- I’ve been getting really into a remix project lately, and will likely come very close to finishing on my days off work this week. Seems like lately I keep having the same crisis: during instrumental breaks do I go batshit crazy with a guitar or with a turntable. Obviously this depends on the song, but it’s still hard to be clairvoyant and know which one will work better. So typically I will just record both and compare and contrast. First World Producer Problems.
- I think I’ve posted Ulises Farinas’ art here before, but it’s well worth a second mention:
The past three decades of wanton patent-granting have created a disastrous environment for innovation. Today it’s practically impossible to build anything without violating a patent of some kind—and risking a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for your troubles. Once intended to protect lone inventors, patents now form a kind of shadow tech industry, in which billions of dollars are spent on amassing huge portfolios. (A recent New York Times article noted that Apple and Google, companies that define themselves by innovation, now invest more in patent acquisition and defense than in research and development.)
Why are companies spending so much money on patents? First, as protection. “Patents are like bullets,” law professor Chien says. “They’re cheap to acquire but can cause a lot of damage.” But if you have your own bullets, would-be assassins are less likely to target you. That’s the thinking behind RPX (Rational Patent Exchange), whose clients include Google, Microsoft, and IBM. RPX amasses patents, it says, to keep them out of the hands of lawsuit-happy competitors, and it vows not to sue anyone over them.
- I’m a massive proponent for not going to war with Iran. The problem with my viewpoint is we kinda already are at war with Iran. It’s just a sophisticated war, a secret war.
The dramatic spike in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year also has some in the U.S. distinctly worried. While direct denial of service attacks on U.S. banks – widely seen as retaliation for US sanctions and attempts to freeze Iran from the international financial system – were seen relatively simplistic, attacks on US allies in the Gulf were more complex.
The most worrying, experts say, were those on Saudi oil firm Aramco and Qatari gas export facilities. Last month, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described the Saudi attack as the most sophisticated yet launched on a private company, effectively destroying tens of thousands of computers – although he stopped short of blaming Tehran directly.
“This means that espionage has also gone digital – and while we’ve seen several cases of nation-state espionage done with backdoors and trojans, we’ve seen only one documented case of a nation-state doing cyber sabotage with malware. That case is Stuxnet. During my years in this industry I’ve seen multiple mysteries, but few of them have been as interesting as the case of Stuxnet. F-Secure Labs estimates that it took more than 10 man-years of work to develop Stuxnet. Related attacks like Duqu and Flame might have taken even more. Stuxnet had a “kill date” of 24 June 2012, which means the worm has now stopped spreading. But that has little significance, as the operation had already been active for years and reached most of its targets already by 2010.”
- I’m not sure if I’ve ever talked about net/for reals label Aural Sects on here before. They are London-based (I think?) specializing in Witch House for the 21st Century. An internet friend of mine helps run it. Trying to define it without simply listening to it can be a drag (as this blogger puts it). There’s elements of chopped and messed-up Hip-Hop mixed with Electro and dreamy Shoegaze type shit. It’s simultaneously peaceful and disturbing, if that helps. Anyways, a lot of the Aural Sects music is free, and almost all of it is worth looking into.
- The winners for this year’s Eisner Awards have been announced. I’m reading them for the first time… I wonder if I’ll be happy. Huh, big year for Mark Waid. His Daredevil took Best Single Issue and Best Continuing Series and he took Best Writer. Waid’s good, I’m no hater. But…??
- Primeval Superstitionsat GuernicaMag discusses a a photographer’s — Katarzyna Majak — portrait series on peoples of minority religions. One of which… Wiccan or Witchcraft.
“Majak’s photos stem from her interest in exploring minority religions in a country that is dominated by Catholicism. Through her work she has found female spiritual leaders of all ages. She has interviewed nearly all of her subjects, questioning their surroundings and relationship to their alternate spiritual findings. Each woman possesses a unique object of power, used for promoting their individual abilities and identities. They believe their spiritual work helps shift the balance between masculine and feminine forces, reclaiming power for women. Her solo photography show, at the Porter Contemporary in Chelsea, New York City, invites viewers to bring their previous conceptions about womanhood, and the occult.”
These photos fascinate me, and I’d like to have long conversations with each of these women.
- Wired.uk has an article reporting on new research about the microbe marine life levels in the Gulf of Mexico 2ish years after the now mostly forgotten BP oil spill. And it has been mostly forgotten; unless you live down there, and your economy is so closely tied to the ocean. Characters at my work have said that “it really isn’t as bad as it seems”, or that the whole thing was overblown by the “liberal media”. But, and this is from a strictly non-political viewpoint, I just don’t see how 210 million gallons of crude oil could be dumped into a gulf (we’re not talking the middle of the Pacific here) and it not affect the marine life. I was right. PLoSONE research group studied the shoreline and found “predatory fungal communities that can survive in harsher conditions appear to have replaced the previously diverse range of microscopic marine life that once populated the shoreline, including metazoan phyla, protists, algae and fungi.”
