letoams

Orphans Christmas Party - Dec 25 1pm onwards

2009-12-18T22:04:21Z

Start Time: Friday, December 25, 2009 at 1:00pm
End Time: Saturday, December 26, 2009 at 1:00pm
Location: 167 Church St. app 2103, Toronto

For Christmas, many people retreat to spend time with their family. For those with no family obligations, or those who are comfortable bringing their family, there will be a alternate "ophans" Christmas gathering of friends (and strangers!) on Dec 25.

People are welcome from noon Dec 25 until noon the next day. If you're coming from out of town, there is some crash space available if you do not object to waking up to the sounds of an espresso machine and the smell of fresh coffee. Parking might be available in the building, but I cannot guarantee a spot. Though there is nearby paid commercial parking.

There will be pleasant company, board games, Wii games, movies, yummy foods and drinks (but BYOP). People are encouraged to bring more of their own games and consumables as well. A special balcony is available for those who prefer to combust their consumables. The building also has a pool table until midnight.

Remember: No orphan left behind! Bring a friend!

To: privacy@thestar.ca

2009-09-11T04:14:46Z

To: privacy@thestar.ca
Subject: Privacy complaint

To the person responsible for the Toronto Star's adherence of their privacy policy.

Humans have a hunger for sensationalism. I understand the Star's market capitalization of that. And luckily, the Star has thought about the balance of sensationalism versus privacy in their privacy policy listed on their own website at http://www.thestar.com/generic/article/108477

Unfortunately, the Star seems only interested in the protection of the privacy of its customers, and therefor really, the protection of their source of income. Apparently, privacy considerations of everyone else is only there to be violated and monetized upon.

That a friend of mine fell to her death was a very unfortunate event for her, her family and her friends. A sensationalist though harmless news article about these events could perhaps even serve a purpose of warning other people against similar fatal mistakes. The article was even useful as a resource for her friends to share information about her tragic death. And I am sure my friend herself would have laughed with approval at the insane headlines about her supposed "ghost hunt", despite the inaccuracy of the information that was there purely to juicen up a headline to ensure the quantity (not quality) of your publication.

However, having your "journalists" uncover her name, locate her Facebook account, and calling her friends to fish for more information is where your "journalists" crossed the line of decency, fairness, professional conduct and perhaps PIPEDA. And for what? It serves no purpose. A million people reading this article have no use for a specific name or other personal details. The handful that have a use for knowing would surely prefer one of many other more personal ways of receiving such tragic news.

I hope that the "journalist" that made those calls will never have to find out themselves about a dear lost one through a phone call made by one of their competitors fishing expedition through Facebook despite them deserving that exact fate.

Contrary to your journalism, my friend will be missed.

GiveAway: Pentium 3 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, towercase - no disk

2009-03-16T22:02:17Z

GiveAway: Pentium 3 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, towercase - no disk

Can take a 2nd CPU that's not installed. Has a cdrom drive too.

If you want it, come by at the hacklab on tuesday or make an appointment with me.

Battlestar question.....

2009-03-16T04:37:23Z

Though it should not contain spoilers, unless you havent watched the last 7 episodes, I'll put in the safety spoiler click.

I am not sure if the Final Five cylons were the only models that roamed Earth. I don't think anything was ever stated about it, so I think there were more, it is just these five managed to escape the slaughter of the humans (or other cylons?)
So these Five escape and then when the humans make the next generation of cylons, who then make the next generation of human cylons, meet up with them. And the Final Five give the new cylons the technology to build a Resurrection Ship. (this btw, might have been the trigger for the new cylons to go to war, since they can now resurrect. Though they originally might have just created lots of duplicate copies that could not resurrect - I always wonder about the new cylon bodies - don't they have a "brain", or I guess, initial firmware)

Did the Final Five have their own Resurrection capabilities at the Colony? If so, don't the non-rebel cylons have that resurrection capability?
If the Final Five did not have a resurrection capability, what were they lacking? Resources? Then why did they not create copies of themselves once they met the new cylons and got the Resurrection capability?

I almost thought that the Final Five could not resurrect, until I remembered that Saul killed Ellen, and she resurrected. Why did they not create some redundancy copies of themselves?

Something is strange with the final five and resurrection. I am just not sure if this is a writer anomaly or something that the last episode will explain to us.

Lazor in action video!

2009-03-16T04:24:50Z

Our new LED sign at the HackLab!

2009-02-01T05:35:06Z

The LED sign is basically a Blinkenlights display, just like the building in Berlin and City hall in Toronto was. Just a different backend, but driven by the same proxy and UDP packet
format.

