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Hank001
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Post by Hank001 » Sun, 6. May 18, 19:31

Morkonan asked:
Would you side with Fonda or Bronson? !!
Hank of course, though Sergio was playing loose with rules dressing him in black and Chuck in white.

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Post by felter » Sat, 12. May 18, 17:35

So I'm playing a game and I want to find out how to do something, so I what most normal people do and google it. Low and behold there is a video that has in it's title, how to do such a thing. So of course I now spend the next 29 minutes watching said video to get my answer just top find out the video title was a lie, the video doesn't show what it says it shows. So I leave a comment warning people that the video's title is a lie and not to bother watching it if that's what you want to find out and I also drop a thumbs down along with a lot of others who have done the same the thumbs down is way higher than the thumbs up.

That was last night, today there is a reply from the video maker and boy was it nasty, He was cursing and swearing calling me all the vile names under the sun, to give you an example kind of, as I'm censoring it he finished with.

Welcome to my block button you F****** C***.

Of course I get the last laugh as my reply was welcome to my report button for harassment and bullying. He was a typical American where he seemed to think that he can say and do as he pleases and there will be no comeback. Where now at the very least he will have a mark against him on Youtube while it could also lead to him getting either a suspension or even a ban, and all of his videos being removed. Also any advertising on his channel could be removed.

I have had a few people disagree with my comments on Youtube but this is the first time someone has been so aggressive in their reply and it's stupid as it is them that pays for it in the end. I know that the American President is a pig online but that does not give them the right to be just like him.
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Post by Hank001 » Sat, 12. May 18, 18:02

felter observes:
I have had a few people disagree with my comments on Youtube but this is the first time someone has been so aggressive in their reply and it's stupid as it is them that pays for it in the end. I know that the American President is a pig online but that does not give them the right to be just like him.
That's becoming more and more common the online behavior now would in the past peg someone as a troll. Put it down to the phenomenon of being unable to resolve conlicts/direct challenges with any composure past giving in to the fight or flight reflex. Trumps on line conduct is also serving as a bad example I agree, but it's serving to exacerbate a deeper problem and with the general degradation of civility mades response to critiques like the one you cited more and more likely I'm afraid.

PM me with the question, I can probably find you the answer on the local gamer chatroom.
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Post by Morkonan » Sat, 12. May 18, 18:31

Alexa and Siri Can Hear This Hidden Command. You Can’t
Researchers can now send secret audio instructions undetectable to the human ear to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant...
So... It seems that some voice-controlled devices can be hacked, crossing the "air-gap" (An air-gap that is required for "sound") and instructing the devices just like the user can. Telling the device to connect to websites, send texts, email, take pictures, all without the human in the room being able to hear the commands being issued and their devices being hacked by commands embedded in a television commercial or song being played on a nearby television or radio.

Tinfoil hat stuff? No. This is a very real consequence of deploying technology that isn't fully understood and is pushed to market as quickly as possible because of the fierce competition in a very lucrative market.

Sure, it will probably be "fixed" and that avenue of attack won't be easily available anymore. But, what if it wasn't? One television commercial, maybe even innocently hijacked for malicious purposes by an audio-engineer during production, could end up with everyone's voice-command device who listened to it being turned into a zombie, fully under the control of a malicious third-party...

Extend the risk to other devices, other systems, that incorporate new voice-control technology for even broader risks.

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Post by Hank001 » Sat, 12. May 18, 18:56

Morkonan wrote:
Extend the risk to other devices, other systems, that incorporate new voice-control technology for even broader risks.
Even scarier. Why did companies like Amazon leave the sub/super audio sidebands open for such intrusions? This happened to be a topic I heard discussed last night. The device's hardware (At least Amazon's) circuitry was CREATED to include these bands when it would have decreased circuit complexities to have only had the devices recieve in the range of normal human hearing.
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Post by Morkonan » Sat, 12. May 18, 19:16

Hank001 wrote:Morkonan wrote:
Extend the risk to other devices, other systems, that incorporate new voice-control technology for even broader risks.
Even scarier. Why did companies like Amazon leave the sub/super audio sidebands open for such intrusions? This happened to be a topic I heard discussed last night. The device's hardware (At least Amazon's) circuitry was CREATED to include these bands when it would have decreased circuit complexities to have only had the devices recieve in the range of normal human hearing.

Ssshhh... We're not supposed to be talking about that where they can hear us... :)

How or why did they do that? Because... "User Convenience!" Ask any company why they did such a thing and they'll say "It's all in the best interests of our customers" and you'll be hard-pressed to falsify that statement to point out that they've purposefully built in an exploit that they can later leverage. That they haven't fully figured out how to leverage it, though, doesn't matter to them.

