Recent Posts

651

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 24, 2015, 09:16 AM »

Aaaaaaaaannnnnndddd...

Let's start an entire new round of leaks!

http://www.aljazeera...tions/spycables.html

Introducing The Spy Cables

Secret documents, leaked from numerous intelligence agencies, offer rare insights into the interactions between spies.

LET THE BLOODBATH BEGIN!


In other news, the new exciting sandwich from McDonalds and then, the Katy Perry and Pink feud and the cricket results! 

652

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by Renegade on February 24, 2015, 05:13 AM »

A post that points out how many scientific debates are framed as false dichotomies, i.e. You either accept everything we say 100% or you're an idiot.

https://www.reddit.c...an_alternative_view/

The War On Science: An alternative view (self.conspiracy)

submitted 18 hours ago by qthagun [+1]

(Note: this article is written to go with the March 2015 National Geographic cover

large image (cover)

 ; it is such an excellent piece of propaganda that it can be easily subverted for an alternative viewpoint.)

Do you remember a time before there were Wars, with a capital W, on intangible ideas? As an American who's only in their 30s, I can't say that I do; my first introduction to our political paradigm was the War on Drugs. I still can't really tell you what a Drug is these days, the legal pharmaceuticals we manufacture killing more people each year than the few illegal scheduled Drugs, science showing that sugar and cocaine activate similar reward pathways. In the US our drug addiction rate hasn't really changed since the 1970s, while the amount we spend on drug control each year has skyrocketed from the millions to the tens of billions. We view Prohibition as a charming relic of the past, while we raid medical marijuana dispensaries at home and guard captured opium fields abroad. I guess that tells you what a War on an Intangible Idea entails.

The same media which raised my generation on the War on Drugs, and the following generation on the War on Terror, has a new War for a new generation. Enter: The War on Science. Everything from Climate Change to the moon landings to vaccinations, these uneducated idiots are coming for you! And if there's one thing we know about uneducated idiots, it's that they're organized and good at what they do. And what they do is get everything wrong and cause all of our problems. It's 2015 you uneducated idiots! Don't you know that we have the right answers for everything? That's why we have experts.

We've actually put a few of our own experts to work on this cover photo, lovingly recreating that famous scene etched into all of our memories. Notice our attention to detail, taking care to ensure the dust underneath the LEM's engine is completely undisturbed, with no blast crater or any evidence of propulsive landing whatsoever. Looks just like the real NASA thing with the exception of our devoted worker who's almost spoiling the illusion with his size. We wanted to show everyone just how easy it is to recreate these scenes for a camera (minus the long journey back home to Earth for our worker and crew). But let's not get too distracted by the past; besides pointing out that it is impossible to prove a negative (such as that something didn't happen or that something doesn't exist), we'll leave "removing one of truth's protective layers" (Neil Armstrong, 1994) for another exercise, as this upcoming War on Science has much more immediate political concerns.

Let's start with the careful selection of messages on this cover, the witches we'll need to burn if we want to be warriors in defense of Science. "Climate change does not exist". We are officially 1984 now. "Climate change" is a tautology by its definition. There is no way to define the climate of the entire planet in a static way; it always changes. What also always changes are the political arguments attached to such a vague topic as Climate Change. Most of the media my generation consumed focused on Global Warming, while a few decades earlier the same mobs were whipped up with fear of Global Cooling. Today it is Climate Change and no one can really define it except that it's scary and coming for you. Everyone knows we are polluting our air and our water, but they want you arguing about whether or not the Climate is changing and in which direction. We've covered up the deep recession since 2008 with the explosive growth of fracking, destroying our own land for short-term profit, but instead of looking at that they want to propose carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes, ultimately resulting in a whole new regulating government bureaucracy. We're currently waging war on our own environment and they want you arguing about how we can prevent Climate Change.

Next up in pithy slogans is "Evolution never happened", excellent bait for a controversy as it simultaneously muddies up a topic and then simplifies it to a false dichotomy. Here we have an example of the War on Science already occurring. The definition of evolution itself has evolved multiple times in my lifetime. Discovering mitochondrial DNA and a common human female ancestor of ~200,000 years ago exemplifies the process of science, where continual questioning and investigation overturn our past understanding and open up all new avenues of questioning. It is a thing of beauty to behold. But instead we're encouraged to divide ourselves into camps, to claim we finally have it all right, to choose sides in a battle between the Current Conclusions of Science TM and anyone who would question. All shades of nuance are ignored: you either agree with the Current Conclusions of Science TM or you are an uneducated idiot whose very existence threatens us all.

