Getting Started With Fantasy Football

I am going on my fourth year of Fantasy Football, last year I played in two separate leagues and finished first in one league, second place in the other and in both leagues I auto-drafted my team(let the computer do my drafting for me). I got into fantasy football for multiple reasons, it gave me a chance to further the football season beyond just watching the games; gave me a chance to beat friends and coworkers at fantasy football plus it gave me a chance to win money from them as well. One recurring thing that I hear from a lot of people when I bring up fantasy football is that they do not watch football so they would lose, here I will introduce to fantasy football and throughout the upcoming season I will make fantasy football posts a weekly occurrence.

First you will either need to join or start a league, if you are just now getting into fantasy football then I would recommend joining an existing league being as nobody wants a new person as their league’s commissioner. A commissioner is the person that not only sets up the league, they may also be needed to uphold or deny potential trades based on fairness so you can see how a person that is inexperienced with the sport can not be ideal for this position. ESPN, NFL and Yahoo are all potential sites that you could set up a league, I have experience with all of them Though I prefer ESPN. It is also possible to join a public Fantasy Football League with people you do not know, I would ask that it is clearly described how money for the league would be handled before the season even starts, and I personally would not play unless money is involved.

I play in a 10 man league as well as a 12 man league, monetarily speaking, if everyone pays $100 in a 12 man league then you could pay $100 for a chance at up to $1100 though it’s rare that the entire prize goes to the first player. In my 12 man league the buy-in is only $50 and the prizes are divided as $375 for first place, $175 for second place while third place earns they $50 buy-in back. In my 10 man league where the buy-in is $100 and I am commissioner, I made it so first place is awarded $600 while second earns $300 and the remaining $100 was issued to the “Aaron Hernandez Award Winner”(the first individual player arrested on the season) for Dwayne Bowe. Again, for me I only play fantasy football because of the fact that I can play against, and win money from my friends and coworkers.

You will need a strong commissioner, one that will enforce full payments are received from the league’s participants before the start of the season or else that team is removed from the league. In a former league we had a very new commissioner and when playoffs rolled around half of the league had yet to pay, those that did not make the playoffs refused to pay and payouts suffered because of it. You will of course have people that try to take advantage of newer players, offer you a trade of your Peyton Manning(last years top fantasy player) for 2-3 mediocre players and try to say that you are getting the better end of the deal because you are getting more in return, a good commissioner will veto that trade without hesitation. Fantasy Football, at least the way I play and have described how to play, can be a very fun and rewarding experience that lasts beyond the Fantasy Football season, I like to let the others know what I have spent their money on.

Finding Tech Abroad: Exploring Technology in Knoxville, TN

I will be out of the Miami area for the next week but I will be looking for technology in Knoxville, TN. LOPSA East Tennessee will be hosting their ARM Revolution this coming Tuesday, July 1st which I plan on attending. Taken from their page, the ARM Revolution is described as:

ARM, as of 2013, is the most widely used 32-bit instruction set
architecture, and is used approximately 95% of all smartphones. After
some brief comments on the history ARM and the differences between ARM
and x86 architecture, I’ll talk about current ARM developments and
some cool projects using ARM-based CPUs.

If you have an ARM project you have built or are working on
(RaspberryPi, Arduino ARM, or any other ARM-based system), bring it
along so we can do a bit of show and tell. I will be bringing a couple
of RaspberryPis as well as the usual mobile platform suspects.

Hopefully I will have a write-up from the event available on Wednesday and I look forward to interviewing a few Raspberry Pi inventor/developers. I will also be interviewing one of the gentlemen behind the 2014 Knoxville 24 Hour Film Festival award winner for Best Comedy, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Film. En route back to Miami I am hoping to have a chance to explore technology along the way. It looks like I will officially have a logo within the next week, so that puts me even closer to getting the .com running, hopefully within the next two weeks. Again, Thank You to everyone for the continued support worldwide, I am hoping for big things moving forward. 

What is Hacking?

Despite what teenage girls or mothers on Facebook would have you believe, hacking is not accessing a computer after someone neglected to log out from it. A true hacker would never need you to forget to log out of your account nor would they need to even be at your location. They would get your account information remotely without any assistance from you at all. A hacker would also not need to phish for your information, phishing is a type of scam where a person pretends to be someone they are not to get your information, here is a good example.

