GeekNights Monday - Government Hackers

MrPeriod

Tonight on GeekNights, in light of many interesting revelations about Stuxnet and Flame, including having been signed by quasi-legitimate Microsoft certificates and being well beyond commodity security software vendors' capabilities, we consider government hackers and the future of this sort of "cyber" warfar (though there is actually quite a past as well). But first, a couple of extra satellites the US Government happened to have lying around, ICANN's ludicrous digital archery, the coming disaster of arbitrary TLDs like .lol, and Google having won the case that APIs are not copyrightable.

• The Orvillecopter
• How a Smartphone Knows Up from Down

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Banta

Nyancat/Orvillecopter. It's the OTP.

Victor Frost

That music on the orvillecopter video rings strongly similar to Katamari music.

open_sketchbook

Yo, I took Porter to PAX. It's an awesome little airline and those little turboprops are real quiet.

However, flying into Toronto is fucking scary because landing goes waterwaterwaterwaterwaterwaterohshitwearewaytoolowwearegoingtocrashanddie LAND.

Churba

Shit, man, Toronto isn't so bad. Fuckin' Lord Howe airport on Maquarie island gives me the willies, though - Left, mountain, right, mountain, below, water, in front, water. So does Tioman Island - overshoot on that, and you're off a fuckin' cliff. Wellington is always windy as shit, and shakes you around like a good martini shouldn't be.

open_sketchbook

It's not actually bad for pilots. It's just sort of creepifying as a passenger, when all you can see is what's out your tiny window and for all you can tell you are descending straight into the water.

There are far worse, for sure. Saint Barts, now that's a runway.

Churba

Can't say properly, I've never piloted anything into Toronto in any sense of the word, only flown passenger - and I can't say it bothered me. I've flown into LH, though, as well as riding in, It's not HARD, just gives you the willies.

Tioman island is worse - Much the same, but with a 90 degree approach turn, and the whole cliff thing.

ThirdWorldMan

Regarding the Flame/Duqu virus, US Government & Microsoft...just wanted to say that again, Stallman was right: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

Free Software forever
http://www.debian.org/intro/free

One other thing in relation to 'cyberwar', to quote the awesome Tor developer/activist Jacob Appelbaum: "Everyone is talking about cyberwar as if its inevitable, but yet nobody wants to talk about cyberpeace building. Why not?"