This is what the cover illustrates and what the War on Science is: an all or nothing proposition. How else could we be made to spend all of our time arguing against ourselves? Simply frame the argument such that both sides are wrong, but both sides have legitimate grievances, and you've engineered a propaganda playground for the unwitting. Keep the medium brief and the content fast; no one has time for anything more than that. We definitely need someone to blame. Everyone senses something is wrong with our world. Wasn't Science supposed to deliver us from this? Maybe all these problems are because enough people aren't going with the flow anymore. That's why we need to regularly reinforce the one conclusion that has never been overturned: we know what we're talking about, because we have our experts working on it.

Which is why we can tell you with complete confidence that genetically modified food isn't evil. Who can say what evil is anyway, but an emotional idea loaded with religious and moral connotations, undefinable by either either science or the law. It's a useful term to generate endless arguments, framing the subject emotionally to engage feelings before thought. Everyone intuitively understands that there is an information war going on, and so often we take our sides first and that is the extent of our communication. We are encouraged to segregate ourselves based on our ideas and when one of the sides we can choose is the Current Conclusions of Science TM, the choice is obvious to many. By definition, the Current Conclusions of Science TM are correct, are they not? Tautologies are true everywhere.

GMOs aren't evil; GMOs are unlabelled in America. In dozens of other countries, GMOs are completely banned. But National Geographic and its American audience just know that there isn't a debate, because obviously GMOs aren't evil. Hip celebrity scientists such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson tell us everything is OK while blurring the distinction between natural hybridization over centuries and transgenic GMOs over years. While GMOs are sold to us with the promise of supernutrition and feeding the world, the ones we get are modified to be pesticide resistant and are covered with toxic pesticides. Instead of transparency and accountability there is a rotating door between the companies making these GMOs and the government agencies regulating them, as the current deputy commissioner for foods at the FDA, Michael Taylor, was previously a VP of public policy at Monsanto. Meanwhile the companies themselves are the ones tasked with the testing to prove the safety of their products - inevitably they find their products to be safe.

Much of this data is hard to get and not available for public access. There are no epidemiological studies investigating potential health effects of GMO food on human health. International agreements show widespread recognition of risks posed by GMO foods and crops. There is no consensus on environmental impacts of GMOs. A recent statement in the journal Enviromental Sciences Europe concludes “…the totality of scientific research outcomes in the field of GM crop safety is nuanced; complex; often contradictory or inconclusive; confounded by researchers’ choices, assumptions, and funding sources; and, in general, has raised more questions than it has currently answered.” In short, the science isn't settled at all.

As anyone who has taken part in the vaccine discussion that has exploded on social media over the past month can tell you, it's not really about the science anymore. It's about choosing sides in The War on Science. Who can even tell what sides there are, on such a wide array of issues? With so many disparate hot button issues lumped together, each carefully chosen with a distracting straw-man to burn, National Geographic is here to tell you exactly what to think. With the modernization of the Smith-Mundt act of 2012, it really isn't even illegal for the US Government to knowingly lie to the public anymore. The companies that are selling you these products employ massive public relations divisions, and nowadays you can see the results of spending so much money on advertising when you turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper or magazine.

Thankfully this magazine is here to strong-arm us to the final topic, the most pressing of all, the real target: vaccines. The rhetoric and fear surrounding vaccines is rising; it seems if we don't make a decision soon we face unspeakable consequences. Step out of line, potentially support the wrong side, and experience vicious social ramifications, public shaming, and group shunning. What's the simple conflict here, and what is a non-expert to think? Here the stink of desperation oozes out of the propaganda. "Vaccinations can lead to autism": a milquetoast statement, a clear retreat from the more blunt and catchy "Vaccines cause autism". With such an obvious clue that things might be more complicated than all or nothing, let's take a moment to examine this from an alternative perspective.

