Category Archives: Recommendations

Recommendations from around the web.

To Be or Not to Be an Activist

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Being an activist has never been easy. Even in the 21st century, the death sentence for speaking the wrong words can be delivered unexpectedly by those that happen to disagree for whatever reason. This happens despite millennia of social development, now culminating with a sharp rise in our ability to exercise the right for free speech thanks to the Internet.

Last month, just before UK’s referendum on whether or not they should stay in the European Union, a member of parliament was killed, probably because she was holding peaceful views in a country that is increasingly dominated by hate. Jo Cox was stabbed, shot, and then stabbed again, in a horrifying illustration of how the wrong politics and education have mutilated our society:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jo_Cox^

And, almost four months ago, Berta Cáceres, an activist that was militating for the rights of indigenous people was shot and killed in Honduras.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/03/americas/honduras-activist-berta-caceres-killed/^

No, being an activist has never been easy. Yet, some amazing people have not been deterred by the fatal risks. I am humbled and honored to know that I have lived among such courageous beings. These two women, along with countless others sisters and brothers throughout history, have led us out of savagery and hate.

I dream of a day when any man or woman can express their thoughts without fear of death. Even more, I dream of a day when everybody will care about what these driven individuals have to say. The most important thing that I believe we should all be aware of is that it is within our power to change our society’s course. Don’t let this blood be spilled without a change. Don’t let any more blood be spilled…

Updated 2016-07-20: today the news came out that another “inconvenient” person was murdered, this time in Ukraine. Rest in peace, Pavel Sheremet^.

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This Guy Talked to God

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At long last, finally there’s somebody in our current generation that managed to talk to God! It’s been some time since this last happened, but judging by what this person wrote, he may belong to a new generation of prophets. Or maybe he’s just a good writer. Here, judge for yourself:

http://www.fullmoon.nu/articles/art.php?id=tal^

There’s quite a lot of interesting reading on that philosopher’s website.

And in case his website ever goes down, I’ve saved the PDF and the text. You can find them at the links below:

www.mentatul.com/axup/Harry Stottle – Talking to God.docx^

www.mentatul.com/axup/Harry Stottle – Talking to God.pdf^

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All Your Computers Are Belong to Us

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In recent years, Intel has moved towards integrating some pretty nifty remote administration features into its CPUs. While this may be a good idea for certain enterprises, it may quickly turn into a nightmare as soon as exploits and vulnerabilities are found. And guess what^?

Software has bugs. Hey, it happens, everybody makes mistakes. But in this case, the mistakes can’t be corrected in time (before an attacker exploits them). That’s because, in typical monopolist corporation fashion, Intel is obscuring the process by not allowing the security community to analyze whatever code the company decides to shove into our machines. The same argument stands true regarding any proprietary code, especially Microsoft’s Windows, which after 20 years of fixes is still the most vulnerable mainstream operating system.

The following article describes the problem pretty well:

http://hackaday.com/2016/01/22/the-trouble-with-intels-management-engine/^

It’s probably only a matter of time until a clever attacker will compromise the company’s buggy code. Of course, Intel will eventually patch its security holes, but given that the company’s CPUs are used across the world in some pretty sensitive contexts, there’s no telling how much damage such attacks can cause.

As for us mortals, we are at risk of having our privacy compromised even by petty criminals. This is because there’s a large window of opportunity between the time when a security hole is found and the time that Intel moves to fix it for less prioritized customers.

And don’t even get me started on how governments across the world can (and probably will) force Intel’s hand into giving over political dissidents on a silver platter. Privacy? What privacy?

If you want to learn more, here’s another article on the same topic:

http://boingboing.net/2016/06/15/intel-x86-processors-ship-with.html^

I wrote this hot on the heels of a Dissected News piece about Cyber-Warfare^. There’s additional interesting information to be found there.

