Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Reelya]

Even demolishing and building on the same site, using robots and utmost safety, there would be too much chance of dispersing radioactive stuff.

Stuff they can retrofit onto existing plants would be worth looking at however, since the plants are already there.

[Yoink]

Edit: a new WTF. A passing mention of somebody named James Thomson in the book I'm reading, where he is described as "the ultimate pessimist-poet", led me to abandon the book for a moment to have a look for his work online. A couple hours later and I've been intensely trawling Goodreads, Abe Books and Amazon for a wide variety of weird and disturbing literature.   
My shopping cart on Abe Books currently sits at just shy of one-hundred and thirty US dollars. Uhhhhhh could somebody please confiscate my internet before I spend stupid amounts of money on books? Especially when I already have so very, very many books lying around that I need to read, a backlog I am forever adding to. I have a demonstrated lack of self-control when it comes to books. Uh oh.   

The first of the books I ordered have begun to trickle in. I think I ended up whittling the total down to like, $80 USD or something? Still far, far more than I ought to be spending on books, but enough to not bankrupt myself outright. Yay? I clicked the "save for later" option on the titles I culled, though, so who knows how long before I'm seized by another fit of acquisitiveness and go back for 'em.
      
First cab off the rank is Apocalypse Culture, a weird collection of essays from kooky folks and/or outright lunatics from the '80s that is sometimes regarded as some sort of counter-culture classic. I don't know, I just expect some truly fucked-up reading to have a laugh and kill off brain cells with.   


Accompanying WTF: the seller I bought this from (through Abe Books) sent me a really nice little email as opposed to the usual automated message from Abe Books, saying they were about to send my order, hoped I enjoyed it, and hoped they could be of further assistance in future. No idea if they send that verbatim to everyone they sell to, but I thought it was kind of a nice touch.    

[Reelya]

Second, it sends you your password to your email. It sends your password. If you don't know, this is an incredibly bad sign. It means that they're storing your unencrypted password on their database. Warning bells should be going off right now. Since I apparently don't have a choice in the matter, I put my email in, and... the password is literally my ID card number. Really? They're not even trying now.

If they sent you a password you put in then that's a bad sign.

If they sent you an auto-generated password that's temporary, that's normal. It does not in fact indicate that they're storing a plaintext password in the database. Since you said it's your ID number ... that's information they already know without actually needing to extract anything from the database.

It's the same with password resets. These usually set your password either to a random string or to a default password, then they email you what they set. This process doesn't actually require the password to be stored in plaintext in the database, and it in fact indicates they couldn't read your old password to send that, so they have to overwrite it.

What's the alternative here? It's that they email you a password reset link that includes a token. This is in fact no more secure than just generating a new password, changing the password, then sending you that password. If someone could intercept the password, they could just as easily intercept the password reset link. It could even be less secure. If you click a password-reset link then the entire URL request is sent in plain text to be resolved by the DNS system, and theoretically a bad actor could harvest that link, block it then take over your account.

[Maximum Spin]

Part of it is proliferation issues - the US (and other reactor-using nations) does not want civilians to have access to fissionables that could be used to make bombs, no matter how trustworthy those civilians are. If nothing else, there is the risk of "indigenous resistance fighters" attacking a shipment to a disposal facility and making off with bomb-making material to sell on the international black market.

Yes, but it's important to keep in mind that this is already possible and hasn't happened yet, and, like, there is a 100% chance North Korea would already sell you plutonium if you asked. Probably cheap, too.

What's the alternative here? It's that they email you a password reset link that includes a token. This is in fact no more secure than just generating a new password, changing the password, then sending you that password. If someone could intercept the password, they could just as easily intercept the password reset link. It could even be less secure. If you click a password-reset link then the entire URL request is sent in plain text to be resolved by the DNS system, and theoretically a bad actor could harvest that link, block it then take over your account.

There's a pretty high probability that your email was sent unencrypted over a compromised connection anyway.

[heydude6]

First cab off the rank is Apocalypse Culture, a weird collection of essays from kooky folks and/or outright lunatics from the '80s that is sometimes regarded as some sort of counter-culture classic. I don't know, I just expect some truly fucked-up reading to have a laugh and kill off brain cells with.   

Sounds pretty interesting. Maybe there’ll be something eye-opening in all the madness.

