Googled "recursion".

Did you mean: "recursion"... Yep. Try it here: Recursion
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Epic BF3 Simulator

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Guru Magazine Zero Issue Review

 So i recently saw a twitter update that took me to the Guru Magazine introduction page.  The article essentially talked about how in this new digital age we have entered a "new digital age of ignorance" and frankly I agree.  In a world where with a few key strokes you can determine if that questionable remedy for a stomach ache is a hoax or not, people rarely do so.  They note that this is because science is synonymous with complexity and boredom.  They created Guru Magazine to be a eZine that presents science in a way that is approachable to the general public.  As I browsed the zero issue that is available on their site for free (zero issue) I was very happy with their approach.

 They split the information into sections such as tech, science, food and mind and have short but engaging articles.  The overall layout feels like a lifestyle magazine as they intended and the use of pictures and graphics really gives the whole thing a nice flow.  If you have ever been interested in science but found it a bit out of your grasp I suggest you keep an eye out for the next articles (gurumagazine.org), or better yet follow them on twitter @GuruMag.

-theuglybanana

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Organize Posts with Blogger Pages

Abstract:  When I started this blog I was excited to see that there were pages, so I could organize my content, however under closer inspection I found that they dont actually allow for multiple posts.  These static pages are fine if you never really need to update the data, however I wanted to have individual sections such as Hacking, Science and Technology.  I found a simple (ugly) little method to do this using Javascript and the standard Blogger dashboard.

Method:  It is actually very simple to do this for basic functionality.  First navigate to you Blogger dashboard then go to Posting->Edit Pages->New Page.  This will bring up a prompt for you to compose or Edit the HTML code.  Choose to Edit the HTML code as shown in the image below.

The code shown in the example is simply a javascript redirect which moves the page to the relevant search page for the topic you want.  When you create a new post you simply add the search topic into the Labels section.  For each page just change the redirect URL.

Code:  <script type="text/javascript">

            <!--

            window.location = "http://theuglybanana.blogspot.com/search/label/Hacking"

            //-->

           </script>

Simple paste this with the proper URL for your site and save the changes.   Of course you will have to add a pages widget, but when clicked it will redirect to the relevant search topic.  For example I labeled this post with "Hacking" which is why it shows up here.

Problems: 

1. Since this is an ugly hack there are a few little problems with it.  First of all since it redirects from one page to another the viewer will see a quick glimpse of an empty page before the redirect occurs, however this is not really noticeable if you have a quick internet connection. 
2. When you navigate to this "page" the tab will not be highlighted as it is not on the specified page.  Im sure with a little of CSS and screwing around you can make the redirected page activate the button, but I have not done that to date.  An example of what I mean by this is shown below. 

In this picture we are on the hacking page however it is not highlighted.

Conclusion:  This is a quick and very easy way to get post pages organized on Blogger using the template designs and not too much overhead.

-theuglybanana

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Facebook Phishing (how to freak out your friends)

Abstract:  In this post I will talk about the dangers of opening suspicious links and not exercising common sense.  I made a mock up phishing site for Facebook which with slight modification could be used to send user credentials to a server side database (MySQL).

Background:  The reason I am posting this is to highlight how easy it is for someone to mimic a popular website and with some social engineering can easily steal usernames and passwords.  The simplest method is to get a free web account such as 000webhost.com under a shell email so there is no trace of who you are, and then visit a site you want to phish and copy the login page source code.  This is exactly what I have done on Facebook.  The next step is to modify the login forms so that it will send the user information to your database and forward them to the real Facebook and they are none the wiser.

  In order to get people to your "Fakebook" you can use a variety of vectors such as email spamming or say going to the Apple store and setting up Facebook to redirect to the phisher site.

Product:  So here is a link to the pseudo-phisher site facebook.com.  As you can see I masked the fake URL with the real one so it is less conspicuous.  If you click and log into this site you will see a popup saying that you should be more careful in the future and no user data was taken.  You can check the source code on the register.php if you would like and see its just a javascript prompt.  If you would like you can send this link to family or friends that regularly buy into spam emails and have a little bit of fun watching them sweat.