My Battlestar predictions (don't read unless you saw S4E12)

2009-01-25T18:13:44Z

So they broke the math. The 12 known models, which includes Ellen, did not include Starbuck. So there are now 13 known models. I guess the cheating is similar to the 12 Apostles and Judas. So Starbuck is the Harbringer of Death (the traitor Judas). Though her arrival at Earth happened after it was already dead for 2000 years.

It is revealed the entire Earth (the 13rd tribe) was populated by Cylons. It also contained unknown models of Centurions, likely created by those Cylon inhabitants - they were separated from the other (12?) Cylon colonies.

So my wild theory is that the humans did not create the Cylons. It is the humanoid Cylons that created the humans. The humans are the real toasters. The humans rebelled against their masters and won, in a mirror image copy of the universe we knew so far. The Cylons ran away from their creation, just like the prophecies (or rather the history books) have revealed. But the 13th tribe (Earth) was found and destroyed by humans anyway.

And just when we learn that Kelly's child is not a hybrid, we're shown another child, that of Number 6 and Tigh, the first pure Cylon. This makes sense, if you take for granted that the Cylons are the original species, who conceived and multiplied, before being wiped out by their human toasters. Perhaps the Resurrection ship was their emergency way of survival, after the genocide that left only 13 original beings, not enough to jump start a new population. There is definitely an obsession about conceiving and giving birth with the humanoid cylons. However, there are still two other hybrid children. The child of Number 6 and Gaius (most similar to Jesus) and the child of Boomer (Number 8) and Hero.

Anyone have lots of DNS traffic they can send my way?

2009-01-25T00:07:23Z

I am doing some stress testing for our DNSSEC appliance. Two weeks ago, I pointed all my machines at it, and its been running great. I've also fired "resperf" at it with high query rates and it worked fine. But I'd like to have a more real sustained load on it.

Anyone here can send me lots of dns traffic?

inauguration gatherings?

2009-01-18T17:09:26Z

Are there are local gatherings on Monday night or Tuesday during the day (with tv streams) happening? Apart from the 44 useless hypothetical facebook events, I have nothing in my schedule so far :P

Neon Sign!

2008-12-17T03:30:35Z

Our HackLab now has a neon sign! It just needs to flicker and make zooming noises now :)

Our logo is a merge between the CN Tower, and the schematic of an LED.

Welcome back USA

2008-11-05T06:37:06Z

We missed you!

Halloween parties this weekend?

2008-10-29T16:14:03Z

So far, I am seeing a lack of Halloween parties. Where are people going to? Is an emergency party required?

Woah, what happened to today?

2008-10-23T23:52:18Z

Holy server migration batman!

Started rack move at 8am. It's now 8pm. I left my chair once to get some food and once to get more coffee. WTF happened with the day?

The old rack in Amsterdam only contains old junk servers now, and the core router/IPsec gw. The new rack is filled with all the new servers that got moved. IPsec tunneling glues it all together until the uplink gets moved next week. Phased out some 32bit VM's for 64 bit ones. And then technobabble technobabble technobabble technobabble hate NETKEY technobabble technobabble

Why isn't there more Heroes now?

I want more Heroes!

Palintology

2008-10-11T03:11:50Z

"I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110 (a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act," investigator Steve Branchflower concluded in the panel's 263-page report.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7662820.stm

Isn't it best (for GOP) that Palin is sacrificed now for another running mate? Or is there some legal reason he can't change it anymore?

Bike light question.....

2008-09-10T19:49:17Z

Yesterday, secretsoflife and me were biking home in the dark. She prefers a blinking back light, while I prefer a solid back light. I know in The Netherlands, blinking lights are not allowed, but I was not aware of the situation here. So I used the intertubes instead of working and found blinking lights are legal, though no preference is mentioned anywhere of one over the other.

I ended up on Wikipedia which only has this one section, amusingly marked with [citation needed]:

Flashing lights have been shown to be three to five times more visible than a steady light of equivalent brightness. But it has been found that people tend to underestimate the distance to flashing lights and that drunken drivers are attracted by them, and there is evidence that they are harder to place than a steady light.

So I'm now more tempted to go with "what most other cyclists are doing and car drivers are expecting". But our own statistical sample was low that night. Two were blinking, one was not.

