Quick Review: Vivarium (2019)

2020-12-21 - Reading time: 2 minutes

This should have been a home run. Decent cast. And an interesting foundation of an idea.

A young couple looking to buy a new home become trapped, alone in community of identical homes. After repeated attempts to escape, always, inexplicably circling back to building #9, a box appears with a newborn baby inside: raise the child, and be released, print on the box promises.

For a while there it felt like a compelling, bizarre supernatural mystery in the best tradition of Twilight Zone's creepiest.

And then... just as it gives you a taste of where this might finally be going... nothing.

It yanks the rug out, and practically waves a scolding finger in your face for wanting more from the film. It punishes you for it with a an eye-roll of an ending that's nowhere near as clever as it probably thinks it is.

There's some creepy atmosphere, decent acting, but it literally goes nowhere at all. Just enjoy the trailer and imagine your own, more interesting film.

2/5

(Vivariam is currently included with Prime Now.)

BYTE's Audio Cassette Standards Symposium

2020-12-20 - Reading time: 11 minutes

(This is a mirror from swtpc.org [archive.org], which itself is a mirror from BYTE Magazine. Minor formatting changes have been introduced.)

BYTE's Audio Cassette Standards Symposium
Written by Manfred and Virgina Peschke
BYTE, Feb 1976, Pages 72 and 73

BYTE Magazine sponsored a symposium on November 7 and 8, 1975 in Kansas City MO regarding the interchange of data on inexpensive consumer quality audio cassette drives.

These drives may be used as one of the mass storage devices in the first generation of personal computers, and will retain importance for some time to come as a means of interchange of software between computer enthusiasts who purchase products of the small systems industry.

In order to promote the growth of the industry, BYTE sought to achieve an industry standard on audio cassette data interchange through a working conference.

We extend our greatest appreciation to the 18 people who worked very hard until late Friday night and Saturday morning to discuss the multitude of problems and solutions associated with digital recording on auto cassettes. The names of the participants are listed in Table 1.

In spite of the short time available, the participants were able to draft a set of provisional standards which seems to promise great reliability and is rather inexpensive to implement; implementations may be entirely in hardware, or may require a mix of software and some minimal hardware.

Considerations were given to the problems of speed variation among recorders and playback equipment, start and stop delays, recording density (or speed) versus reliability, and recording frequencies to avoid interference with the telephone network in case some users plan to transmit the tones of the cassette over the phone lines.

On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Felsenstein and Mr. Mauch volunteered to write up the consensus among the participants as to a provisional standard which has been reproduced below.

Provisional Audio Cassette Data Interchange Standard
The consensus among the participants of the audio cassette standards symposium at Kansas City MO sponsored by BYTE Magazine is as follows:

• The proposed standard centers around the use of a frequency shift modulation method from which serial clock data can be extracted at rates of up to 300 baud. The system is intended to be used with low to medium cost cassette recorders incorporating electrical stop and start capability which may be operated under program control.
• The technique proposed provides for long and short term tape speed variation, limitations in bandwidth due to effects such as tape misalignment, and the necessity to retain low cost and low complexity of the hardware. The technique allows for potential operation at higher tape speed than the nominal 1.875 inch/s (4.75 cm/s).
• A mark (logical one) bit consists of eight cycles at a frequency of 2400 Hz.
• A space (logical zero) bit consists of four cycles at a frequency of 1200 Hz.
• A recorded character consists of a space as a start bit, eight data bits, and two or more marks as stop bits.
• The interval between characters consists of an unspecified amount of time at the mark frequency. In this respect the data format is similar to that of asynchronous data communication.
• The eight data bits are organized least significant bit first, most significant bit last, and followed (optionally) by a parity bit. The total number of significant bits and the parity bit cannot exceed 8.
• Where less than eight data bits are used, the unused bits (following the optional parity bit) at the end of the character are mark bits (2400 Hz).
• Data will be organized in blocks of arbitrary and optionally variable length, preceded by a minimum of five seconds of marks. To avoid errors due to splice and wrinkle problems common at the beginning of tape, the beginning of the first data block will occur no sooner than 30 seconds from the beginning of clear leader.
• The contents of the data block are not specified.
• The data block ends after the stop bits of the final character.
• Bit clocking information may be extracted from the recorded waveform, which is always an integer multiple of the bit rate, regardless of tape speed. This permits the recovery and retiming of data by means of a UART, which requires a clock of sixteen times the bit rate, although other simple circuitry may be used.
• A reliable bandwidth of 3000 Hz was assumed in choosing mark and space frequencies due to the head misalignment expected between various cassette recorders. The recording technique is a redundant form of Manchester or bifrequency code which has a long history of reliability in the computer industry. In its present form it was proposed by three independent manufacturers at the conference. One cited reliability rates of one error in 10**7 characters for 200 passes.

Table 1: Participants at Audio Cassette Symposium.

