Category Archives: Technology

Stupidification Part Deux

Not that Congress needs help to be stupid … 

 
Line by line, how the US anti-encryption bill will kill our privacy, security

El Reg takes latest Burr-Feinstein legislation apart

Line by terrible line

Here at Vulture West we’ve gone through the legislation to see what exactly is in the bill. Here, for your delectation, are the worst bits:

All providers of communications services and products (including software) should protect the privacy of United States persons through implementation of appropriate data security and still respect the rule of law and comply with all legal requirements and court orders.

This is the crux of the issue. The senators want to have their cake – by requiring tech companies to protect their customers’ data – and eat it too – by insisting that law enforcement can break the code.
According to the best minds in cryptography this simply can’t be done – it’s not a moral or legislative issue but a mathematical one. Once you introduce a flaw into an encryption system, it’s impossible to stop others finding it, especially since you are mandating it is there by law and the prize is free access to all US data traffic, as evidenced in the Juniper case.

Burr and Feinstein don’t specify how this police backdoor could be managed and still protect data. Instead they have just said: “Here’s what we want – do it.” 

More at:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/13/burr_feinstein_antiencryption_bill_is_out/

As for the American public’s reaction, well that’s less certain. The US populace are largely complete pussies when it comes to terrorism and have – time and again – shown themselves willing to abandon hard-fought-for liberties whenever the T word comes up.

Good sense may prevail in the Land of the FreeTM, but don’t bet on it.
  

 

We’re doomed

Stupidification …

YouTube, the Internet, and the Stupidification of Mankind (A Rant)

stupidification 

Noun

1) making one less intelligent

2) filling people’s mind with patently false concepts, ideas, or historical information

3) reducing or eliminating common sense and rational thought in others

stupidify 

Verb (see stupidification)
PRE-RANT

I can’t stand it anymore. If I don’t rant my head will explode.

I am a child of the 60s. I was there when it happened I saw it with my own eyes. I am also a man of rational thought and historical perspective. I understand and follow the scientific method and I have a good grasp of recent and ancient history.

Humankind has made incredible advances in the last 5000 years. We have gone from wandering about foraging for food, living in fear of nature, disease, and the elements to almost totally mastery of our environment. We have greatly improved the life expectancy and quality of life of the majority of people living on this planet. We have identified, studied, and cured numerous diseases. We have dramatically improved the food supply. We have improved sanitation, the quality of the water we drink and the safety of our work environment.

In the past 5000 years our concept of mathematics has gone from one / few / many to calculus and higher forms of mathematics. This has enabled the advancement of the sciences and our understanding of chemistry, physics, and the world around us, below us, and above us. We have gone from walking on foot to spanning the globe by land, sea, air, and space. Our roads and automobiles allow us to travel farther in an hour than ancient people could travel in a day. Modern air transportation can take us nearly anywhere in the world in less than a day. Manned and unmanned spacecraft circle the Earth in 90 minutes.

Our accumulated knowledge of the past 5000 years has allowed us to develop the technology required to build computers, routers, switches, fiber-optic cables, the Internet, online banking, video communication, websites, blogs, YouTube, streaming music, smart phones, tablets, and much much more. Geosynchronous satellites provide weather information and satellite television. Google, Bing, and other search engines provide us instantaneous access to all of mankind’s knowledge. Men and women graduating college today have never known a time without this technology and we all take it for granted.

Eratosthenes first determined that the Earth was a sphere in the first century BC and actually calculated its circumference to within 15% of its currently accepted value. The fields of surveying and geodesy have established to the nth decimal point the shape of the earth as an oblate spheroid and have developed a vast selection of projection systems (aka Coordinate Reference Systems) used by map makers and the global GIS community to map sections of the three dimensional earth to the two dimensional maps used by governments, companies, and individuals. The map applications on our smart phones rely heavily on this body knowledge. The global network of fiber-optic subsea cables that empower the global Internet could not have been laid without this body of knowledge.