- From IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies), Patrick Lin of The Atlantic asks “Is It Possible To Wage A Just Cyberwar?”. Lin discusses 6 issues that relate to the righteousness of an act of war, as pertaining to cyberwarfare: 1) Aggression, 2) Discrimination, 3) Proportionality, 4) Attribution, 5) Treacherous Deceit, and 6) A Lasting Peace. Very interesting:
This digital evolution means that it is now less clear what kind of events should reasonably trigger a war, as well as how and when new technologies may be used. With cyberweapons, a war theoretically could be waged without casualties or political risk, so their attractiveness is great — maybe so irresistible that nations are tempted to use them before such aggression is justified. This essay identifies some important ethical issues that have been upturned by these emerging digital weapons, which in turn help explain why national cyberdefense is such a difficult policy area.
- Finally, On The Natural History of Surveillance likens science fiction tropes to the tech we have now. Well… “likens” might be the wrong word considering lots of the shit from 60′s science fiction (particularly PKD books) IS HAPPENING NOW tick for tock.
Upon hearing the phrase, we may not know exactly what a “cephalic sniffer” is, nor whether it is a real piece of technology. However, as to what such a nefarious device might be able to do, we could surely begin to imagine from the name alone. And as for whether it is technological reality (it is not, being invented by Philip K. Dick in his story Clans of the Alphane Moon), from its “sci-fi” sounding alliteration we might guess correctly that it is purely fantasy.
At least it was fantasy when PKD invented it in 1964. Today, advances in biometric identification mean that while a device that can search out an individual by his or her brainwaves is not yet on the market (at least publicly), searching out a person by face or speech pattern is decidedly real. Furthermore, brain-computer interface devices (BCI) have been commercially available since at least 1999.
- This Noah Shachtman Wired article reads like a latter-day William Gibson novel: ‘The Secret History of Iraq’s Invisible War‘. Apparently to combat the use of the insurgency’s most effective and accessible weapon — the remote controlled bomb — the US Government developed, with defense contractor ITT, a jamming device for soldiers to carry on the ground. The device uses RF (radio frequency) tags to disrupt signals to bombs from detonators in a given radius. Shachtman goes on to discuss his tour of the company’s R&D facility in full (which is a big deal because apparently the government refused to admit the technology existed for some time). The company now is working on what they’re calling the ultimate weapon when it comes to electromagnetic warfare:
“…A tool that offers the promise of not only jamming bombs, but finding them, interrupting GPS signals, eavesdropping on enemy communications, and disrupting drones, too. The first of the these machines begins field-testing next month.”
- Update on the IMF hack story I posted a couple days ago: the BBC is now reporting that it may have indeed been a government — not a rouge group of cyber-terrorists/criminals — that hacked into the IMF system. Nation states hacking into the international overseer of the global financial system? This has science-fiction realism plastered all over it…
In the 2009 documentary Collapse, Michael Ruppert frequently mentions his ability to look at current events/news stories and “read between the lines” to see a crystal clear image of what’s really going on in the world and where we’re headed. I believe we all have that ability to think critically, and we share that phenomenon (ex. all these hurricanes, floods, dust storms, earthquakes, and tornadoes have to be put similar thoughts in people’s heads). It isn’t a burden, it’s a gift. A gift clear as freshwater when you click into the BBC‘s Tech headlines of the day: four articles out of the top bunch point toward an obvious (and frightening) narrative.
First of all, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) — one of the most influential organizations on the planet — has been cyber-attacked. I am weary to use the term “hacked”… but almost may as well.
“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it has been targeted by a sophisticated cyber attack. Officials at the fund gave few details but said the attack earlier this year had been “a very major breach” of its systems, the New York Times reports. Cyber security officials said the hack was designed to install software to create a “digital insider presence”. The IMF, which holds sensitive economic data about many countries, said its operations were fully functional. The cyber attack took place over several months, and happened before former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested over sexual assault charges.”
Also, on the subject of financial institutions getting hacked…
“Hackers have stolen data from thousands of Citibank customers in the US, the bank has confirmed. The breach exposed the names of customers, account numbers and contact information. But other key data, such as date of birth and card security codes were not compromised, the bank said in a statement. Citigroup is the latest in a string of high profile companies to be targeted by cyber criminals. It has been criticised for not telling customers about the breach when it happened in May.”
- This “poem” called Johnny Depp as written by Tim Burton is complete shit. Seriously, how do people think Burton is such an amazing artist. It’s simple: this is shitty poetry.
- This whole Iran getting the most sophisticated malware anyone has ever seen story is insanely interesting. I was explaining to a friend recently how I’m actually not creative at all; to write any speculative science fiction nowadays all you need is a computer or a daily newspaper. The material just leaps off the page at you.
