In the above video from Prager University, we learn why are men so attracted by a woman's legs, but not vice-versa? In five minutes, Dennis Prager explains why the answers to these questions reveal so much about male and female nature.
Via Prager U
Jan 4, 2018
Men and the Power of the Visual
6:00 AM
Paul B
In the above video from Prager University, we learn why are men so attracted by a woman's legs, but not vice-versa? In five minutes, Dennis Prager explains why the answers to these questions reveal so much about male and female nature.
Jan 3, 2018
What is #Bitcoin backed by?
6:00 AM
Paul B
This question comes up all the time when discussing Bitcoin with people who are new to the whole idea of cryptocurrency. I mean, what is Bitcoin backed by anyway? Before we answer this question, let us ask you a question. What is the American Dollar backed by? I mean, up until 1971 the Dollar was backed by gold. Richard Nixon ended that.
Via Federal Reserve History:
Since this decision was made, the Dollar hasn't really been backed by anything. In fact, this decision allowed The Federal Reserve (Which isn't a government entity by the way) to print as much money as they want, pretty much any time they want, for whatever reason they want. This actually causes the Dollar to be worth less and less over time.
So if the Dollar is not backed by anything, then why is it worth anything at all? Well, not unlike gold itself, the main reason the Dollar is worth something is because we all agree that it is worth something!
The difference between Bitcoin and the Dollar then, besides it being digital in nature, is that it is backed by the Blockchain cryptography technology, and there is a finite amount of Bitcoins available. Moreover, there will only ever be 21 Million Bitcoins in circulation, which creates scarcity. An individual can't just create more Bitcoins whenever they feel like it, which prevents inflation. Because transactions, and holdings are "logged" in the Blockchain and checked by miners, there can be no double-paying and everyone can account for all transactions.
To further explain, here is a video via Mainwashed of the Winklevoss twins talking about what Bitcoin is backed by, and how it compares to gold.
If this still doesn't make sense, don't worry. A lot of new technologies don't make sense at first. Just look at Katie Couric from 1994 trying to understand what The Internet is.
Like it or not, Bitcoin is here to stay in one form or another. You better stop resisting, and start trying to understand it better.
Via Federal Reserve History:
President Richard Nixon’s actions in 1971 to end dollar convertibility to gold and implement wage/price controls were intended to address the international dilemma of a looming gold run and the domestic problem of inflation. The new economic policy marked the beginning of the end of the Bretton Woods international monetary system and temporarily halted inflation.
The international monetary system after World War II was dubbed the Bretton Woods system after the meeting of forty-four countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. The countries agreed to keep their currencies fixed (but adjustable in exceptional situations) to the dollar, and the dollar was fixed to gold. Since 1958, when the Bretton Woods system became operational, countries settled their international balances in dollars, and US dollars were convertible to gold at a fixed exchange rate of $35 an ounce. The United States had the responsibility of keeping the dollar price of gold fixed and had to adjust the supply of dollars to maintain confidence in future gold convertibility.Here is Nixon giving his famous speech on the decision:
Since this decision was made, the Dollar hasn't really been backed by anything. In fact, this decision allowed The Federal Reserve (Which isn't a government entity by the way) to print as much money as they want, pretty much any time they want, for whatever reason they want. This actually causes the Dollar to be worth less and less over time.
So if the Dollar is not backed by anything, then why is it worth anything at all? Well, not unlike gold itself, the main reason the Dollar is worth something is because we all agree that it is worth something!
The difference between Bitcoin and the Dollar then, besides it being digital in nature, is that it is backed by the Blockchain cryptography technology, and there is a finite amount of Bitcoins available. Moreover, there will only ever be 21 Million Bitcoins in circulation, which creates scarcity. An individual can't just create more Bitcoins whenever they feel like it, which prevents inflation. Because transactions, and holdings are "logged" in the Blockchain and checked by miners, there can be no double-paying and everyone can account for all transactions.
To further explain, here is a video via Mainwashed of the Winklevoss twins talking about what Bitcoin is backed by, and how it compares to gold.
If this still doesn't make sense, don't worry. A lot of new technologies don't make sense at first. Just look at Katie Couric from 1994 trying to understand what The Internet is.
Like it or not, Bitcoin is here to stay in one form or another. You better stop resisting, and start trying to understand it better.
