I’ve decided to move everything off wordpress.com to my own server. Here’s the link:
yay!
Category: Random Thoughts
Adam retweeted this article from @newsycombinator a 2 hours ago. Since I’m taking an afternoon break from in the summer heat of Hong Kong, I decided to mess with the scam website. I figured they probably don’t have any real content on their server.
With a little help from Firebug, I managed to find the path to their image archive… and surprisingly, it’s a huge collection! The path is http://sexynaughtybartenders.info/images/#{category_id}/#{image_id}.jpg. (for example, http://sexynaughtybartenders.info/images/13/37.jpg)
Here’s a short ruby script I wrote grab all of them… for funsies:
require ‘curb’
(1..50).each do |category_id|
(1..1000).each do |image_id|
img = Curl::Easy.http_get(“http://sexynaughtybartenders.info/images/#{category_id}/#{image_id}.jpg”)
break if img.response_code == 404
f=File.new(“#{category_id}_#{image_id}.jpg”, “w”)
f.puts(img.body_str)
f.close
end
end
Screenshots!
(click)
It’s only fair scammers get scammed sometime too! =]
This has happened to me twice now – getting my Gmail password reset
after coming back from a trip. It reaffirms that no one should use email as file storage.
It’s ridiculous. The first time it happened, I had no way to recover it except by remembering exactly when I started using Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Notebook. (I never gave Google an alternative email and never registered my phone)
I had to ask Nima when I first sent him an email, recalling that we both beta-tested Gmail in its early years. I figured out when I started using Calendar by asking Jasmina (who has access to my calendar) the date of the first event on it. Docs, for some reason, I remembered the first time I used it. Notebook was a tricky one. I knew I only recently started using it to keep track of certain lists, so I checked the creation time stamp on the bookmark link .lnk file. It was an NT timestamp, so that took a while to figure out.
After a few hours, I finally found my way back into my email… that was empty. All my emails and attachments since 2004 were destroyed! As a countermeasure, I created another gmail account to use as an archive where I set up forwarding of all my future mail. I registered my other non-gmail accounts as the primary reset email address, and registered my phone.
All is fine and dandy, until I got back from Yosem
ite last Friday to find myself locked out of my gmail, again.
I got a text from Google with my email reset code, and my archive email has an email to reset my password. Note – these notifications were NOT requested by me, which means someone used the password reset option and guessed the reset url Google provided. Not good. The url is 20 characters, and it seems like 128-bit ASCII, or 128^20 entropy. Looks secure enough to me. The account activity log shows 3 accesses not from me:
Gmail access log showing unauthorized access.
I went camping August 17 to August 20, which means the accesses via Browser (IMAP was from my phone) were not me. Doing a whois lookup showed that those IP addresses belong to two bulletproof servers, Sil.at and FDCservers.
Sil.at
FDCservers
I’ve hit a dead end here. There’s no more trace of the attack and the only thing I could do was to call up these servers and demand termination to the user, I mean, FDCservers’ AUP even says they don’t allow illegal activites. I figured that’s more trouble than it’s worth. Maybe I’ll call them up next time it happens. For now, my archive-and-reset system works fine.
Has anyone else had this problem with Gmail?
to add connectivity, ubiquitous portability, and location-based services to enhance information and services found on the web.
Not just Competing. Think Co-operating.
Not Career. Think Passion.
Not Market. Think Community.
Not just Profit. Think Thick Value.
Not Buy and Sell. Think Participate and Contribute.
Not just Author. Think Initiator.
Not just Managing. Think Leading.
Not just Education. Think Passion Nurturing.
Not mugging up and Memorizing. Think Imagination and (New) Innovation in schools.
Not Organization. Think Networked Value Creators.
Not Campaign. Think Movement.
Not Customers. Think Fans and Followers.
Not Brands. Think Personal Brands.
Not USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Think PVP (Personal Value Proposition). that’s what value you can bring to the society.
The true gift of the digital age isn’t information – it’s collaboration.
-Prabhakar Jampa
You can’t make this stuff up:
Jessy: My favorite domestic land animal is a puppy
Dad: Domestic? what about international?
Jessy: What’s international? like wild?
Dad: What’s wild?
Jessy: Wild like wild animal! My favorite wild animal is the polar bear cub.
Dad: Polar bear? I guess that’s international.
If playing RPG games has ever taught me something, it’s this:
Saved states will lead us to care little about which path to walk down, which reward to choose, and which dialog bubble to click on. Parallel this to life? If we had a time machine, we wouldn’t care how we live our life because we have infinite lives. Life means facing the options we are presented with, making a choice decision, and handling the consequences which itself is another fork. I’m glad time machines are impossible.
On a side note, this is the first post I thought would be private to begin with that ended up being public instead. I guess I shouldn’t assume!
Ever noticed why the large handicapped stalls in most bathrooms are always, on average, the cleanest? I’ve been dying to figure out this phenomenon. Are handicapped people cleaner? Are the non-handicapped people that use handicapped stalls also cleaner, so they always pick the cleanest stall, which happens to be the handicapped one, and clean it afterwards? Maybe we should develop a more productive way of spending time in the bathroom, so people like me can stop thinking about meaningless questions like this while they do the number two.
Instead of watching CS 61B Webcast like my schedule says, I’m wasting time watching the YouTube Orchastra. Apparently, YouTube chose people around the world to perform this new piece of classical music that is supposed to be really famous, but I’ve never heard of it. While I was watching one of the selected clarinetists, I remembered how much I wanted a three thousand dollar clarinet in high school. At first I thought if I really had purchased one, it would have been a huge waste of money since I no longer play the clarinet. My other self, perhaps the wiser one, then told me that at the time the three thousand dollar clarinet probably mattered more than having a three thousand dollar laptop, or other interests I may now have.
Indeed, we should not limit ourselves or our children. The memory of desire is far more superior than the memory of denial, especially when it gives insights to human nature. I laugh now at what I did five years ago, and I know I will laugh again for the same reason five years from now. I’m not infinitely intelligent, therefore I cannot calculate life’s game tree, even with pruning. However, the more efficient the algorithm, the more levels deeper down we can search and evaluate.
