Oh my bits!

Originally posted in my other blog: HamletAgain in Medium

BITCOINS- the currency of the Future

Many people has heard about Bitcoins, the decentralized virtual currency, but as famous as it could be, most of the population doesn’t know exactly what it is and how it works, not to mention is barely used.

What are BITCOINS?

A Bitcoin is a decentralized, worldwide, virtual currency system. It’s a peer-to-peer distributed system in which users own a key that are usually stored in digital wallets on each user’s computer, and that key is used to prove the ownership of a transaction unblocking the value and letting different owners use it. It’s Worldwide because it’s not based in any country in particular, virtual, because there are no physical coins that represents it, and decentralized because the currency is “created” by mining. Mining Bitcoinsis, basically, find mathematical solutions to problems while a bitcoin transaction is happening. Every ten minutes (aprox) someone is able to validate the transaction and then is rewarded with brand new bitcoin.

Bitcoins appear mostly as an alternative to solve conventional-currency problems such as trusting in authentication of the user or the centralized system itself. The first problem in particular can be embraced with cryptographic digital signatures and physical currency system, but the centralized system is still an inconvenience, making it easier to be targeted by hackers.

How to use BITCOINS

First thing is owning a Wallet. You can choose a wallet fitting your needs, there are many of them. In Choose Your Wallet you can compare and decide between some of them. Once you have installed you wallet, you will see it requires password and passphrases, which should be (for your own sake) very strong.

You can get BITCOINS using Bitstamp (European)or Coinbase(US-Based) or either offering products and services for bitcoins. A Bitcoin transaction consist on an ownership chain in which the owner of a certain amount of BTC can grant partially or totally that quantity, by signing that the value now is owned by the other part. A transaction basically moves a value from “input” to “output”. Another kind of transaction is a lot of small inputs and one output, equivalent to change small currency for a larger paper (and inverse).

Keys and Wallets

The ownership of BTC is established with digital keys, which are stored in a file in the Wallet of the owner, those keys are generated by the software and the internet is not needed. That currency is not validated, tho, until is properly signed and included in the blockchain in the process of the transaction (remember the Mining?) in which resides the decentralized trust and cryptography.

A private bitcoin key is a complete random 256 bits number. The public key is generated from the private random key using a one way function, elliptic curve multiplication. At the same time, the public address is generated from the public key using a one way function:

PUBLIC KEY -> HASH160 -> PUBLIC KEY HASH -> BITCOIN ADDRESS

The last step (from Public key hash to the Bitcoin Address) is generated using Base58Check (based in Base64 system). This is a text-based binary encoding format developed for bitcoins, a method that uses lower- and upper case letters, numbers and missing 0, O, l and I.

{123456789abcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ}Bitcoins nowadays

Originally posted in my Medium blog HamletAagain

Rubber Ducky

Apart from the cute bath companion, Rubber Ducky is the name of a hacking injection device that consist in a pen drive and a micro SD. The pack itself also comes with the case, and a couple of USB adapters.

The device imitates the human keyboard input, “Humans use keyboards. Computers trust humans” prays the motto. The process is simple, in the micro SD we save a program called “inject.bin” that we previously generated based in a code. We connect the micro SD in the duck and connect the code in the targeted computer, then it will make its magic.

Not long ago a friend of mine described hackers as some kind of magicians. They do their thing and no one knows how they do it, there’s a trick behind the curtain and you feel far away from knowing the truth. The trick in this case is fully documented on the Github Wiki, which explains how to write the code that afterwards will be encoded. 

This is the official Command Breakdown

DELAY x — Delay in milli-secs

STRING xyz — types following characters

GUI — Windows Menu Key

GUI r — Windows Run box

COMMAND — OSX Command Key

UP | UPARROW — Up Key

DOWN | DOWNARROW — Down Key

LEFT | LEFTARROW — Left Key

RIGHT | RIGHTARROW — Right Key

CAPS |CAPSLOCK — Capslock Key

ENTER — Return/Enter key

SPACE — Spacebar

REPEAT x — Repeat previous command X times.

You can even use some (but not all) two or three key-combinations:

SHIFT-ENTER

CTRL-ALT-DEL

ALT-F4

The poet programmer

Probably on your daily life you use a computer, a smartphone, a tablet, and you enjoy the apps, games and social media. All of this is possible thanks to the programmers that are working behind the scenes, designing all those apps, programs and games.