Jan 2, 2018
#Bitcoin and top 6 alt-coins are up today
6:10 PM
Paul B
The top six cryptocurrencies are up according to coinmarketcap.com today! At the time of this writing Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) are up by 10.94% and 10.82% respectively.
Ethereum had the biggest change in 24 hours when it shot up last night by roughly $100.
Does this get you excited in 2018 or what? Let us know in the comments!
Ethereum had the biggest change in 24 hours when it shot up last night by roughly $100.
Does this get you excited in 2018 or what? Let us know in the comments!
New Bauer-Power bumper stickers are in
4:46 PM
Paul B
Great news folks! I just got my shipment of Bauer-Power bumper stickers in! Even better news is that I am going to be giving them away along with my Do Not Consent stickers and my 5th Amendment stickers when you order your free Powered by Ubuntu stickers! It's like sticker overload!
Here's what the new bumper stickers look like:
Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, guess what? I will also throw in one of my new Mainwashed bumper stickers too!
Here's what the new bumper stickers look like:
Here is what they look like on the back of my dirty SUV:
If you haven't heard about Mainwashed, it's a right leaning libertarian news aggregation site that seeks to bring you lots of news in one place in order to fight the brainwashing you get from the mainstream lying media.
If you are all about freedom, and you value your constitutional rights, then you would probably like Mainwashed. If you don't value that sort of thing, and are more into left-wing shit, like communism or whatever, you might want to give the sticker to your parents. They will appreciate it...
Anyway, to get these stickers, just follow the instructions at http://stickers.bauer-power.net!
How to disable SSL and Early TLS (TLS 1.0) for PCI-DSS Compliance in IIS and Apache
7:00 AM
Paul B
Well shit guys. The time is almost upon us where all companies that handle credit card transactions must disable what PCI-DSS calls "early TLS" and SSL. By now most of you should already have SSL 3.0 and below disabled to mitigate against attacks like POODLE and BEAST. By June 30th, 2018 though, you must now also disable TLS 1.0 too!
From PCI-DSS:
For IIS, download a tool I've written about in the past called IIS Crypto. Run the tool as an Administrator on your Windows IIS server, and under Protocols Enabled, uncheck everything except TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 then click Apply.
After you click Apply, reboot the server and you are good to go!
For Apache, at least in Ubuntu, all you have to do is modify your default-ssl.conf file located in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ using your favorite text editor, and find the section that says SSLEngine On and modify it to say:
Are you and your company prepared to make this change by June 30th? Let us know your story in the comments!
From PCI-DSS:
Is your organization still using the SSL/early TLS protocols? Do you work with online and e-commerce partners or customers who haven’t yet started the migration away from SSL/early TLS to a more secure encryption protocol? Read on for key questions and answers that can help with saying goodbye to SSL/early TLS and reducing the risk of being breached.
What happens on 30 June 2018?
30 June 2018 is the deadline for disabling SSL/early TLS and implementing a more secure encryption protocol – TLS 1.1 or higher (TLS v1.2 is strongly encouraged) in order to meet the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for safeguarding payment data.Awesome! Well, it really isn't that difficult to disable TLS 1.0 in IIS and Apache. I'll start with IIS first!
For IIS, download a tool I've written about in the past called IIS Crypto. Run the tool as an Administrator on your Windows IIS server, and under Protocols Enabled, uncheck everything except TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 then click Apply.
After you click Apply, reboot the server and you are good to go!
For Apache, at least in Ubuntu, all you have to do is modify your default-ssl.conf file located in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ using your favorite text editor, and find the section that says SSLEngine On and modify it to say:
SSLEngine onSave the config, then restart Apache:
SSLCipherSuite AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH
SSLProtocol All -SSLv2 -SSLv3 -TLSv1
SSLHonorCipherOrder On
sudo service apache2 restartBang! Done! Now you aren't serving anything without encrypting it with either TLS 1.1 or TLS 1.2!
Are you and your company prepared to make this change by June 30th? Let us know your story in the comments!
#Ethereum is on fire right now! Is this due to #testnet for #Casper?