The mainstream Current Conclusions of Science TM (in America, God Bless America) are that vaccines are both safe and effective. The gold standard for proving medical safety is to compare human populations with a control group over the long term. Out of the current US Vaccination schedule of 12 different vaccines (compared with just 3 in the 1980s), none of them have ever been tested against a saline control in a human population long term, either individually or as a group. If none of our drug testing included comparisons of populations given placebos, would you trust them? On the other side of the vaccine safety issue, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that federal law prohibits parents from suing drug makers over serious side effects from childhood vaccines. The only way Americans have left to defend themselves, the lawsuit, cannot be used to seek compensation from vaccine injury, and yet they want us to know that vaccines are safe? They had to create a program to handle all the numerous reports of negative side effects of vaccines (VAERS - the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System), and yet they want us arguing whether or not vaccines may lead to autism?

This is overt manipulation, and yet a review of history leaves us with the conclusion that it is effective manipulation. Populations have been whipped up with the fear of biological armageddon before, with dissidents fined and jailed for refusal of the current cure du jour. A new wave of people are publically arguing for forced mandatory vaccinations right now, because ultimately their fear trumps your liberties. The efficacy of vaccines has never actually been proven, neither has herd immunity ever been shown to exist. There are outbreaks among fully vaccinated populations. President Obama recently granted immunity to a CDC whistleblower to testify about the efficacy of vaccines to Congress. This is another clear example where the science is anything but settled, but our culture of choosing sides is moving towards a future where individuals no longer have any choice for themselves. There is a comments period open right now for the US Health and Human Services current draft proposal regarding more mandated employer-enforced vaccines for adults, at the same time that the US Government is involved with a lawsuit against Merck (the manufacturer of the MMR vaccine) about the false claims of efficacy of its vaccine.

Jenny McCarthy served as the sacrificial offering in the media, an open warning and example to anyone who would question the current narrative. The government has a monopoly on legal force, and a narrative is forming across the media that such force should be used to override our individual right to bodily integrity and self-determination. We are shown the social effects of questioning the narrative, and anyone that's even questioned the ever increasing vaccine schedule can tell you what those social effects feel like personally. There is a science, with a lowercase s, that is a method, an application, a process that is founded upon open questioning. And then there is a Science, with a capital a S, that is the Current Conclusions of Our National Experts TM, a dogma which does not allow any questioning or deviation from the herd.

We should always be questioning. The truth fears no investigation.

653

Living Room / Re: Meshnets are happening (mini-Internets that connect to the Internet)

« Last post by Renegade on February 24, 2015, 04:36 AM »

Sounds like what Melbourne Wireless have done for the last few years.
 (see attachment in previous post)

-4wd (February 24, 2015, 01:45 AM)

I thought about looking that up as I'd forgotten the site, but just got lazy. Thanks for posting it! 

654

Living Room / Re: Net Neutrality? Title II?

« Last post by Renegade on February 24, 2015, 04:13 AM »

Is there a better or worse someone? Who really knows.

-rgdot (February 23, 2015, 11:04 PM)

Oh, stop asking easy questions!

655

Living Room / Net Neutrality? Title II?

« Last post by Renegade on February 23, 2015, 10:35 PM »

This is really going to work out totally super awesome! I'm like totally for sure realz it iz! 

http://www.wsj.com/a...-obamanet-1424644324

Paywalled. So, search for "From Internet to Obamanet" in Google then click there to get through.

Full article

From Internet to Obamanet

BlackBerry and AT&T are already making moves that could exploit new ‘utility’ regulations.
 
By L. GORDON CROVITZ
Feb. 22, 2015 5:32 p.m. ET

Critics of President Obama’s “net neutrality” plan call it ObamaCare for the Internet.

That’s unfair to ObamaCare.

Both ObamaCare and “Obamanet” submit huge industries to complex regulations. Their supporters say the new rules had to be passed before anyone could read them. But at least ObamaCare claimed it would solve long-standing problems. Obamanet promises to fix an Internet that isn’t broken.

The permissionless Internet, which allows anyone to introduce a website, app or device without government review, ends this week. On Thursday the three Democrats among the five commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission will vote to regulate the Internet under rules written for monopoly utilities.

