just visiting this site makes you a target. While we may never know for sure what it is about Linux Journal in particular, the Boing Boing article speculates that it might be to separate out people on the Internet who know how to be private from those who don't so it can capture communications from everyone with privacy know-how. If that's true, it seems to go much further to target anyone with Linux know-how.

It's bad news to all of us who use and read about Linux on a daily basis, but fortunately we aren't completely helpless. Earlier in the year I started a series on security, privacy and anonymity in my Hack and / column that included articles on how to use the Tor browser bundle and Tails. With either piece of software in place, you can browse Linux Journal (and the rest of the Internet) in private.

And:

http://www.linuxjour...nt/are-you-extremist

Since the news broke yesterday that we are an extremist publication according to the NSA, we at Linux Journal have thought a lot about what that might mean to our readers.

I am one of our readers, and I know many of our readers personally. That said, I can certainly describe many of us as "extreme" in a variety of ways. We're extremely passionate about our hobbies and professions, extremely excited by innovative technology, and extremely supportive of the open source software community. So maybe we are extremists.

With these things in mind, we thought perhaps our readers might like to join us in letting our extremist flags fly by "stamping" your online profile pictures with our Linux Journal reader extremist seal of approval. Mine's below.



So please join us in pronouncing that we support extremist causes like open source, online freedom, and the dissemination of helpful technical knowledge by adding one of these lovely graphics to your picture. And as always, thanks for your support. Available in red, black, or white.

I just love this: "we support extremist causes like open source, online freedom, and the dissemination of helpful technical knowledge."

 

1810

Living Room / 20% of sites blocked in UK

« Last post by Renegade on July 04, 2014, 11:34 AM »

Get ready to crack out the joke:

https://www.openrigh....org/press/releases/

ORG's Blocked project finds almost 1 in 5 sites are blocked by filters
Open Rights Group Blocked project finds almost 1 in 5 websites tested are blocked by web filters

High level of variation between ISPs suggest filters are not consistent in protecting children

Overblocking is affecting bloggers, businesses and web users


A Porsche broker, a political blogger and a mum hoping to read an article about post pregnancy care are among those that have been affected by filters designed to protect young people from adult content.

The extent of overblocking has been revealed by Open Rights Group Blocked project, which is documenting the impact of filters. Web users can use a free checking tool on www.blocked.org.uk where they can instantly check to see if a website has been blocked by filters. So far Open Rights Group has tested over 100,000 sites and found that over 19,000 are blocked by one ISP or another.

More that the link... if you can see it.

1811

Living Room / Linux User Are Evil TERRORISTS! Shame on you all! :P

« Last post by Renegade on July 04, 2014, 09:20 AM »

Yeah... You can't make this up.

http://daserste.ndr....l/nsa230_page-1.html

The XKeyscore rules reveal that the NSA tracks all connections to a server that hosts part of an anonymous email service at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It also records details about visits to a popular internet journal for Linux operating system users called "the Linux Journal - the Original Magazine of the Linux Community", and calls it an "extremist forum".

More at the link. A lot more.

You dirty terrorists!

40hz, shades, and many others... I fully expect you to turn yourselves in for your crimes!

This post should totally be a poll for how many people pissed themselves laughing!

1812

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

« Last post by Renegade on July 04, 2014, 08:26 AM »

I happened across some really good comments in an article... but first... the tl;dr

http://libertyblitzk...-i-think-it-matters/

tl;dr - Fast food hamburgers contain wood pulp.

Comments:

NSFW

Now that Burger King has the ‘Gay Pride Whopper’ it makes sense they want ‘wood’ in it.

There’s a simple solution to indigestible wood pulp in your food: just add fresh, raw termites to your diet to introduce their cellulose-digesting gut bacteria to your intestines. Mmmmm! Problem solved! Also, we have here a new profit potential in the probiotics market….. termite-gut bacteria yogurt.

 

NOM~! NOM~! NOM~!

1813

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

« Last post by Renegade on July 04, 2014, 06:44 AM »

Your next driver's license picture...

-Renegade (July 02, 2014, 01:24 AM)

Some years back, the photo on my husband's drivers license looked so unlike him, that he had to carry the older expired one along with it, otherwise if he got pulled over, the officer would likely have thought he was using someone else's license.