The term hack is getting dangerously close to generic use as of late, there are “lifehacks”, “kitchenhacks”…typically anything that makes an existing tasks even remotely faster is now considered a hack. The new generalization of hack and hacking takes away from the true hackers, and these are people that know far more about computers than you ever could. Commonly accepted uses of the term hacker taken from Wiki are:

•  People committed to computer security, primarily concerns those who work debugging or fixing security problems (White hats), differentiate from the morally ambiguous Grey hats and the illegal computer criminals, who perform unauthorized remote computer break-ins via a communication networks such as the Internet (Black hats).
• A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts.The Request for Comments RFC 1392 amplifies this meaning as “[a] person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.”
• The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s (e.g. the Homebrew Computer Club) and on software (video games, software cracking, the demoscene) in the 1980s/1990s. The community included Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and Paul Allen and created the personal computing industry.

We will focus on the computer security defined hacker here. These hackers will examine and exploit weaknesses in a computer system or network, typically motivated by profit, protest, challenge or personal enjoyment. Hackers are essentially experts in computer or network security. Recent examples of websites actually being hacked are:

• State of Montana notifies 1.3 million patients of breach to Department of Public Health and Human Services server.
• Popular messaging app Yo gets breached.

PC World also recently released an informative map that shows in real time what it looks like when the web is hacked. Despite the bastardization of the term hacker, it is best that you do know what you are dealing with when encountering actually being hacked.

Division in the Dogecoin Community

In the past week the normally fun loving /r/Dogecoin community has been at odds with one another over a trademark dispute. The dispute seems to have mostly settled for now but it clearly will have lasting ramifications that have yet to be determined.

Ultra Pro, a company most widely known for creating protective cases for collectibles, files a trademark application on Doge stating they are doing so to protect themselves from potentially being sued in the future for not having a trademark on merchandise they create utilizing the meme. This leads to immediate and very vocal backlash against Ultra Pro courtesy of the /r/Dogecoin community.

Following the trademark announcement by Ultra Pro, Moolah tweets this, which is then posted onto r/dogecoin. Moolah releases a statement that they are merely filing a notice of opposition and that nobody, including them, should hold a trademark on Doge.

Dogecoin co-creator, and owner of Dogecoin.com, Jackson Palmer expresses his belief that Moolah is intending to take the trademark for themselves as well as his support for Ultra Pro in acquiring the trademark for free public use. Jackson makes a post saying that he was misled by Moolah’s ambiguous wording and decides to leave the community.

 

Ultra Pro makes an AMA on /r/dogecoin. They state that they still have no intention of using the trademark against anyone, and they are open to Moolah’s idea of filing the notice of opposition to make sure NO ONE can have the trademark, as (allegedly) the original trademark application was just for Ultra’s self-defense. However, until a notice of opposition is completed, Ultra is continuing to wait on the original application to protect themselves.

In the aftermath of this situation, original Dogecoin developer Billy Markus makes a post saying that the entire situation is stupid tells the /r/dogecoin community that it needs to stay silly. Ultra Pro is still awaiting on its trademark while Moolah is still waiting on their notice of opposition. Jackson Palmer tweets that he has left the /r/dogecoin community but not Dogecoin.

Dr. Austin Fowler Explains Quantum Computing

I recently had a request to explain quantum computing is, being as I did not know enough about the subject to answer it myself, I had an opportunity to ask Dr. Austin Fowler. Dr. Fowler is a quantum computing researcher at University of California, Santa Barbara and an honorary researcher at The University of Melbourne who has a background in computer engineering, computer science, mathematics, and physics.

What exactly is quantum computing?

A different type of computer that given n quantum bits can store any combination of the 2ⁿ possible bitstrings simultaneously.

How new is the technology?

Arguably the field of quantum computing was born in 1994, with the publication of Shor’s efficient factoring algorithm.

What can it be used for?

Many things, see http://math.nist.gov/quantum/zoo/

How can I differentiate between a computer, a digital computer and a quantum computer?

The former is cheap and widely available, you will only find prototypes of the latter in research laboratories. The only exception is the D-Wave machine, which occupies a small room and retails for approximately $15 million.

Would I have to study a particular programming language to develop digital computers?

A good programmer can easily switch to a new language. You want to be good at programming, and this should not be considered a language specific goal.

Would a person with a basic knowledge of several languages be at a disadvantage against someone that specializes in one?

More languages should be advantageous. More techniques. More ways of thinking.

You have a quadruple major and PhD, would this field but out of range for a person wanting to break in but they are far from having a doctorate?

One of my students is 16 and in high school. Primarily you need to be smart and want to do this kind of work. And you need to team up with someone that has sufficiently broad background to guide you to problems that can be sold with your current background.

According to TIME Magazine, granted this was months ago, a D-Wave costs at least $10 Million dollars so who needs/could afford a quantum computer?

Scientists. Modern classical supercomputers cost hundreds of millions of dollars. People still buy them.

