this is more audio scribbles. the volumes are utterly fucked, everything is too loud and the compressor is freaking out throughout it. this is what happens when i’m excited while mixing

preteen (?) – tusk.mp3

Much like early websites, built by enthusiasts (in all the negative connotations of this word), our current approach to distributing information about us has very little security precautions. This is partly because we don’t really understand the scope of our actions, partly because what we’re writing is free content for the social media sites: the more we write and the more people read it, the higher the value of their website.

This isn’t an attack on any specific protocol, site, or network, though I will discuss a few, but rather a talk in the general about our attitude. I realize I’m writing this 1 day after the launch of Google Buzz, but all of these vulnerabilities existed previously as well, Google ubiquity and attempt to centralize all of it makes it more obvious.

One great example of trust is the hash tag mechanism on Twitter. Companies are using hash tags to foster conversation about themselves without any thought about the lack of moderation in the medium. A corporation that would instantly file a cease and desist against a website that in official looking type made claims in it’s name, is more than happy to lend legitimacy to “its” hash tag by having reps post it to it from their twitter account. This creates a trusted space with absolutely no access control as anyone can post using with any hash tag.

If an attacker waits for this company name hash tag to achieve legitimacy and a crowd of followers, all she has to do is to push enough posts quickly enough to cause a (pardon) buzz and an instant bad press rumor is launched. There are plenty of forums that can (and off the top of my head 4chan, digg, and reddit have) push enough posts to create a trending rumor out of the blue, especially as the retweets from confused readers begin and take over the process. Since Twitter provides an API, this could also be done by a bored single person who created a few thousand accounts for himself with a capcha breaker and can write scripts. By endorsing these open hash tags, companies are basically giving the world at large the ability to speak in their voice.

Companies also have taken to displaying screens with their hash tags displayed as scrolling searches in their lobbies (or in one case in San Diego, on a large TV behind the bar). The lack of moderation means that anyone can post ads for their competitors, or simply embarrassing content in order to hurt the brand name. There is no way to stop this content from being posted to the hash tag, and short of closing the feed, no way to remove it. Some of the software goes as far as displaying images inline, ways to prank this are left as an exercise for the readers.

On the complete opposite side of this target space be personal social media attacks. A casual glance at facebook, twitter, and buzz feeds shows that we treat these websites like personal conversation tools, not billboards for all to see. Things that we’d never plaster over our house, like “I’ll be gone on vacation for 7 days so no one is home”, we’re more then happy to put online on a site that also has our address. We fight like mad against the invasive nature of omnipresent cameras while tweeting our exact location every 30 minutes in order to get Foursquare points, with absolutely no sensation of irony.

Google Buzz, which by default appends map information if posting by phone, makes this even more obvious. A chatty person involved in a back and forth might leave a complete trail of where they were at near constant intervals in their day. While I grant that this lack of privacy is not catastrophic in and of itself, a criminal with a smart phone and access to the “local buzzes” feature would be able to have up to the minute reports of who is where, who just went to the atm, who is bringing home a new expensive TV (and where exactly are they plugging it in), and with a trip to the airport, a constant feed of people excited to be going away for a few days.

The last in particular highlights that we have not reached the point that caused the tip towards security on the net: automation of attacks enough to let every Joe the Script Kiddy do harm. Currently an attacker would have to go to the airport, set up a laptop, pull buzzes of people leaving or arriving, compare it to their previous buzzes and figure out their home address. However, all of the above can be converted into a simple application which performs all these steps in a few seconds, something which we’ll playfully call iBurglar. Once it’s an easy to use app, available for download, is the point where we might start to see action from the social media websites.

We also do not realize how permanent the things we write on these website are and how trivial searching them has become. A search on social sites for phrases related to drug use (try 420) shows people more than happy to discuss illegal actions in criminally implicating ways. And this time, unlike phone or txt messages, we can’t even begin to claim an expectation of privacy, we are literally posting it for everyone to see. There was recently a news story about a bail-hopper who was caught because cops recognized the resort in the background of his new Facebook profile photo. This didn’t even require a warrant, it was a public photo.

It’s easy to dismiss examples like that, and all the previous ones, as the fault of the users, but users assume privacy and assume good intention. Currently the social media is a giant space completely open to attack, and our current open-by-default approach is not sustainable. It is the responsibility of social media designers to create mediums that steer users into safe behaviors and quite literally to protect them from themselves, while at the same time balancing the needs of their shareholders and advertisers. It’s an interesting future, no doubt.

along the ways i ran into a single quote from the 70s that completely stopped me.

“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim” – Edsger Dijkstra

in one sentence it summarized for me that “thinking computer” is a just a language illusion. it’s not real and it will never be real.

a computer will never think in the same way a submarine will never swim. swimming is what living things do, a submarine instead ‘propels itself through water’. a computer will never ‘think’, it will ‘perform computations in order to arrive at conclusions’. which, guess what, they already do and have been for ages.

for people to agree that a machine is a “thinking computer” would be one that can feature a display of a pleasant cartoonish face that, when computing, would furrow it’s brow and make “hmm” noises. while an interesting task and a cognitive/behavioral challenge, it’s not a computer science problem.

the better goal i learned in compilers: we should be working to precisely define problem spaces where computers can help with decision making, and then writing better and more robust expert systems (by whatever buzzword they’re going by nowadays) that can read data about the situation, and suggest or perform actions in response. not as glamorous as ‘thinking’, but infinitely more useful.

