Maëlys McArdle

Category: Life

Every other post.

  • Defcon 19

    Defcon 19

    A few weeks ago I attended the 19th edition of Defcon in Las Vegas. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Defcon is a large annual hacker conference. There are a number of talks on various topics of interest to this subculture, such as computer security, the law and digital rights, novel uses of hardware, lockpicking, etc. There are also a number of workshops, contests, “villages”, vendors, and art expositions. It’s really a fantastic experience.

    I arrived on a Thursday and left that Sunday. But in that short space of time, I was able to see old friends, make new ones, and see some really interesting talks. My favourite one was on bit flipping due to what the speaker suspected was non-ECC memory being affected by cosmic radiation, and how that could be exploited.

    All the contests they had running were really cool, but this one had me laughing out loud. It was the beer cooling contest. As these guys had their set up running, you could see the liquid nitrogen escape out onto the ground.

    Another fun event to watch was the hacker jeopardy. You got points for getting the answers right, but you also got points per beer bottle you consumed during the match. By the end of one game, all three teams had negative scores (until the beers were taken into account.)

     

    But it was really hanging out with friends that made this so fun, and with my interest in compsec taking a back seat, it’s really the prime reason I’d come back again. So cheers to Alex, Jean-Marc, Logan, Nick, StankDawg, Lattera, Zandi, Murd0c, and Jason Scott.

    Everyone attending was fantastic to be around. Whenever I sat down for a talk, I’d talk to the people around me. I met individuals from all walks of life – nursing, security, hardware architects, etc. I had breakfast with a really nice attendee from the Bay area, and we were both into food. We started to trade recipes and advice.

    The talks were good. I already mentioned the one about memory corruption, but I also liked Jason Scott’s talk on the value of archiving sites that host people’s personal expression, Mikko Hypponen’s presentation on malware history, Steven Levvy’s thoughts on his writing career, the talk by Adrian Crenshaw (Irongeek) on de-anonymizing TOR, and the Defcon network team on how they set up and secured it all.

    Other fun stuff to see at the con:

    • The “Wall of Sheep”, which displayed usernames and passwords of people who used unsecured connections on the unsecured network.

    • “Mohawk Con”, one of the many fund raisers at the conference. If I remember correctly, I think close to $40,000 US was raised that weekend for non-profits. You can see a girl shaving someone’s head behind the sign in the image below.

    • The robotic cock fight, in the midst of the capture-the-flag contest.

    • A showing of the movie “Hackers”, starring Angelina Jolie and um… Angelina Jolie. Jeff Moss (aka. Dark Tangent, the guy behind Defcon) prefaced the film by talking about how it was actually intended to be based a bit off of the early nineties rivalry between Legion of Doom (LOD) and Masters of Deception (MOD). One character in the film has an overbearing mother, and according to Moss, there was really a guy whose mom you could hear yelling in the background during telephone calls.
    • A lockpicking and hardware hacking village, where you could get your hands dirty and learn the basics or work on your own projects. I wanted to buy a lockpick gun, but didn’t think I could get it across the border back home.

    • “QueerCon”, where LGBTers and allies could socialize. Unfortunately, the music at the main party was quite loud, so it was really tough to talk to new individuals – and I missed the quieter socials. Next time.
    • A chillout lounge where you could sit down and relax. A dragon with psychadelic video projected onto it hung from the ceiling, a DJ was there spinning tunes, and neat artwork peppered the area.

    …and this is just scratching the surface of what there was to do.

    As for Vegas itself, I enjoyed good food and good weather. I was kicked out of a restaurant with my cousin and his friend, a first for all of us, for what I assume was being obnoxious/loud in French.

    So many people I encountered complained about the heat while I was there. I found it really pleasant. Yes it was hot, but it was dry heat. I’d take a 42C in Vegas over a 30C in Ottawa any day.

    Relevant: My blog post about attending Defcon 17 two years ago.

  • Freeing myself from my watch

    Freeing myself from my watch

    Tic toc tic toc…

    I broke the strap off of my faithful watch a few months ago. At first, I didn’t go out to replace it out of laziness. Now, it’s because I believe the quality of my life has gone up since I’ve been without it. I can still get the time from my cell phone if I need to, but only when precisely that: it’s when I need to.

    I went out to the market last Sunday, ordered a nice cup of coffee and sandwich, and read while sitting on a park bench. When I felt satisfied, I got up and left. It was wonderful and relaxing.

