According to an indictment, the four [men from Florida] flew to Portland on Nov. 8, 2023, rented an Airbnb in Vancouver and used ride-share car services to get around.
Over the next two days, they watched their target’s downtown Portland apartment and schemed how to carry out the kidnapping, the indictment alleges.
On Nov. 10, some in the group abducted the man, forced him from one car into another and drove him away from his residence while others entered the man’s apartment to try to access his cryptocurrency.
They drove the man to a field in Banks, tied him to a post with duct tape and repeatedly assaulted him before abandoning him, according to the indictment and police records.
Later that day, they ultimately used the man’s password, or so-called “seed phrase,” to transfer digital currency from his cryptocurrency wallet to another location, the indictment says. Prosecutors have not disclosed how much currency was taken.
Extortion and personal data breaches accounted for the most frequent cryptocurrency frauds reported in 2023, according to the FBI
A reminder that security is only as strong as it’s weakest link. And often, that link is you. It only took some rope and a long bout of ‘persuasion’ for this guy to lose his crypto wallet.
This also holds up for things like biometrics where you can be forced to apply a finger or put your face in front of the device. Even worse, some biometrics still work if you’re conscious or not. They could club you and put your finger on the device to unlock it. They may not even need the rest of you if you turn into too much of a hassle. You could just find yourself tied to a post missing a finger, hand, or even your head (face id).
I’m not a climate change denier. I am a denier of these cornball solutions proposed to supposedly fix climate change. Why can’t I question bad ideas without being branded a denier/heretic?
I love science. It’s what got me into the field of Computer Science as my livelihood for the last 25 years. Empirical, data-backed thinking is what’s led us from the ignorance and superstitions of the past to understanding we have today. But science has a problem. Namely – that politicians, news agencies, and activists are running around claiming they are speaking for science.
To understand something, you must know what it is you’re seeking. Epistemologically, the object of science is to create physical descriptions of the natural world. Science seeks to describe how the world works via repeatable, quantifiable descriptions of natural processes. Science, however, has NOTHING to say about political policy or ascribing human value to what it finds. Political policy and human value are the proper objects of government and religion. Science can describe how an atom is split – it is politicians, engineers, and theologians that tell us if we should build a bomb or a power plant.
Therefore, it’s time to separate the peanut butter from the chocolate. If someone legitimately questions a political policy or posited socialpolicy for an issue – they are NOT a science denier. They are a policy or activist questioner. I believe most people would agree politicians, and especially activists, should be questioned – regularly. This is a good thing, a necessary thing. Something democracy is founded on. Any activist or politician that resorts to silencing others or cannot defend their proposals by describing the solid scientific evidence and social policy reasoning behind them is a danger to democracy.
Example: We can 100% agree that gravity is real and buildings will fall down and kill people if built badly. A healthy scientific statement can absolutely withstand someone arguing if certain kind of concrete can withstand certain pressures and forces. You go out and try it. Reality decides who’s right. A healthy public policy of building codes based on those facts can withstand any scrutiny without resorting to someone being called a ‘gravity denier’ or ‘regulations denier’. It’s clear that building code has had serious flaws in the past – but that is a flaw of the policy. Science and gravity are just fine thank you.
Public policy and social policy do NOT speak scientifically nor for science. Policy should be BASED on science, but equating the two is wrong. Science and political/social policy fundamentally differ in what they are trying to do.
What we have now are policy makers and activists pretending they are scientists or pretending to speak for science when they are not. They are arguing for a particular political policy – not the science. Most activists, if you look, have very limited to no real knowledge of real science. Most are not scientists at all. Some have very dubious public and private credentials to even speak on these topics. Because they do not understand the science, they all too often resort to ad-hominem name calling more akin to radicals, cults, and zealots.
Sadly, the average person doesn’t usually understand the nuance that science and policy are different. I see all kinds of signs that say ‘Science is real’ and ‘We believe science’ here in Portland, while at the same time voting down fluoridating water – 5 times. It doesn’t help when politicians/activists saying they are the same. It’s beginning to undermine the notion of truth itself. This is why people are increasingly starting to say they don’t trust ‘science’ anymore. What they should say is they don’t (and shouldn’t) trust politicians and activists claiming to be scientists.
Maybe that’s why we are seeing an increase in political fanaticism that one would normally see in a cult. It attracts the same radicals – for the same reasons. (Aside: One might make a very interesting study that with the decline of religious following, people have turned to political/social policy as their new religious belief system. Which is why people’s political beliefs are often held with the same convictions as faith)
Hossenfelder has been ruffling some big feathers. She claims her adherence to the standards of truth surrounding her calling foul on the failures of string theory (claims she was proven right about) cost her tenure. She also admits when she’s wrong. Honestly – I think she’s one of the few people really doing science by demanding high standards of proof.
More telling is the comment sections on her Youtube videos that are full of other scientists (and PHD’s) who are encountering the same things and sharing the same stories. Namely, that publishing results that align with current thinking is more important than truth (evidenced by major cases of data fraud being discovered in a shocking numbers of papers). She notes funding channels are controlled by just a few large figureheads in each field that determine what can be researched and often hold personal vendettas against anyone that questions their leadership or scientific direction. Science has become highly entrenched in ‘orthodox’ lines of thought and has their own inquisitions towards those that question the results. She describe how the funding mechanisms keeps perpetuating failed ideas even when decades of work shows no results – or even shows clear negative results.