Mankind has been a spacefaring nation since the late 1950s with launch of Sputnik by the former Soviet Union. Humanity has had a more or less continuous human presence in low earth orbit since the early 1960s beginning with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. To date Russia / Soviet Union, the United States, and China have launched men and women into space. Each of these countries has had multiple long duration space stations in orbit. A total of 544 people have been in orbit. Twelve Americans walked on the surface of the moon during the Apollo program of the late 1960s – early 1970s. The total time spent by humans in space is in excess of 131.3 man-years. The following countries have some form of manned and/or unmanned space program: America, Canada, China, Europe, Japan, India, and Russia. Unmanned scientific probes have studied every planet in our solar system. India has a robust unmanned space program and it successfully placed the Mangalayaan probe into Martian orbit on its first try in 2014. World Space Flight has documented every manned and unmanned mission to date.

The knowledge mankind has acquired in the past 5000 years is vast and deep. The technologies we have developed with this knowledge are nothing short of magical.

BEGIN RANT

The “straw the broke the camels back” occurred while preparing my previous post on the Falcon 9.  I ran across a YouTube video on “FakeX” whereby the vlogger reviewed footage of the last SpaceX CRS-8 launch and step-by-step pointed out how every aspect of the video was fake. His explanation and reasoning for each of his points indicated how truly clueless, ignorant, and stupid he was … and yet this video had thousands of views and the vlogger had thousands of followers. Most of the comments and commenters agreed with him. I won’t give you the link because I don’t want to give him another view. Across the Internet and YouTube you will find hundreds (thousands?) of videos “proving” how we have been lied to about:

The Earth is really flat and not a sphere – we’ve been lied to

NASA is lying to us – all spaceflight is faked

The Moon landings were all faked

9/11 – the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition, not planes

The holocaust never happened

Pretty much if you can name an established fact, you will find a blog and a host of YouTube videos “proving” that it is obviously not true and that we have been lied to. A vast global conspiracy has lied to us about pretty much everything we have ever been taught in school or college.

Funny you think? Maybe, until you realize that this counter-culture numbers in the hundreds with followers numbering in the thousands or more. Globally. Millions of views. It is not so much a disbelief in reality as it is a readiness to BELIEVE that everything we have been told or taught about [insert topic] is a lie.

How do you teach science to kids when an Internet search is just as likely bring up even more sites and YouTube videos refuting the science. In a world where everyone gets equal time the “NASA lies crowd” get as many hits as the “NASA crowd”. Even worse Google and YouTube give you suggestions based on your viewing history. Months ago I watched some flat Earth videos and faked Moon landing videos. Now most of videos suggested for me by YouTube are exactly these kinds of videos. “There must be some truth to this if there are that many videos.” And … if someone tries to refute the “we’re being lied to video” the vlogger responds with “wow look at how hard they are working to prop up the big lie.”

Think I’m over reacting? Go to YouTube and search on “NASA lies” or “flat earth” or “Moon landing hoax” or “holocaust hoax” or “9/11 hoax” or … or … or … Look at the number of views. Look at the comments. If you personally did not experience it how do you know what is truth? Science? Laws of Physics? All lies.

Lies lies lies everything you have ever been taught about anything is a lie. AND YOU CAN’T PROVE OTHERWISE.

CALMING DOWN

Whew, OK I’m calmer now … but I’m not done yet.

The irony in all of this is that the Internet and YouTube would not even exist were it not for the very technological advances and hard earned knowledge that the conspiracy theorists tell us are all lies. Global subsea cables and communications satellites are the backbone of the Internet. Flat Earth? I don’t think so.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. – Carl Sagan

So back to the title of this rant … YouTube, the Internet, and the Stupidification of Mankind

YouTube and the Internet give anyone regardless of intellegence, education, or cognitive function equal footing with the brightest and most learned among us. It is the great equalizer … and the great stupidifier … on a global scale … 24×7.

 

 

We’re doomed.