No one, including the bullied FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, thought the agency would go this far. The big politicization came when President Obama in November demanded that the supposedly independent FCC apply the agency’s most extreme regulation to the Internet. A recent page-one Wall Street Journal story headlined “Net Neutrality: How White House Thwarted FCC Chief” documented “an unusual, secretive effort inside the White House . . . acting as a parallel version of the FCC itself.”

Congress is demanding details of this interference. In the early 1980s, a congressional investigation blasted President Reagan for telling his FCC chairman his view of regulations about television reruns. “I believe it is imperative for the integrity of all regulatory processes that the president unequivocally declare that he will express no view in the matter and that he will do nothing to intervene in the work of the FCC,” said Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat.

Mr. Obama’s role raises legal as well as political questions. Those harmed by the new rules could argue in court that political pressure made the agency’s actions “arbitrary and capricious.”

The more than 300 pages of new regulations are secret, but Mr. Wheeler says they will subject the Internet to the key provisions of Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, under which the FCC oversaw Ma Bell.

Title II authorizes the commission to decide what “charges” and “practices” are “just and reasonable”—an enormous amount of discretion. Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has found 290 federal appeals court opinions on this section and more than 1,700 FCC administrative interpretations.

Defenders of the Obama plan claim that there will be regulatory “forbearance,” though not from the just-and-reasonable test. They also promise not to regulate prices, a pledge that Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has called “flat-out false.” He added: “The only limit on the FCC’s discretion to regulate rates is its own determination of whether rates are ‘just and reasonable,’ which isn’t much of a restriction at all.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that if the FCC applies Title II to the Internet, all uses of telecommunications will have to pass the “just and reasonable” test. Bureaucrats can review the fairness of Google ’s search results, Facebook ’s news feeds and news sites’ links to one another and to advertisers. BlackBerry is already lobbying the FCC to force Apple and Netflix to offer apps for BlackBerry’s unpopular phones. Bureaucrats will oversee peering, content-delivery networks and other parts of the interconnected network that enables everything from Netflix and YouTube to security drones and online surgery.

Supporters of Obamanet describe it as a counter to the broadband duopoly of cable and telecom companies. In reality, it gives duopolists another tool to block competition. Utility regulations let dominant companies complain that innovations from upstarts fail the “just and reasonable” test—as truly disruptive innovations often do.

AT&T has decades of experience leveraging FCC regulations to stop competition. Last week AT&T announced a high-speed broadband plan that charges an extra $29 a month to people who don’t want to be tracked for online advertising. New competitor Google Fiber can offer low-cost broadband only because it also earns revenues from online advertising. In other words, AT&T has already built a case against Google Fiber that Google’s cross-subsidization from advertising is not “just and reasonable.”

Utility regulation was designed to maintain the status quo, and it succeeds. This is why the railroads, Ma Bell and the local water monopoly were never known for innovation. The Internet was different because its technologies, business models and creativity were permissionless.

This week Mr. Obama’s bureaucrats will give him the regulated Internet he demands. Unless Congress or the courts block Obamanet, it will be the end of the Internet as we know it.

656

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 23, 2015, 08:07 PM »

My favorite one...

https://www.reddit.c...as_and_glenn/coupfs7

-wraith808 (February 23, 2015, 07:53 PM)

Hehehe! That's an excellent thread! It gets better though down below.  

I rather got a kick out of this:

657

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Renegade on February 23, 2015, 08:01 PM »

Aliens invade Canada! 

-Renegade (February 23, 2015, 03:22 AM)

That image just looks like a Mountie hat thrown in the air 

-4wd (February 23, 2015, 06:06 AM)

The species of aliens there are called "Stetsonites". They typically raid maple syrup farms, but have been known to also raid craft beer breweries, which, as you might expect, is often followed up by a crash like this one.

Aliens invade Canada! 

-Renegade (February 23, 2015, 03:22 AM)

That image just looks like a Mountie hat thrown in the air 

-4wd (February 23, 2015, 06:06 AM)

It's a low budget hoax - times are tough all over.

-Stoic Joker (February 23, 2015, 06:40 AM)

Oh sure. Laugh it up! You're safe way down south there where you won't be getting anal probed like all those poor people in Manitoba, eh?