But, who was the first programmers of all? Don’t you think that should be an important person, well known and famous? After all that one person is the responsible of our modern programming.

Guess what? That first programmer was a XIX siecle lady, who was a great mathematician and poet. That’s right, even before computers were a reality, she already worked on the first theoretical computer program. How did this happen?

Ada was the daughter of George Gordon Byron and Anne Isabella Byron. Ada’s father was a poet, and he used to “go out with ladies” with made her wife pretty angry. They divorced, and Ada’s mother tried to apart her from poetry, the Lord Byron’s business. So, she thought that maths was the most separated discipline from poetry she could find, and hired math teachers for Ada. She learned all about maths and enjoyed it, but she also kept reading and writing poetry as she actually admired her dad as a writer. That way she became a mathematician who also wrote poetry, and she liked to define herself as a poet scientist.

She met a lot of guys who studied maths and science and they found her an intelligent interesting person. Her best friend was a guy called Babbage, who thought of an interesting theoretical machine no one could actually understand or show interest in, until Ada saw it. They worked together and got along very well.

Years after her death with the age of 36, she was still recognised as an important figure in the incipient science of computers, Alan Turing named her in his work “On computable numbers”.

Today, her day is celebrated worldwide, and reminded as the origin of programming. Our lady of computers, poet and brave enough to create in a world which wasn’t the most easy one for a female leader.

She is now a symbol and inspiration for women interested in tech, computers and programming, and proves that girls are, alongside their males pals, the future of technology.

Intelligence Meaning and introduction

Artificial intelligence is one of the most famous computer related fields due to science fiction. Also is one of my favorites.

Intelligence is a wide term that can be understood in many ways, the self definition of intelligence is not even unique and can be described in many kinds of intelligence, which, itself, exposes how blurry the term is. Howard Gardner -Cambridge university- described the multiple intelligence theory, as many ways of seeing intelligence. Which means you can be many kinds of intelligent:

Linguistic (as in kids), the capability of learning and manipulating a language.

Mathematical and logic, the capability of manipulating numbers and logic problems and relations, in games or experiments, too.

Kinetic and corporal, the ease of perceiving your surrounding and control of the body. Like professional dancers, athletes and such. 

Musical, actually related to mathematical, the ease of manipulating the sounds and talent to listen propertly.

Interpersonal, the social and communication ease. Also includes the empathy and self-recognition. 

Naturalist, the ease to feel close to nature and understand the environment.

So, knowing this, what is actually the “artificial intelligence” term referring to? IN the general term, AI is just meant to solve problems quickly and efficiently, using complex algorithms. But even tho, there are some huge nerds on computer science who aim of something more than that.

Types of AI

Let’s first talk about the 4 main blocks that separate AI projects. We will talk about:

- Systems that ACTS like humans

- Systems that THINK like humans

- Systems that ACT rationality

- Systems that THINK rationality

Systems that thinks like humans are related to cognitive science. They are based in psychological studies and experiments that try to understand how human mind relations work, and then tries to replicate it with computing. In this case we will see the neurological model of algorithm, in which data is treated like information processed in our mind, with -mathematically defined- neurons. 

Systems that thinks rationality are more related to logic, in which the laws of math and logic are pursued strictly. This one is very difficult to apply as practical experiments are way different than ideally mathematical environments. 

Systems that act like humans are my favorite personal. These kind, are intended to fool a human on making them think they are able to think and even be humans, but not necessarily are. Science Fiction has used this kind of AI models many times, such in Ex Machina. Turing, one of the computing science fathers, developed this idea in his XX s. studies, and defined the Turing Test in his article “Computing machinery and intelligence”.  

This test implied a human tester in a computer or a similar machine, chatting to someone without seeing that person. Based on the conversation, the human tester had to decide if his/her pal in the other side of the conversation is an AI or a real person. This test is -still- currently taken in AI competitions annually. 

System that acts rationality are called agents. They are told to obtain a goal and they are given tools and experience to reach that goal. Most of the AI main projects taken nowadays are related to this kind. They are required to learn from the environment, take decisions, and perceive. 

But, is actually AI possible? 