    The old me would have looked at my watch every five minutes at that park bench. Knowing what time it was at that instant would instigate distracting thoughts. Oh I should probably get up. Oh I should do this for another 20 minutes. Oh the afternoon is passing quick. 

    I would be needlessly be preoccupied by such matters. So, off it goes. Now, I only check the time when I actually have a reason to. And that is liberating.

     

  • Ramblings at 2AM about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

    Ramblings at 2AM about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

    Update: You can read all the ways I’m wrong about the text below over at this discussion here. This was a fun thought experiment, and I’ve left it as-is. Please take the following as being %100 wrong.

    I don’t believe that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is an accurate understanding of the mechanics of gravity. Of course the formulas for predicting behaviours are accurate, and have been proven time after time. But there’s a difference between establishing formulas for behaviour prediction, and understanding what’s going on in the back. You can come up with the right mathematical relationships for the wrong reasons. That’s what I believe Einstein’s theory to be: the right math for the wrong reasons.

    Einstein believed that time was flexible, affected by gravity.

    I believe that time doesn’t exist, other than a human abstraction to quantify the fourth dimension (dimensions themselves being an abstraction.)  A clock doesn’t actually measure time itself – time isn’t a particle or thing you can detect. What your common watch is at it’s heart an oscillating crystal which we’ve associated a given number of oscillations to mean a unit we’ve given to quantify a fourth dimension, a second. This behaviour is constant relative to other observed phenomena over this fourth dimension, so we can use it as a means to establish differences between points in time. Like other dimensions, time would have no start or end, and it only has meaning when presented relative to something else. For this last point, think about it this way: if I say it is currently 12:45pm, we know that that’s relative to the start of the day, the day being relative to the month, the month to the year, and the year to a historical event. Remove these established points which we use to derive meaning from time, and time itself becomes immeasurable. Even when we say something happened 4.7 billion years ago, we need another point with which to compare it with (present time in this case.) Same with cartesian coordinates – without a center point to anchor coordinates (commonly (0,0)), coordinates lose meaning.

    Time as an abstraction is thus static, no more flexible than the meaning of the number “one.” When you see the clocks of GPS satellites skew due to the effects of gravity, Einstein would argue that you’re witnessing the variability of time itself – relative to us, the satellite’s clocks would run slower. Relative to the satellite, we on Earth would be faster. Within the frame of reference of each, time would be the same. This would be due to the effects of gravity bending spacetime, he would argue, the effects which would be stronger for us Earthlings than the bodies further away from this mass that is our planet (assuming no other bodies existed.) This is because the force of gravity is proportional to the distance between both bodies.

    I would argue that time itself is the same for both (being static), but that the effects in the current static four dimensions due to the difference in gravity alone accounts for the alterations we see in the output of these clocks.

    I also believe photons to have a mass, and that the bending of light paths we see (gravitational lens) are not due to the warping of spacetime, but simply due to the gravitational pull on the photons by bodies in space. With the Einsteinian spacetime explanation, the light always travelled in a straight path relative to its frame of reference, but the space through which it travelled was curved due to gravity. With my explanation, light travelled was travelling in a path curved due to the pull of gravity. It would be “aware” of the curve in it’s path, if you will.

    Current accepted theory would dictate that photons are massless. I disagree. With my theory, we can predict the mass of a photon. You can estimate the mass of the star that bends light, you know the positioning of the source relative to this planet, you know the speed at which light was travelling, and you know how much its path was bent to reach you. You can thus determine what the mass of the individual photons must have been for it to have been altered to that extent.

    Of course, all of this would be much easier if we knew what gravity was. We still don’t. We can predict with great certainty its forces. We can measure it’s effects on bodies with incredible precision. But we have yet to understand what gravity itself is.

  • Victory?

    Victory?

    Following up on my last post, I sent this message to my MPP asking for clarification on his statements:

    Thank you very much for your reply.

    I did hear the comments made on behalf of the Premier. It was not clear to me, however, if this meant that students would no longer be forbidden from starting Gay-Straight Alliance clubs come September. Will that in fact be the case?

    – Julien

    Yesterday, I received a response back from his assistant:

    Hi Julien,

    My apologies for the delay in response. I’d like to confirm that students can now start Gay-Straight Alliances in all schools throughout the province.

    [Name Removed]
    Senior Constituency Assistant
    Office of Yasir Naqvi MPP, Ottawa Centre

    If this is true, this is big news. It would be a departure from Mr. Naqvi’s previous statements, which mirrored the party line. It would be a great victory for LGBT youth in Ontario Catholic schools.