658

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 23, 2015, 07:42 PM »

An AMA with Ed, Laura and Glenn:

https://www.reddit.c..._and_glenn/?sort=top

A couple Q&As:

Q: https://www.reddit.c...as_and_glenn/coup7ld

[–]masondog13 3287 points 6 hours ago

What's the best way to make NSA spying an issue in the 2016 Presidential Election? It seems like while it was a big deal in 2013, ISIS and other events have put it on the back burner for now in the media and general public. What are your ideas for how to bring it back to the forefront?


[–]SuddenlySnowden EDWARD SNOWDEN 4375 points 5 hours ago*x15

This is a good question, and there are some good traditional answers here. Organizing is important. Activism is important.

At the same time, we should remember that governments don't often reform themselves. One of the arguments in a book I read recently (Bruce Schneier, "Data and Goliath"), is that perfect enforcement of the law sounds like a good thing, but that may not always be the case. The end of crime sounds pretty compelling, right, so how can that be?

Well, when we look back on history, the progress of Western civilization and human rights is actually founded on the violation of law. America was of course born out of a violent revolution that was an outrageous treason against the crown and established order of the day. History shows that the righting of historical wrongs is often born from acts of unrepentant criminality. Slavery. The protection of persecuted Jews.

But even on less extremist topics, we can find similar examples. How about the prohibition of alcohol? Gay marriage? Marijuana?

Where would we be today if the government, enjoying powers of perfect surveillance and enforcement, had -- entirely within the law -- rounded up, imprisoned, and shamed all of these lawbreakers?

Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determing thour futures.

How does this relate to politics? Well, I suspect that governments today are more concerned with the loss of their ability to control and regulate the behavior of their citizens than they are with their citizens' discontent.

How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.

You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn't to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where -- if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen -- we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new -- and permanent -- basis.

Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.

We haven't had to think about that much in the last few decades because quality of life has been increasing across almost all measures in a significant way, and that has led to a comfortable complacency. But here and there throughout history, we'll occasionally come across these periods where governments think more about what they "can" do rather than what they "should" do, and what is lawful will become increasingly distinct from what is moral.

In such times, we'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.

Down in that thread:

[–]the_ak [+1] 2014 points 5 hours ago*

Edward Snowden just called for civil disobedience against the US government whilst also arguing for the legalization of marijuana during an AMA. This is quite possibly the most reddit thing ever.


[–]SuddenlySnowden EDWARD SNOWDEN 3081 points 4 hours agox3

its-happening.gif

 



1 more:

Q: https://www.reddit.c...as_and_glenn/coup4cr

[–]TheJackal8 2690 points 6 hours ago

Mr. Snowden, if you had a chance to do things over again, would you do anything differently? If so, what?


[–]SuddenlySnowden EDWARD SNOWDEN 4108 points 5 hours ago*x4

I would have come forward sooner. I talked to Daniel Ellsberg about this at length, who has explained why more eloquently  



than I can.

Had I come forward a little sooner, these programs would have been a little less entrenched, and those abusing them would have felt a little less familiar with and accustomed to the exercise of those powers. This is something we see in almost every sector of government, not just in the national security space, but it's very important:

Once you grant the government some new power or authority, it becomes exponentially more difficult to roll it back. Regardless of how little value a program or power has been shown to have (such as the Section 215 dragnet interception of call records in the United States, which the government's own investigation found never stopped a single imminent terrorist attack despite a decade of operation), once it's a sunk cost, once dollars and reputations have been invested in it, it's hard to peel that back.

Don't let it happen in your country.

Ah, heck. 1 more:

Q: https://www.reddit.c...as_and_glenn/coup9hn

[–]moizsyed 1214 points 6 hours ago

How did you guys feel about about Neil Patrick Harris' "for some treason" joke last night?


[–]_EdwardSnowden [+1]EDWARD SNOWDEN[ S ] 2376 points 5 hours ago

Wow the questions really blew up on this one. Let me start digging in...

To be honest, I laughed at NPH. I don't think it was meant as a political statement, but even if it was, that's not so bad. My perspective is if you're not willing to be called a few names to help out your country, you don't care enough.

"If this be treason, then let us make the most of it."

HE QUOTES PATRICK HENRY!!!  