 

 

See also The War on Science

Falcon 9

OMG I am just a little kid in old man’s body. Tears are running down my cheeks as I watch this. It is like being back in the 60s watching the moon launches or 2001 A Space Odyssey. I have always been very emotional about spaceflight (and music).

Less than four years. I have been blogging on SpaceX since the inception of this blog in 2013.

People of SpaceX and Elon Musk … thank you for a great ride!

 

… sticks the landing

And it …

As part of Friday’s CRS-8 successful resupply launch to the International Space Station, SpaceX accomplished its first ever ocean landing of the Falcon 9 on the ASDS (Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship) Of Course I Still Love You. Prior to this SpaceX successfully returned to Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral. See The Falcon Has Landed.

Another take on Friday’s landing 

Scooba dooba gone

Alas poor Scooba we barely knew you.

The Kraken is sad.

A trip today to the iRobot website, fails to show the Scooba. iRobot has dumped the Scooba Floor Scrubbing Robot in favor of the Braava Floor Mopping Robot.

  

It was inevitable I suppose. “This town ain’t big enough for both of us.” When iRobot paid $74 million for the company that made the Mint back in 2012, the fate of the Scooba was sealed. 

I was never that impressed with the Mint. To me it seemed like nothing more than a robotic Swiffer. Yet with a price well under half that of the Scooba, the much simpler Mint … now rebranded as the Braava … was destined to fly of merchants shelves.

In related news CatBeard Manor has also recently employed the services of a Roomba 980. Let me just say that this baby … I have named it WALL-E … is pulling out more dirt and cat hair than my Dyson ever did.

Pickles discovers Arlo

15 seconds at a time…

The Arlo camera was set on motion detection and a 15 second recording window. I merged them with iMovie.

Depending on the amount of light received it is either color or infrared black and white. When Pickles blocks enough light the IR LEDs turn on and the camera goes black and white. Pickles is fascinated by the infrared LEDs. Mmmm … tasty.

  

See previous post for more Arlo videos.

Release the Kraken

I have decided to call my new toy tool The Kraken, mostly because I love saying “Release the Kraken.”
 

Below we see the Scooba 450 in action, as filmed by one of my Arlo wireless security cameras. Note the infrared eyes on the front of The Kraken. These are invisible to the naked eye, but detected by the infrared-sensitive Arlo camera.

  
And now with the camera riding The Kraken … yee haw ride ’em Arlo!

  
From more info see:

http://www.irobot.com/For-the-Home/Floor-Scrubbing/Scooba.aspx

http://www.arlo.com/en-us/

Power of gold …

MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015) Gold

I ordered one of the new MacBooks. It arrived on Thursday. 

For many years I have not had a computer at home, just various iPads and iPhones. This was all I needed for my online activities. I had multiple computers at work, I didn’t need one at home.

All of that changed a week ago Friday. It is easier to update one’s resume on a laptop than on an iPad.

Let’s just say that I was as excited as a little girl with a new pony to get it, but don’t take my word for it …

“and a hard drive of five hundred and twelve megs” megs??? I hate it when I do that … Gigs! Not that bad considering it is all solid state.

  

Wish me luck on coming up with a kick-ass resume otherwise I may end up like this guy

 
  

Buffet’s Math Trumped by Gold

Roy Sebag, CEO of GoldMoney and Founder of BitGold takes Warren Buffet to task on Buffet’s statement in his most recent Annual Letter to stock holders claiming that:

American GDP per capita is now about $56,000. As I mentioned last year that – in real terms – is a staggering six times the amount in 1930, the year I was born, a leap far beyond the wildest dreams of my parents or their contemporaries.
  
Sebag goes on to show that the American GDP per capita is NOT a staggering six times the amount in 1930, but rather is essentially unchanged when compared in an apples to apples comparison in terms of the purchasing power of gold.

 
Read the entire essay on the web or in PDF.

Visit BitGold.com to get started and earn up to a 5% first deposit bonus.