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The Overview Effect

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When we become aware of our planet’s fragility and beauty, a cognitive shift in awareness occurs. This short but emotional presentation shows what a few of those that went through the difficult training required to travel away from Earth have to say about The Overview Effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHMIfOecrlo^

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How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

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Let’s have a look at a very interesting article that shows how the choices we have in our daily life are limited and controlled. It’s written by a Design Ethicist at Google:

https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3^

In a nutshell, the article explains how our choices are constrained by poor design or clever manipulation techniques that aim to hide those options that are not favorable to certain commercial interests. Being aware that this happens is important knowledge. A quick fix is to always dig deeper and try to look beyond “what’s on the menu”.

Update: in 2017 I wrote a more detailed article^ on this same subject.

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The Uncertain Future of the Internet

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As one of the most, if not the most powerful force for change, the Internet’s future is a cause for concern. In the past decade, governments and corporations have increasingly encroached upon our freedom and privacy. These entities will use every possible excuse to rein-in the transformative power of the Internet.

As more people get connected, the Internet is becoming a mirror of our society. The good, the bad, the beautiful, the horrible, we can all find it online. Our society isn’t perfect. With such an educational system, who can even expect it to be? But regulatory bodies can now motivate various restrictions as being “for our own good”, this being one of the age-old excuses that our masters have used when trying to deprive us of something:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/345063-internet-mousetrap-shut-freedom/^

But here’s the good news. The Internet is still at its very beginning. The fifty or so years^ that have passed since the first research into packet switching might seem like a lot. But really, compared to other technologies that have been around for hundreds or thousands of years, it’s not. Here’s a good article driving this point home:

http://new.www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-kelly/the-internet-is-still-at-the-beginning_b_10321958.html^

We’re still in danger of governments depriving us^ of what is becoming our voice as a species (more than 40% of the world population is now online). Keep this in mind next time you read about efforts to protect the freedom and independence of the Internet.

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Cyber-Warfare is Scary

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When we read in the press about “hacking”, it’s mostly about software-based attacks. It may be about exploiting a vulnerability to reveal passwords or attacking an insecure computer. Then there’s the entire social-engineering aspect to it, which is basically hacking a person’s mind (can also be seen as a person’s software).

Cyber-warfare^ has been defined as “actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation’s computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption”. Serious confrontations are also going on between corporations, with industrial espionage being one of the main drivers. Unlike in real war, because a single individual can take on an entire nation through the use of clever hacking, the boundaries between these “size categories” are blurred.

In addition to the myriad ways a target can be hacked through software, there’s something far more insidious and dangerous that can happen. Hardware-based attacks:

https://www.wired.com/2016/06/demonically-clever-backdoor-hides-inside-computer-chip/^

What the article above explains is how tiny hardware back-doors can be baked inside any integrated circuit. It’s not news that this is doable, but what is news is that it’s way too easy to achieve and almost impossible to detect. Even in the case of the highly advanced computer processors that are inside all our devices. Apparently it can be done by a single (well trained) person working inside the factory that manufactures the chip.

Such modifications are extremely hard to detect. It’s quite tempting to go a bit paranoid when thinking about how many of our mission-critical processors are manufactured in Asia. China has lately started to re-assert itself technologically and militarily. There was an age when airplanes and bombs would decide the fate of a war. That age is slowly fading away.

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John Oliver Destroys Donald Trump

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This may be almost four months old by now, but I believe it’s more actual than ever. So please enjoy and feel free to share the link to all your friends who care about the world they’ll leave as heritage to their children:

http://m.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2016/02/john-oliver-donald-trump^

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nVidia GeForce 1080 and AMD RX 480 – the Video Cards of June 2016

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This June is a good month to be a gamer. Both nVidia and AMD have announced new graphical processing units that exhibit vast improvements over the previous generation. After being stuck for almost four years on the now-primitive 28 nanometer lithography, the GPU manufacturers have jumped straight to 14 (AMD) and 16 (nVidia), skipping over the intermediate step of 20-22 nanometers.

