Lisbon Portugal

I visited in October 2015 and here are some things to do:
Pastel de Belem
Sintra

12 History of Cryptocurrencies [Bonus lecture]

Lecture 12 in the series.

1. Traditional Financial Arrangements
2. Credit based systems
3.

[Source]

windows 10 rants problems, and improvements

First I should start with what I like about windows 10:

• Upgrade was easy and painless (and free!)
• Most of the controls, options, settings are the same, or easy enough to figure out
• Runs fast enough, if not faster than previous version
• Windows edge is good improvement from internet explorer
• Finally back to a normal start menu

Now the problems I've been having, and hearing about:

• Display drivers having problems, I've had witnessed my screen flashing numerous times. I had issues with screen freezing when I plug in my laptop power cord but when I unplug it is as if everything is still happening (i.e. whatever I clicked while it was plugged in and frozen did actually happen). I also heard of AMD display drivers having many issues with windows edge but I did not experience this.
• Recently noticed that when the screen saver comes on my CPU usage goes up - figured this out from the heatsink fans spinning very loudly and by looking at the task manager.

All in all a decent operating system. Fast and stable. That is all we really want, is that too much to ask (looking at you ubuntu)

Nexus 5 reboot loop fix

The power button gets dusty over time so the solution to fix the nexus 5 reboot loop is to user air dust blaster for computer parts, see example here:

11 The future of Bitcoin?

Lecture 11 in the series.

1. The block chain as a vehicle for decentralization
2. Routes to decentralization
3. What can we decentralize?
4. When is decentralization a good idea?

[Source]
[Download here]

10 Altcoins and the Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

Lecture 10 in the series.

1. Short History of Altcoins
2. Interaction between Bitcoin and Altcoins
3. Lifecycle of an Altcoin
4. Bitcoin-Backed Altcoins, “Side Chains”

[Source]
[Download here]

9 Bitcoin as a Platform

Lecture 9 in the series.

1. Bitcoin as an append-only log
2. Bitcoins as “smart property”
3. Secure multi-party lotteries in Bitcoin
4. Bitcoin as randomness source
5. Prediction markets & real-world data feeds

[Source]
[Download here]

8 Alternative Bitcoin Mining Puzzles

Lecture 8 in the series.

1. Essential Puzzle Requirements
2. ASIC Resistant Puzzles
3. Proof-of-useful-work
4. Nonoutsourceable Puzzles
5. Proof-of-Stake

[Source]
[Download here]

7 Community, Politics, and Regulation in Bitcoin

Lecture 7 in the series.

1. Consensus in Bitcoin
2. Bitcoin Core Software
3. Stakeholders : Who’s in Charge?
4. Roots of Bitcoin
5. Governments Notice Bitcoin
6. Anti Money-Laundering Regulation
7. Regulation
8. New York’s BitLicense Proposal

[Source]
[Download here]

Ubuntu issues and problems

So after about a year of using my Acer Aspire laptop I decided to get myself a new solid sate drive to replace the hybrid drive. And with this I thought why not try installing Ubuntu instead of the ol' windows setups. Here's my experience so far.

My major issues that made the laptop unusable or simple irritate me:

• Mouse freezing! to fix: ctrl+alt+f[1-5] and then again with ctrl+alt+f7 to get back to gui
• Memorizing/Save the screen brightness upon selecting when adjusted [source]
• Better use of gpu, install best (even if proprietary driver) to use it better come back from standby mode when opening screen

Lack of things that I wish it had:

File manager:

• easier manipulation of saved favorites in connect to server -- modify this file ~/.cache/nautilus/servers [source]
• percentage of disk space used (on left side when clicking computer) -- see filesystems of system monitor

Update Aug 2015: I have upgraded to windows 10

does hubs.ly work after cancling or without hubspot subscription

So we use hubspot for couple things, and they use the hubs.ly URL shortner in social media posts.

I was wondering if those links would still work after cancelling our subscription, so far the information I got was Yes it will work. But no analytics on the links of course - since you cannot access the dashboard, naturally.