Some People Shouldn’t Own a Computer

I got my start in the technology world by working on the hardware side of desktop PC’s and though I have taken more of an appreciation towards software lately, hardware will always be something I am proficient in. I will soon be filing an LLC due to recently being hired as an IT Consultant for a Miami based real estate company; asked to custom build a desktop computer and get paid by a separate individual to “fix” their laptop. I am awaiting approval on the LLC before taking on the first two tasks, however I accepted and recently finished fixing the laptop, he following is why some people should not own a computer.

I feel the two things that people know far too little about yet rely far too much on are cars and computers. I knew the person in question with the laptop before I started this blog, when she first broached the subject of needing her laptop cleaned she told me it had “the computer equivalent of AIDS” and yes those were her exact words. Specifically what she expressed that was wrong with her laptop is:

1. That it would power off after 5 minutes of use.
2. That it would not connect to the internet.
3. That it was loaded with viruses. 

The first thing I did as I always try to do was connect to the internet which it did immediately, we can now cross number 2 off of that list. Now that the laptop was connected to the internet I had pop up warning messages from everything, ‘Your antivirus database is outdated by 300 days’; ‘Malwarebytes is outdated by 300 days’; ‘Windows needs to be updated’… I noticed that the laptop was getting hot so I removed the now determined to be dead battery and used the computer plugged into an outlet, that solved number 1 off of the list, afterwards I was informed that the laptop just ran continuously as it was her torrenting computer. After the Antivirus software and Malwarebytes had updated I was prompted to restart the computer and was met with the following:

I have no idea how long this took because I went to do something else after I saw how many updates were required. Once I returned I decided to address issue 3 and tackle the viruses. The following pictures are not for the tech squeamish.

What you should notice in the three Malwarebyte scan photos are that every time I use the same Quick Scan but the number of objects detected and the time elapsed vary.

I would run one scan and it would then complete and prompt me to restart the computer, again as these scans were going on I did other things. If you question why someone like Geek Squad charges so high to do this, it is because they take the same $50 an hour, they just charge you the hour(s) it takes to run these scans/updates.

I ran one final Malwarebytes scan on this computer which came back with no threats, cleaned the start up menu and feed up some hard drive space, we can now cross number 3 off the list as well. Most people wouldn’t drive their cars for a year without changing/checking the oil so I still find it crazy that a person would run their computer weekly without checking their antivirus software, the constant pop up messages from the toolbar are hard to miss. Normally I would not even touch Malwarebytes but since it was already installed on this computer that is what I went with, also I would not pay to use the antivirus in question, which will remain nameless, but to each their own. 

I have seen plenty of computers in worse condition than this one and I must say had they been forthcoming from the beginning regarding never updating anything or running it continually I could have most likely diagnosed it before even powering it on. The reality is that most people are embarrassed having to bring up computer issues, only once can I say that a customer was forthcoming that she received the MoneyPak ransomware because she was looking at porn, I fixed her computer easily for free. Be honest with the people that are fixing your computer, they are going to find out regardless how the threat got onto your computer in the first place.

Going Further With Torrenting

Previously I touched on How To Get Started With Torrenting, now I will further explain common terms you may encounter as well as where to get started with private trackers. I cannot post web addresses here as it is firmly against the rules of several private trackers but what I can do is post a reference to r/trackers here, where they keep a somewhat updated list. As I stated in yesterday’s post, an issue you may run into on a private tracker is that the content you are looking for is not available, that’s where specialty sites come in handy. If you cannot find what you are looking for on your private tracker of choice, let’s say sports, then you can be sure that there is a private tracker that specializes in just sports, if you only care about football, you can find one that only features that.

On a public tracker you could download the file and be on your way, a frowned upon practice dubbed hit and run, but on a private tracker you are required to seed that torrent after you have downloaded it to help others leech from it. You may have to seed for a designated period of time, at least 48 hours or just simply seed back the ratio you have downloaded, example being if you download a 1GB file then you should upload at least the same 1 GB. That brings us to ratio requirements which vary by trackers but typically want you to have uploaded more than half of the data that you have downloaded, keep in mind that if you are trying to get onto a more elite private tracker then a 1.0 ratio is not that impressive. Some private trackers will have torrents designated as free leech where you can download the torrent and not have it count against your download total, effectively a ratio booster. So, I guess your big question is how do you get onto a private tracker?