Y'know... this guy:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

-Patrick Henry

There are many more there.





CITIZENFOUR

The new documentary is available at http://cryptome.org.

They're using mirrors and other sites as well. I'm guessing bandwidth has become a problem!

659

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Renegade on February 23, 2015, 03:22 AM »

Aliens invade Canada! 

660

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Renegade on February 22, 2015, 08:37 PM »

Hey buddy! It snowed in Canada, eh?

http://www.buzzfeed....js538/snow-what-snow

 

661

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 22, 2015, 09:51 AM »

Wyrmwood



Zombie B movie with an awesome Ned Kelly allusion. Aussie flick.

It gets funkier.

Ranks right up there with "Dead Alive" - a Kiwi flick that came out a few decades ago.

Some seriously messed up black humour in there. 

The educational point that I took away was Aussies say "ay" where Canadians say "eh". Very intellectual stuff!

But still fun.

Hint, there's a twist in this flick that isn't in many stories you'll hear.

662

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 22, 2015, 06:58 AM »

Speaking of which, I have around 20 drives that I need to destroy in the next couple months or so.... and no shotgun! 

-Renegade (February 22, 2015, 05:20 AM)

A descent hammer will also do nicely

-Ath (February 22, 2015, 05:27 AM)

Ain't near as fun as shootin' the b'jeez out of something~!

(Also, a lot more work.)

Come to think of it, lining up all the drives and droppin' a .30 cal machine gun on 'em would be **FUN**! There are enough of them to have a real blast!

Sigh... But I do have a hammer, and no .30 cal machine gun. Guess it'll have to be hammer time.

Just DBAN them then give them to me when you come up the hills 

-4wd (February 22, 2015, 05:42 AM)

When the Mercedes died, a friend gave us an old car that doesn't do more than 100 km at a time (without a major fight), and that really HATES hills. Even if it were worth it, there's not a hope in Hades I'd make it there. (Most are around 250~500 GB 10k RPM drives, so not really worth salvaging -- IIRC.)

You want 'em? Let me know and I'll see about wiping them. No promises though, as my technology tolerance/patience has dwindled over the years, and the hammer is sounding like the most likely solution.

663

Living Room / A funky use of HTML in writing

« Last post by Renegade on February 22, 2015, 06:39 AM »

I've been mulling over different uses of HTML in crafting "documents", and I tripped over this quite by accident:

http://techno-anthro...e-venn-diagrams.html

Scroll down a bit. You'll see a SELECT element used.



It's one thing that I'd never considered before, even though I commonly use the "A/B/C/D" structure. This simply does that in a different way with an HTML element.

664

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 22, 2015, 05:20 AM »

^ Data destruction that goes past 10, past 11, all the way up to 12!  

Speaking of which, I have around 20 drives that I need to destroy in the next couple months or so.... and no shotgun! 

665

Living Room / Meshnets are happening (mini-Internets that connect to the Internet)

« Last post by Renegade on February 22, 2015, 03:47 AM »

Meshnets are "off the grid" Internets that can connect to the Internet.

Pittsburgh - http://www.metamesh.org
Buffalo - http://www.buffalomesh.net

Found via: http://www.reddit.co...reless_mesh_network/

I'm sure others are also in the works as well.

This should be a nice breath of fresh air for anyone keeping up with the news about the Internet in general.

666

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Renegade on February 21, 2015, 04:34 AM »

Next-generation http/2 protocol is done, promises faster, safer browsing. (see attachment in previous post)

-Edvard (February 19, 2015, 09:21 PM)

And...

HTTP/2 also uses fewer connections between server and client, and allows servers to push content straight to a browser.

Are we laying odds/bets on just how fast that gets exploited?

667

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on February 21, 2015, 04:10 AM »

^ Sure! Why not! I've got an extra $15,000,000 USD lying right over here!

They'll probably go for between 10 and 15 million. There's a chance that someone will bid higher though just to get that many all at once -- could go for double.