Four Horsemen

Today’s Four Horsemen

  • socially organised violence
  • debt, 
  • iniquity
  • poverty

From Rotten Tomatoes 

The Four Horseman is a independent cinematic feature documentary which lifts the lid on how the global economy really works. Living in the age of consequence unfettered growth and profit seeking have pushed humanity to the brink. Today’s Four Horsemen – socially organised violence, debt, iniquity and poverty control all of our lives. They’re gathering momentum, decimating communities and compromising future generations if they are not arrested the planet will gallop to a logical conclusion.

  
  

  

http://www.fourhorsemenfilm.com

Interview with Roy Sebag

October 2015 interview with Roy Sebag Founder of BitGold and CEO of GoldMoney

This is a one hour interview with the founder of BitGold. Roy Sebag is a smart, knowledgable, articulate dude.  

Regardless of your current feelings about gold, if you work and want to safeguard the value of your earnings you owe it to yourself to watch (listen really) to this video. Roy talks about concepts of money, value, investments, and of course … the BitGold platform. 

No hype. No scare tactics. Just information. 

I hope you find it interesting.

  

For more info go to https://www.bitgold.com

PS   I was just notified that this was my 1,000th post 😎

Roy and Josh


http://youtu.be/b0QMQwRx1q8

BitGold is the modern day embodiment of the global internet data/gold crypt envisioned in Neal Stepenson’s Cryptonomicon. While “reading” the Cryptonomicon last August (the first time) I began searching the Internet for digital gold solutions. I discovered several failed platforms … and BitGold. Coincidentally, BitGold had just announced entry into the US market.

YouTube and the Internet are awash with bombastic exhortations for and against the ownership of gold, fraught with dire predictions of the collapse of the US dollar and collapse of the global monetary system. Roy and Josh are above all that. Yes, they do point out the limitations of fiat money systems and yes, they do remind us that gold maintains its value literally forever, but they are calm, low key, and well reasoned. In coming posts, I will share those videos and other links that I find most interesting or useful. If you are interested, you can of course do your own research starting at BitGold.com.

Cryptonomicon


Order it from Amazon


Order it from Audible

I just finished listening to Cryptonomicon for the second time. Cryptonomicon, published in 1999, is eerily prescient of the technological developments since then. Written at the dawn of the Internet it presages digital banking, digital encryption, and global telecommunications.

Cryptonomicon is a fascinating mix of historical fiction, science fiction, and techno-thriller. It follows two timelines – one in World War II, the other present day. The World War Two timeline follows the exploits and adventures of real and fictional characters involved in formulating and breaking the Nazi and Nipponese codes used to send vital wartime communications. The present day timeline follows what one quickly learns are the descendants of the WWII cast of characters who are building a data crypt and associated digital infrastructure in the Phillipines and Sultanate of Kinkuta. The past and present are woven together in a fine tapestry.

Neal Stephenson is at his best in Cryptonomicon. It is filled with action, suspense, and humor. A good read and a better listen. This is a must-read book for devotees of Stephenson, WWII, cryptology, and the Internet. I give it four thumbs up.

Elon Explains

… some of the background for last nights successful Falcon 9 landing

 A lot about how things work in space is counter-intuitive, as all of our intuition is gained from daily experiences where the air is thick, gravity doesn’t seem to change and movement is relatively slow. We do see lots of movies about space, but, unless you’re watching an IMAX documentary, they vary from slightly wrong, like The Martian (good movie!), to mostly absurdly wrong, like Red Planet (don’t watch this, it will hurt your brain), which also doesn’t help intuition.

• • •

In the case of the Falcon 9 rocket, the boost stage is able to accelerate a payload mass of 125 metric tons to 8000 km/h and land on an ocean platform or to 5000 km/h and land back at the launch site. The second one is lower because the rocket is moving super fast away from the launch site, so it has to do a screetching U-turn with nitrogen attitude thrusters, then fire the engines to create a reversed ballistic arc, then reorient again for atmospheric entry and have the engines pointed in the right direction for the landing burn. Since the propellant is liquid, it wants to centrifuge out during these maneuvers, so there has to be a system of baffles and internal holding tanks to keep it in place. It also needs three axis control surfaces that don’t melt easily and work well from hypersonic through subsonic speeds.

