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Image courtesy of www.breitbart.com[/caption]

I thought I’d take a break from writing about Tech this week, to focus on where the worlds attention should be–Iraq and Syria, and the existential threat that is besieging the middle-east, a threat we’ve come to call The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

ISIS may have started of an off-shoot of Al-Qaeda, but they’ve evolved to be much more, they’re so far removed from the Al-Qaeda of Osama Bin Laden they’re starting to look like an reincarnation of an much for terrifying ancient enemy. An enemy that 700 years ago threatened the very existence of Islam in the Middle East more than Israel ever could today. ISIS might be just be the next–Genghis Khan.

You might scoff and laugh, but there are many things strategically and tactically that make ISIS look like a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, and there were many contextual similarities between what’s happening now in the Middle East, and what was happening 700 years ago when the Mongol Horde descended upon it.

The Mongols are the exception to all of history, for example they’re the only people to have invaded Russia in the Winter–and WON!, and they invaded Afghanistan on horseback–and WON!

Historians will glorify them, but we know better. At its peak the Mongol armies controlled more land than anyone before them , but they won their battles in vile, vicious and cunning ways and what they did to their captives is unspeakable. Truthfully the Mongols (and specifically Genghis Khan) were Assholes of the highest order–but they weren’t the only Assholes in history. Alexander, Napoleon, Attila–these were all assholes, it’s just that the Mongols won more wars giving them more opportunities demonstrate their asshole-ness.

Of course the Mongols weren’t just assholes, they were phenomenally great Military Tacticians and Strategist. Almost everything they did (apart from binge drinking) was for the sole purpose of winning wars and battles–even their rapes and terrorizing served to aid them in victory over the enemy (and we’ll soon see how).

But when you dissect as to why the Mongols were so successful–you’ll soon realize it’s the same reason ISIS is so successful, and the similarities between ISIS and the Mongols are too shocking to ignore.

When you get behind the wheel of your car, and hit the road–you’re implicitly trusting ever other road user to play by the rules.  You trust no one will go out of their way to crash into you, or that no one would swerve into you for an insurance claim, you even trust that pedestrians won’t hijack your car as you stop at the red light.

Sometimes you mitigate these risk, by locking your doors and keeping your distance, but fundamentally you’re placing a lot of trust on your fellow road-user. You have no way of knowing for sure that they’ll be good boys and girls–but you go about your daily car ride trusting that they’ll do what is right. In cases where you don’t trust anyone, you don’t use the road. I know a lot of people who won’t drive in India because they don’t trust road users there–and some foreigners refuse to drive in Malaysia for the same reason.

Society works on trust, and without it–society just wouldn’t work.

Think about it–you might not trust the restaurant waiter with your credit card–but you just ate at the restaurant without viewing the kitchen. Dying from poisoned food is far more serious than credit card fraud, yet you’ve trusted the restaurant not to poison you, but not with 16 digits from your bank. Sometimes you’re trusting people without even knowing it.

And the same is true for the internet, The Internet Protocol(IP) that governs the whole internet till this day, is a highly ’trusting’ protocol that prioritizes speed and simplicity over security and privacy. In much the same way that it’s faster and simpler just to trust the restaurant not to poison you than it is to inspect the kitchen and verify the ingredients–the Internet Protocol accepts everything as true and routes data accordingly. Other protocols like SMTP and POP3 that are used for email employ the same levels of trust, that’s why you can never trust an email–it’s just too easy to spoof.

Essentially everyone on the internet trust everyone else to play by the rules. For example when Pakistan decided to block youtube in their borders, a mistake made by their local telecoms managed to take youtube down for several hours worldwide simply because everyone trusted the information Pakistan was sending them. Nowhere else in the world does such a high level of trust exist as on the internet–and nowhere else is it more dangerous.

Last week one of my most popular videos detailing how I hacked Unifi accounts was ‘flagged’ as inappropriate in YouTube–apparently it was in violation of their community guidelines.

As such my video was made unavailable and essentially deleted from Youtube.

I was upset.

The email I received from YouTube, gave no indication as to what I did wrong, and even though it states that someone have viewed my video, the language used suggest this was just an automated message sent to my inbox. Nowhere does it suggest an actual human viewed my video and made a judgement, and even worse no justification was given for the removal of the video other than it was ‘flagged’.

Regarding your account: Keith Rozario

The YouTube Community has flagged one or more of your videos as inappropriate. Once a video is flagged, it is reviewed by the YouTube Team against our Community Guidelines. Upon review, we have determined that the following video(s) contain content in violation of these guidelines, and have been disabled:

• "How I hacked 4 unifi accounts in 5 minutes" (http://youtu.be/MGWMFur2Pek)

Everyone hates spam. Misleading descriptions, tags, titles or thumbnails designed to increase views are not allowed. It's also not okay to post large amounts of untargeted, unwanted or repetitive content, including comments and private messages.

Your account has received one Community Guidelines warning strike, which will expire in six months. Additional violations may result in the temporary disabling of your ability to post content to YouTube and/or the permanent termination of your account.

For more information on YouTube's Community Guidelines and how they are enforced, please visit the help center.

Please note that deleting this video will not resolve the strike on your account. For more information about how to appeal a strike, please visit thispage in the help center.

