Topics

46

General Discussion / Hackerspace!

« on: January 25, 2011, 03:30:41 pm »

So, me and my friends are starting up a hackerspace called SkullSpace Winnipeg. We've been working at it for a little over a month (mid-December), and things are going super well! We don't have the actual space left (hopefully very, very soon), but things are getting exciting.

All our info (twitter/facebook/mailing list/blog/flickr/youtube/etc) is on our site, http://www.skullspace.ca

A local university newspaper did a story about us today:
http://www.themanitoban.com/articles/40858

It's exciting!

Do any of you have hacker/builder/makerspaces in your towns? If so, do you visit them?

47

General Discussion / Story from a professional cheater

« on: January 15, 2011, 12:13:04 pm »

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2011/1/13/141736/786

Really good story. It's written by a guy who writes papers for students professionally. He's a master of every subject as well as writing, "It was true. At this point, there are few academic challenges that I find intimidating. You name it, I've been paid to write about it."

Well written (I should hope!) and a super interesting (albeit long) read.

"I haven't been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples. If I can find a single page from a particular text, I can cobble that into a report, deducing what I don't know from customer reviews and publisher blurbs. Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article. And of course, there's Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I've taken hundreds of crash courses this way."

48

General Discussion / Bill O'Reilly's homophobia

« on: December 28, 2010, 08:13:51 pm »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g8VNUkIemw

Watching that is so freakin' painful. Bill O'Reilly is such a jackass.

49

[x86] Announcements / SMF 1.1.12

« on: December 27, 2010, 11:18:57 am »

Just updated SMF 1.1.11 to 1.1.12. Every time something like this comes out, I get a little edgy

Let me know if there are any problems.

I looked at SMF 2 again, but they still haven't released it. One of these days, though...

50

[x86] Announcements / Oops

« on: November 28, 2010, 01:24:36 pm »

Dunno why the server was offline this evening (wait, morning.. stupid timezones), but I rebooted it remotely and it looks okay now. The load was 80+ so something was hurting it. Dunno what, though. *shrug*

51

General Discussion / Sad story about sexuality

« on: November 17, 2010, 10:40:42 pm »

I just read this, and it's depressing. Thank god the world's changed:

I grew up in a small town, in a devout Catholic home, and I had no clue there was more than one kind of sexuality. I had thoughts and feelings I didn't know what to do with, but I don't think I'd ever heard the word "gay," much less knew what it meant.

I'd had sex with girls, but I didn't have my first experience with another guy until I was 18. I was at an ex-girlfriend's party, and it wasn't pretty; everyone was bombed or high. Except for this older guy: late-20s, maybe 30, somebody's brother. I knew he was looking at me in a way that men weren't supposed to look at other men. We got talking, realized we both hated the party, and agreed to go for a walk in what by then had to be the wee hours. We were in a big deserted park, grass, bushes, streetlights, when he turned to me and I thought, "He's going to kiss me and I'm going to throw up." He did; I didn't.

I was so awkward. I had no idea how to do the things my feelings were prompting me to do. I knew I wanted to top him, but didn't know that word or how exactly to get there. He was so patient and gentle and understanding. This is not a story of a teenage kid being preyed on. I took the lead; he guided. He never pushed anything. He helped introduce me to myself.

He lived halfway down the East Coast, but he kept in regular touch with calls and long affectionate letters, checking in on me, listening to me, reassuring me that whatever I felt was okay.

Not everyone felt that way. This was almost 40 years ago. When I got comfortable enough to tell my parents I thought I was gay, they had me committed to a mental hospital. That's another story, and not a very nice one. I was there till I was 21 and could legally insist on being released. Shock treatments, megadoses of Thorazine. I don't know why I didn't go truly nuts. I think a big part of it was the memory of that kindness and that closeness, and the rightness of it, for me. I lost a lot during those years locked up. I lost track of that wonderful guy who'd been just what I needed when nobody else understood.

I never had a chance to thank him, so I'd like to do that now, and maybe imagine he's reading this and remembering too.

Anonymous

52

[x86] Announcements / Out of town soon!

