Recent Articles

State of the Gato Address for 2017

Posted 22 Jun 2017 at 19:36 UTC by robogato

It has been 18 years since Raph created Advogato; ten years since I took over hosting and last posted a State of the Gato Address; and six years since there was any development work on the mod_virgule codebase. The server Advogato is running on is around 15 years old and will be decommissioned in a few days. Active users have dwindled into the single digits. Most have moved on to more modern social networking sites. It's been a good run but it's time to say goodbye. The trust metrics updater and blog aggregator have been turned off and the site will go into read-only mode today. Don't worry though, the content will be preserved. I've spoken with Mark Graham at the Internet Archive and the entire content of Advogato is being copied into their archive where it will be permanently accessible.

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Mentifex Urges Chinese UW Students to Overthrow Xi Jinping

Posted 4 Jun 2017 at 12:46 UTC by mentifex

Today on June 4th we pause to remember the hundreds of young Chinese victims of the bloody Tiananmen Massacre and to plot the overthrow of the evil and incompetent Chinese government by converting Chinese students at the University of Washington into a network of technically sophisticated spies working together to bring freedom and democracy to China and America.

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Keyboard logging on Hewlett-Packard laptops

Posted 14 May 2017 at 10:28 UTC by lloydwood

The Conexant audio driver on Windows HP laptops secretly logs every keystroke to disk. This is a large security hole.

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PROCLAMATION: June 14th is National Sexual Predator Day

Posted 21 Apr 2017 at 19:42 UTC by mentifex

WHEREAS: Donald J. Trump has a birthday on June 14th.

WHEREAS: Donald J. Trump has sexually assaulted many women.

NOW THEREFORE, WE THE SHEEPLE OF THE UNITED STATES DO HEREBY PROCLAIM JUNE 14th OF EVERY YEAR AS NATIONAL SEXUAL PREDATOR DAY IN HONOR OF THAT GREAT AMERICAN SEXUAL PREDATOR DONALD J. TRUMP.

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New Book on Methodological Naturalism in Science

Posted 25 Feb 2017 at 01:25 UTC by johnnyb

I just published a book titled Naturalism and Its Alternatives in Scientific Methodologies which deals with whether Methodological Naturalism is helpful or hurtful to science, what alternatives could be used, and what the benefits and problems of those approaches might be. The book also ended with a chapter on some fields which are already benefitting from alternatives to methodological naturalism.

This book is based on a conference, the videos of which you can view here.

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Mentifex on Trump Ponzi Madoff Vesco Bilko

Posted 25 Nov 2016 at 17:03 UTC (updated 25 Nov 2016 at 17:04 UTC) by mentifex

The greatest scam artists of all time are listed below in their latest new rankings based on the sheer grandiosity and jaw-dropping audacity of their larger-than-life swindles, defraudings, embezzlements, and downright scams.

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How I first heard the News that Theranos bottomed-up?

Posted 19 Oct 2016 at 14:40 UTC (updated 19 Oct 2016 at 15:50 UTC) by sye

It was from This post on Chinese site sciencenet.cn

Then I read two reports by Nick Bilton of Vanity Fair: " HOW I GOT TO THE BOTTOM OF THE THERANOS MESS: - What I learned while reporting on Elizabeth Holmes and her company."
BY NICK BILTON SEPTEMBER 20, 2016. and this other exclusive report.

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Guess who this GNU is?

Posted 3 Aug 2016 at 19:03 UTC by sye

" Can your friends guess who this GNU is? One of the possible designer T-shirt for the EOMA68 libre hardware Crowd Supply campaign going on. It is inspired by a real-life person who now lives in Russia. I would like for people to guess who it is. And don’t give out any more hints! "

guess-who

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Building Scalable Web Applications Using the Cloud

Posted 10 Jun 2016 at 20:04 UTC by johnnyb

Excited that my new book is #1 on some of Amazon's "Hot New Release" lists. Check it out here - Building Scalable Web Applications Using the Cloud. If you ever wanted to get into cloud programming but didn't know where to start or how to use it effectively this is your book.

Some people think that cloud programming comes automatically by buying a cloud server. Not so much. This books gives you a bare-bones walkthrough of the things that you need to not only build your app in the cloud but make it scalable as well.

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The Wreck of the Edmund Kuro5hin

Posted 3 May 2016 at 15:45 UTC by badvogato

The legend lives on from trolltalk on down
Of the big net they call Intar Webby
The net, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the posts of October turn gloomy.
With a load of whiny diaries - 26,000 tons more
Than the Edmund Kuro5hin weighed empty
That good site and true was a bone to be chewed
When the trolls of October came early

The ship was the pride of the USian side
Coming back from some server in Wisconson
As the big Scoop sites go it was bigger than most
With a crew and the Captain well seasoned.