In combination with switching over to multigate transistors^, this technological leap allows the new video cards to achieve a boost of up to 40% in performance at a much lower price than the previous generation. In terms of price/performance ratio, we’re looking at an improvement between 60% and 80%. That’s massive. We haven’t seen such a leap in GPU technology for many years.

It’s also important to note that nVidia and AMD are not directly competing this time around. nVidia took to the high end with its Pascal microarchitecture while AMD went mainstream with Polaris. AMD’s RX will offer the best value, but if you want maximum quality Virtual Reality gaming, then nVidia is your only option.

The new video cards aren’t widely available yet and a shortage can be expected in the coming months. But make no mistake; these new models will kick some serious pixel! I want to make sure you’re aware of this and for heaven’s sake, don’t buy any of the previous generation video cards. The new arrivals are making them beyond obsolete.

There are a lot of “trap products” out there right now. In a perfect example of bad timing, Asus just unveiled a beastly, liquid-cooled gaming laptop. Unfortunately, it has the obsolete GPUs inside. In six months, a lighter laptop will be more than capable of humiliating this one:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-gx700-gx701-water-cooled-strix-gl502-thin-and-light,31888.html^

And don’t worry; there will be plenty of new video cards to choose from. MSI, a video card manufacturer, will release no less than five options using the same GeForce 1080 GPU. Talk about consumerism:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/msi-nvidia-gtx-1080-gpus,31913.html^

Last but not least, I’m very interested what these new GPUs will bring for a certain emerging product category: virtual reality backpacked computers. It was only a matter of time until some company would try to address the issue of people tripping onto the cables they use to connect their high-end Head Mounted Display to the computer. As goofy as it sounds, do not underestimate the temptation of VR gaming. These products will sell.

And, to confirm what I’ve just said, it turns out that it’s more than just one company developing these things. The only catch is that, unsurprisingly, manufacturers are using the recently obsoleted GPUs. I imagine that in about 6 months, when nVidia’s mobile Pascal will have shown up, these backpacks could become quite a product, especially for those interested in VR gaming:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/vr-backpacks-msi-zotac-chaintek,31974.html^

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Superbugs & Antibiotics

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Bacteria resistant to last-resort antibiotics are slowly but surely spreading through our world. After almost a century of heavy antibiotic use, many bacteria have started to develop resistance to our methods of treatment. The result could be disastrous. Even routine surgery and minor infections could become life-threatening.

Here’s a very well written piece about the situation:

https://medium.com/@fernnews/imagining-the-post-antibiotics-future-892b57499e77#.ojct9q7xd

As the article above points out, 80% of the antibiotics we use globally are used for farm animals. And by “farm”, I mean those grotesque factories where we shove animals into enclosures and keep them there until the end of their sorry lives, never to walk under the open sky.

But even cutting down on these antibiotics won’t do much other than to slow down the inevitable evolution of bacteria. Life is a perpetually evolving process. It will not stop for us. As the article above also points out, changing ways of farming won’t be easy for the farmers or their customers. But eventually, changes must be done, or we will face some serious consequences sooner or later.

Farms in the third millenium.
Farms in the third millennium.

Last week, the USA grimly realized that an antibiotic-resistant variant of the E. coli bacterium has been found^ within its borders. The infection was discovered in the urine of a 49-year-old woman. This bacterium is still vulnerable to other types of antibiotics, but researchers are afraid that, through genetic exchange, bacteria might share immunities between species.

Perhaps our rapidly evolving technology might be able to save us. The evolution and spread of bacteria could be monitored via electronic records. Additional funds can be directed into finding better, smarter ways of dealing with infections.

I have great hopes in the fields of nanotechnology and bio-engineering. However, such solutions may carry even greater risks. Our attempts to control natural processes at an exponentially increasing scale have as a result an exponential risk to lose our balance altogether.

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