[Reelya]

What's the alternative here? It's that they email you a password reset link that includes a token. This is in fact no more secure than just generating a new password, changing the password, then sending you that password. If someone could intercept the password, they could just as easily intercept the password reset link. It could even be less secure. If you click a password-reset link then the entire URL request is sent in plain text to be resolved by the DNS system, and theoretically a bad actor could harvest that link, block it then take over your account.

There's a pretty high probability that your email was sent unencrypted over a compromised connection anyway.

That just means the whole using email as the unlock mechanism for accounts of every type is not secure.

[Maximum Spin]

What's the alternative here? It's that they email you a password reset link that includes a token. This is in fact no more secure than just generating a new password, changing the password, then sending you that password. If someone could intercept the password, they could just as easily intercept the password reset link. It could even be less secure. If you click a password-reset link then the entire URL request is sent in plain text to be resolved by the DNS system, and theoretically a bad actor could harvest that link, block it then take over your account.

There's a pretty high probability that your email was sent unencrypted over a compromised connection anyway.

That just means the whole using email as the unlock mechanism for accounts of every type is not secure.

Yes, it's really bad and terrible.

[wierd]

It would be fine if the user set up GPG, and got a public key from the service, delivered via the browser in an appropriate HTTPS session. 

The emails would then be sent in an encrypted form, would have digital signature verification of the sender, etc.


But nope. Nobody wants to implement that on email except nerds. (raises hand-- uses GPG on email.)

[ChairmanPoo]

I think I've discovered the new Gene Ray

https://mobile.twitter.com/alfastring

[wierd]

I think he has been eating too many LSD laced (magic) mushroom pizza slices.

[Reelya]

I think I've discovered the new Gene Ray

https://mobile.twitter.com/alfastring

Yeah pretty much. Also note that nobody could even be bothered to reply to him even to tell him he's wrong.

Ooh he's got a testimonial quote on his website:
​

“Einstein bent the space, Ferent unbent the space” Adrian Ferent

So he's quoted himself as supporting himself.

[wierd]

Yeah... I noticed how he seems to have this problem with finding PEERS to review his work... (ahem)

[NJW2000]

I especially like where he defines morality as a quotient of summed levels of evolution.

I have no idea what that means. I do like his theorem naming conventions though - simple and  consistent.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think I've discovered the new Gene Ray

https://mobile.twitter.com/alfastring

​

“Einstein bent the space, Ferent unbent the space” Adrian Ferent

So he's quoted himself as supporting himself.

Over and over. I love it

[Reelya]

Still liking Bruce Cathie however

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Cathie

Getting an actual book published about this shit was harder than just spamming to the web.

A girl I met at college had one of his actual books and believed it. She lent it to me, the guy didn't like the table of the elements so he redid it as a triangular one because space alien pyramids. Among many many other innovations in the field of physics and even how basic arithmetic works: the normal rules of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, those are only what the government wants you to believe. Bruce Cathie has math+ with rules only he can understand.

Bruce Cathie did that thing similar to ley lines: he drew lines between arbitrary UFO sightings and was able to construct some world-lines that matched a specific pattern, and claimed these lines revealed special truths about physics and chemistry, coming up with his own version of atomic theory basically.

I also once met some Australian Christians who claimed that nuclear weapons were basically a hoax and that they could only detonate at specific places and times, which also seems to be from Bruce Cathie's books. So those ideas were getting around.

EDIT: at least one of his books can be read here:
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/energygrid_harmonic695/energygrig01.htm#2.-%20MATHEMATICS%20OF%20THE%20WORLD%20GRID

These were the harmonic values that now fully occupied my attention:

    1703 — This is the four-figure harmonic of 170,300,000,000, which is the expression in cubic minutes of arc of the mass or volume of the planet Earth and its surrounding atmosphere.


    1439 — A four-figure harmonic of 143,900 minutes of arc per grid second, representing the speed of light in grid values.

     

    2640 — This figure, expressed in minutes of arc values, is built into the polar portion of the grid structure as a geometric co-ordinate.

Now I found that when I matched these values harmonically the results were as follows. Zeros to the right-hand side can be ignored in this form of harmonic calculation:

Code: [Select]


 1703
 -264
 ----
 1439


Ok, so I never saw this book before, and he's already redefined how subtraction works. I told you this guy was using some advanced math the rest of us don't know about. You got that? 1703 - 2640 = 1439, because zeroes on the right can be ignored in subtraction. Expand your closed mind!