Archive for category Internet
Why alternatives to Bitcoin are Pyramid Schemes
Scrooge loves alt blockchains
I’m sure you’ve all heard the news swirling around the usual Bitcoin (BTC) related news outlets that there are a myriad alternative Crypto-currencies available now (referred to colloquially as “alt blockchains”). Popular ones being IXcoin, I0coin and Solidcoin to name a few, all touting the reasons why users should jump the Bitcoin ship over to their new ark on the path to cash laden greener pastures.
So what’s the catch?
If you’re currently working, mining or trading on any of these Bitcoin alternatives and haven’t asked yourself that question, then please read on with an open mind. If you’re currently looking into these new alternatives but are unsure, I hope the information I’m able to provide gives you enough knowledge to make your own informed decision.
Continue reading “Why alternatives to Bitcoin are Pyramid Schemes” »
On the subject of Bitcoin and creating free Money
The All-MIghty Bitcoin (BTC)
I don’t want this blog entry to be about explaining Bitcoin (BTC), so I’ll point you folks looking for more information over to Wikipedia where they have a very in-depth article on the topic. What I will talk about in this post is a story of my involvement in the whole Bitcoin shenanigans that are happening on the net and where I think I’ll go with, or leave it.
In early June of this year I caught wind of Bitcoin really taking off through a friend who had started experimenting with solo mining using his CPU. At the time, I had thought nothing much of it and brushed it off as just another distributed project along the lines of SETI@Home or Folding@Home.
Over the course of a week or two, through bloggers and twitter feeds the whispers in the wind of Bitcoin had turned into a full on fog horn! Bitcoin was a modern day gold rush and if you weren’t in on it, you were missing out! The numbers at the time were ridiculous and it sounded like you’d be stupid not to get in on it. Earnings for miners being upwards of $2000 per month, people investing thousands of dollars in new hardware and obviously the news media coverage of the less glamorous use of Bitcoin… that of the drug trade through the Silk Road.
I didn’t want to be the last person to the party, so I jumped in.
Continue reading “On the subject of Bitcoin and creating free Money” »
Did LulzSec poison Google’s search results?
Posted by eric in Internet, Reverse Engineering on June 10, 2011
I was looking for some more information on LulzSec this afternoon and while poking around Google, my search results went funky (and albeit, more colorful than normal):
LulzSec poisons Google?
I thought this might have been some funny business either with my SSH tunnel or Firefox, but I was able to replicate the results using IE and a different proxy altogether:
LulzSec poisoned Google Results in IE
The poison itself looks like a CSS or Javascript injection where it creates a rainbow connected to the search button. The rest of the search results are skewed.
So essentially I was able to replicate the poisoned results multiple times across multiple browsers. You have to search for the term “LulzSec” and F5 until you happen to get the result. I imagine this is a case where the Google Index with the poisoned results hasn’t propagated across the ENTIRE Google farm yet, so you’ll have to play search results roulette until you get it.
This is either something weird going on at Google, or LulzSec is indeed the most badass group of hackers this world has ever known. Poisoning the Google Search results is like the Holy Grail of awesome hacks! 
ApocBot v0.0 — Open Source Magic Online Automated Trade Bot Released!
Posted by eric in C# Programming, Gaming, General Programming, General Software, Internet, Magic Online on December 11, 2010
For everyone who’s been waiting and searching, here it is:
ApocBot v0.0
ApocBot v0.0 — The First (not completely working) Open Source MTGO Trade Bot written in C#/.NET!
Now that the fanfare is over, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.
What was with the delay?
The truth of the matter is that life just has a way of happening. My desire to play Magic The Gathering: Online waxes and wanes through the years and I started this project shortly after moving across the country. So you can say it was the product of my being bored in the evenings 
Over the course of a few months my interest in this project started to fade as I settled into my new job and had to travel a bit.
I had debated in my mind on how to handle the bot. I know over time it would be a maintenance nightmare as people would require support and updates, which is honestly why I decided to go Open Source with it. For some reason people feel that paying for software implies some form of support! 
In the end, I just stopped working on it because (a) MTGO is just a hobby, so I wasn’t looking to make money off the bot and (b) I didn’t want to have to constantly maintain and update the code to work with new versions/UI changes as they come out. That’s just the lazy bastard I am
That being said, I still feel this is an important project because it gives the community at large the ability to finally be more open about automation on MTGO (and possibly other games).
So what shape is the code currently in?
Out of the box, the code isn’t going to work. I’ll go into the details below on why/what needs to be updated to get it in running shape.
Other than updating some of the code to work with any UI/screen changes, it should still work pretty well! I know it worked the last time I tried to use it (six months ago?).. so I’m sure with some TLC, someone can get it up and running again.
And it’s free?!
Yep! Anyone is free to download and use the code for ApocBot in their own Magic Online Trading Bots as long as they adhere to the BSD License terms. If anyone is feeling giving, links back to my blog and some Magic Online gratitude would be appreciated! (My MTGO user name is “WndrBr3d“)
Download:
ApocBot and the source code are released under the BSD License. Please review the included “license.txt” file for terms and conditions. For more information on the BSD Licenses, click here.
ApocBot v0.0 (Source)
Requirements: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0
And now.. the very rough technical details on how it works…
Continue reading “ApocBot v0.0 — Open Source Magic Online Automated Trade Bot Released!” »
ApocBot — I feel I owe everyone an update!
Posted by eric in C# Programming, Gaming, Internet, Magic Online on December 10, 2009
12/21/2010 UPDATE: I have released the source code for my MTGO trading bot “ApocBot”. You can view that blog post and download the code for free here.