-app103 (July 04, 2014, 04:52 AM)

Heheh! My current DL and my passport both have me with a mohawk haircut! I think I might do the same for my next ones as well. (I keep my hair buzzed extremely short only because I'm too lazy to shave it all the time. And I've switched to safety razors, which take longer to shave with...)

1814

Developer's Corner / Re: friend can't run progs made with .net 4.5 on his XP machine

« Last post by Renegade on July 03, 2014, 08:41 PM »

Shades is right. XP won't run 4.5. Upgrade OS, or downgrade required .NET version.

1815

Living Room / Re: Facebook plays with your mind

« Last post by Renegade on July 03, 2014, 02:55 AM »

To be fair to Facebook, they're not doing anything less ethical than has been going on when you watch TV - subliminal messages, etc.

1816

General Software Discussion / Re: Decentralised Crowd Funding - Mike Hearn's Lighthouse

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 02:13 PM »

Still digesting (lots to read)...but it looks to be awesome.

-40hz (July 02, 2014, 11:23 AM)

Take your time. It's really dense stuff, and not easy to get through quickly. Few people understand anything about this right now. We're at the bleeding edge.

1817

Living Room / Re: WARNING: Carefully clean up broken CFL (fluorescent) lightbulbs if you have any

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 09:12 AM »

^^ That f.lux is fantastic! Thanks for pointing that out!  

1818

Living Room / Re: WARNING: Carefully clean up broken CFL (fluorescent) lightbulbs if you have any

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 09:00 AM »

^What a classically lamed assed defense at the end of the video: Isn't that rather Orwellian? Why yes...but think of the children..

We. Are. So. Screwed..!

-Stoic Joker (July 02, 2014, 06:37 AM)

Yup.

I do a fair amount of work in the semi-conductor industry, so here's a quick overview about how things will go...

1) Get lighting SDK & development boards for prototyping, etc.

http://www.microchip...-communications.html

The Lighting Communications Development Platform provides a universal lighting development platform for the creation of communications enabled lighting applications. The platform consists of a main board and various communications interface adapters to support in the development of DALI, DMX512A, as well as future protocols (eg. RF).

To utilize the communications platform, a minimum of (2) main or (2) prototyping boards and (2) adapters are required – connected via appropriate cabling (eg. RJ45 patch cable, DMX512A 5-pin barrel cable, or DALI 2-wire). The communication platform is compatible with commercially available DALI/DMX512A products and can be integrated into existing lighting networks during development or utlized with multiple communication platforms to simulate large lighting networks.

2) Develop prototype for Orwellian nightmare.

3) Develop specs for mass production/surveillance.

4) Profit!

5) Stick little finger in corner of mouth & laugh maniacally!

I'd encourage people to have a browse around for different kinds of sensors and to imagine what they could do with them. The barrier to entry is fairly low now. You can do this at home.

1819

Living Room / Re: BitPay introduces "BitAuth" - New authentication technology

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 08:42 AM »

Hmm, I thought this kind of scheme might be useful in providing a small number of authentication "tokens" (possibly down to one) for reuse across many systems -- but without some of the downsides of existing systems which claim to provide a sort of single-sign-on system.

-ewemoa (July 02, 2014, 05:17 AM)

Yes - it is like that.

But for mouser to go and implement it as an additional authentication mechanism probably is too much work. The current one here works already.

That system is a more robust and secure, but it's not the kind of thing that people normally use, so there's a learning curve for it. It's probably not worthwhile for "normal" sites (e.g. forums, etc.) to use quite yet. If it becomes widely adopted in other areas, then it might make sense for "normal" sites to use it.

In my own experience, SSO is horribly broken. I want to tear my eyeballs out and ram broken glass bottles through my eye-sockets whenever I even think of SSO. That would be less painful.

1820

General Software Discussion / Decentralised Crowd Funding - Mike Hearn's Lighthouse

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 08:26 AM »

Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been a fantastic boon to the world at large as they have enabled so many different projects across a wide range of disciplines.

Now, Mike Hearn's Lighthouse is about to take crowd funding to the next level - decentralised crowd funding. This is going to be big. Very big.

Oliver Janssens offered up $100,000 to anyone who could replace the Bitcoin Foundation. His original post is here:

http://www.reddit.co...e_platform_that_can/

He has just announced the winner(s) here:

http://www.reddit.co...winner_announcement/

He will be awarded $40,000 on completion. After the platform is live, I will put an additional $50,000 towards the first core dev crowdfunding project that gets made on it.