Every device that's been produced by anyone of note that uses any connected tech has features that are purpose-built to leverage its ability to collect information that can be used to make money. Some even have headline-articles when they're discovered, forcing companies to alter them, shut them off, or change their own user policies, but only when they're actually discovered by someone... "If they can't see it, it's not wrong!" :/

The rewriting of ethical standards in light of the Information Age revolution is appalling. But, it's accepted every day without anyone blinking. "A person's private life is free for the taking as soon as they decide to buy a product... " Who they know, where they go, what they do, what they buy, where they eat and work, the bank they use, the services they subscribe to, who lives with them, their age, sex, even what they look like; All of that is information that companies think they're entitled to because of a licensing agreement that nobody can read and understand.

One time, a man at a crossroads made a deal like that.

If we continue to accept these Faustian ethical standards, we are the ones that will pay the price for that, not Apple, Amazon, Google or anyone else who bases their monetization methods on exploiting their customers to the fullest.

But... "the money." :/

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Post by Hank001 » Sat, 12. May 18, 19:32

Morkonan: :D :thumb_up:

Think you nailed it.
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Post by red assassin » Sun, 13. May 18, 10:01

This is a well-known issue with neural networks referred to as "adversarial examples". https://blog.openai.com/adversarial-example-research/ You can generate a test input, observe how it's processed, permute it a little, repeat, and keep doing that until you arrive at some target destination. Because of the way neural networks work, it's very difficult to mitigate in the general case, though obviously it's an area of ongoing research.
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Post by Hank001 » Sun, 13. May 18, 17:53

Thanks for that link Red Assassin. I passed that on to the lab here that's covered with Siri guts. (Their wetwork AI is probably a bit corrupted by Saturday's graduation and follow on frollics.)

That example on the link reminded me of when people where using JPEG noise to covertly send text messages. Though in this case no doubt a graphic representation of the corruption pattern.
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Post by Tracker001 » Tue, 15. May 18, 06:41

Lets make (stack) the Periodic table with the physical elements themselves in order .

What if

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Post by Hank001 » Tue, 15. May 18, 07:44

Tracker said:
Lets make (stack) the Periodic table with the physical elements themselves in order .
Elements are kind of like people, the less noble ones don't make good neighbors.

(And as a former scope dope; Like your avatar. :D )
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Post by Morkonan » Tue, 15. May 18, 21:52

Tracker001 wrote:Lets make (stack) the Periodic table with the physical elements themselves in order .

What if
There's a great pop-sci book about a couple of chemists/physicists/scientists that did this. Sorry, can't remember the name, atm. :/ IIRC, they did it with a bit more style, though.

BTW, IIRC, it's very suspicious to go around buying a bunch of smoke-detectors in order to collect radioactive samples, ever since a kid decided to build his own breeder reactor I think. (He irradiated himself) Yup - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

Lolz... His house was declared a Superfund site. (That's basically an "OH HOLY @#@% LOOK AT THIS MESS" environmental "problem" so big no local agency or concern can clean it up without government assistance and intervention...)

But, at least he got his Merit Badge. :)

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Post by Hank001 » Wed, 16. May 18, 00:29

Morkonan noted:
But, at least he got his Merit Badge. :)
With americium 123? I didn't think you could get enough together to spit out a gamma ray. Plenty of alphas since that's what ionizes the smoke particles, maybe an occasional beta, but DAMN! Sounds like the kid was a bit of an an overachiever. Makes me wonder that he was into that caused the alcohol poisoning that did him in. Frat party or a distillation experiment gone wrong, or both? :(

(And I thought getting my electronics merit badge by making a 5watt transmitter out of household things 45 years ago was clever...JEEZ!)
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Post by Morkonan » Wed, 16. May 18, 01:16

Hank001 wrote:...Makes me wonder that he was into that caused the alcohol poisoning that did him in. Frat party or a distillation experiment gone wrong, or both? :( ..
IIRC, he had some psychological problems. He may have been one of those few that were geniuses when young, but slowly went made after puberty hits...

A different genius, this one a bit more well-adjusted: https://www.popsci.com/science/article/ ... yed-fusion

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Post by Hank001 » Wed, 16. May 18, 01:31

Morkonan said:
A different genius, this one a bit more well-adjusted..
I picked up from just the nature of the idea of slapping together a breeder reactor... well there's genius and then there's a kid thinking up something and partent or parents with no clue at all. The last example merged and reminded me of the time my kid bother and I got short on funds and though about making our own model rocket engines... Parental good sense prevailed. :D.
(Guess that is sort of why I'm still here to comment on it.)
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Post by Morkonan » Wed, 16. May 18, 05:17

Hank001 wrote:...my kid bother and I got short on funds and though about making our own model rocket engines... Parental good sense prevailed. :D.
(Guess that is sort of why I'm still here to comment on it.)
..