What are other people's experiences and thoughts on this? (both as a cyclist, and as a car driver)

Palin

2008-09-04T00:48:55Z

Drinks on Flickr this Friday at C'est What

2008-08-07T18:10:12Z

http://www.blogto.com/tech/2008/08/drinks_on_flickr_this_friday/

The Flickr team is in Toronto this week and will be buying drinks and snacks for anyone who shows up this Friday at C'est What between 6 and 8pm.

I emailed with National Flickr product manager Katheline Jean-Pierre who suggested the meetup was simply an informal get-together where she and a bunch of Flickr/Yahoo! folks hope to meet up with some Toronto Flickr fans. She also hinted that they might be giving out some new, free Flickr t-shirts to those who stop by.

Better get there early.

The notion that boys are better than girls at math simply doesn't add up

2008-07-25T12:26:07Z

Math scores for girls and boys no different, study finds

The notion that boys are better than girls at math simply doesn't add up, according to a study published today in the journal Science.

An analysis of standardized test scores from more than 7.2 million students in grades 2 through 11 found no difference in math scores for girls and boys, contradicting the pervasive belief that most women aren't hard-wired for careers in science and technology.

OLS ticket, plus VIA tickets, plus shared room available

2008-07-22T04:16:21Z

My friend Hugh is going to go to OLS (and present there too). His friend, with whom he was sharing a hotel suite with can't make it anymore. Therefor, there is a free OLS + train + accomodation available for someone. I myself am too busy with family visiting me, so I cannot go either. I've asked some friends, but they didn't get back to me.

So, if you want or know someone who wants to go to OLS, expenses paid from Toronto, for next weekend, mail me, and I'll pass it on to my friend.

Looking for non-crappy 1u chassis - harder then you think

2008-07-12T04:21:12Z

For our appliances, we have been looking at 1U chassis'. It's amazing how much bad metal is out there, and even more amazing what bad jobs people can do cutting a custom hole.

So, to my geeky friends, where can I find a nice looking 1U chassis with a 3 1/2" opening (for an LCD display we have), that takes a mini atx with one PCI via riser card.

The only non-crappy thing so far I found is the petabox, but it has its own LCD without buttons, and the LCD we have has a few buttons which we need for one of our appliances' functionality.

It's time for CHANGE

2008-07-09T23:24:29Z

Or so people thought when they decided to favour Obama. Unfortunately, he has reversed his previous policy on immunity for illegal wiretapping done by telco's for the Bush government, using the same fear for terrorists rhetorics as the Republicans/ Neocons.

Failure to live up to your own expections: -1 for Obama

OLPC paper (at PET I assume)

2008-07-07T03:37:27Z

Len gave me to interesting links. One to his paper Chilling effects of the OLPC XP Security model and a New Scientist article quoting him and others.

Thanks Len! Now for my comments to this paper......

I don't understand 2.4. unless the original server with usb key is compromised, how is the user's private ecc key compromised by a 'rogue backup server'?

2.5 How can there be both "easy theft of private key" and "no way for the user to repudiate"?
If you proof the first, you disproof the second. But also more in the context of rogue governments, the need for proof is not that strong - anyone will get intimidated (eg see recent Zimbabwe voting)

2.5 using https on the XO will still not compromise privacy, it does not matter that ip,tcp or udp is unsigned or wether a low level application adds a signature. same for OTR on top of IM. Granted,
it would have been better to have these work out of the box, or do some tor/onion routing.
One might hope that dissidents whose lives depend on their anonymity, will be able to either use the XO with that additional layer of IM or https. Or that they find other means. I find the theory of 12 year old dissidents 'because there are 12 year old children soldiers' weak. It's easy to force kids into a militaristic regime where they cannot think for themselves, even about joining or not. It is quite something else to go actively against a regime.

The XO is not a voting machine, sounds like Chaum's personal ax to grind Just creating 40.000 fake ID's for XO's to activate and vote would be easy for any fraudulent government anyway, no matter how secure the individual voting protocol. Though it is good to think of the XO's as more then just learning toys for kids, the focus is on them being learning toys for kids. Having these toys not stolen outweights having them be potential voting machines.

2.6 valid concerns, but what it misses is a viable alternative for the intended feature - how to prevent XO's from being removed from the children. That danger is much more imminent when the de-activation is removed. And with the additional theft without this feature, at the next earthquake, there won't be any XO's in the country to begin with.

3.2 IT security professionals hand picking socilogy theories is a very weak argument. The "scarring" argument of a laptop shutdown is pretty meaningless in countries where everyone, including children,
get their hands chopped off on a regular basis, or where diseases rampage a village and hunger happens regularly. Quoting psychologists in the conclusion does not lead me to diminish these thoughts at all) This section is a conclusion looking for a reason which you cherry-picked.