- Boeing Laser Systems Destroy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Tests. “The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] in May demonstrated the ability of mobile laser weapon systems to perform a unique mission: track and destroy small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)… As part of the overall counter-UAV demonstration, Boeing also successfully test-fired a lightweight 25mm machine gun from the Laser Avenger platform to potentially further the hybrid directed energy/kinetic energy capability against UAV threats.”
- Police Open Up to Social Media. “PC Ed Rogerson is on Twitter. He is one of about 20 or so police officers that have turned to the micro-blogging service. He started using Twitter in October in a bid to reach more of the people that live along the streets he patrols in Starbeck, Harrogate. Even before MyPolice gets going some forces are pioneering widespread use of social media.”
- Chinese Military Site Draws Hackers. “The Chinese military defense website was subjected to 2.3 million hacking attempts in its first month, according to officials. “When there were major events taking place related to the military and national defense, the number of (cyber) attacks rose,” said editor Ji Guilin.” In an NBC news piece I saw the other day an ex-US government official was claiming that a hack into the military’s primary system (2006, I think?) had been by the Chinese. He said, “I don’t blame them. They do it to us, we do it to them.”
See! This ain’t no joke. I suppose it does seem a bit unrealistic in terms of a woman named Ksana who manipulates technology with her mind, but recently the US President has unveiled plans to name a “technology czar” to oversee cyber security for the country’s grid of information. He’s apparently starting a Cyber-Security Office in the White House, and has even said “this cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation” and “we are not as prepared as we should be”. If the terrorists of TODAY were to get their hands on some modern, and fast, computer technology and Internet access, they could do a lot of damage. Though, I’m not even sure they have Commodore 64in those caves between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Speaking of terrorism and CPU’s that look like typewriters, it’s really amazing how much Terry Gilliam’s 1985 dystopian, Orwellian, surreal, bold BRAZILcan be applied to today’s society. Next week the world will catch the first glimpse of Government Motors (GM) Co. A capitalistic system where slowly the government starts to control and own almost everything?? With no “big brother” to speak of and a “buffoonish, slap-stick quality” to it?? Sounds an awful lot like the government of the United States. Even the Micheal Palin character, Jack Lint, could be compared to that ugly bitch Lynndie England, who honesty isn’t fit to wear the fuckin’ uniform (will anyone forget the picture of her gleeful smile as she points to a prisoner’s privates, who’s completely naked save a bag over his head and maybe some de-lousing powder?). Even Jack Lint’s techniques could be compared to waterboarding. But the real question is, if all this holds up, what the fuck does the SAMURAI in Sam Lowry’s dream sequences represent??
It took me a long, LONG time to actually finish my latest flash-fiction piece. Part of the problem was trying to ground it in reality when 2056 still feels like it’s centuries away. But we’re coming up on the mid-2000s quite fast. Proof of this is actually how feasible a lot of “возможность: Part III – Blackout” actually is. It’s astounding. I don’t mean the ability to communicate and control technology with one’s mind… pretty sure that isn’t feasible. But just about everything else.
On top of that there’s also a strong influence of Transhumanism in the writing, I even mention the term once. Well – there’s a magazine called “H+ Magazine” which covers “scientific, technological, and cultural trends that are changing – and will change – human beings in fundamental ways”. The site talks about nano-technology, human modifications, etc. All things I’m mentioning in возможность: Part III – Blackout. In fact, they’ve even got an article abouta new contact which electronically displays information into the users chosen eyeball. Ksana, my protagonist in the short story, has a left eye with modifications similar to these (quote from the article)…
But don’t throw away the digital glasses just yet. A very basic version with a few pixels may be available soon, but a fuller realization of this concept may take years. Even with obstacles still to be overcome, these engineers have achieved something taken straight from a science fiction movie or novel. Eye enhancements… check.
On top of that, this has just been patented:
Title: Enhancers specific to motor nerve cells/sensory nerve cells Abstract: This invention provides a method for improving gene expression efficiency specifically in motor neurons and/or in sensory neurons and an enhancer consisting of the following DNA (a), (b), or (c): (a) DNA consisting of the nucleotide sequence as shown in any one of SEQ ID NOs: 1 to 4; (b) DNA consisting of a nucleotide sequence derived from the nucleotide sequence as shown in any one of SEQ ID NOs: 1 to 4 by deletion, substitution, or addition of one or more nucleotides and capable of improving gene expression efficiency in motor neurons; or (c) DNA consisting of a nucleotide sequence capable of hybridizing under stringent conditions to a nucleotide sequence complementary to the nucleotide sequence as shown in any one of SEQ ID NOs: 1 to 4 and capable of improving gene expression efficiency in motor neurons.
Neat stuff. Go here for my short story involving all this tech and more.
