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bitstream (6144)

bitstream
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Journal of bitstream (6144)

The Fine Print: The following are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Thursday May 12, 16
02:06 AM
Code

The soylentnews.org front page looks like when logged out. But whenever one reads an article everything becomes normal. But still shows the logout version on the front page, even if the internal state is not so.

Tuesday May 03, 16
08:07 PM
Science

Health watchdogs has approved a groundbreaking trial to test if it is possible to regenerate the brains of (brain) dead people.
The biotech company BioQuark in the USA got ethical permission to use 20 patients who have been declared clinically dead from a traumatic brain injury, to test if parts of their central nervous system can be brought back to life. A combination of therapies will be used, which include injecting the brain with stem cells and a cocktail of peptides, as well as deploying lasers and nerve stimulation techniques which have been shown to bring patients out of comas. The trial participants have been certified dead and only kept alive through life support. They will be monitored for several months using brain imaging equipment to look for signs of regeneration, particularly in the upper spinal cord -- the lowest region of the brain stem which controls independent breathing and heartbeat.

If they succeed, they will have open a box of a lot of interesting questions.

07:16 PM
Science

Introducing the disposable laser: Ultra-low-cost, easy to fabricate 'lasing capsules' made with inkjet printer

Researchers from France at the Center of Microelectronics in Provence at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne in France and in Hungary have invented a way to print cheap and disposable lasers using organic carbon containing materials. That are easy to fabricate.

Inorganic lasers, are used in laser pointers, DVD players, and optical mice. Organic lasers offer benefits such as high-yield photonic conversion, easy fabrication, low-cost and a wide range of wavelengths. They do however degrade relatively quickly.

The disposable part of the new laser is the printed gain medium. And a proposed use is analyzing chemical and biological samples.

Monday May 02, 16
09:22 AM
Code

I saw the time reference "11:00am (UTC+2)" elsewhere at this site. It's unnecessarily convoluted and increases the risk of confusion. Instead use a format like this:

UTC 09:00

Clear timezone and 24 hour format without uncertainties or anything open to interpretation.

08:15 AM
Security

This world is putting more carbon into the atmosphere than in the last 66 million years and at a faster rate than in that period 66 million years ago.

There's a new study to which James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, says that the impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned. The research invokes collapsing ice sheets, violent megastorms and even the hurling of boulders by giant waves in its quest to suggest that even 2 ⁰C of global warming above pre-industrial levels would be way too much. Hansen has called it the most important work he has ever done. Hansen says "I think almost everybody who is really familiar with both paleo and modern is now very concerned that we are approaching, if we have not passed, the points at which we have locked in really big changes for young people and future generations,".

The problem here is positive feedback loops. Like increased temperature causes permafrost regions to release methane which makes the temperature higher, repeat Ad infinitum of which the future generations will likely feel as Ad nauseam.

But don't worry, the future will at least not be boring.. !

Wednesday April 20, 16
07:12 PM
Nexuses

Utah Governor Gary Herbert said on his "GovGaryHerbert" Facebook page that "Pornography is a public health crisis. The problem is rampant, yet it thrives in secrecy and silence." He emitted this thought on signing a resolution which says porn is "a public health hazard leading to a broad spectrum of individual and public health impacts and societal harms." In addition, it "perpetuates a sexually toxic environment." The resolution goes on to say "due to advances in technology and the universal availability of the Internet, young children are exposed to what used to be referred to as hard core, but is now considered mainstream, pornography at an alarming rate." The resolution states that pornography "equates violence toward women and children with sex and pain with pleasure, which increases the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse images, and child pornography." The resolution requests that "the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of our state and nation." In the words of Gov. Gary Herbert, "Today's bills will start an open discussion."

It sure will start an discussion, perhaps there's more to it than the small corridors of power can muster?

SJWs and a rigged dating market populated by stressed out people perhaps makes people choose porn as the most resource efficient choice? No social sniping, legal risks, infections, endless stream of bills, time consumption and more stress?

The consumerist notice that states “that have enacted conservative legislation on sexuality.” consume more porn. The average consumption is the same. Other finds are that adult escort sites are more popular in “blue” states while visitors from the “red” states are more likely to visit wife-swapping sites, adult webcams, and sites about voyeurism. When porn was legalized in Denmark in the 1970s, rape went down significantly. Later studies have shown that the places with the most and best internet connections have the lowest number of rape cases.

Societal and political mental blocks also makes porn the most valuable but not the best source of information on the issue of feeling, love and sex? because depictions of healthy, well-adjusted sexuality are banned from general media way too often. While violence and death is just fine. And thus the systematic bias continues to implement the law of unintended consequences.

Resolutions are way less likely to happen on issues like GMO, unsound foreign entanglements, dogma schooling, pharma deception, financial robbery, depletion of aquifers, junk food.. even in schools, poor educational opportunities, personal freedom restraint, pollution of life-essential resources etc. So perhaps someone just needed to engage peoples emotions to keep themselves relevant with or without intention.

Saturday April 16, 16
08:30 PM
Nexuses

When surrounded by a majority of people that act irrational, lack imagination and are content with sitting in a mental pool of mud. One can have the viewpoint that It's up to everyone what they want to be, but when these people are in numbers and in various positions to mess up things repeatedly, mostly because their own incapability, there's consequences. So what is an efficient way to handle this quite universal phenomena? So they are marginalized in ones own life but still available in other aspects. These people will however always be in majority because that is how probability distribution works.

Ignorance is a bliss but when the mental sharpness will see through the monkey business consistently, one has to figure out something else.

Monday April 11, 16
05:23 PM
Career & Education

Why Facebook is a religion. It integrates with your society in many ways, like a power web you can't really shake off (ingrained). There's requirement for believers to logon and confess and be shamed for any imperfection so they can feel bad (confession and shame). Any non-believers will be seen as odd or shunned (obligatory). Money is demanded in various way of which spam is one (offertory). Priests make arbitrary decisions and keep books on you (herd masters and registration). You have to be a repeat customer to be in the loop (presence enforcement). Etc..

Modern population control enforced by social circles and HR.

Friday April 01, 16
12:13 AM
Soylent

All this flickering stuff turned on somewhere the last 2 hours just makes the reading the site much harder. Please fix this!
And the colors doesn't make it easier either.

Thursday March 24, 16
07:00 AM
Security

According to some sources, now also this camera recording central for CCTV can be taken over easily (p0wn3d):
Remote Code Execution in CCTV-DVR affecting over 70 different vendors
So next time you pass some border wink to the hackers:
Bulgarian Government border control buys the vulnerable Chinese TVT system

The devices you buy even refuse your direct orders:
The stubborn Foscam FI9286P refuses to drop the phone-home. Unless you apply a firmware update plus an additional patch and re-configuration.

And you probably read about "smart-tv", consoles, bios "checks", telemetry in w10, router advert injection hello Belkin, etc. It's all spy on you without real consent.

So I think one can draw some conclusions:
  * Manufacturers can't be trusted on either ability to secure or objective to care for customers
  * Devices will do phone-home by instruction
  * Code quality is so bad it will be hacked eventually
  * Security updates won't happen

So make sure all devices you take ownership of are prevented from any RF links and from unfiltered wired network. Or that you have documentation and the ability to put your own firmware on the device.
Thus if the device isn't friendly for hacking. Avoid it. You won't have any idea what stinking code that exists inside the device.

Any thoughts on this? especially on the options of putting your own firmware on devices and generally doing a good choice of modifiable devices? IoT are useful, you just have to be in control.