Getting my eyes stabbed out/going blind.

No idea why, but any possible corner near my face freaks me the fuck out.

So, if I were to whip up some script that went through every single email account I had and mark everything older than 6 months as unread on a daily basis, I would be immune to this type of search?

On the other side; This is just another example reminding us that technology is advancing faster than we can regulate it.

Oh man, this takes me back to middle school. Had gotten my first laptop, an amd box running 64bit vista, and man were those bundled parental controls fun. I probably wouldn't have gotten into computing as much as I am if I hadn't gotten so pissed off at the restrictions UAC and parental controls enforced. Ended up booting linux off a slider phone's sd card while in usb mode just to use chntpw and promote myself to admin.

On the side I also did that to my cousin's computer and while my parents didn't care much anymore that I had did that to my own, boy was my cousin's mother pissed. On the bright side of that, I actually earned a good amount of how the registry works and the SAM hive.

As big as an advocate for encryption I am, full system encryption is only useful if the computer isn't connected to the net, or you want to prevent the average Joe from accessing your files. (Note that this is for personal computers, servers are a VERY different story.) If it is connected to the net, malicious code is far more likely to compromise your system than someone cracking your password.

Tor and VPNs are more privacy related than anything else, and for the most part any major VPN provider will log the connections for government agencies. Tor is a bit harder to crack, but assuming one can control a good portion of entrance and exit nodes, one could potentially de-anonoymize a certain percentage of connections.

PGP is a great example of secure messaging and is one of the many things that I should, but don't have a firm grasp on, or use at all. For me that's pretty surprising, especially with the alarming amount of surveillance in these days. One thing to note though is that PGP usually uses RSA encryption which is based on modulo functions with very large prime numbers as a result. One thing to note is that smaller sized RSA keys such as 256bits are (<--- Note the publishing year) completely insecure due to advances in factoring technologies. If you looked at the last link it also talks about the equation for the "number n, there exist prime numbers p and q such that n = p × q." Reversing the equation we get the P versus NP problem, which I'd recommend reading the consequences if p = np or not. As a side note google in 2012 began using 2048bit RSA keys, although I'm pretty sure they now use 4096bit, but I can't find any articles on that.

Outside of factoring, there are also other mathematical methods of encryption, such as elliptical curve. (Which I have far less knowledge of) However, encryption isn't everything. For example, you can crack any password for 5 dollars. Along with that, encryption can be made insecure due to malformation of keys, non-truely-random code, OS caching (ex: paging file, assuming you're not running full disk encryption), and potential spies.

In the end however, I believe that encryption is important to privacy, security, and our freedom. Keeping your data safe from outsiders can only be done by securing not only your hardware, but the far more vulnerable software. Encryption is needed in communication, transactions, and privacy as without, so many things would be in the eye of the public.

As an ending note, I think it is far more important to tie both encryption and anonymization together, as if either is broken, then the other becomes far easier to break and hence your privacy, freedom, and security become compromised.

Speaking of octopi, you quickly reminded me of this political cartoon:

Currently in computer limbo with a tablet as my most powerful full-fledged pc. Ordered some parts to fix and upgrade an older laptop which will be fun. Hopefully my nice laptop gets back from warranty service before I go off to college next week.

I'm going to be a freshman, and outside of the one tour and orientation I never got a proper feel of the the classes so its going to be a little scary until I catch the flow of the place. Still, very excited to go off, even if I am dorming in a double with a sophomore. Going to try to use this chance to instill better study and personal fitness habits for myself.

Although, I feel the pressure now even before I go off to college as I'm riding a scholarship (Which is apparently considered a form of financial aid rather than an award) that pays for my tuition, but requires me to maintain a certain gpa, which increases each semester. So if I screw up, I basically lose my opportunity to get some form of higher education without copious amounts of debt.

Switching back to technology crap, I got a pair of a900x last week. These cans are pretty awesome for $150. Sounds great on any high quality input, while okay on low quality input. I guess it is true: "Shit in, shit out".

Referring back to the death of my ssd, I've been looking into building my own nas. I could throw something together for about $500, but it would lack server grade ram, and only give me 2 1tb hdds. While one layer of redundancy is better than none, I'd personally like to get more (the case I've been looking at is 4 hot-swap disks) and larger capacity disks and run them raid 1 + 0, or all in raid 1. One gives me a bit more storage while two disks are in sync and two more are also and together they form a larger volume, while the other ensures I'll have my data for a pretty long time. I think I should hold off longer at this point to see if I can get more higher quality parts for cheaper when the holidays roll around.

Q: Is that the name of your unit? A: I cannot answer that question, that is a secret. Q: Is that the board which passersby on the main road see outside your unit's base? A: Yes. Q: Read it out to the jury, please. A: I cannot do that. It is a secret.

That is a particularly startling comment. They are tried for spying for merely publicizing a publicly available fact. And while they were set free, it does not sit well for anyone as we proceed into the future that you can be tried just for showing people something they could find themselves.