As stated before public policy and social policy is NOT science. Policy should be BASED on science, but equating the two is wrong because they fundamentally differ in what they are trying to do. The other problem is that it appears we’re not actually DOING science by demanding high standards of repeatable proof.
Truth is being attacked on 2 fronts. Ironically by the very people claiming to be speaking for truth. It’s creating a crisis of faith in science as well as contributing to our increasingly divisive political climate that acts more like cults than democracy.
Looking Glass is now making the Looking Glass Go – a much thinner and mobile version of their glasses free holographic Looking Glass Portrait display. This isn’t new tech, but it is interesting to see people working in the space again.
With their software, you can make your own images and display animated content as well. Viewing angle is about 60 degrees and is created from up to 100 different still images.
It’s not limited to static images. You can even use the Looking Glass API to run this Unity version of Doom on the display and can look around pillars and objects.
Did you know the US Mint has a really interesting online shop? One of their more interesting products is uncut sheets of currency. You can get uncut sheets of most denominations: $1, $5, $10, $50, $100, and even the wonderful $2 bill. The sheets come in lots of different formats too. You can usually buy sheets of 50, 32, 25, 20, 10, 8, and even 4 note configurations.
Some gotchas:
You may need to come back to the site multiple times over a period of months if you have something specific. $2 bills were out of stock for almost a year at one point during Covid but have recently returned. In addition, since this is legal currency, the cost of the sheet is actually more than the full face value of all the bills on the sheet. For example, a 32 sheet of $2 costs $102 (more than the $64 face value). A 50 note sheet of $1 is $86. A 16 note sheet of $100 bills costs an eye watering $1860.
Adding to recent discussions about the ‘script kiddie’ Flipper Zero hardware hacking device, a new video appears to show someone burning up a smart electric meter by issuing power cycling commands really fast.
If you have a Multnomah County or other local library subscription, you can use get a New York Times group pass via your online Library card. It allows you to log into NYT’s website or via the mobile app. You’ll need to claim then renew the pass every few days, but a lot cheaper than paying for a subscription.
If you want more unlimited access to all magazine holdings (such as The Economist, Smithsonian, Inc, Fast Company, Wallpaper, etc) by using the PressReader website or app and logging in with your library card information.
A guy went in for surgery and the anesthesiologist said things were so safe now they just had to push this one button to start the anesthesia flow and then monitor him during the operation. The man, excited, asked the doctor if he minded if he got to push the button to start the anesthesia.
There is a new stop-motion game like The Neverhood and Armikrog or recent movies from Laika. Harold Halibut is a adventure game that uses stop-motion and physically captured model objects to tell the story of a community that crashes their spaceship into a planet covered by the sea.
They made all the objects and stop-motion characters by hand, with real cloth, paint, sculpting, etc. When they realized how much work the stop-motion animation was going to be, the big idea was to 3D scan their hand crafted scenes, objects, and characters in the classic T pose, then use standard digital rigging systems to apply motion captured animations instead of painstakingly hand-animating every frame.
While this was a brilliant method to reduce the massive amounts of time and animation effort required, it still took them over 14 years to complete the game. They freely admit that most of that time was spent just figuring out the workflows since they weren’t well versed in game development tools. Still, what takes Laika hundreds of workers years was completed by this team with a fraction of that effort. They were able to add use all kinds of amazing effects and create scenes nearly impossible for true stop-motion animation.
Watching the resultant gameplay, some of the scenes are gorgeous. The close-ups and dialog shots are amazing and the facial animations are butter smooth. There are even tiny idle animations and movements that you would never do with stop-motion and a great depth to the game by letting you freely walk around – something impossible with hand-modeled animation. But there is maybe the only gripe: it’s too smooth.
Part of what makes stop-motion animation so quaint and ‘comfy’ is the little imperfections and limitations like clothing that interacts differently and animations that randomly pop and hitch. With this method, I notice the animations (especially walking animations) are a little too smooth and they often lose that stop-motion quality. There are times when they stretch the mesh too much and it becomes obvious the model is just getting stretched/bent. Individual clothing layers do not interact separately – they bend together as one. It feels like a solid plastic model – instead of having individually reacting layers of clothing/hair/etc. There is also none of the random occasional popping of clothing/animations mysteriously between 2 frames.
There could be ways to fix this by turning off random parts of motion blending between keyframes and having shaders that could randomly add some pop/hitching. Layers of materials could be animated separately. Still, it’s a noticeable distraction and difference between real stop-motion.
Also very noticeable is that the lighting is computed not physical. Especially in the larger/wider scenes, lighting is clearly rendered and it makes things look flat. Objects do not cast the physically correct kinds of shadows or receive mixes of soft and hard lighting edges as if the physical objects were place together and lit as a whole. This makes the rendered versions of the 3D objects (especially in wide shots) look flatter than they would if the real scene were physically created and lit.
This is definitely a novel new technique that is likely going to transform some of the industry. I think it has some amazing possibilities for speeding up dialog and closer-up shots; but probably not good at totally re-creating the aesthetics of stop-motion. I do think some of the smoothness/deformation and lighting issues could be fixed – but that will take a lot more work. Interestingly enough, Laika goes the OTHER direction. They computer generate/animate their faces in modeling tools, then physically 3D print them to put onto the objects into the physical world.
