Archive for the ‘cool’ Category
Mullvad is run by Amagicom AB, owned by Fredrik Strömberg and Daniel Berntsson. They accept bitcoin for payment, FTW!
“Our goal is to make internet censorship and surveillance ineffective.”
via About | Mullvad.
In Flash of Fire, Florida Loses Old Friend, the ancient tree known as “The Senator”
via Disbelief Still as Florida Reacts to Burning of 3,500-Year-Old Tree – NYTimes.com.
Hope the Tule Tree in Mexico remains safe!
Sign Into Your Google Account on Public Computers Without Typing Anything
via Lifehacker.
Essentially, load accounts.google.com/sesame in the public browser, then use a smart phone which is connected to your google account, with a QR reader – this will enable access on the public terminal, without having to enter in any sensitive information. Voila!
The end of 2011 brought us the latest in attempted Internet censorship by the corporate masters,with the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. This handy list of corporations who support SOPA can give one a glimpse of just who and what is pushing this awful bill. A quick perusal of the list shows many legal firms and law enforcement agencies, along side media conglomerates. Lawyers, cops and CEOs - assuredly a casustic mix.
One of the current top stories on Reddit.com (the ‘frontpage of the internet’ as they refer to themselves) is titled:
GoDaddy’s Response to the Boycott: “Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business.” Reddit, Lets make them feel the impact and move your domains! Spread the word!
GoDaddy issues challenge, geeks accept. Less than 24 hours later, GoDaddy flip-flops.
One redditor summed up GoDaddy’s interesting response in the Internet parlance of ‘too long, didn’t read’ as such: “tl;dr: Come at me bro.” Another replied with the standard, “Challenge Accepted” meme.
GoDaddy even has a dedicated page in its community support forums addressing the topic, with some very tersely worded responses.
While I only operate a few personal domains, I will be moving them elsewhere. The support of SOPA is baffling enough but the response that basically said “We know people are upset, we just don’t care because we are stacking the papers, yo.” is what convinced me.
Competing domain registration firm (and all around GoodGuyGreg) namecheap.com did Internet denizens a solid by promoting an exodus from GoDaddy with a few clever coupon codes – “SOPASucks” is one, another is “BYEBYEGD” – these coupon codes both work to save a bit on any domain transfers to namecheap.
December 29th has been declared the official domain exodus day, with cynical internet peeps predicting there will be an issue with GoDaddy’s services on that day, in order to prevent such a mass, coordinated movement from occuring.
After the GoDaddy elephant hunt/massacre by GoDaddy’s founder and former CEO Bob Parsons in the spring of 2011 – namecheap and GoElly.com ran similar promotions, aimed at the animal-rights conscious consumer who was offended by Bob Parsons’ elephant slaying. PETA honored Parsons with its first ever, “Scummiest CEO award” to which Parsons replied, “I understand PETA has an agenda, but I refuse to go along with their extortion-style practice.” He continued to defend his killing of the “problem elephant” and refuses to even acknowledge other proven non-lethal ways of keeping elephants away from food crops. The final solution apparently is his only method.
After having already moved about a dozen domains from GoDaddy this week, still more work is left to do – it was embarrassing enough using such an openly misogynistic company. They offered domain registrations as a loss leader, at times under $2 each, when the market rate was about 10x that amount, so one could argue there was once a financial incentive to use this trashy company – but no more. Quite the opposite, for supporting SOPA (or even formerly supporting it), as currently written, just may kill the Internet as we have come to know it.
It would be most interesting to see the stats on godaddy’s domain transfer requests for the end of 2011. Vote with your domains, get outta there. Another post at reddit, titled, “Today I Learned Wikipedia.org is registered at SOPA supporter GoDaddy” challenges not just Wikipedia, but any/all domains registered at godaddy,
Why just wikipedia? Why not contact everyone who’s registered at GoDaddy?
I noticed RedLetterMedia –who just released their Indy 4 review– are also registered at GoDaddy.
Also Blip.tv, WordPress, explosm.net, direct2drive, Penny-Arcade. Why not start emailing them as well?
May this catch fire – off to move more domains!
Well, that didn’t take too long! GoDaddy changes it’s tune: “Victory! Boycott forces GoDaddy to drop its support for SOPA” GoDaddy’s statement is available here.
However, all one needs to do, is visit GoDaddy CEO’s homepage blog, at: BobParsons.ME and ask yourself, “Is this a company I wish to patronize?” There are plenty of reasons to not use the services of a company such as GoDaddy. Their flip-flop on SOPA is interesting, for it shows the power of these movements – it also exposes the dickish move they pulled with their smarmy initial rebuff of the movement. By completely invalidating their statements from less than a day sooner, we can see this company is flailing.
Why go with a host like namecheap? Well, they have a blatant anti-SOPA position, ‘cuz they understand the internets: Why we are against SOPA and why it is so important to us, read our stance here. Unlike GoDaddy, who funds a Nascar team with cheerleaders, and who’s founder and former CEO seems like some sort of crazed ego maniac.
A commenter on a GoDaddy forum said it very nicely:
Far too little and much too late. If GoDaddy had cared about the openness of the Internet and the 4th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States they would have invested their efforts in opposing this wretched legislation from the very beginning, not flip-flopping when it became unpopular or financially disadvantageous. I and all of my MANY domains are moving elsewhere and not one cent of mine will ever find its way back to GoDaddy. I hope I am not alone and that THOUSANDS of freedom-loving people around the world join me.
Well said, you are most definitely not alone. If you have a problem elephant, call Parsons of GoDaddy – if you need domains registered, consider namecheap.
Chris Langan, one of the world’s smartest people, has a fractal-like uber meta-theory: the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU), and a website to help explain it, CTMU.org.
Some interesting CTMU links:
Kudos to Geke.us for these rather illustrative Venn diagrams:
Goldman Sachs Employees and their Government Positions
Monsanto Employees and their Government Positions
From an Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research paper, entitled “On the anomalous secular increase of the eccentricity of the orbit of the Moon” (download as pdf)
A recent analysis of a Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) data record spanning 38.7 yr revealed an anomalous increase of the eccentricity e of the lunar orbit amounting to e˙meas = (9 ± 3) × 10−12 yr−1. The present-day models of the dissipative phenomena occurring in the interiors of both the Earth and the Moon are not able to explain it.
Thus, the issue of finding a satisfactorily explanation for the anomalous behaviour of the Moon’s eccentricity remains open.
A promising candidate for explaining the anomalous increase of the lunar eccentricity may be, at least in
principle, a trans-Plutonian massive body of planetary size located in the remote peripheries of the solar system.
Uhm.. Ok.
Update October 1 – mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge. Occupy Live Stream.
Thousands of folks down in Occupy Wall Street today, with the rumor of Radiohead playing a free show @ 4pm.
Even IF Radiohead does not play a note at the #occupywallst event today (as has been widely rumored, and then widely denied) the fact that the corporate media has ignored the thousands of people who showed is mighty telling. There have also been suggestions that Facebook and other social media sites have been censoring news of this “event”. Tho lots of manufactured drama on all sides it seems.
Some great related reading to this event:
With the Priv3 plugin: priv3.icsi.berkeley.edu/
