AltSci Blog

I was walking across a beach with Charlton Heston when he shouted: "You did it! You finally did it!" If you do a search for "planet of the apes statue of liberty", you'll get analysis like:
Is humanity even worthy of freedom? ... the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand on a desolate beach, is one of the most enduring images of science-fiction cinema. Now that's irony. [1]
this final plot twist sees the protagonist's arrogance undone when he is made to realize that it is precisely this characteristically human arrogance that evidently precipitated a catastrophe (assumed to be a nuclear war, a looming fear in the Cold War era) [2]

Blaming all of humanity for the annihilation caused by nuclear holocaust is not exactly legit. There are plenty of us that are part of humanity that don't want to be annihilated by atomic weapons. Actually, as we now know there are enough people that agree that they don't want to be annihilated by atomic weapons that we've survived a whole 62 years since the first use of atomic weapons. 62 years is not nearly long enough to prove that nuclear war is preventable, but it's anecdotal evidence that we might survive another 62 years. The politicians and military officers that brought us into the cold war obviously had to justify their stance of 'defending' our values with mutually assured destruction. The same is true of absolute pacifists: one must justify his/her stance of 'defending' others through action or inaction. But gambling or relying on a strategy that is likely to end in disaster of epic proportions? That's fucking crazy. I don't know what they were smoking back in 1945, but I know what they're smoking right now. Mutually assured destruction is philosophically bankrupt and can be proven so. I don't have enough time to explain it tonight, but here's an overview of the inconsistencies.

• You have a large number of devices that could destroy the entire planet.
• Your enemy also has devices that could destroy the entire planet.
• If you attack your enemy, they will destroy the entire planet.
• If your enemy attacks you, you will destroy the entire planet.
• In order for your enemy to press the big red button, they have to be willing to kill everyone on Earth, something that not many people should be willing to do.
• In order for you to press the big red button, you have to be willing to kill everyone on Earth, something that not many people should be willing to do.
• Fear of killing everyone on Earth stops both sides from killing each other.
• The inconsistency is that if a person is already willing to kill everyone on Earth, they probably don't fear killing everyone on Earth, so the real thing that stops both sides from killing everyone on Earth is the fact that the leaders of our nation simultaneously fear killing everyone on Earth while are still willing to kill everyone on Earth.
• This inconsistency and the fact that elections are not based on mental stability (Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon, ...) mean that mutually assured destruction is a terribly unstable system.
• The idea that mutually assured destruction could be justified as a defense is unreasonable.

I haven't gotten much work done on Small Wide World, but I've been working billable hours instead which isn't so bad. Show some interest in SWW and I'll put some hours into it. I think getting the Dodgeball and Myspace mappers online will be amazing good free PR for me. I just have to code it right.

Despite the undeniable statistic that driving is the most dangerous thing for a 25-year-old to do, driving, especially in curvy areas at 80 mph is really fun. I have two cds that are engineered to inflict the most damage possible to the speed limit. Harm is a virtue so long as the harm has a purpose. Though ends do not justify means and means do not justify ends, those things which satisfy both conditions of suitable means and ends can be justifiable. You can call me justifiably.

I suspect I'll get some work done on Small Wide World, but I've got some other work to do tonight.

I was talking while totally plastered last night about the reason I don't like nature. I don't like trees. I don't like insects. I don't like fish or wildlife. I don't like dangerous stuff. I don't like beautiful views. I don't like losing hope of ever getting back to safety. At age 15 my family went on a dangerous kayaking trip far enough away from civilization and unprepared enough that we could have been lost at sea. During that trip, I failed to keep calm. I paniced because my arms were failing and I was making stupid mistakes. I nearly fell out of my kayak just out of frustration. Had I fallen out on purpose or by accident, I would have a very low chance of surviving. If you think about it, my adolescent mind failed the test of whether it was stable enough to face possible death.

Hi there,

I talked with some cool people tonight. I wanted to just chat about some fun stuff. Rap is an interesting genre. There are plenty of good artists, but none of the famous artists are very good in my opinion. I mean, how is that even possible? It's something that has to do with the way that business and urban music happens. I'm not qualified to explain it.

I was made aware of a virus on a computer that I had access to. I looked around to see if it was simple enough to just remove. It was extremely well entrenched. It was impossible to remove and had installed so many other viruses that it was practically a complete destruction of the machine. I blame Microsoft, but you're probably thinking that I'm biased. I am biased, but I am also a quite authoritative source of information. Those who don't believe my opinion can explain away. Go right ahead. A technical user visits a website using IE6. They are immediately (without clicking) infected with dozens of viruses unremovable. All of these are the fault of Microsoft. The specific keywords that I found in my research of this virus are too numerous to display, but here's a few: C:\windows\system32\core.sys func.exe func.js. Avast seemed to understand a few of the viruses, but was not able to remove the virus. This is obviously past the limit of virus protection. It is a sign of the times that Microsoft is not secure against viruses.

Linux does not have many viruses because it is engineered much differently. It has been designed to avoid easy exploitation. I will write a virus for Linux in the next month to show how awfully difficult it will be. If you're interested, keep tuned in. I'll be using it at Defcon ACTF.

Greetings,

Enough has happened since my last blog that I decided to write a new one even though the only real thing I can say is that I have officially released my first product, Small Wide World. But I decided before I wrote this blog that I was only going to advertise it once or twice. This blog is about stuff that I think is cool. And there are a lot more cool things than my small project that does a few cool things and draws a few pretty graphs.

Entrepreneurship besides the whole hacking part is about selling stuff. It is a strange and interesting process that has a lot of issues. Issues like Paypal's IPN being non-trivial to secure. Issues like advertising taking way too much time and effort, but really being the only way to sell a product. Issues like hiring people being a massive money sink and being the way to earn large amounts of money. These issues I plan to figure out in the next year. And you're likely to hear about them in spades if you check back in a month or two.

What about things that are not related to my making money. Okay, lemme see.. Hanging out with friends has become a more important part of my life more recently. I would like to think that Dodgeball has helped with this, but a lot of factors have changed my normally non-social hours to social hours. I think that one thing that has caused it is my recent experiment with serotonin. (No, I haven't been injecting it.) I have been testing what things change my moods and hypothesizing that each time I have a mood swing, it's being caused by serotonin levels changing rapidly. What causes serotonin levels to change rapidly? If my experiment was done today and I had to turn in my results, I would say with a lot of qualifiers and maybes that the three things that increase serotonin levels are: caffeine, music, and exposure to friends. I haven't really found things that reduce serotonin levels specifically and reliably. But if you're me, you don't really want to decrease serotonin levels. Adjacent and related but not equal to moods are productivity, interest, and respect for life. While these things are obviously helped by better moods, there's certain factors that can change each of these. Stabilizing my mood is important to me, but often I want to play on the side of too good of a mood. How does one test whether they are in too good a mood? I went to the Infected Mushroom show (I didn't go in because I'm too poor) on Friday and took some interesting pills that made me really happy and I was really productive at Last Supper Club and for 6 hours when I got home.