We will see if this is true, only time will tell. Updates coming in the next month (after migration to wordpress)

Let me know in the comments if you had experience with hubs.ly and hubspot migration blog to wordpress.

Thanks for visiting

6 Bitcoin and Anonymity

Lecture 6 in the series.

1. Anonymity basics
2. Overview of Bitcoin deanonymization
3. Mixing
4. Decentralized mixing
5. Zerocoin and Zerocash
6. Tor and the Silk Road

[Source]
[Download here]

Latest phishing email - Re; Proposal Penny Lee markweb06@outlook.com

As the title, this is the latest phishing email I got with the subject: Re; Proposal
from the email: Penny Lee markweb06@outlook.com
With attachment: DOC.pdf - https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/3308b7b049d73b589b40dbe8d8c6254280749395d8bcfb58524b7e95f6df015f/analysis/1426696615/

XMP toolkit 2.9.1-13, framework 1.6
This PDF document has 1 page, please note that most malicious PDFs have only one page.
 This PDF document has 10 object start declarations and 10 object end declarations.
 This PDF document has 2 stream object start declarations and 2 stream object end declarations.
 This PDF document has a cross reference table (xref).
 This PDF document has a pointer to the cross reference table (startxref).
 This PDF document has a trailer dictionary containing entries allowing the cross reference table, and thus the file objects, to be read.

Raw/original message: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=aLAKCxU8

Let me know what you think.

5 Bitcoin Mining

Lecture 5 in the series

1. The task of Bitcoin miners
2. Mining hardware
3. Energy consumption & ecology
4. Mining pools
5. Mining incentives and strategies

[Source]
[Download here]

4 How to Store and Use Bitcoins

Lecture 4 in the series

1. Simple storage (Availability, Security, Convenience)
2. Hot and cold storage
3. Splitting and sharing keys
4. Online wallets and exchanges
5. Payment services
6. Transaction fees
7. Currency exchange markets

[Source]
[Download here]

My simple git cheatsheet

Of course there are many of these out there but I just needed the simplest one so here it is:

got to the directory and do this:

git add --all .

git stage .

git commit

[add message and click control x, yes and enter]

git push

[enter your password]

done.

Hope this helped, let me know if there's anything wrong, different, etc in the comments below.
Using ubuntu 14.04 with git installed.

3 Mechanics of Bitcoin

Lecture 3 in the series

1. Transactions (Inputs and outputs.)
2. Scripts (OP_RETURN)
3. Application of bitcoin scripts (Smart contracts)
4. Bitcoin blocks
5. Bitcoin network
6. Limitations & improvements (Transactions per second, Crystallographic algorithms, Forks (hard and soft))

[Source]
[Download here]

2 How Bitcoin Achieves Decentralization

Lecture 2 in the series

1. Centralization vs. Decentralization:

1. Who maintains the ledger?
2. Who has authority over which transactions are valid?
3. who creates new bitcoins?
4. who determines how the rules of the system change?
5. how do bitcoins acquire exchange value?

2. Distributed consensus

3. Consensus without identity: the block chain

4. Incentives and proof of work

1. How to pick a random node?
2. How to avoid a free-for-all due to rewards?
3. How to prevent sybil attacks?

5. Putting it all together

1. What can 51% attacker do?

[Source]
[Download here]

Smart Traffic lights are the way of the future

First came heard of this idea when I was attending a hackathon, that team won. I had a feeling I should join but they were a very large team already... Anyway, recently thought about it again and found globalnews and torontostararticles and after reading them I remembered what realization I had back in the summer, when self driving cars are allowed on the roads, they will work with the smart lights to coordinate the commute to be even faster! that is just great :)

Let me know what you think. Comment below.

1 Intro to Crypto and Cryptocurrencies

Lecture 1 of Preston University online course of the series

1. Cryptographic Hash Functions
2. Hash Pointers and Data Structures
3. Digital Signatures

[Source]

[Download here]