For a sea platform landing, the Falcon 9 figure of merit is therefore roughly 300 gigajoules (GJ) of kinetic energy and for a return to launch site landing, the number is about 120 GJ. These are fairly sizable by terrestrial standards. To put it into perspective, the city of San Francisco uses about 1 GJ per second of electricity, so the Falcon 9 booster transfers enough energy to power a city of almost a million people for five minutes. 

• • •

Read more about the physics and technology involved in first stage Return To Launch site, plus a short history of SpaceX’s efforts in this regard at:

http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/12/21/background-tonights-launch

One millimeter

[begin rant]

One fucking millimeter. There I said it … millimeter … or if you prefer millimetre.

iPhone 6s   The only thing that’s changed is everything

No … not everything.

My old iPhone 5s died. OK so it didn’t really die, but the female charging port on the phone got damaged from accidentally ripping the charging cord out of the phone … one … too … many … times. Getting the phone to charge involved just the right amount of ceremonial incantations, fiddling with the Lightning connector, and careful positioning of the iPhone and cord. On the Monday before my birthday the phone died and would not charge. So I ordered a new iPhone 6s Plus, which as luck would have it arrived on said birthday. (Happy Birthday to me, etc., etc, etc.)

I love everything about it … except …

Sir Jonathan Paul Ive, can I call you Jony?

So Jony, the whole world knows how fucking brilliant you are. There, I did it again … brilliant. Yes, you … are … brilliant. You’ve even been knighted for brilliance, for Christ’s sake.

You are brilliant … and you are obsessed. Obsessed with industrial design. Obsessed with elegance. Obsessed with perfection. You are also obsessed with thinness. Obsessed.

But when does obsession cloud judgement? When does the obsession for thinness negate superb industrial design?


One fucking millimeter. If you had made the iPhone 6 series one millimeter thicker, the camera lens would be flush with the case … like the iPhone 5 … and EVERY other iPhone before it. No one … and I do mean no one … would have noticed or cared if the iPhone 6 series was one millimeter thicker.

What could you do with an extra one millimeter of thickness? Make the case a tad thicker and stronger. Make the battery thicker and add a few extra minutes of run time. Who knows? Who cares?

The important thing is that one millimeter is the difference between a smooth backside and one with an ugly zit that keeps the phone from laying solidly on on flat surface without rocking. One millimeter means not worrying about scratching fine old wooden finishes. One millimeter is the difference between obsession and … perfection.

Any chance of fixing this in the iPhone 7?

[end rant]

iOS 9 Keyboard

When iOS 9 came out for iPad and iPhone, the default appearance of the keyboard changed. The Mrs is visually challenged and did not like the new look of the keyboard. She wanted the old one back. The difference is that the old keyboard displayed CAPITAL LETTERS all of the time. The new one displays either lowercase or UPPERCASE depending on whether or not the shift key was depressed.

OLD KEYBOARD

 

 
New Keyboard 

 

Although not obvious it is possible to revert to the old keyboard default as follows:

Settings > General > Accessibility > Keyboard > Show Lowercase Keys 

Toggle Show Lowecase Keys off

 
Let me know in the comments below if this was useful to you …

Dictation

The Mrs has MS (Multiple Sclerosis), diagnosed over a decade ago. It is what it is. We deal with it.

I got an email from a former colleague who also happened to be the father of my son’s best friend from high school. He and his wife are staunch southern Baptists. “How was [the Mrs] doing?” he asked.

Using the dictation feature of my iPad, I dictated:

“OK, but she is currently suffering from an MS exacerbation.”

  

  

Just before hitting send, I decided to proofread the email and read the following:

“OK, but she is currently suffering from excess masturbation.”

  

###################

 

True story. When I tried to read it back to my wife, every time I got to “suffering from” I would begin laughing so hard I had to start over. It must have taken me a half dozen attempts before it could read it all the way through.