668

Living Room / Oh, how I love Techdirt! :)

« Last post by Renegade on February 21, 2015, 02:32 AM »

Probably one of the most amusing sites ever (once you get over the blood curdling rage) yet again reminds me why I love it so much:

https://www.techdirt...ams-trademarks.shtml

So many issues here, one struggles to know where to begin. Let's start with the fact that Evolution Finance is as much in the baseball business as it is in the puppy-murdering business, which is to say not at freaking all. "I came here to buy baseball tickets and I ended up transitioning my 401k into a personal Roth IRA on the basis of better returns in the bonds market" is a phrase that is nearly impossible to even have imagined, thus showing the extreme and dangerous power of dumb ass trademark claims. Add to it that half the problem appears to be that a trademark was granted on what barely amounts to more than a letter and we've already got issues with MLB's claims.

Puppy-murdering business!   

669

Living Room / Re: Preloaded spyware, courtesy Lenovo

« Last post by Renegade on February 20, 2015, 09:26 AM »

I've almost always had custom built computers, but the "stock" ones that I've had have really sucked by comparison.

670

Living Room / Re: Happy New Year! 恭禧發財! 새해 복 많이 받으세요!

« Last post by Renegade on February 20, 2015, 09:24 AM »

Happy Year of the Zombie Sheep!

-app103 (February 20, 2015, 05:10 AM)

Darkly cute!

671

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

« Last post by Renegade on February 20, 2015, 03:18 AM »

So the NSA and GCHQ have everyone's mobile phone SIM keys.

https://firstlook.or.../19/great-sim-heist/

THE GREAT SIM HEIST

HOW SPIES STOLE THE KEYS TO THE ENCRYPTION CASTLE

AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.

More at the link.

And still no criminal charges... Gee. What a shocker. 

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Living Room / Happy New Year! 恭禧發財! 새해 복 많이 받으세요!

« Last post by Renegade on February 19, 2015, 08:02 AM »

Happy New Year! 恭禧發財! 새해 복 많이 받으세요!

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Developer's Corner / Re: Long essay on the business of starting (feminist) collaborative publications

« Last post by Renegade on February 19, 2015, 07:08 AM »

I get the use of the information in the link, but I never understood why people need to mix gender issues with technology. Ironically, doing so is SEXIST, as it serves no purpose but to further an agenda.

What exactly is "feminist tech"? What makes technology either feminist or MRA? Machines have no gender. Nor does the machine care about the users gender.

Which begs the question. Since machines have no gender. When the singularity comes:

How will the movement of genderless but sentient beings be called? ARA (Android Rights Activist) or Andronist? Maybe GRA (Genderless Rights Activist) or GRM (Genderless Rights Movement).

I'm sorry for the rant, but I still remember gamergate.

-rxantos (February 18, 2015, 09:28 PM)

The article was pretty good. It covered a lot of ground.

I didn't get any "feminist" feel from it. It was simply factual from what I read, though I did skim.

I don't know what they actually publish though. That may be another matter. But the article itself was a solid piece.

I'd certainly pass the link on to anyone asking about publishing.

There's a thread on feminism in the Basement forum. That's a better place to discuss things like "feminist tech". From the article, "feminist tech publication" is merely "feminist" + "tech publication" from what I can see there. i.e. A tech publication from a feminist perspective, and not "feminist technology", which simply doesn't make much sense.

Regarding the actual tech side of the article, I'm not a fan of Google Docs, but it is an easy & cheap option. But she never gets into platforms much. It's all business.

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Living Room / Re: Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware

« Last post by Renegade on February 18, 2015, 08:06 AM »

That's convoluted and asinine enough to be believable. It does, however, have one major flaw. Nobody in the intelligence business thinks that far ahead. Technically, you could say we have no intelligence agencies - just counter intelligence, and only in the most literal sense.

-Vurbal (February 18, 2015, 07:36 AM)

BWAHAHAHAHAAH~!

Yep. Pretty much!

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Living Room / Re: good Videos [short films] here :)

« Last post by Renegade on February 18, 2015, 07:48 AM »

no, it was straightforward emigration - well, a spot of bother with the landlords, and, you'll love this one:

With no taxes or tithes, to devour up your wages
When you're on the green fields of Americae

-tomos (February 18, 2015, 07:40 AM)

I'm sorry, but I can't respond here. See you in the basement. The beauty has been spoiled. Destroyed. And even speaking of that is now "controversial" or "blasphemy".

FWIW - It was a beautiful song.