Well, it seems my little post on my MTGO trading bot as generated some interest, so I felt I should at least give an update on the status.
- Basic Trade functionality is completed
- Trade x for y (i.e. 4 Uncommons for 1 Rare)
- Buy/Sell x for x (i.e. 6 Rares for 1 Ticket or 1 Ticket for 6 Rares)
- Smart Bot functionality is 70% Completed
Currently ApocBot is able to correctly identify cards that are selected during a trade and quote the stored price for the cards. So far, so good!
Want some more info?
Continue reading “ApocBot — I feel I owe everyone an update!” »
Upgrading my HTPC — It’s Alive!
Posted by eric in Hardware, Internet, Miscellaneous, Multimedia, Reviews on August 24, 2009
A couple months ago I posted a blog entry about my plans to upgrade my Home Theater PC (HTPC) using the new Zotac IONITX
Intel Atom based motherboard. As a point of reference, I’m upgrading my HTPC from an underpowered, but pretty sweet at the time VIA EPIA-M 600M. My reason for using the 6000 at the time was I wanted a fanless setup to the HTPC would be as silent as possible.
The case I’ve been using is a Morex 3677B case, which is fairly small but still allows enough room for a 2.5″ Hard Drive and a Slim Laptop CD/DVD drive.
A couple gotchas I ran into while upgrading from the VIA board to the new Intel Atom based board:
Apple releases fix for wireless latency issue caused by 10.5.8 update!
Has wireless latency gotten you down? Have your internet porn habits been impacted since you updated your Macbook or Macbook Pro to 10.5.8?
ME TOO AND IT WAS DRIVING ME UP THE FUCKING WALL!
After I updated my 15-inch Macbook Pro to 10.5.8 I noticed right away that my wireless performance was in the crapper. Ping times to Google jumped up to an AVERAGE of 300ms, sometimes as high at 1,500ms! Any other wireless device in the house? 40-50ms! So it was obvious, after pulling my hair out thinking it was an issue with my Airport Extreme base stations or Verizon FIOS.
Luckily my friend Joe (who has been suffering the same issue), pointed me towards a link on Apple Support that not only admits that the 10.5.8 update breaks “some” Intel based laptops, but they also released a fix! What was their fix?
It basically rolls back your wireless drivers to 10.5.7!
http://support.apple.com/downloads/AirPort_Client_Update_for_MacBook_and_MacBook_Pro
I hope this helps out anyone else who thought they were losing their mind!
Cheers!
Time Warner Cable — Have They Gone Mental?
Posted by eric in Internet, Miscellaneous, Opinion on April 7, 2009
I’m sure you’ve seen it in the news lately, lord knows I have seen it on every technology related website and blog across the internet. Time Warner Cable has announced a monthly bandwidth cap on their Road Runner Cable Internet service. Time Warner is touting that the 40GB plan should be enough for a majority of users and barely anyone should incur overages.
What are they not telling you? That the 40GB plan is $54.90! The comparable in price plan they’re offering to customers who currently subscribe to Road Runner standard for $29.95/mo? A paltry 5GB! That’s right! Time Warner Cable is going to be charging home users almost THIRTY DOLLARS per month for a pathetically small 5GB of data transfer. Don’t think the marketing genius stops there! In addition to these new ridiculous bandwidth caps, they’re going to be charging you $1 per gigabyte over!
Continue reading “Time Warner Cable — Have They Gone Mental?” »
Pimping out my hosting provider again.. to those who need one! :)
A friend of mine called today saying he was looking for a Hosting Provider that’d let him host his setup for Microsoft SeaDragon (or DeepZoom, whichever you call it). Basically he needed to host a large amount of pictures and not have to worry about hosting disk space or monthly transfer amounts.
Of course I pointed him over to my posting provider, InMotionHosting! Why? Because their cheap $6.95/mo hosting account has UNLIMITED transfer and UNLIMITED storage! So of course it fit his needs perfectly and I think anyone would be insane not to jump at a hosting offer like this at such a cheap rate.
I mean seriously, these are the features for their ‘low end’ business account:
- Unlimited Storage Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Up to 7 domains on the account
- Free Nightly Backups of all your data
- Two MYSQL Databases (which are also of unlimited size)
All for only $6.95/mo! Seriously! I know, shameless plug but it’s seriousliy rediculous what you recieve for the price.
Use the link below and check them out!
Cheers!
Your Netflix client been crashing on your TiVo?
Posted by eric in Internet, Miscellaneous, Multimedia, Reviews on December 9, 2008
I was excited as probably many of you that Netflix had finally come to TiVo! I was tired of Amazon UnBox and although it was super cool that I could get Netflix on my 360 it’s far more conventient that I have it on my TiVo
Well, the other night my wife was watching a movie through Netflix on the TiVo and about four times it just quit out to the main TiVo menu. What the frick?
I told my wife to give the XBox 360 a try and see how it handles. Well turns out that the 360 had a hiccup too, but you know what it was? A buffer underrun! That’s right! My internet connection for whatever reason couldn’t keep up with the Netflix stream and it ran out of data. Of course the XBox client was smart enough to realize this, displayed a message and buffered some before streaming again.
My TiVo client? Crashed out. Talk about two code bases not up to par with one another.
So if you’re having the same issues, odds are your network connection (for whatever reason) is not keeping up with the Netflix stream and it’s just crashing out to the main menu of TiVo.
My suggested work around for the time being is try watching it on your XBox 360 if you have the option. Otherwise, you might want to contact your cable provider or stop torrenting all that norwegian snow porn
Cheers!
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the Internet category.
Get Connected