• Some private trackers allow you to go to their site and sign up, this could be one of your best options for getting started and can also be a stepping stone for getting into the better private trackers available if they require proof of your ratio.
• Private trackers may hold open enrollment, a temporary designated period where you can sign up for that tracker without an invite.
• Invite only trackers are exactly that, you will need to be invited to join and unless you personally know the person inviting you, you may have to provide proof that you can understand how a private tracker works. Some of the more elite private trackers may only issue invites to their donors, people that donate money to the continued operation of the site. There are several levels of elite trackers, some of which you may have to take a quiz to be accepted to.

I feel at this point you understand the legality of torrenting; the difference in private and public trackers; how to set up your computer to start torrenting; where to look for private trackers and understanding common terms you may encounter in torrenting. Also, TorrentFreak is a great source to keep up with the latest news in the torrenting world.

How To Get Started With Torrenting

I should preface this by letting you know that the act of torrenting itself is not illegal, it is specifically the content which is downloaded that could make you torrenting something illegal. People that have downloaded copyrighted material through torrenting have been arrested and owners/operators of sites that support torrents containing copyrighted material have also been arrested. However, more often than not downloading copyrighted material could lead to a stern letter from the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) or Motion Picture Association of America(MPAA) or potential lawsuits from the aforementioned Associations.

Think of BitTorrent as a way of transmitting files across the internet; a torrent as an indivdual file; torrenting as the act of downloading files. Files that are transmitted can vary in size from a single .jpg which is a couple of kB’s in size to entire video libraries which can be hundreds of GB’s in size. With the speeds that BitTorrent is capable of, a full movie will take a few minutes to download given there are enough people sharing the file. Sharing the file is not only uploading a file to be downloaded but also supporting that file after you upload it so others can download that same file, you in this case would be a seeder while the person trying to download that file would be a leecher. If you upload a file to a tracker site and do not in turn seed that file then nobody will be able to download it but if you upload it and seed then others can download from it and become seeders as well, after they have finished the download.

With a basic understanding of what BitTorrent does and also the concept of needing seeders to allow downloads for leechers, let’s discuss how to get started with torrents. There are mimimal hardware capabilities required for torrenting with possibly only a hard drive large enough for your downloaded files, an inexpensive external hard drive will work just fine for this. What you will need to make torrenting possible is a torrent client, of which µTorrent is currently the most popular outside of China. After you have a torrent client that enables the file sharing, you need to know where to look to get files that you can torrent. The Pirate Bay is one of the most widely known magnet link sites which we will label a public tracker meaning anyone can access it. The process after finding a torrent you like is as follows: click the download link to have that file load in your client; click the button to accept that torrent being added to your client; opening the file after the torrent has finished downloading; an optional step may be needing to unzip the file so you can access it. Public trackers will give you a huge selection of content to choose from with an equally as large number of peers seeding and leeching, the downside to public trackers is that there can be a public record of what your IP address has downloaded. A more secure way of torrenting would be from private trackers which usually require signing up, and in more elite private trackers, the need to be invited.

Acceptance into private trackers could also require proof that you are not only familiar with torrenting, but you are also a person that seeds more than you leech, or ratio requirements. Private trackers give a little more piece of mind but they can have wait times associated with downloads, not have enough seeders for downloads or just not have a particular download you are looking for. I feel that is more than enough to give an overview of what exactly torrenting is, next time I will get into the more advanced terms and options associated with torrenting.

Why the Government Doesn’t Need to Spy on You

People Overshare On The Internet: Individuals create their own online profiles to which they have attached their names, addresses, family trees, work history, pictures, cell phone number, hobbies, friends and almost anything else you could want to know about a person. Our cell phones have GPS that can give the exact location you are currently at and a healthy percentage of people are okay with letting the world know where they are at all times. In 2008 the Bling Ring robbed the homes of several celebrities by using Google, TMZ and the celebrities own Twitter accounts to learn when the stars would be home. The gang would then use Google Earth to study aerial photos of the celebrity homes to determine the best points of entry. The gang was finally caught after captured CCTV footage from the robberies of Lindsay Lohan and Audrina Patridge was released which led to the identity of one of the criminals while his Facebook led to the identity of the others.

People Don’t Take Steps To Protect Themselves: The days of thieves dumpster diving to steal your identity are no longer needed, now criminals retrieve your personal data from improperly disposed of  PCs, servers, cell phones and memory devices. Carelessness in properly protecting your web device of choice can also lead to harder to remove adware, spyware and ransomware. There are plenty of people that spend their free time seeking and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network for profit, protest, challenge or simply enjoyment.