Protection:  The way to protect from this is to use common sense.  Look at the URL of the page you are logging into, and of course dont open emails that seem suspicious or ask for user information.

Be safe,

-theuglybanana

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Getting Around Megavideo

Abstract:  This post will talk about an intermediately challenging method which will allow you to get around the Megavideo time out limits.

Prerequisites: In order to do this you should not be afraid of the terminal window and have some basic knowledge of using a shell (for windows Cygwin).  I will go step by step so no real problems should occur.

Software:  For this tutorial you will need the following:

• Any browser but I will explain for Firefox.
• If on windows you will need Cygwin (www.cygwin.com).  I will not go over how to install cygwin as its is fairly straight forward, however you must add the SSH package during installation.
• You will need to attain a shell account that allows for SSH tunneling.  I will explain how and where to look for this.

Background:  This section will cover the basics of what the details of the timeout are and how we are going to get around it.  All computers that are connected to the internet are assigned a unique IP address. When you view a video on Megavideo the IP address is used to determine which computer or network is streaming, and when 72 minutes have been watched on that address a time out error is done.  This is so non paying customers dont take up all of the bandwidth which costs the company money.  The basics of the method is to change the IP address of you computer which will make Megavideo think you are on a new computer.  

  One would think that if you have a home wireless network then you could just switch computers, however this is not the case.  In a home network each computer essentially points to the router which is connected to a single modem.  This modem contains the IP that Megavideo sees.  This also means that if multiple people in your house are streaming it will all add up meaning you may only get 15 minutes before it times out.

  If you are lucky and have a neighbor with an unsecure network you can just switch to this network and bypass the time limit, however this will cost the neighbor bandwidth and money so this is not the most kind method.  The alternative is what we will talk about now.

Method:  The first thing to do is to install the needed software especially the SSH client on cygwin.  If you are using a distribution of linux like me this should be standard.  In order to test this simply go to the terminal and type ssh and see if you get an error message.  Once this is complete and working we can move on to the next step.

  The next step is to get a shell account.  This is the most difficult part as it is hard to find a shell account that will allow for ssh tunneling.  Since we will be using this shell account as a dummy IP address to trick Megavideo if everyone uses the same account (IP) there will always be time out errors much like everyone in you home streaming at the same time.  So the idea is to find your own unique shell account. You can google ssh tunnel shell accounts and try to find one.  A nice site I found with a few working accounts is http://livessh.com/free-ssh-tunnel-accounts-list.php which has default shells that allow tunneling.  The best account you can find is one that is hosted in the US as this will allow for streaming from US only sites such as Hulu.com and the like, however this is not needed for Megavideo.

  Once you have secured an account you may try to forward a port from Firefox.

SSH Tunnel:   In order to forward traffic from the shell to Firefox you must do only two things.  The first of which is to open your terminal and enter the following command.

ssh username@shellname.com -D 3030

In this command you replace the username, and shell name with the one appropriate with the account you have signed up for (or that on the liveshh.com site).  As a concrete example see Fig.1.

                                          Fig.1: ssh into the shell account.

Once this is complete leave the window open and continue with the Firefox modification.

Firefox Port:  For this step open Firefox and go to EDIT->PREFERENCES->ADVANCED->NETWORK and click on the Connection Settings.  You should be at a following screen.

As shown, change to Manual Proxy Configuration, and in the SOCKS Host set it to "localhost" and port "3030" as before.  Once this is done, try to access any web page from Firefox.  If you get an error message it is likely that the shell account you used does not allow for tunneling.  If this happens the terminal screen should spit out the following error.  channel 3: open failed: administratively prohibited: open failed.  You will have to find another shell account in this case.  Other possible errors are likely similar but may deliver different error messages.  It is difficult to get a good shell and keep it and this is the largest challenge.

Conclusion:  I trust that you found this tutorial somewhat helpful, and of course there are other ways to get around Megavideo however this one has work very consistently for myself and I though I would take the time and spread what I know.  I wish you good luck in finding a shell and I hope you find one in the US.

- theuglybanana

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