Sincerely, 

The YouTube Team

A popular question I get, is how to boost a WiFi signal. Folks struggle to get good WiFi connections on the 2nd (or 3rd) floors of their homes because the routers they have don’t pump enough  ‘juice’ to go around. This is particularly true for those that work from home, having poor WiFi while trying to have a teleconference– just sucks. While other applications like YouTube and Facebook could use buffering or caching, a real-time conversation with someone over skype relies on good connectivity all the way from one party to the other, and it doesn’t matter if you have Unifi 20Mbps, if your WiFi is laggy.

I thought I could fix this by buying a more powerful router–but that didn’t work. The signal strength increased, but the quality was still below par.

The best solution is to skip WiFi  and get a Powerline Adapter instead. A powerline adapter uses your home electricity wiring to transmit the data, and because it uses wires, it’ll beat any wireless connection you have. The adapters fit nicely into your 3-Pin wall sockets, and all you need is Ethernet cables to plug into them to hook up your laptop or PC to your router located somewhere else in your home.

The premise is quite interesting and the results are even better.

I remember this problem from watching an episode of numbers. You’re a contestant on a game show–and you’re given 3 doors to choose from.

Behind one door is a shiny new sports car–behind the other 2 are goats. Your goal is to get the sportscar, by choosing a door. But after you choose a door the host reveals one of doors with the goats. Leaving you with you just two doors, instead of your initial 3.

A Coalition of Muslim NGOs have asked for Cadbury to pay for the ‘cleansing’ of the blood of Muslims to remove any traces of Pig DNA they might have consumed from having eaten Cadbury chocolates.

I’m not going to debate the religious and legal implications, just the scientific aspect. The aspect which says that the DNA of what you eat doesn’t enter your blood–and cleansing your bloodstream is an absolute waste of time, not to mention precious blood.

There’s a highway they want to build from Damansara to Puchong–called Kidex, and just like any other highway before, people are understandably worried about the construction. This excerpt from the KL-Chronicle details the causes of anxiety:

[box icon=“chat”]Kidex will be constructed over heavily built-up residential areas in Petaling Jaya and will pass very close to schools, houses and places of worship. It will pass just 5m away from two schools – Bukit Bintang Boys Secondary School and Sri Petaling Primary School. Its distance from the Tun Abdul Aziz Mosque in Section 14 is listed as 7m and from St Paul’s Church as 18m. Houses in parts of Sections 2, 4, 7 and 8 will be just 10m from the highway

And so, when Kidex had their townhall last week, a group of protesters showed up to voice their displeasure–as should be allowed in a democratic society. Kidex claimed they had conducted a survey that proved that the majority of the people wanted the highway, this was hotly contested by the Say No to Kidex committee, who contended that the survey wasn’t ‘authentic’.

The video below (from Malaysiakini) has a great interview with the secretary of the Say No to Kidex committee outlining their points of contention on the survey by Kidex. (starts at 1:10)

1. The initial Kidex survey of 300 respondents--of which 73.4% were agreeable to the building of the highway. 2. The Say No to Kidex committee did their own survey on 20 different locations, including the Mosque, Schools, and the resident associations of the areas affected by the highway. 3. Say No to Kidex can't comment on how many people they've engaged but can confirm it was more than 300. 4.Hence the public perception of the initial Kidex survey is negative. 5.The list of the initial 300 respondents has not been shared--as it was confidential. 6.The survey was conducted by a Ph.D in statistics, but this survey itself was funded by Kidex. 7.The next survey as planned by Kidex would have 2000 respondents.

Teachers day was last Friday, and I thought it would be good to make a small post in tribute to an interesting teacher I had in form 4.

Imagine a 200 pound man, with a thick moustache, carrying intimidating rotan, and wore nothing but Chairman Mao style Bush-coats everyday–that’s Mr. Vijay, and he thought me Additional Mathematics.

Mr. Vijay was interesting in many ways, including the wrestling stories he’d tell in class, but for all my years in school I only remember a handful of lessons, and none more vividly than the time he thought me the story of Carl Friedrich Gauss during us lesson on arithmetic sequences.

The story is certainly fiction, similar to that of Newton discovering gravity by watching an apple fall from a tree–but that is irrelevant, what’s relevant is how I remember it, and as my tribute to one of my teachers, I’d re-tell the story here.

Here goes.

Once upon a time, there lived a boy named Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Even while still in elementary school, Carl was already a maths genius, and like all other geniuses was a bit of a nuisance in class. So one day to shut Carl up, his teacher gave him an ‘important assignment’–he was to calculate the sum of all numbers from 1 to 100. i.e. 1+ 2+ +3 +4….+100. The idea was that this would keep Carl busy for the remainder of the lesson

However, Carl came back very quickly with an answer of 5,050!!

How did Carl do this?!!

We are all a single species, all of us share a common DNA, so common that if yours changed by a mere 2% you’d be a chimpanzee.

We share one atmosphere, from which we breath the same air–not just with other humans alive today, but those of past times as well. In fact, every breath you take contains a slither of air from the breadth of everyone else–who has ever lived. I stand in awe, when I realize the air in my lungs now was also in the lungs of Julius Caesar as he was stabbed to death.

Tun Dr M, our beloved former Prime Minister, openly supports Israel–well sort off.

Today on his blog chedet.cc, he called on everyone to boycott Israel, stating quite clearly in his latest post that;

I think the whole world in the interest of justice should boycott doing business with Israel. This is truly a pariah state which is immoral and beyond the pale of human laws.

Now of course, you’re wondering if Tun Dr M supports Israel or not? Well in actual fact it’s both, because while his words say he opposes Israel, his actions, specifically those of his website suggest otherwise.