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Corporation can't have both ways

Posted 10 Feb 2016 at 22:56 UTC by badvogato

Corporations and their BIG brother Uncle Sam can't have it both ways. Trumpeting Open Source Innovation on one hand and heavy handed prosecution with 'trade secret' without IBM's comment on the the other hand.

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A New Book Introducing Programming

Posted 28 Jan 2016 at 22:18 UTC by johnnyb

My new programming book, New Programmers Start Here, just came out today! I'm very excited to get this in the hands of new programmers.

This book tries to be a "pull up by your bootstraps" guide to programming. It introduces more than just the language (JavaScript in this case) by taking the reader through how all of the pieces of data on a computer connect together, and how the computer itself works. I believe that this is the best first-programming book for new programmers.

If you have friends who are designers who want to start transitioning to programming, they should pick up this book. If you have young friends who want to get into programming, they should pick up this book.

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The Nine Billion Names of God

Posted 8 Dec 2015 at 21:01 UTC by ringbark

In 1953, Arthur C Clarke wrote a short story in which monks were proposing to automate the listing of the names of God, believed by them to be around nine billion. How would we get on doing this?

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so I heard GNU turns 30 !

Posted 19 Sep 2015 at 15:06 UTC by badvogato

From CSvax:pur-ee:inuxc!ixn5c!ihnp4!houxm!mhuxi!eagle!mit-vax!mit-eddie!RMS@MIT-OZ
From: RMS%MIT-OZ@mit-eddie
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.usoft
Subject: new Unix implementation
Date: Tue, 27-Sep-83 12:35:59 EST
Organization: MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA

Free Unix!

Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete
Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix), and
give it away free(1) to everyone who can use it.
Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly
needed.

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Progress on Internet Child Pornography

Posted 17 Sep 2015 at 18:29 UTC by MichaelCrawford

I aim to Solve what I at first called, then referred to but now denote as The Software Problem:

Software failure is fundamentally a human problem, not a technical one.

Purely technical solutions fail to effect truly meaningful and lasting change.

A common - but commonly ineffective non-technical Solution to the Deadly Sin of Greed is the arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of the greedy. The progress I report herein aims not to imprison anyone rather to spare the many victims of Child Sexual Predators. While I do expect vast quantities of prosecutions to result from my FBI/IC3 report, I hope to "Break The Cycle", in that many child sexual predators are themselves the adult survivors of incest and child molestation.

I am one such adult survivor, my abuser - in the common parlance - hoped to "train" me to accept my fate by leaving kiddieporn lying around in my plain sight. While my widely-known Madness resulted, that I was so-trained leads to my present focus on the development of Technical Measures, not to so elminate Child Sexual Exploitation rather to take the money out of it.

Adults - even teenagers - have sexually-abused children since the Dawn of Humanity; my own work is unlikely to eliminate it.

But at least I can lead the Venture Capital community to make wiser choices as to which web startups they fund.

To Wit:

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Is There a Mandatory Reporter in the House?

Posted 27 Aug 2015 at 04:00 UTC by goingware

I haven't had a whole lot of luck getting anyone at Adult Protective Services to respond. I received just one email to say that a social worker would call me on the phone to handle my mother's APS intake, but after I responded that I was out of minutes and so must do it via email, I haven't heard back from them.

From time to time a Mandatory Reporter will agree with me that they are obligated to file a Mandatory Report. I expect that's what Mandatory Reporters are for: to agree that they would be imprisoned were they not to file.

Oddly those Mandatory Reports are never filed yet the Mandatory Reporters are never prosecuted.

Just now I quite bluntly confronted my mother regarding my father's murder. She administered at least six caplets of Extra Strength Tylenol per day - quite likely more than six - for at least two years, perhaps three, as Tylenol was modestly effective for Dad's Shingles, which later progressed into Neuralgia.

This despite that he had Hepatitis twice during his life from eating tainted shellfish.

When Dad's doctor ordered a CAT Scan of his liver to determine whether the hardened lump in it could be cancer or just Cirhosis, Mom flatly refused to permit it "Because his insurance doesn't cover CAT scans".

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SECURITY ADVISORY: Please Block favicon.ico in Your Firewall

Posted 18 Aug 2015 at 06:39 UTC by MichaelCrawford

Even if you don't use a firewall you might use a non-filtering proxy. If so you might be able to filter just "/favicon.ico" from every web site.