1. power on
2. enter username and password
3. you will get between 0 and 4 warnings about hard drives being corrupt (long story), just hit ‘Ignore’ for now.
4. your screen will suddenly switch from normal to all messed up. to fix it back, click offscreen to the right and up and find the pull down menu option to switch to 1244×768 resolution. long story.
5. next, networking. the built in wireless doesn’t work (long story) so it uses a usb wireless. the one that this mac has is not mac compatible (long story) so it uses spoofed windows drivers. run USBWirelessUtility to connect. in case it ate it’s configuration, you might need to re-enter WPA2 key.
6. networking part 2: since the computer shares network to the xbox you will need to put in custom command line routing rules (long story). first do “killall nadt” and wait about a minute (long story). after “ps -au | grep nadt” shows it died, run “./nads”.
7. next, storage. there are four usb drives which all have full disk encryption. start Disk Utility and count the devices. they sometimes don’t come up correctly (long story) so if one doesn’t show up, figure out which one it is by disk size and power cycle it until it shows up.
8. now open TrueCrypt and arrange the drives in correct order by size (‘Restore Favorites’ won’t work, long story) and mount them one by one using each of their unique passwords (all 30ish characters) which when entered together in the right order make a verse from a polish song from the 90s.

and you’re done. if you’re feeling proactive you can reestablish smb connections to other machines, verify dropbox and simplifymedia are running correctly, and check for patches. if there are patches, cross your fingers that they won’t require a reboot.

• Welcome to the Jungle
• To the Jungle
• We Got Fun
• Fun and Games
• We Got Everything
• Everything You (i think this one is really great)
• Everything You Want
• We Know the Names
• Know the Names
• Money Honey
• In the Jungle
• The Jungle
• Bring You To Your Knees
• I Wanna Watch
• I Wanna Watch You
• I Wanna Watch You Bleed
• Watch You Bleed
• We Take It
• Take It Day by Day
• Day by Day
• It’s the Price
• Price You Pay
• Very Sexy Girl
• Hard to Please
• You Can Taste
• Taste the Bright Lights
• Bright Lights
• You Won’t Get Them
• Free In the Jungle
• My Serpentine (or)
• My Servant Teen (depends on who you ask as to what he’s actually saying)
• Hear You Scream
• You Scream
• It Gets Worse
• Worse Here Everyday
• Learn to Live
• Live Like an Animal
• Where We Play
• A Hunger
• A Hunger For What You See
• You Can Have Anything
• Anything You Want
• Take It From Me
• To Come Down
• So Down
• Jungle Baby
• Bring You Down
• Down, Yeah!

we often say things like “he knows he shouldn’t be up there” or “he knows he shouldn’t do that” after catching the cat sneaking into some place we don’t want him to be, and that word choice implies that the cat is doing something consciously immoral. however, it’s probably more accurate to say “he knows that if i see him up there i’ll forcibly remove him / squirt water at him”. the cat isn’t aware of the right/wrong of his actions, just that he needs to weight the pros and cons of this action against the risk of you getting out bed, walking over, and squirting him with water

btw, this is totally hypothetical and not at all related to loki waiting until i turn off the reading light before leaving the room and jumping up on the kitchen counter.

now, let’s turn that around. think of the phrase “dark mathematics”. doesn’t work, does it? the brain automatically goes “no, that’s stupid, mathematics is amoral, it’s how you use it”.

so why does magic have an inherent morality while mathematics doesn’t? what about other words?

• dark physics – no
• dark engineering – no
• dark science – maybe
• dark experiments – yes
• dark acts – very yes
• dark programming – lolno

so the rule appears to be “things that are understood as implying action are inherently moral, things that don’t, aren’t” even when the logic makes no sense (programming, after all, is in fact an action, ditto chemistry).

not really going anywhere with this one. i came up with the phrase “towers where adepts practice dark mathematics” while in the shower, thought it was hilarious, pondered why, and needed to write it down in over 140 characters.

- george washington was sterile. this made him a more popular choice for president since he couldn’t have a “dynasty”

- old testament jews practiced legal polygamy

- as part of the “not legal be gay in public”, people were arrested for having too long or too short hair, pretending to dance with someone of the same sex, and in one case, for being two men discussing opera.

- from the above, gender roles used to be enforced by the government

- for a period of time if an american woman married an asian she would have her citizenship revoked, and not gain the husbands. since asian men were never allowed to gain citizenship, the wives became effectively stateless

- from the above, marriage was and is used by the government as a punitive measure to enforce 2nd class status

- till 1975 federal government was not allowed to hire homosexuals for state posts

- the vatican is on record saying “Allowing children being adopted by gay couples would do violence to these children. Their condition of dependency would stunt their full human development”. this implies that in the eyes of the catholic church homosexuals are inferior and not ‘full humans’

one thing i did know but want to reiterate: it’s amazing how blatant it is that “protect” is a fake word. protect children, protect marriage. that word has a specific meaning: you ‘protect’ from evil, you ‘protect’ from criminals, you don’t ‘protect’ from learning about someone else who you respect and value as a fellow human being

it’s also very telling that prop 8, the anti-gays, are actively attempting to block the inclusion of pro-prop 8 ads, including ones they themselves wrote and shot. almost like they are ashamed of them (legally, speaking of course)

well, conceptual replacement anyways. nature is real.

kotek na p?otku, originally uploaded by miriku?.

also, testing flickr’s “blog this” functionality