This is a complex discussion taken by computer scientists, engineers, psychologist and philosophers, and there are also a wide range of answers. Turing again, defined a list of possible arguments against AI being a possible thing, and he personally believed it could be possible in a certain point of the future. Here I wrote about how some of those arguments are already invalid. 

There’s something called “The Chinese room”, an argument used to disqualify AI as an impossible concept. 

There’s a room closed with an input hole and and output hole. Someone puts a Chinese text in the input, and after a while the translation appears in the output. In general it seems to know Chinese, but does it really? Apparently, no, as the artificial subject in the room will be equipped with lots of manuals and dictionaries to assist it, but will not understand the meaning itself.  

Empieza el curso, y esperamos empezar a mover Interferencias con más fuerza. Por lo pronto, el Departamento de Software Libre de la universidad de Granada ha organizado una pequeña quedada para compartir ideas, proyectos y coordinar gente de diferentes grupos.  

Todos los que quieran, son bienvenidos a apuntarse (y traer a gente interesada) el sábado 17 de junio, a las 13:00 en el Bar la posada (junto la Escuela Técnica de Informática y Teleco), si venís traer dinero, caerán algunas cervezas.

Aquí, los detalles del evento

El horario será el siguiente :

13:00 horas: llegada y acreditación 13:30 horas: Presentación del Software Freedom Day por parte del Granada HackLab. Introducción al software y tecnologías libres por parte de Ángel Pablo Hinojosa y Manuel Cogolludo Vallejo, del Granada Hacklab 14:00 Otras intervenciones, cerveza y tapas.

Ese día se intentará coordinar Interferencias con otros grupos o con la OSL, pero recuerda que también es un evento al que asistir por interés individual, aunque no tenga relación con Interferencias (seguridad, derechos en internet, etc), si no también Software Libre, Hardware Libre, y demás.

INTERFERENCIAS

información básica 

Interferencias es un grupo sin ánimo de lucro que pretende reunir a una serie de personas interesadas en:

- Privacidad

- Vigilancia masiva

- Derechos en internet

- Seguridad

Y derivados, con la idea de compartir experiencias, hacer mesas redondas y participar activamente en la defensa de los derechos en internet y la privacidad.

Este grupo está asociado a la EFF y más concretamente a la Electronic Frontier Alliance para activismo estudiantil.

Hi!

This guide is not a style guide, neither a clothes shop list or anything like that. I consider a cyberpunker not necessarily the one who dress with black, green and neon (it gives you an amazing look tho) but the one who, by heart, believes in the high technology low life,  the real use of computers, the hardware curiosity, the transhumanism aware, surveillance, etc, regardless how they look like. 

This guide is a simple article that sums up what I consider to have a nice cyberpunker lifestyle nowadays. 

First, are you using your computer for real?

When I entered computer engineering I knew about Linux, and open software, but not that much!

As I entered I found a group of people related to open software. They taught me a lot, and also I had to learn how to use the console for, literally, every subject.

BUT there are TONS of distributions, which one is the best? WELL that’s the most amazing part, you can choose whichever depending on your needs. If you are used to Windows or IOs I recommend you to …

The hell is that thing?

This is a random game generator for arduino. It works with Arduino Uno, LCD Screen, button and a potentiometer. My idea was to create a random roleplaying character as I’m a roleplaying lover myself, but I want to program a roleplaying tool in the future. 

How it works?

you can click the button and a character will randomly do things until he dies by, either stumbling 5 times or shooting himself with a gun (for now). Until that happens, it counts the things you do without dying and then shows you the final points at the end.

The potentiometer is for the screen contrast. 

Where’s the code?

Imagine you are about  to enter a very secure place, such an airport. You proudly have a tattoo in your arm, you have it since you were a teenager. Just before passing, a cop ask you politely to show your tattoo entirely, with a surprise feeling, you show it.

The cop takes out a scanner and pass it through your arm. A second later other cop is watching his computer with a weird face, and ask you to stay apart for a moment. They guide you to a room where you are ask a lot of weird questions, you are actually in hurry.

Apparently your tattoo is very similar to a picture related to an organized criminal group. You insist you don’t know what is all of that about, but their algorithm is clear, it has +90% of coincidence. What..?

Do you think this sounds like science fiction?

Well, it’s not.  

In the USA, the government is working wants to use it, and the scientist developing it used some tattooed criminals in prison for a database, and the algorithm is being tried since 2014. All the information is here.  

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