    I forwarded the emails to Xtra!, who got back to me saying they’d follow up. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Is this in fact true? Did the assistant misspeak? I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.

    Update August 25th, 2011: I was able to talk to Mr. Naqvi in person at a town hall meeting that he held. Unfortunately, the assistant did in fact misspeak. The Catholic boards would continue the ban on any club with the word “gay”, though Mr. Naqvi assured me that students could rename the club and the content would not be censored by the schools. I have reason to believe that this won’t be the case, but time will tell.

  • Response from my MPP on GSAs

    Response from my MPP on GSAs

    A little over three months ago, I sent a letter to my local MPP discussing the ban on Gay-Straight Alliances in Ontario Catholic schools and imploring action. His name is Yasir Naqvi, and he also happens to be the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Education. Yesterday, his reply arrived.

    Dear Mr. McArdle,

    Thank you for your emails regarding the Catholic school system in Ontario. I appreciate the time you have taken to write and share your concerns with me, and I would like to apologize for the delay in my response. Every student in Ontario’s publicly funded schools is entitled to respect, equity, and an education free from discrimination and harassment. Students do better in a respectful and inclusive environment, and those in our publicly funded schools are fortunate to benefit from an environment where kids from all ages, races, and backgrounds share a classroom. Their differences help to make our province’s schools among the very best in the world.

    Last fall, our government required Ontario school boards to implement one of the most progressive inclusive education policies in North America. Every school board now must have their own Equity Policy, including Catholic and Francophone boards. Our Equity and Inclusive Education Policy is clear; discrimination based on race, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation are unacceptable, and boards and schools all have a role to play in helping to build more inclusive schools. We take matters like this very seriously: we have also passed legislation to make reporting violent incidents mandatory, and added “bullying” to the Safe Schools Act. We are focused on ensuring that all students have the supports in our schools through student-led forums to feel welcome, safe and free from discrimination and harassment.

    I know that student support groups for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) students have been controversial within some Ontarian schools. In September, 2010 our government presented Gay Straight Alliances as an option for boards to build more inclusive, respectful schools, but it has been left to school boards to decide whether or not to implement them. However, earlier this month the Premier stated that “…effective this September, high school students who want their school to have a student support group for LGBT students will have one. This is not a matter of choice for school boards or principals. If students want it, they will have it.” I am very proud of our government’s firm stance on this issue. We must all ensure that every Ontarian student feels welcome, safe and supported in an environment free from discrimination and harassment. Gender-based and homophobic bullying is unacceptable in all schools.

    Once again, thank you for writing. Please do not hesitate to contact me at my Community Office at any time to share your thoughts and concerns. I look forward to hearing from you.

    Sincerely,

    Yasir Naqvi, MPP
    Ottawa Centre

    I thanked him for the reply, and asked him if this meant that students would no longer be forbidden from starting Gay-Straight Alliances.

    That clarification is needed. The Catholic schools are currently working on a framework for their own version of the clubs, and the skeptic in me believes that the McGuinty government would be content to keep the ban in place and if it meant the introduction of these new clubs. I have reasons to suspect this will be the case given the exchange quoted below:

    Does McGuinty’s announcement mean, then, that there will be GSAs that are called GSAs and supported by Catholic school administrators next year? “Premier McGuinty did not use the words GSAs,” Murray wrote in a text message to Xtra. “He said ‘support groups for LGBT youth.”

    Ignoring the acceptance of intolerance with the persistence of the ban, the problem with this is that there is a world of difference between a GSA and what I’ll call the “framework clubs.”

    Gay-Straight Alliances are student run clubs that provide support for students affected by LGBT issues and their allies.  The good they’ve done in making schools safer for students have been espoused over and over by the Ministry of Education.

    Meanwhile, the framework clubs came to be out of an opposition to the genuine support offered by GSAs. Not exactly a promising start. Furthermore, its mandate is being worked out by the same institution whose leadership in Ontario dictates that gay students must be viewed as intrinsically disordered. The same institution that continues to marginalize queer students, sometimes to absurd lengths.

    Imagine if an organization who believed that racial minorities were “intrinsically disordered” had decided to come up with their own version of an anti-racism club, as a means to prevent real anti-racism clubs from taking hold. I think it’s quite evident how students would not likely be served with such alternatives.

    Update: Naqvi’s comments for this article gives further credence to the scenario I suggest. I’ll be the first to celebrate should I turn out to be wrong.

    Update: Xtra! has an interesting article on the situation.