Stever's blog

The fall of the United States

The accounting in state and federal governments today is so cooked, it would make Enron blush. The politician’s general strategy is to basically postpone the problem to a later date. The problem with this philosophy is that when you blow up, you tend to blow up BIG. There is so much off-balance-sheet debt on our state government’s books, it’s not even funny. This is beyond being disingenuous, it’s outright fraud. The world’s economic climate will crash to the point where we probably won’t be using dollars as a form currency.

Can you imagine the repercussions of this? The federal government could theoretically become irrelevant overnight! They could no longer pay for the military because people wouldn’t accept dollars as
payment.

Weird. . .

McDonald’s

I’ll say it once, and I’ll say it again. The best place to hack is from a McDonalds. They’re everywhere, there is free wifi, and with Tor you pretty much have anonymous access. There’s also plenty of space to lay out your stuff, it’s relatively quiet (compared to starbucks) and the workers will generally leave you alone. Apparently, the one in Agoura Hills has a couch and a couple of comfortable couchy seats in it.

nice.

The Village Venus Effect

There is a human phenomenon called “Village Venus” effect. Meaning if you live in a small town, the prettiest girl in the town is essentially the prettiest girl in the world as far as you’re concerned only because you’ve never seen anyone prettier. Likewise in science, if we have a theory about how something works and we can’t imagine any other theory, then we are convinced that we are right.

The Ptolemaic (earth-centered) view of the universe could accurately predict the movement of the planets, even though it was flawed perception. It took a Copernicus to change the way we look at the model to get even more accurate. But the earth-center way of looking at thing persisted for a very long time, even though the other theory could explain the facts better.

If someone were to ask me how we all got here, I’d say “evolution”. There is much scientific evidence supporting evolution (and then some. . .). But as a die-hard skeptic, I realize that the village venus effect might be taking place here, which makes me think that the theory may eventually be proven wrong. Just remember, newtonian physics looked perfect until Einstein came along!

Good science, in my opinion, should spend more time looking at alternatives theories – even if the present ones seem perfectly adequate. One of my criticisms of science is that it is a bit weak on the perceptual side of things. It is all too easy to reason correctly from the wrong premises.

Racist disney cartoons

Does anyone here think that in 50 years, we’re going to be looking at this in the same way we look at racist disney cartoons of the ’30′s and ’40′s?

Pathetic. . .

Medical marijuana card

Last week, I had to renew my medical marijuana card and the damn receptionist refused to service me! I don’t know what the fuck I said to make her do this. My guess was that it was my general demeanor.

Here’s my side of the story: it was the second weekend in a row where I went to this office for a 2:00 appointment. . . and they make me wait 45 minutes. I had stuff to do afterwards that couldn’t wait. And they couldn’t tell me when I was going to be serviced either. And by the looks of the overcrowded waiting room, the dumbass receptionist probably overbooked the appointments (again. . .). Look, I’m busy, I don’t have time for this nonsense, so I told her. The people in the waiting room started laughing. Looking back, I guess it was a bit rude. I think the straw that broke the camels back was when I demanded guaranteed service for a higher price – like at the post office.

Anyway, I’m going to a place by my work instead. They’re new so I probably won’t have to wait in line forever.

Work

dude, I just checked my orders online since I left work at 6. A bunch came in. This thing is starting to get out of hand. . .

Serendipity

The classic model of breakthrough discoveries is a lot like Columbus’ discovery of america. Columbus searched for something he knew (india) and ended up finding something that didn’t know (america). Such is serendipity. It’s not so much moving in the same direction as everyone else, it’s more about purposely going in a different direction than everyone else and seeing what you find. It’s all about being a fool in the right places.

Perhaps a computer program that mines facebook data that sends you messages about serendipitous events?

Hacking Tutorial ebook – Metasploit Unleashed epub

I’ve been experimenting with metasploit lately and I’ve been amazed at how far some of these hacking tools have progressed. This hacking framework is very very elegant. In order to fully utilize the program, though, you need to learn assembler so for that I recommend Dr Carter’s PC Assembly Language PDF. I’m about a third of the way through it, but it’s a pretty good lowdown on assembler. And it’s free.

Anyway, there is a website called “Metasploit Unleashed” that teaches the basics of the framework. I went through the whole tutorial and it’s very good. The navigation on the website was a bit annoying, though. And sometimes I’m out and about and it’s convenient to read on my kindle, so I created an epub/mobi version of the website. It’s the exact same content, just repackaged in the ebook format. And, of course, the authors are credited in the metadata for the book. Anyway, if you want to download it yourself, get it here:
Metasploit Unleashed epub
Metasploit Unleashed mobi

If there are errors in the book somehow, and you want to submit a patch, this is the github webpage: https://github.com/modelprinting/Metasploit-Unleashed-ebook

Any hackers out there that found this useful, please give me a shout-out.

atheists

Nothing bothers me more than the atheist who comments on the lack of scientific rigor of a particular religious belief but then listens to his stock broker.

Happy 2011

Happy 2011 everyone, let’s hope this year will be a good one.

My new years resolution: increase serendipity. My strategy. . . pull a random noun out of the dictionary and do a task related to it. Or cross fertilize it with a task you want to do, then see where it leads. The purpose isn’t to be “right”. It is sometimes necessary to go through a wrong area in order to get to a position where the correct stepping stone is visible. It’s about movement rather than judgment.

This will fail 95% of the time, but it can lead to breakthroughs and new possibilities.