Ray Borrill	1218 Prairie Dr, Bloomington IN
Hal Chamberlin	The Computer Hobbyist, P 0 Box 5985, Raleigh NC 27607
Tom Durston	MITS, 6328 Linn NE, Albuquerque NM
Lee Felsenstein	LGC Engineering, 1807 Delaware St, Berkeley CA 94703
Joe Frappier	Mikra-D, 32 Maple St, Bellingham MA
Bill Gates	MITS
Gary Kay	Southwest Technical Products Corp, 219 W Rhapsody, San Antonio TX 78216
Bob Marsh	Processor Technology, 2465 Fourth St, Berkeley CA 94710
Harold A Mauch	Pronetics, 4021 Windsor, Garland TX 75042
Bob Nelson	PCM, San Ramon CA
George Perrine	HAL Communications Corp, Box 365, Urbana IL 61801
Ed Roberts	MITS
Richard Smith	The Computer Hobbyist, P 0 Box 5882, Raleigh NC 27607
Les Solomon	Popular Electronics, 1 Park Av, New York NY 10016
Michael Stolowitz	Godbout Electronics, Box 2355, Oakland Airport CA 94614
Paul Tucker	HAL Communications Corp
Mike Wise	Sphere, 791 S 500 W, Bountiful UT 84010
Bob Zaller	MITS

Remember Reg.

2020-12-12 - Reading time: ~1 minute

 

Take the DoD Cyber Awareness Challenge!

2020-12-03 - Reading time: 6 minutes

I was doing a bit of OSINT-ish poking around on this character, Mellissa Carone.

She's a supposed voter fraud "whistleblower" for Rudy Giuliani. His star witness claims to have essentially seen all the voter fraud ever in her seemingly-drunken, insane testimony at a hearing in Michigan. You really have to see it to believe it. She made a complete ass out of herself trying to bullshit everyone in the room. Even Rudy, at one point, had to be like "whoa, down girl".

Ordinarily I wouldn't be dwelling on a private individual in a blog post, but Mellissa chose to step into the public arena.

So I figured I'd see what I could dig up on the web, in relation to a couple of her claims. Just practicing some OSINT on a public figure.

Anyway, in her testimony she claimed to be an IT contractor hired by the current conspiracy scapegoat "Dominion". Now she says she can't get work anymore because "the Democrats destroyed her life", and so on.

As far as jobs go, her LinkedIn says she's been an intern at a place called Ciber Global but with the title "Cyber Security Analyst". She mentions Ford Motor in a subheading on this one.

Next one down, same timeframe as the Ciber job, again, "Cyber Security Analyst" for Ford Motor Company. Maybe lent out as a temp?

Further back, an internship as an IT Technician at a local painting company.

And even further back, an IT Specialist/Help Deak [sic] person for Millennium Servica [sic]. This might be a Remodelling and Repair Contractor, or this unknown, defunct company.

Whichever. Doesn't matter.

Along side all this, she's also listed as being a graduate of ITT Technical Instutute and the University of Michigan, working on an associates degree in Computer/Information Technology Administration and Management.

UPDATE: Apparently she's been up to some other stuff, too. Whoops...

In addition to her work experience, her profile features a set of certificates and awards:

Nothing really of interest. I can't even verify her Ciber employment, never mind this certificate. But that's fine. I don't really care. Any discrepancies are probably easily explained with a little more detail. (Benefit of the doubt, and all that.)

But then I scroll over to the third cert; the "Cyber Awareness Challenge" completion certificate:

What's that logo? Department of... hmm.  I can guess, but let's ZOOM AND ENHANCE:

The Department of Defense?!

Woo! Impressive, right?

So I looked around for that, and found... THE 2021 CYBER AWARENESS CHALLENGE!

You too -- yes, YOU -- can take the unclassified training course, just like she did, and get your very own DoD Certificate of Completion for you to type "FART BUTT" on and save to a PDF and put on your own profile.

And best of all, it's in COLOR and updated for 2021!

But in all seriousness, I encourage you to take a look at this small, free course they're offering.

It's actually well put together and rather creative for a multiple-choice quiz that marks you correct even when you're wrong. You can't lose!

The real meat of it, though, are the details it provides. There's a lot of "duh" basic security things (don't bring in external devices, don't hold security doors open for anyone, etc), but it actually gives some interesting insights into how they handle working with classified security information, among other things.

Quite a bit of video, too. Here's my favorite:

 

The Unification III Rap Battle

2020-11-27 - Reading time: 3 minutes

 

First name: Michael. Surname: Burnham.
When I rock the mic, you KNOW that I'll burn 'em.

It's a hell of a shock: I'm the sista of Spock;
Now that's a pedigree that yer pointy ears can’t block.

I’m from a distant time; I’m told that’s a crime;
Thousand-year start; yet you can’t hold these rhymes.

Now this trio of elves wants to challenge me?
Their Kal-toh's collapsed, while my Chess game's six-D!

Yap yap, your logic lacks validity;
More like Infinite Stupidity in Infinite Vapidity.

Now run along and go slap your gong;
When you return, you’ll admit you’re wrong.

I was lost before, but now I’m in my Prime;
Don’t look now, but it’s "Amok Time"!

Your blood is green, but I’m the reason queen;
Now shut the fuck up and and give up SB-19!

I was supposed to be working on the Terebikko research over Thanksgiving weekend here in the US, but instead we got treated to a pair of wonderful episodes of The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Discovery.

The latter of which featured Burnham forcing the Vulcan/Romulan leadership to respond by challenging them in a formal logic debate. And, well, I joked on Reddit that it was a "logic rap battle"... and many hours later... well... that happened.

It's something pretty far out of my wheelhouse, but I actually put effort into it and did some research and stuff. And I've always enjoyed Epic Rap Battles of History, so maybe it's been brewing in the back of my mind for a while. 😉