12:24 AM
Paul B
Ethereum, at the time of this writing is up to a high of $879.20 to USD according to coinmarketcap.com! I wasn't the only one relatively shocked by this. Twitter user @azerx tweeted the following:
Twitter user @muslenerd tweeted the following reply:
What is @muslenerd talking about? Well, according to BlockExplorer.com:
This is great news for crypto-investors since most crypto-coins have been in a slump since just before Christmas!
What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments!
What is going on with #ETH, its going up like crazy!— Rza [LTC][VTC] (@azerX) January 2, 2018
Way to go #ethereum 🚀🚀🚀 pic.twitter.com/1IUG4fiZUq
Twitter user @muslenerd tweeted the following reply:
#Ethereum proof of stake testnet just released. This is a big deal. Earth is going to have a new decentralized Internet very soon.— Crypt0 (@muslenerd) January 2, 2018
What is @muslenerd talking about? Well, according to BlockExplorer.com:
Ethereum developers have launched an alpha test network (testnet) for Casper, paving the way for the cryptocurrency to eventually transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.
Like bitcoin, ethereum currently operates on a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm, meaning that the network is secured and new currency units are issued through “mining,” whereby participants solve cryptographic puzzles to validate transactions and create new blocks.
However, PoW has attracted criticism over the years, both for its tendency to centralize mining hardware into a few pools and for the amount of electricity it consumes.Whatever the reason, Ethereum is up baby! Check out these charts via coinmarketcap.com:
This is great news for crypto-investors since most crypto-coins have been in a slump since just before Christmas!
What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments!
Jan 1, 2018
I2P: An alternative to Tor for online anonymity
7:00 AM
Paul B
I've been a big proponent of Tor since I first heard about it years ago when Cory Doctorow did a keynote speech at ToorCon in San Diego talking about the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) back in 2006 I think. I mean, if you wanted to browse the internet without big brother spying on you, it was always my recommended option.
If you are unfamiliar with Tor, here is an explanation from their website:
From their About page:
Do you use I2P? Do you use Tor? Why do you prefer either one over the other? Let us know in the comments!
If you are unfamiliar with Tor, here is an explanation from their website:
Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.Some people warn that there are flaws in the Tor network though where activity can still be monitored, and sometimes if you are not careful, traced back to you. How To Geek writes:
...when you use Tor, your Internet traffic is routed through Tor’s network and goes through several randomly selected relays before exiting the Tor network. Tor is designed so that it is theoretically impossible to know which computer actually requested the traffic. Your computer may have initiated the connection or it may just be acting as a relay, relaying that encrypted traffic to another Tor node.
However, most Tor traffic must eventually emerge from the Tor network. For example, let’s say you are connecting to Google through Tor – your traffic is passed through several Tor relays, but it must eventually emerge from the Tor network and connect to Google’s servers. The last Tor node, where your traffic leaves the Tor network and enters the open Internet, can be monitored. This node where traffic exits the Tor network is known as an “exit node” or “exit relay.”So what alternatives do you have? Well, you could spend some money and use a private VPN service, or you can check on I2P (Invisible Internet Project)!
I2P is an anonymous network, exposing a simple layer that applications can use to anonymously and securely send messages to each other. The network itself is strictly message based (a la IP), but there is a library available to allow reliable streaming communication on top of it (a la TCP). All communication is end to end encrypted (in total there are four layers of encryption used when sending a message), and even the end points ("destinations") are cryptographic identifiers (essentially a pair of public keys).So what's the difference between Tor and I2P? Well Ed Holden from IVPN wrote up a pretty lengthy article explaining the differences, but in conclusion he said:
We see that both Tor and I2P provide cryptographically sound methods to anonymously access information and comunicate online. Tor provides one with better anonymous access to the open internet and I2P provides one with a more robust and reliable “network within the network,” a true darknet, if you will. Of course, when implementing either of these two tools, one must always be aware that one’s ISP can see that he or she is using Tor or I2P (though they cannot determine the content of the traffic itself). In order to hide this knowledge from one’s ISP, one should make use of a high-quality VPN service to act as an entry point to either one’s anonymous network of choice or to the internet at large.In the end, it all comes down to preference and making sure you are securing your computers at the highest possible level. Make sure you are not accidentally leaking info, and it really doesn't matter which one you use to surf the internet anonymously.
Do you use I2P? Do you use Tor? Why do you prefer either one over the other? Let us know in the comments!