The Eris Project will receive 10% for their efforts. (A freakin' AMAZING DAO proposal based on Ethereum.)


Mike Hearn has blogged about it here:

http://blog.vinumeri...er-janssens-team-up/

VINUMERIS AND OLIVIER JANSSENS TEAM UP

Welcome to the first update about Vinumeris and the Lighthouse project, and thanks for reading this blog - your interest is both hugely appreciated and tremendously motivating.

About six weeks ago I gave a talk at the Bitcoin 2014 conference in Amsterdam, where I demoed an early version of an application that implements a form of crowdfunding which takes place directly on the block chain. Hopefully that talk will be available online soon. Interest in the project has been much greater than I expected and since then I’ve had meetings with many groups and people that would like to use Lighthouse once it’s finished.

Unfortunately there was a problem – although the app supports entirely peer to peer and decentralised crowdfunding, I planned to make the first version crippled and locked down to only my own projects. The reason was a plan to raise the development costs of the app using Lighthouse itself, presenting a catch-22.

More at the link.

You can find Eris here:

https://eris.projectdouglas.org/

1821

Developer's Corner / Re: Want to make some extra coin? Like a LOT of extra coin? BIG BOUNTY!

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 08:07 AM »

The results are in!

http://www.reddit.co...winner_announcement/

Mike Hearn won with his "Lighthouse" project.

Runner-up went to the Eris project team.

There is some seriously good stuff happening there, and anarchystar really deserves the credit for making it all possible.

1822

Living Room / Re: Switzerland-based ProtonMail, yet another secure email service

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 06:08 AM »

@IainB - Completely off topic

Regarding:

You'd probably need to architect the thing with everyone's agreement though, otherwise a lot of innocent people will probably have to die in the revolutionary process.

-IainB (June 21, 2014, 11:18 PM)

A much more articulate bit on that by Gary North (source):

The secret of liberty is not revolution; the secret of liberty is to de-fund the existing centralized order.

An interesting piece there by him. When I read that, I immediately though of you and this thread here.

1823

Living Room / Re: BitPay introduces "BitAuth" - New authentication technology

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 04:14 AM »

So will it be possible to sign up at DC forums using this?

-ewemoa (July 02, 2014, 03:44 AM)

It's possible, but probably not worthwhile.

1824

Living Room / Re: Microsoft Steals 22 Domain Names from NoIP

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 02:15 AM »

Techdirt chimes in:

https://www.techdirt...-legal-process.shtml

That's not a "technical error." That's Microsoft blatantly making an extreme claim that convinced a judge to hand over a whole bunch of domain names without any kind of due process or adversarial hearing. While Microsoft may have then had a technical error on top of that, what kicked this off was a very, very big legal error.

And this contains the ammo MS used to shoot No-IP:

https://www.techdirt...without-notice.shtml

(Scribd)

1825

Living Room / BitPay introduces "BitAuth" - New authentication technology

« Last post by Renegade on July 02, 2014, 01:46 AM »

This is some pretty exciting stuff!

http://blog.bitpay.c...-authentication.html

BitAuth is a way to do secure, passwordless authentication using the same elliptic-curve cryptography as Bitcoin. Instead of using a shared secret, the client signs each request using a private key and the server checks to make sure the signature is valid and matches the public key. A nonce is used to prevent replay attacks and provide sequence enforcement.

And how it works:

How BitAuth Works

The general flow of using BitAuth to authenticate a request is as follows.

• Key generation: generate a keypair using ECDSA, on the secp256k1 curve.
• SIN construction: with public key k1, concatenate the SIN version byte and hashed public key, then encode this in the base58check format.
• SIN sharing: register your SIN with the remote service using a mechanism of your choosing—generally, this takes place with client registration.
• Submitting Requests: requests are made over HTTP, with the x-signature header:
  • generate a unique, higher-than-previous nonce
  • include nonce in the body of your request
  • concatenate and sign URI + BODY with your private key, and provide it in x-signature

The server will now verify the signature against the public key you’ve provided and the SIN you’ve shared previously, confirm that the signed nonce is greater than this SIN’s previous nonces (preventing replay attacks), and subsequently authenticate the request.

More at the link.