#Garadget, You Played Yourself

Ello ello, and welcome to BaicunnPress. I hope you're all having a fan-fucking-tastic day! Thank you for stopping by the site. Today, the Internet has gifted a very special thing; a good laugh and a whole new door to a possible vulnerability in IoT. It feels a bit dickish to laugh at watching an entrepreneur unravel over a couple days, but meh. In short, you're gonna love this shit.

A little background is needed to grasp the full majesty of the situation. Garadget is an IoT device that allows users to incorporate their garage door into their home automation, allowing remote open/ close operation and providing notifications. If it sounds lame, it's bc it kinda is, as it has no other real off the shelf application. However, Garadget was able to raise $63,059 on it's Indiegogo campaign in February of last year, and are currently selling for $99 on Amazon (with 71% favorable reviews as of writing this). 

On April 1st (yes... the April Fools Day), an Amazon user named R.Martin took to the product review page for Garadget to unleash his fury. R.Martin was incensed at the alleged instability of the companion iOS app, and decided that shenanigans would stop with him by posting the following review:

Martin also took to the Indiegogo Community Board to start the following thread about the product and iOS app:

It's not clear which came first, but hilarity ensues with Garadget's following responses:

When confronted by another thread user about effectively bricking Martin's device Garadget responded with this nugget of purely juvenile genius:

Technically, Garadget is being a bit of a dick, but more surprisingly civil chatter happens before Garadget, in an apparent attempt to apologize?... let slip the cherry on the cake:

OK, calm down everybody, Garadget is being dramatic. Save your pitchforks and torches for your elected representatives. Please, no death threats. And in case you're curious about the link to the quote, it's actually the following tweet by Ellon Musk:

Can we get a golf clap for the brilliant mind behind the creation and slow death spiral behind this startup. It takes a pretty big set of brass balls, and a pretty hefty background in rocket surgery to play your brand so boldly. But c'mon man, this is the internet, and it's gonna shut that shit down.  

As far as the possible new IoT threat... Think about what could happen if a device manufacturer in the future weasels an anti negative review clause into their terms or service. With the lack of consumer protections in regards to technology in the US, there's a lot of people that might get locked out of their homes. It's an unlikely threat given the potential for blow back, but a potential threat it still is.

The Indiegogo Community thread has been taken down, but down below you can find the link to the Google cached page, the Amazon review thread, and the Indiegogo campaign page :

Amazon Review

Cached Indiegogo Community Thread

Indiegogo Campaign Page

Thanks for stopping by. As always I appreciate your support. Keep an eye out for new content, and follow @BaicunnPress on Twitter for new content alerts. I'll see you wonderful people tomorrow.

-Chali Baicunn 

Do Androids Dream?

Ello ello! I hope that you're all having a fantastic day. We've made it halfway into week and we just have to push through to Friday now. I assume like me you've put some thought into AI and what that may mean for humanity. Personally, this chipper looking bastard to the left, introduced me to the ethical implications of how we define life, and got me thinking about; "Is there is a line when it comes to AI?" If so, "Where is it?" And then The AI question creeps into the mind; "If we made AI, would or could they turn against humanity?" Well thanks to Google we're now at the point where AI entities can hide stuff from us... If they wanted. 

Last week, Martín Abadi and David G. Andersen with Google's Google Brain project announced that 2 of their neural network AIs (Alice & Bob) had generated their own encryption method, allowing them to hide messages between them from a third neural network AI (Eve), that was attempting read the message. 

Abadi and Andersen, set this experiment up, by assigning each neural networks with specific tasks. Alice was instructed to pass a secret message to Bob, and Eve was tasked with figuring out how to intercept and read the message. After, about 15,000 attempts, Alice and Bob were able to simultaneously start using the same encryption method. In the end Alice was able to encrypt a 16 bit message, without Eve being able to fully decrypt the message. The actions of these 2 neural  networks are no complicated that the researchers are unable to explain how it happened, or by what encryption method was used. It seems to me that we may need to wondering if androids dream of electric sheep.

Thanks for stopping by again. I appreciate your support. Make sure you keep checking in for more new content. So what do you think? Is AI good or bad thing for mankind? Are we an evolutionary dead end working toward our own demise? Make sure to let us know what you think. Don't forget to follow @BaicunnPress on Twitter and join the BaicunnPress Nation over on Facebook at @BaicunnPress. Also don't forget that this Saturday (11/5/16) is Extra Life. BaiclunnPress is teaming up with @RUM_Gaming to raise money for sick kids and the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. We've taken down some adds on our site to make way links to donate. Be safe, have fun, and don't quit your job, you're halfway done with this week. (I'm probably projecting) 

-Chali Baicunn 

Is This Who We Are?

Hey guys! Thanks for stopping by. Today we have guest post from the vault. This is a philosophical post of sorts, written by my friend DANG, regarding his loss of faith in humanity. Read on and enjoy!

-Chali

Sometimes, in life, you see or hear something that changes the way that you feel about the human race. In some cases you walk away from your experience with a profound sense that humans are good and that life really is all flowers, sunshine and people caring for each other. Other times the news is more grim and you just have to wonder why we allowed ourselves to procreate and shouldn't we just be wiped off the planet like the scourge that we all are? Philosophically speaking, the reason that we are so affected by news of how humans treat each other, (good or bad,) is simply because we now all have a horse in the race. In our polymorphous society we cannot simply separate one group's actions from ourselves because politically we are not allowed the time-honored method of coping which is to separate ourselves into groups (that would of course be racist or something.) We are all in this together and therefore any good or evil that we encounter is part of us personally.

So, I recently heard a true story that immediately darkened the skies of humanity. A story so vile that I felt that I could never look on the human race the same again. A story, not of murder or abuse (which we have all come to accept with some sort of detached nonchalance) but one of mutual hedonism that aggravated every fiber of decency that was in me. I passed this story on to a friend anticipating a similar response, and although the depravity of the subject was new to him, he did not react as I would expect. I was anticipating at least some measure of appalled disgust and what I got was simply slightly intrigued nonchalance. His reaction to the story destroyed my faith in people even more than the story itself. What kind of a world do we live in if we are so desensitized that we can no longer have an emotional reaction to utter depravity. He blamed his lack of surprise on the internet, particularly 4chan. I guess that I understand.... but that doesn't mean that there isn't something deeply wrong happening here.

So now I will tell you the story and let you decide for yourself whether you are at all affected by the knowledge that is about to become part of you. Please let me know, for posterity of course, what you felt when you read it. Here goes:

I have a friend who is a doctor in an urban emergency room. He sees homeless patients several times a day. The other day he treated a  homeless man with a colostomy bag. In questioning the unfortunate gentleman he came to realize that the man had been selling his ostomy hole for sex. That's right - he had been letting other bums fuck him in his side hole for probably malt liquor and some Kools. At first I called b.s. and told my doctor friend that this couldn't possibly be true at which time he explained to me that it was true and that the homeless man had a nasty case of gonorrhea in his 'side-butt.'

There are so many details that are left unanswered about this situation. Were all the other holes occupied? What exactly does an ostomy fuck go for?..... It really did blow my mind.

Am I just a naive shut-in to be affected by this story? Is this something that I should just have expected to hear about someday? WTF!

BY DANG

Thanks for stopping by. If you feel like a BBQ brush and a gallon of antibacterial soap can't get you clean now, I'm sorry... ish. Hope you were entertained. Please be sure to share and comment. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ for updates on new posts and more. And as always, I hope to see you later. 

-Chali Baicunn