« on: November 10, 2010, 10:59:34 am »

So, my schedule is pretty crazy. Here's what's going on:

Nov. 11 - Nov 16 -- Ottawa, ON
Nov 23 - Nov 30 -- Vienna, Austria
Dec 2 - Dec 3 -- Baltimore, MD

Dec 3 is a Friday. If there's any chance somebody can hang out in or around Baltimore on Dec 4, let me know and I'll see about staying that extra day. I haven't booked that flight yet.

Hopefully my new server is more stable than that old PoS.

53

General Discussion / Techniques to turn a 'no' into a 'yes'

« on: November 07, 2010, 01:55:35 pm »

No, it's not a sexual thing. Well, I suppose it can be.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/10/dont-take-no-for-an-answer.php

Interesting that they research different techniques (like asking for a lot and settling for a little, asking for a little then ramping up, etc) against each other to see which ones work best.

54

General Discussion / Passwords for porn sites!

« on: November 07, 2010, 10:08:20 am »

So, I was doing some research last night, and I found something funny that I wanted to share. I posted this on Twitter, too, and I'm going to be including it in a couple talks I'm doing (if they post videos of the talks, I'll link them).

Anyway, I generated a bunch of dictionaries for cracking passwords (bruteforcing guessing hashes -> passwords). I have, for example, US cities, human names (from Facebook), English words, German words, etc. Yesterday, I decided to generate one that's based on the Holy Bible (the King James version, for what it's worth). Then I tested it against the various password breaches I've collected to see what it's most effective against.

Now, I expected it to work well against the passwords from singles.org and Faithwriters, because they're religious sites. And it did -- over 8% of people at each of those sites used a variation of a Biblical word as their passwords. What surprised me, though, is that one site did better -- 12% of people from a porn site used a variation of a biblical term as their password.

No other sites came close to the religious sites or porn site.

So, what do you think? Most people who like porn are sex-deprived Christians? People at porn sites choose biblical passwords out of guilt? Huge coincidence?

55

General Discussion / Own it!

« on: November 05, 2010, 12:26:38 am »

Not really work safe: http://www.tynanfox.com/the-fox-den/2010/10/own-it.html

It's basically a short blog post about somebody who wrote "FAG" on the window of a gay-owned business. Rather than taking it negatively, they decided to offer a 15% discount for anybody who takes a picture in front of it. It's a form of Reappropriation, and I find it hilarious.

56

General Discussion / Improve traffic: remove signs?

« on: November 02, 2010, 04:15:55 pm »

http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?aid=1234

Really good story that puts into words something I've been thinking for awhile. My favourite quote it, “When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots” -- and that's really the case, whether it's driving, IT, etc.

57

General Discussion / This just in: God hates figs!

« on: October 30, 2010, 01:36:18 pm »

Mark 11:12-14:

[12]The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. [13]Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. [14]Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it.

I still find it funny how people can find random passages in the bible and hold them as gospel truth, while managing to completely ignore others.

58

General Discussion / Alpacas kick ass!

« on: October 24, 2010, 10:57:31 pm »

So, me and my friend went camping this weekend, and on the way our GPS led us down a bunch of weird back roads. On one, we saw a sign that said, "Alpaca Farm -->". Naturally, we had to turn off and find it. We got there, and there was a pen with probably 40 of them wandering around. We got out of the car and they all came to see us. They looked amazing, and they were so curious and cute. They all had different poofy hair and everything. I loved it! Here's a picture I took:
http://plixi.com/p/52449900

Eventually, the lady who runs the farm saw us and came out. She offered to take us around and show us the whole operation. She told us all about alpacas, how smart they are, how they have babies, etc etc. It was really cool!

Although I don't really agree with keeping animals in pens and using them for fur (or anything else), they're still super amazing animals!

59

General Discussion / Google's "it gets better" video

« on: October 20, 2010, 04:41:51 pm »

Sort of about homosexuality at Google. Pretty cool: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/20/it-gets-better-video-1.html

60

General Discussion / When you're in prison...

« on: October 16, 2010, 10:11:42 am »

When you're in prison, don't turn the other way
Keep your back against the wall
When you're in prison, don't turn the other way
Do not bend at all

.. err, sorry, that's an Offspring song. What I really meant to post was this:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=136858

A really interesting read, written by somebody who was in prison for two years for armed robbery. It's about his experiences, the drugs, the killing, and all the other crap that went down. I'd take the whole thing with a grain of salt, because it was originally posted on 99chan, but it's still a great read.