Flying People

How do you get people to fly around in the air above New York City? You create some remote control air planes that looks like humans. I was checking out some blog posts by Giles Bowkett when I saw this video. It is pretty freaky how real the planes look. I might have been disturbed if I were driving on the bridge while these "people" were flying above.

At first I thought this was just some guys with a wild side project. By the end of the video, I figured out this was some sort of promotional stunt for the movie Chronicle. That still did not take away from its awesomeness. In the middle of the vehicle I saw some type of octagon shaped vehicle floating in the sky. I wondered whether this device helped control the planes. Nope. Later I figured it must be some sort of aerial camera to shoot the planes and peoples' reactions.

FBI File on Steve Jobs

Now this is something you got to see. The people over at MuckRock have petitioned the FBI to share their files on Steve Jobs. Wouldn't you know it? The FBI had a file on him. It is back from 1991, when he was a potential candidate for a presidential appointment. So they had to do an investigation on Jobs' character.

They provide his place of birth (San Francisco), his date of birth (02/24/1955), as well as his social security number (549-94-3295). They even show his birth certificate number (55-075100). Apparently social security numbers of dead people are not closely guarded. They are actually shared to prevent identity theft of dead people. Go figure.

There were some funny tidbits in the FBI file. Jobs listed that he was never fired, or quit after being told he would be fired. Many people were interviewed as to the character of Jobs. some called him a "deceptive individual". Others stated that "his moral character was questionable".

You should head over to MuckRock yourself and check out the PDF of the files. Much personal information was redacted. But it is a very interesting read.

Lifestyle of Megaupload's Founder

There has been a lot of buzz about the takedown of Megaupload. Today I read up on the history of its founder Kim Schmitz. This guy has a lot of aliases. His handle is Kimble. He had his name legally changed to Kim Dotcom (LOL). He also had a passport with the name Kim Tim Jim Vestor (WTF?).

Kimble was a self proclaimed German hacker. He founder a security company called Data Protect. Kimble made some cash when he sold most of the company. He was convicted of insider trading when hyping then selling shares of another company.

Kimble is a big boy. He is 6 foot 4 or mote. He once produced a video called Kimble Goes to Monca. It hyped up his extravagant lifestyle with fast cars and hot women. Not all of Kimble's image is hype. He did create his Megacar luxury car system, which unfortunately did not sell well. He also formed a group of hackers to combat terrorism.

Kimble seemed to have got around a bit. He moved to Thailand for a while, where he created a bunch of companies. Most recently he tried to move to New Zealand. There were problems obtaining property. The country apparently does due diligence on its visitors. Let's circle back to the beginning. Megaupload actually made money with its premium download offering. Investigators estimate that since its beginning, the company has brought in $175M. That's no joke. It seems the guy is pretty much history now.

Pervert Hackers

I keep reading about this hacker dude who was able to spy on girls' video cameras. He somehow found a way to take over their computers and turn their web video cameras on. The bad boy caught girls stripping and pleasuring themselves and all kind of other goodies.

The cops got onto the perp when he started blackmailing his victims. He tried to get them to make sex videos for him or something. WTF? Dude should have just got his jollies spying the girls. He even said he was onto a new hack that would enable the video camera without the camera light coming on.

Instead the feds busted in and nabbed the guy with all his computer equipment. Turns out the dude was a victim of a drive by and ended up in a wheelchair. Didn't matter. The judge thew the book at him. Scum gotta pay, disabled or not.

Win 7 Internet Security 2012

I was browsing some web site when all of a sudden my computer got hijacked. There were all kinds of annoying pop ups and programs running. They all seemed to be related to "Win 7 Internet Security 2012". I knew something was fishy when I tried to used Internet Explorer and Chrome to visit Google. This malware stated that Google was a rogue site. LOL.

I could not run any programs such as Windows Explorer. The Win 7 Internet Security 2012 app would come up instead. This thing was throwing out all kinds of buzzwords. It said my computer got hacked. It also said I was a victim of identity theft. How did this thing get installed without me running a program?

I went on another computer and did some research. Apparently this malware intercepts browsers and any executables. There was a full set of instructions on how to remove this evil malware over at Bleeping Computer.

The manual removal instructions seem to have done the trick. Right now I am running a full virus scan with Malware Bytes Anti-Malware. A quick scan already found some probs with my laptop.

Hacking Hacker News

Recently I have been following the disaster known as Paul Christoforo of Ocean Marketing. He flamed a customer of the Avenger PS3 controller. Then he got into it with Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, who managed to turn the masses of the Internet on him. Even though Christoforo messed up, I thought the mob mentality that followed on the net was overkill. Apparently that is an unpopular opinion to have. My comments on Hacker News got downvoted a lot.

I don't post of Hacker News too often. In the past year I probably commented on two posts. However I got a lot of downvotes this latest go around. The result is that my Hacker News karma is low. I think if your karma goes low enough, they ban you automatically. WTF? Now I want to brainstorm a way to hack my karma up into the positive region. While I am at it, I might as well try to raise my karma up high enough to downvote others (you cannot downvote if your karma is too low).

So how does one carry out such a hack? Well I could work within the system. I could try to post some hot new topic that appeals to a lot of reader. Then they could vote me up. Weak. I could find a way to trick the system. Create some Hacker News accounts. Ensure the system would not detect this. Essentially vote myself up to many karma points.

The real win would be to find out how karma is stored. Then I would need to figure out a way to go in and just change my number. Is this thing stored in a relational database? Or perhaps it is in some NoSQL database. What O/S is hosting this database? How can I get in? This is a fun problem to think about. Got any idea?

Customer Service Battle

I been reading this hilarious email exchange regarding an Avenger PS3 controller. I saw the emails over at Penny Arcade. The company was represented by Ocean Marketing. There is a small discussion about it over on Hacker News as well.

Here is the synopsis: Customer pre-orders a control paying full price. The product does not ship on time. He contacts customer support via email. The response gets the customer salty. Then the customer support dude goes to town on the customer. I actually love the put downs.

Here are some gems the customer support guys sends to the customer: "Grow up you look like a complete child bro", "You just got told bitch", and "We just have to put you in the corner with your im stupid hat on". These were all from just one email. LMAO!