I discovered a Zero-Day in the wild this morning. It exploits your browser, quite possibly your entire system through the favicon.ico that is placed at the root directory of many web sites:

http://www.example.com/favicon.ico


It is already public knowledge that neither Chrome nor Firefox place size file size on favicons, thus a very large one - even a standards-compliant graphic document - could crash your browser, possibly crash your computer by running it completely out of virtual memory (ie. swap space). Large favicons exploit dialup modem users via the Denial Of Service that results from downloading a very large file without the end-users knowledge or permission.

I am already developing a Firefox and Chrome Add-Ons as well as Safari and Internet Explorer Plug-Ins that will block all favicons in their initial releases; later versions will user a separate process - a sandbox - to validate the document format of each favicon.ico, render its pixels in a memory buffer then display the now-safe image in the browser's address bar.

My Add-Ons and Plug-Ins will warn the user of invalid documents and display Message Boxes - Alerts - if the favicon.ico document actually does contain a Virus, Trojan Horse or Worm.

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Malicious Slanders and Censures are Poison: Answer to Del

Posted 14 Aug 2015 at 19:12 UTC by MichaelCrawford

... a man is needed, who is ready, as Christ taught,
to be poor, wretched, thirsty, hungry,
and to suffer all kinds of persecution, reviling and defamation.

Jonathan Swift
jon@soggywizards.com

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Revised Friday, August 14, 2015

So crawford, so predictable. I bet there are dozens of 911 not an emergency phone calls to go along with this.

What boggles the mind is how the system fails time and time again
to keep the crawc0ck locked up and medicated.

-- Del Griffith

Creative Commons License
Malicious Slanders and Censures
are Poison: Answer to Del
by Jonathan Swift is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives
4.0 International License
.

In reality, despite my most-diligent, at times desperate effort it is Damn near impossible to pry my medicine out of the hands of all but a very few mental health and medical professionals. To the extent I get any medicine at all - even just a little bit - I quite commonly find that medicine sickens me, that I am allergic to it, that it works well at first but after some time stops working so we must work together to find another - my options are running out - frequently that my new medicine fails to yield joy of any sort.

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the Unique Game Conjecture etc...

Posted 11 Aug 2015 at 18:30 UTC (updated 11 Aug 2015 at 19:03 UTC) by badvogato


Then there were the cookies. One time, inside a local bakery, Knot was surprised to find that three 33-cent cookies were being sold for a dollar. While it didn’t prevent him from buying the cookies, he said, “even if it’s one cent, it seems off.”

"three 33-cent cookies were being sold for a dollar" is more correct than 99 cents. And here's my argument:

For a kid, who really wanted to eat 3 cookies and whose mother saw the price per unit gave him 1 dollar. A smart kid can eat cookie at a time and pay 1 more after he finished one and save one cent by the end of day. An impatient kid WILL pay 1 dollar for 3 cookies to show off his cookies to other envious neighborhood kid.

THAT IS a more ideal pricing, for each according to their need and their want. Also, if I have 3 cookies in a jar, if you get all three from me, that jar's value for holding cookie is depleted when no new cookies are made for the jar.

Be it cookies in a jar or jobless/homeless people look for work and housing. Division of labor, Division of tools one must have to bring fruit for one's labor, Division of grace from a higher order, how economic professors figure all THAT out without living thru it for good and bad time themselves?

penny for your thought? btw, hearty congratulation to Knot as the newest recipient of Nevanlinna Prize

Also support advogato master lkcl 's rhombus-tech with his concern and add your cents to his community of ideas

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HOWTO think about deep mind without going postal?

Posted 7 Aug 2015 at 21:29 UTC (updated 7 Aug 2015 at 23:29 UTC) by badvogato

Devil's in the details. who really use Lunatic Python ?

also, I came across this old entry that belonged to my 'banned' acct on jiaoyou8.com:

Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois
By Dudley Randall

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?"

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook,
Some men rejoice in skill of hand,
And some in cultivating land,
But there are others who maintain
The right to cultivate the brain."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"That all you folks have missed the boat
Who shout about the right to vote,
And spend vain days and sleepless nights
In uproar over civil rights.
Just keep your mouths shut, do not grouse,
But work, and save, and buy a house."

"I don't agree," said W.E.B.
"For what can property avail
If dignity and justice fail?
Unless you help to make the laws,
They'll steal your house with trumped-up clause.
A rope's as tight, a fire as hot,
No matter how much cash you've got.
Speak soft, and try your little plan,
But as for me, I'll be a man."

"It seems to me," said Booker T.--

"I don't agree,"
Said W.E.B.

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