💀It's Horror Time,No More Captchas, and Snoop on Starlink,

Let October begin!

David Nichols

Oct 10, 2022

Spooky Scary Skeletons Send Shivers down your spine . . .

Those were simpler days on TikTok weren’t they?

It’s October everyone! time to watch horror movies, drink cider, and sit outside by a nice roaring fire.

Speaking of horrors beyond human comprehension . . . this toy I got in my adult happy meal was truly terrifying.

First time I ate at McDonalds in years - just to see what all the hype was about. The packaging was cool, but beyond that I wasn’t crazy about it.

Did you see that Last of Us trailer? It looks FANTASTIC - and for those of you who’ve also played the game - I saw a LOT of in game locations.

I finished the Cyberpunk Edgerunners show - and it was pretty good! I’ll definitely watch it again at some point - definitely got me excited to hop back into the game - and get pumped for Cyberpunk 2.

It’s definitely one of the saddest anime I’ve seen - right up there with Akame Ga Kill and Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

It certainly sounds like Elon might actually be buying Twitter this time around. I’m curious to see if his ambitions of turning it into a super app have any merit to them.

Facebook / Instagram failed at the mission - but could Twitter have a chance?

Let’s hop in!

💀It’s Horror Time!

Sooo - you want to have a SPOOKY October?

Gather some popcorn, candy, and cider - because it’s TIME to kick up your feet and watch some scary movies and play some horrific games.

FIRST - we must obey the ephemeral laws of the internet - and watch this video.

Ok! Now - Let’s get to the Horror.

Movies

Found Footage (My Favorite Genre)

Exists - This one is a pretty terrifying Bigfoot movie.
Frankenstein’s Army - A “body horror” WW2 movie. Corny, cheesy, but deeply unsettling.
Lake Mungo - It’s essentially a fictional horror documentary. Unsettling - but not scary in the “boo” sense.
Hell House LLC 1,2,3 - my favorite found footage series. What if you’re a haunted house crew and you pick . . . .a haunted house? RIP
The Houses that October built 1,2 - my second favorite found footage series. What if you like to visit haunted houses . . . and there might be one run by people with very ill intent?

Horror Movies

The Ritual - WENDIGOS and HIKING GONE WRONG. Fantastic movie.
Dead Snow 1,2 - Hilarious Nazi Zombie movies. The first one is the best, but the second is a lot of fun too. Fun blend of horror and comedy.
Antlers - Think horror suspense, but still a very unsettling Wendigo movie.
Brightburn - What if there was an evil kid superman? Terrifying.
Willy’s Wonderland - Nicolas Cage, Giant Evil Animatronics, diet coke, dumb kids. Need I say more?

Horror Games

Dead Space - Scariest game i’ve ever played. The Necromorphs are terrifying - no matter how powerful your weapons are.
Outlast - You and your video camera vs crazy town. Lots of hiding. Much fear.
The Evil Within - Pretty scary until you get the shotgun ngl. Very scary if you don’t have any ammo.
Until Dawn - A great horror game to play on the couch with friends! basically an interactive movie where it can change drastically depending on how slow you hit the buttons.

🎮No More Captchas

Who actually likes doing Captchas?

Whether it’s the typing kind

or the picture kind

We hate them. We know they are supposed to prove we’re human - but . . . they often take more brain power and time than we like to admit.

Most companies use the Google Captcha product since it’s easy to use, install, and FREE.

Well, Cloudflare is rolling out its own solution - which requires no or very little human interaction.

With Turnstile, we adapt the actual challenge outcome to the individual visitor/browser. First we run a series of small non-interactive JavaScript challenges gathering more signals about the visitor/browser environment. Those challenges include proof-of-work, proof-of-space, probing for web APIs, and various other challenges for detecting browser-quirks and human behavior. As a result, we can fine-tune the difficulty of the challenge to the specific request. (source)

Here’s what it looks like

Essentially - Cloudflare uses different signals to determine your humanity - if it feels sure - it won’t make you do any challenges.

After our non-interactive challenges have been run, we evaluate the gathered signals. If by the combination of those signals we are confident that the visitor is likely human, no further action is taken, and the visitor is redirected to the destined page without any interaction required. However, in some cases, if the signal is weak, we present a visual puzzle to the visitor to prove their humanness. (source)

Cool, right?

Hopefully more websites adopt Cloudflare’s solution - or Google rolls out a similar one.

Go check out the Turnstile announcement for more info.

Turnstile

🕵️‍♀️Snoop on Starlink

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a . . . . satellite?

There are over 2,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, and it’s very likely we’ll see that number double or triple in the next decade or so.

Heck - there’s even apparently goals to get to over 40,000 Starlink satellites.

Here’s a hypothetical question - how much is the space garbage collector niche gonna be worth in 20 years? Astroscale is the first space garbage collecting company - and not the last I’ll wager.

It’s a lot of fun to look up in the night sky and watch the satellites fly over - but more difficult to figure out WHO they belong to.

Star Walk has a pretty neat app but what about a DIY approach?

A YT creator “saveitforparts” decided to take the challenge to create a Starlink satellite tracker.

The hardware consists of his “Picorder” mobile device, which sports a Raspberry Pi, a small LCD screen, and a host of sensors, including an RTL-SDR dongle. To pick up the satellite beacons, he used a dirt-cheap universal Ku-band LNB, or low-noise block downconverter. They’re normally found at the focal point of a satellite TV dish, but in this case no dish is needed — just power it up with a power injector and point it to the sky. The signals show up on the Picorder’s display in waterfall mode. (Source)

Here’s the video - it has a great explanation of how it works.

It’s incredibly complex - but saveitforparts keeps it very interesting.

According to Hackaday - you can actually hunt for satellites with just your laptop and a SDR receiver.1

Until reading this article by Hackaday - I had no idea SDR existed, or even what it was. It’s software defined radio - and you can use satellite receivers + software to watch satellites in real time, track planes, weather, and more.

Apparently you can even get images straight from the ISS!

Check out SDR radio for more details, and this list of receivers to see what you’re interested in.

I will say - you may need a ham radio license depending on what you’re doing. There’s a lot of “big scary laws” around radio frequencies - so always check to make sure you’re not running afoul of anything before playing with this kind of tech.

🐙The Land of Random

Random stuff from across the webbbbbb

Got AI?

If you’re craving some fun AI image generation - this one is pretty fun! It’s a bit slow - so you may want to open up a tab or two with some more links to check out while you wait. Images range from “deeply disturbing” to “hey! That’s pretty cool.”

Let's Generate some AI Art!

Hey Puter

Cloud computers have always interested me. Puter is a beta cloud computer software that you can use for notes and a few other functionalities. It’s fun to click around and play with - and you can even log into your session from other devices!

Puter