People Don’t Realize Once Something Is On The Internet It Is On There Forever: In the old days if you wanted to take risque photos of yourself you would most likely use a Polaroid camera, the image would print instantly and you wouldn’t have to take your photos to be developed where someone else could see them. Today if you wish to send risque photos of yourself than you would snap a picture with your cell phone and then message or e-mail them. Scarlett Johansson, Blake Lively, Vanessa Hudgens, Jessica Alba, Kat Dennings and many more celebrities have found themselves in the public eye for nude photos, some of which arguably may have been intentionally leaked. Girls that post themselves to popular nude posting forums, then later wish for them to removed, also learn that you can get a million sites to remove your image but all it takes is for one person to have saved them and those images are never gone. It’s not just nude photos that people should concern themselves with, people can lose their jobs for what the post on Facebook. More recently in the headlines, Justin Bieber and his racist rants were released from back when he was fourteen years old.

If a service came along tomorrow that told people it would maintain their online profile from across Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and anywhere else they wanted to include, it would be a successful app/service but the same people that use it will wonder in ten years how there entire existence is documented online. Technology isn’t going anywhere and it’s only going to get more difficult as time goes on to remove this information about yourself, why not start protecting yourself better now?

How To Make Money Blogging: With Professional Blogger David Peralty

David Peralty was a full-time blogger for five years and created a lot of content about WordPress. In his own words “During my five year career writing online, I published more than 30,000 blog posts using my own name and various pseudonyms. I was part of over 100 podcast episodes. I felt very fortunate doing it all, and while I experienced some horrible burnout from some of my later projects, I still look back on my time working for Jacob Gower on Blogging Pro as some of the best times of my life.” You can follow David at his personal site http://peralty.com.

What got you into blogging, is it something you set out to do or did it fall into your lap?

“Blogging wasn’t what I expected to do with my career, and no one that I knew was blogging at the time, and other than Darren Rowse, I hadn’t heard of anyone making any money doing it.

I went to school for computer networking, and finished as the tech bubble had finished collapsing. When I got online, the idea of journaling my life was super appealing to me as I had always enjoyed writing. I was learning PHP and creating my own online publishing system between using Blogger and being introduced to WordPress.

WordPress changed everything for me. I started following its development, and became part of the WordPress community. When a young man ended up buying a bunch of blogs that I had loved, I contacted him for an interview. He hadn’t planned out what he was going to do regarding the continued content development on those sites and offered me a job.”

Would a person have to put a lot of time and energy into turning blogging into a career or could they do it in their spare time?

“Because the barrier for entry is so low now, with hosted software solutions, and more available information and tutorials, I don’t believe that blogging is an easy career option for most people.

There are people that rise to be well known and make some serious money from their content, but content is mostly a commodity these days, and it can be hard to build an audience. I would hazard a guess that unless you are being employed by an already established blog, the odds of earning a livable income from blogging alone is very low, especially in the first two years of publication.”

How can a person make money from blogging, let alone enough to turn it into a career?

“This is a complex question and the options aren’t as many or as simple as they once were. I would say that the best way to make money from building your own blog today is to use your blog to build a brand and then convert that brand into a product. Look at people like Chris Garrett (chrisg.com) and his Authority Blogger community or what the Copyblogger team has done as an example.

Of course another way, and the way that I did it, was to find blogs you can write on and get paid. There are many successful blogs out there that need content production and are willing to pay for it. Envato is a great example of that, paying some high rates for quality tutorials in a variety of niches.

At the end of the day, making money from blogging requires a lot of hard work, organization, and the ability to develop and built multiple potential income streams through banner advertising, affiliate programs, creating products and services, or crafting content for others.”

I see that you referenced yourself as a former professional blogger, what caused you to no longer do it?

“Two things: burnout and advertising rate drops. When the recession started happening, online advertising rates dropped like a stone, and sites that I worked on started making a small percentage of what they were earning only a few months prior. So then I switched to working on a site for a friend that I didn’t totally enjoy. I put in long, hard hours, and got paid a decent wage, but it caused me to not enjoy blogging as much. I then ended up taking a job doing web development for the local government. I’ve since mostly just stuck to personal blogging as I haven’t been able to find the determination to stick with professional blogging tasks/jobs for any reasonable period of time.

Thankfully, my skills in web development and online marketing have kept me well employed.”

If you could give one piece of advice to a potential blogger from you personal experiences in blogging, what would it be?

‘Be true to yourself. My blogging career came to a halt because I chased money for the sake of money. I didn’t think about what that would do to my psyche. I didn’t realize that by working on projects I didn’t enjoy that I could ruin my passion and interest in writing professionally. I have also seen others go through this same transition, and I am still trying to help one close friend change paths before he is too far gone and quits blogging as well.

If you aren’t being yourself, doing what you enjoy, writing posts you’d love to read, then no matter how hard you work, it won’t last, and you won’t achieve success.”