The second part of the paragraph reads much better, stating the potential monitoring is something that should be eliminated.

My conclusion

The paper feels too much like the authors have a personal agenda. It would have been much better if it had offered a better solution for the measures taken that negatively affect user's privacy - anti theft protection in countries with very scarce electronic resources where OLPC laptops are very valuable. Theft is the biggest threat to the OLPC project, forget having users without having an anti-theft method in place. If one has to choose between giving young kids under 12 a laptop with a potential for abuse (in so far any rogue government really needs to track its citizens under 12) versus not being able to give those kids a laptop, I think the choice is easy, and the OLPC project made the right choice. Of course, that does not mean there is no room for improvement. There is, and improved privacy should definitely get more attention then it got so far. Whether that is likely in this highly politicized and commercialized project, is left to be seen.

I think the project is seeing a much bigger threat of being invaded by commercial software vendors. I might be called a Stallmanite, but showing kids they can copy and share software is as important as giving them access to information.

I wish I could have made it to PET......

Anyone wants to go see Wall-E tonight?

2008-07-03T16:42:29Z

I need a break of being locked in my house coding for 12+ hours straight. I hear there is sun and coffee outside!

So anyone? Wall-E ? :)

YP's state of mind

2008-06-30T19:09:17Z

The following was a comment I wrote to YP in her LJ today. I have to stop reading her LJ, because it is just too upsetting to see someone so fucked up and in need of professional help. Knowing that she recently lost a family member, and that her boyfriend is not helping her but making her worse, I am extremely frustrated being so powerless to do anything.

-------------------

I can't help but notice you are jumping all over the place. Not just in this thread, but in general. The list of things you're claiming has grown to be worryingly absurd:

1 Earth older then the sun
2 Aliens lived on our planets
3 Aliens talk to US government
4 CIA is brainwashing people through Big Pharma
5 magical health potions forbidden by government scheme with big farma
6 Atlantis was real, populated by aliens
7 CIA mindcontrol widespread
8 Child Prostitution, Satanism, linked to CIA
9 Pyramids could not have been build by humans with technology of the time
10 NASA talking to aliens and hiding them.
11 vaccines are known to be contaminated. and a fraud
12 HIV created by pharmaceutical companies
13 magnets contain unlimited stored energy
14 energy produced out of the separation of H2O
15 complicated federal reserve believes I don't even understand at all
16 "seers" and a "healers" are not frauds
17 electromagnetic waves somehow break atom bonds somehow creating energy
18 anti-gravity
19 free energy in defience of laws of thermodynamics
20 US knew about 911 and let it happen
21 US had to blow up additional buildings for ..i don't know why but it proves #20
22 US Federal Income Tax is fraud
23 "Rational Arguements" for Faith.

In response to that, let me quote you from your posting on 2008-01-10 22:17

"YP believes that the truth is revealed only through rigorous inspection, quantifiable and qualifiable observations, and analysis. This is only possible if all information is freely available and has channels for dissemination.

Anyone that uses either their authority as a subject matter expertise, or their power in numbers or their power in resources and wealth, to subvert the dissemination and the persistence of truth, is standing in the way of human knowledge and progress."

Are you claiming all those 22 topics have been successfully held secret by some secret cabal, and that none of those things could have leaked, with verifiable and reproducable experiments. No conclusive evidence leaked that no one (including cynics like me) could possibly deny?

I am very sorry to say that if i have to weight the chance of 25 conspiracy theories being true, versus one person needing psychological help, then I am very sad to have to conclude the latter.

I tried to prevent your association with unhealthy people and failed. I tried to reason with you on matters political and scientific to break your blind faith in the paranormal and conspiracy worlds. I tried asking mutual friends if they thought they could do anything, but that's unfortunately also not happening, as you have seem to have left those people behind in favour of the need of a relationship. You're going to Scientology's Mecca soon, a city filled with crazy people. People who believe in all kinds of conspiracy theories, fake religions, and pseudo science.

YP, when the time comes that you're in doubt of your current situation and somehow got yourself into something you cannot get out of, your friends, including me, will be there to help. I know you will now read this as my arrogant and misguided manipulation of you. But just remember it.

anyone have a spare DSL modem?

2008-06-29T17:13:18Z

Hey,

For our new hacker space slash shared office space, we're looking for a DSL modem. Instead of buying a new one, I was hoping that someone somewhere has one lying around gathering dust.