Aside from climate change, which in my opinion far trumps anything else we could possibly suggest, I think the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a runner up in terms of long-term impact.

I got a tablet with 10 on it. I'll post some wireshark dumps of its traffic. To be useful, I'll also include my settings/config/setup.

Will be back in a bit with some dumps.

I did have ssd support enabled though. That is what is particularly getting me annoyed.

Will look into xfs, though I did find some of the features of brtfs really interesting/cool. Need a working modern computer though, so I should probably set something up to boot off of usb.

How's w3m for mouse usage?

I've tried lynx, elinks, links, and so much more. All of them need more love, but could be REALLY great in the end imo.

Random 4am musing:

Allow for users to temp-ban themselves? (Please, I need to get this paper done! (>_<) )

This could be looked at in a few ways:

1. allows users to step back and not post. Might give super active posters to stand back and watch discourse without their interference.

2. way to allow users to give themselves a block from the site for a short amount of time. Allows for them to accomplish "x" pressing task.

3. gives users a chance to distance themselves from the community for one reason or another. (Perhaps they need to kick a bad web browsing habit, or want to see how hubski might change over a period of time.

Might be interesting, might not. Probably better that I end this idea here and get back to my paper.

I'm not surprised.

Thinking back I remember there was something on the news about allowing ultra-sonic audio for animals watching tv a few years ago. Wonder if this was one motive that got that heavily pushed for.

So, like, can we make a hover board out of this shit if it actually works? I'd buy one if they were cheap enough.

I don't know the specifics, but ubuntu has had better compatibility for me out of the box on specific things such as media keys and driver installation. For most users though, its probably the same in terms of hardware compatibility.

Ubuntu is going to have the best compatibility out there. Period. Mint is great too and a little less sketchy, although some of its recent cinnamon updates have driven me away from it as my go to. Ubuntu is also a bit more beginner friendly imo.

My personal recommendation would probably go to manjaro, which is based off of arch. Basically manjaro is quickly becoming what ubuntu is to debian. (Although debian isn't a bare bones install either, and a bit more user friendly, but you get the point) Be warned though, last time I checked its a little rough around the edges on things such as bluetooth.

You guys are making me feel like my childhood and high school experience sucked. (Well, that's something I already knew though, but you get the point...)

I've been busy recently, but I feel like I've finally gotten into the swing of university. Now I just need to get back into going to the library as often as I was the past few weeks. I feel like if I let that habit slip, I'll be doing myself a major disservice.

I accidentally hit my head against the brick wall next to my bed relatively hard a few days ago, so I've been taking lots of naps and been (trying, and succeeding for the most part) to go to bed early. I don't think I have anything major, but its probably worth it to take it slow. Also getting into the habit of going to bed earlier really doesn't have any negatives either.

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of WipeOut! I've really come to appreciate the games in recent years, and I'm particularly sad that studio liverpool was disbanded by sony. However, a portion of the core team has been working on Formula Fusion independently which seems pretty promising. A fan group has also been working on SlipStream GX which also looks pretty promising. If any of you guys have a ps3 and or vita, hit me up! I'd love to play with anyone here who's a fan.

I put the mid-point at episode 11. Anything before or including that episode is fair game.

So create a mass replicating malware that puts facebook.com and its IP addresses into the hosts file and re-direct them to a webpage that teaches them how to fix it? Yeah.... That'll go over REAL well.

Interesting the way you explain it as being out of sync with reality for a second. I'm not on any medication, but occasionally I do in a sense lose synchronization with reality. It lasts for a few seconds, and while I can hear and see during it, it feels like I'm watching a movie of some sort and I can effectively ignore ALL my senses, including sight.

I'd love for you to elaborate on what your 'zaps' feel like to compare if they're the same thing that happens to me.

Sanctuary RPG is pretty fun! :)

Running voting till Wednesday.

Yeah, if it is two seasons then we'd need to do that. Thats why I think having periodic discussions rather than one at the end of the show might be useful for keeping people watching and engaged.

Other than four words I actually managed to read that. I feel relatively accomplished.

Yeah. I'll probably end up closing the vote in a few days, next Wednesday to be exact. If it does end in a tie, we can do one series, then the next, back to back.

So I own an intel atom tablet, and flash is absolutely faster than html5 for video streaming. Most notably, YouTube is SIGNIFICANTLY slower on their new player.

Thats the plan. Already dumped a list of installed programs, running processes, services, and installed updates.

Preping a linux box to tunnel the internet connection of the tablet and use wireshark to log it. I'll then do my best to remove personal information (if needed), throw it in an archive and post it.

Ugh, I know that feeling too.

Had an SSD failure on the same computer in May. Don't know why I didn't bother to have good backups.

At this point though, I'm either convinced SSD technology isn't suited to my usage demands or Btrfs is the bane of all SSDs.

(Or there is something terribly wrong with my chromebook, and thats why it keeps chewing through SSDs.)

A terminal emulator The phone app The messaging app A notes app