ITER | 100 word story

The sun appeared on the horizon, startling the birds sleeping in the trees.

  

  

Ten minutes earlier …

  

The night sky over the southern French countryside was cool and quiet, yet the interior of the ITER control room was anything but. Engineers and scientists jabbered into their headsets in a multilingual cacophony as beads of sweat pooled on the balding heads of their supervisors. Wall clocks changed to midnight in unison. Nine minutes to the first full power up. 

   

ITER is Latin for “the way.” It was also an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor … the world’s first hydrogen fusion power reactor.

  

iA Writer

I have had iA Writer for a while now and have used it off and on with satisfaction. It is extremely minimal. Nothing to distract the writer from his or her words. Best of all – for 100 word stories – in includes word and character count prominently at the top. Enhanced keyboard as well.

  
iA Writer is the quintessential writing machine for iOS, Mac and Android. Writer is designed so you can keep your hands on the keyboard and the mind in the text.

 

   
   

Available for iPad, iPhone, Mac, and Android.

https://ia.net/writer/ios

The WAR on SCIENCE

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
Carl Sagan

Perhaps society has always been at war with science. Science challenges belief systems. Science threatens the status quo. Scientific thinking requires one to question everything. 

However scientific thought does not grant one the ability to throw out centuries of hard-won knowledge just because the doubter does not “believe” it. The Internet is chock full of blogs decrying the “lies” perpetuated by scientists, NASA, the media, the government. It is truly ironic that the science and technology that made computers, smart phones, tablets, and the Internet possible is the very science under attack on the Internet. So much of the “information” on the Internet is opinion and belief offered up as fact. The Internet gives everyone an equal voice.

Instead of making us smarter, the Internet is making us dumber. Our knowledge is based on “factoids” and “sound bites”. Few people bother to dig deeper. TL;DR

Sadly, I ran across this video on one of those “anti-science”, “we have been lied to” blogs. The author comments:

This is just such a great example of how sometimes the propaganda gets so heavy in it’s shaming tactics that it only serves to show how desperate and panicky the official side is seemingly becoming.

Science = propaganda 

Sigh

Whatever other titles I have held during my professional career …

I proudly claim the title of Scientist.

The Martian 3D

I just saw The Martian in 3D on the wide screen.

Excellent. Seriously excellent. The cinematography was superb. So was the acting. Although there was scrupulous attention paid to the scientific and technological aspects, it did not in any way overshadow the human drama. There was humor. There was frustration. There was elation. Aspects of Apollo 13 and Castaway were strong. There were even reminisces of 2001 A Space Odyssey (without the monolith, monkey men, or crazed computer). I would see this again in the theater.

I previously posted that I had listened to the unabridged audio book. The movie was true to the book, somehow condensing 10hr 53min down to 2hr 21min without loosing anything. Yes, yes the book goes into much more detail on the underlying science and isolation of Mark Watney, but you can read the book later.

GO SEE THIS MOVIE IN 3D


  


  

  

GO SEE THIS MOVIE IN 3D

  

  

http://www.foxmovies.com/movies/the-martian

Don’t google ‘Autocorrect Fails’ if you have anywhere to be soon…

The joy of autocorrect and/or dictation on the iPhone/iPad.

I once dictated a letter to some old family friends who happen to be staunch Baptists. Thankfully I proofed it before sending. When I tried to tell my wife about it it, it took about a dozen attempts before I could get through it without bursting into eye-watering laughter.

Actual message: She is suffering from an MS exacerbation
As dictated/autocorrected: She is suffering from excess masturbation

robynchristi's avatarA Girl In Europe

or don’t want to pee your pants laughing.

i hate autocorrect, autocorrect makes me sound ducking stupid! But I do have to  admit she’s been pretty kind to me unlike to these poor and unsuspecting people…

imageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimageimage

There are worst ones but I can’t risk my mum telling me of soo….

Love ROHN

(Thanks autocorrect)

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