I did that.

:)

(No parental supervision whatsoever. I didn't know what that was.)

Back in the day, you could go to the drugstore and by chemicals. I'd ride my bike to the drugstore (it was a bit further than just a walk) and buy what I needed to make "homemade fireworks." I was pretty close to trying out my own "rocket fuel" too. Thankfully, that didn't happen. I did end up blowing a hole in a neighboring school's soccer field, though... That rocket would have made it pretty a good ways, too, if it hadn't blown up, first. (Maybe it did make it a pretty good way? Or part of it, at least.)

Later, I started buying store-bought rocket engines. Of course, I'd use them to launch explosive devices since, what's the point otherwise? I launched a cricket, once, though. He didn't seem too impressed. Probably went higher, further and faster than any of his friends... ungrateful little bug. :) I climbed a lot of back-yard fences chasing after rocket stages when I was a kid.

Anyway - All of this was thanks to an old chem formulae book my dad, an engineer, gave me. But, he wasn't around to supervise the results so... stuff got blow'd the heck up!

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Post by Hank001 » Wed, 16. May 18, 05:44

Morkonan said:
I did that.
Without much fear of a debate of MAC vs PC proportion (Because most but kids in our day would know the rivalry invovled.)

So I'll ask you. Estes or Centari?
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Post by Morkonan » Wed, 16. May 18, 05:51

Hank001 wrote:...So I'll ask you. Estes or Centari?
Estes. :)

I honestly don't recall "Centari" but it sounds familiar. But, Estes was everywhere so that's why I used when I needed a "standard" commercial engine size. Mostly C, sometimes D's if I had something big. (I believe that's how the size conventions went. Double letters in there,somewhere?)

I did figure out, somewhat, solid fuel motors. I was working on a liquid fueled motor... But, couldn't figure out how to control the valves. (Pin valves that were used for bicycle tires.) I do think the pharmacist would have sold me some industrial hydrogen peroxide, too... (He liked my enthusiasm, probably because he never witnessed the explosive results. :) )

PS - The key I had been missing was making a good clay nozzle for the engine. And, figuring out it wasn't how much fuel, but how it was shaped. I learned that after taking apart commercial motors.

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Post by Hank001 » Wed, 16. May 18, 06:17

Morkonan agreed:
Estes. :)
Centari actually had the market until mid 60's. Later Estes bought them out. Unitl mid 70's it was all mail order. Went into rocketry clubs in the Air Force. HP & alcohol engines, and there were prohibitions like no metal bodies and a cap of 2000 feet and single stage for home built. Went through Stage 5 at Huntsville and shortly afterward the military put the kibosh on all amateur rocketry (Late 80's. Too many accidents.) Here it's back in vogue.

Somewhere along the line I remember they regulated the D as the largest hobby engine and they started making them with an ejection charge only so you couldn't multi stage. C was the largest multi stage. I still see model rockets at Hobby Lobby, but when you've as many of the launches from Vandenberg as I have something about toys pale. (Mostly because you can't go out and grab monohydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide at the drug store) :D Just kidding.

https://www.estesrockets.com/
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Post by Morkonan » Wed, 16. May 18, 08:00

Hydrogen peroxide & diesel fuel/kerosene = fun times... until you burn your backyard down. (I was NOT a firebug! I just wanted to go into space... )

Chute ejection charges were on everything. But, that's because they had a clay plug... Work it right, remove the plug, and you had a shaped blast to set off the next stage without having to buy staged rockets. Didn't always work well, though. I sort of stopped in the 70's, but still liked to think about "what ifs."

Back in the days of the "Boxcar Kids" I had also had these: The Mad Scientists Club.

I am likely responsible for half the costs of rising insurance rates in the neighborhood I grew up in. I once tried to electrify the fences so I could create a really big radio something... I must explain - Back in those days, metal (aluminum) fencing was all connected. Everyone shared fenceposts, etc. The neighborhood's fences were all sort of connected. Well, islands of connection, anyway. No, I wasn't successful in electrifying all of them at once. Darnit.. And, the crystal radio I had clipped to it didn't get fried, either. Weird. (No, I don't know why I had a crystal radio clipped to it. Likely because that was "what I had" and a Mad Scientist uses what is at hand.) The fuses finally tripped, though.

AND, to add to "things that aren't deserving of another thread" by linking something not quite completely different, but different enough -

https://www.evilmadscientist.com/

Some cool shennanigans, there. Mad Scientists have come a long way.

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