Do you know what a numbers station is?

No? Don't feel bad, no one really does.
Well, that's not entirely true, I mean some people know what they are, but not why they are.

This is what I know:
Basically all number stations are are shortwave radio stations broadcasting weird stuff like different tones, Morse code, numbers, words, letters and even clips of music in a loop. People have been listening to them for years. They have been give nicknames by radio enthusiasts across the planet. Names like The Woodpecker, The Babbler, The Skylark, The Crackle, The Lincolnshire Poacher, The Squeaky Wheel, The Swedish Rhapsody, The Gong Station and more. Some of these have been broadcasting for decades while others pop up for a short time and disappear forever.
No one is sure what they are used for. Some say they transmit encoded messages to spies, drug traffickers or even UFOs.
Its a shortwave radio enthusiast/hackers enigma.

I remember as a kid listening to a bunch of them with my grandfather who was a big radio enthusiast/hacker. He is responsible for my initial interest in technology. Blame him.

Here however is where it gets interesting...

One number station nicknamed The Buzzer (UVB-76 - 4625 kHz) has been buzzing a strange tone for over 20 years. Every now and again it will broadcast a voice message. Four times to be exact. Once in 1997, once in 2001, one in 2002 and one in 2006. As you can see, voice broadcast is very rare on The Buzzer.

Not so rare anymore it would seem.

Since August 20th, 2010 to August 26th 2010 (today) there have been 12 changes in the broadcast, some voices, some beeps, some Morse code.

What does that mean? That's a simple question.
It means that something is going on.
It also means that no on knows what... or at least the people that aren't supposed to know don't know, which would mean its working... if that's even its purpose.

That is all I know... Not a thing. But I'm listening. Are you?

Here's some further info if you feel so inclined:
http://www.brogers.dsl.pipex.com/page3.html
http://www.brogers.dsl.pipex.com/enigma ... cs/ECL.pdf
http://www.southgatearc.org/enigma2000/introduction.htm
http://www.archive.org/details/ird059

Ridiculous laser is ridiculous.



Turns out that lasers are close to hitting maximum intensity/power. Im not talking about laser pointers, Im talking about ridiculous lasers. Lets put it in context.
We've all seen a laser pointer. We all (should) know not to point them in someones eyes as it can cause (potentially permanent) damage. The red light has wavelength of around 670 nm. The power of laser points vary from 1-5 mW. Thats milliwatts.
How many milliwatts are in a watt? 1000.
1 watt = 1000 milliwatts.

With me so far?
Groovy.

Now then, Maybe you've seen those green laser pointers. Those are more powerful, mainly due to the fact that it has a wavelength of 533 nm and a higher frequency of 1064 nm. The green lasers usually are about 100 to 300 mW.

Ok. So what?
Lets put this all into context.
Here's a fine video of burning a magazine with a 500 mW green laser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiwOPc1x7UQ

Perhaps you prefer the death of a line of balloons?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=680xwwEs ... re=related

Yeah it takes a minute but you get the idea. Remember, the lasers in those videos are only half of a watt. 1 watt lasers can burn exposed skin.

So anyways - that's all kid stuff. Once you get into the high power stuff, its kind of nuts.
Whats high power you ask?
Weeelllll....
You can cut through mild steel with a 400 watt laser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EFAGhln8OQ

Thats pretty crazy.
Oh wait, no its not.
THIS is crazy!:


Maybe you missed that.
A one trillion watt green laser OMFG, no?
Perhaps you don't quite grasp what that means.
One trillion is a pretty huge number:
1,000,000,000,000

That's 1000 billion, which still doesn't really put it into perspective, so lets simplify that into something contextual... Money. Everyone understands money.
So, lets say I gave you $1 every second. Tax free. 24 hours a day, every day.
After 12 days, you would have 1 million dollars. Not bad, eh? 120 days and you'd have 10 million... which means it would take 1200 days to get 100 million.
I mean, jeez, 1200 days = 3.28549112 years just to get 100 million? We aren't even close to a trillion yet!

What would it take?
Well, lets take this a bit faster or we'll never get there.
1 billion seconds = 31.6887646 years
Wow.
I'm only a few tens of millions of seconds over a billion in total age right now.
So wait, we're not even there yet.

1 trillion seconds = 31,688.7646 years
That's right.
A trillion seconds ago the Neanderthals were running the show in whats now Europe.
A trillion is re-goddamn-diculously huge.
Did I mention that its TWO BILLION TIMES STRONGER THAN THE WATTAGE WE SAW IN THE YOUTUBE VIDEOS?

So yeah. Holy crap.
Not quite Death Star material yet though, but damn.
Actually, don't worry rebel alliance, it seems we cant quite build a laser with the capability to take out a planet. I suppose we are going to have to settle with one that can take out a city... at least for the time being.

Awwww... but why?

Allow me to continue that quote I started earlier:


Yup. They made matter out of light. Holy poop again!

A direct quote from the paper on this (pdf link on the bottom of the post)



In other words,
The stronger the laser the stronger the electric fields are it produces which accelerates the positron-electron pairs (aka matter) to the point of making them emit photons that are capable of making new pairs, and so on. Eventually you wind up with the energy created from the matter being created equaling the power/energy of the laser, which cancels it out. (kills the laser)

whew. I hope that was somewhat clear.
Also, tell me that the chamber to do this doesn't look like the Death Star.

(more awesome higher resolution picture here: https://lasers.llnl.gov/multimedia/phot ... 1324_4.jpg)

PS - How could it be that Dr Evil not only has the whole laser thing going for him, but also seems to comprehend the vastness that is 100 billion?
Props to you good sir. I tip my hat.



So yeah. Bring on the frikkin' sharks!
-Halla

REFERENCES AT THE SPEED OF YOUR INTERTUBES CONNECTIONS:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/100 ... 5398v1.pdf
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2 ... limit.html
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/AmyLy.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_poin ... er_pointer
http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl ... -ever-lase

Hey all, it was recently decided that we were going to start a twitter account.
I know we took our sweet time but here it is:

http://twitter.com/infoleak_tweets

Check it out and subscribe!

The plan is to alert all you IL'ers to things like status updates, any bug fixes, new features or content (for example a new video tutorial) earth shattering news and such.

All of our administrators have access so if you cant stand the topics, opinions or writing styles of someone like me for example, dont fret.

Enjoy cyber-pseudo-stalking us!
-Halla

Today I got a hit in the ol inbox on our friend, net neutrality, and see that Google and Verizon are supposedly teaming up... which probably means Verizon was going to offer faster priority delivery of Internet traffic for them - for instance youtube would be faster than vimeo or googleme faster than facebook, or something. whatever.
Heres the link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/techn ... anted=1&hp

So Im looking for some clarification and I see this:
http://twitter.com/googlepubpolicy/status/20393606477
which is google denying the story the ny times put out.

OK, so now I really have to see whats going on so some more searching reveals this:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-0 ... affic.html
which basically says, google and verizon are talking but about NOT throttling services.

Whew.
No wait, then this.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/40668.html
Oh man this is kind of what the nytimes said, but softer...

Then this:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... EFTTopNews
Wait, WHAT? WSJ confirming the NYTimes story?

OH DEAR LORD WTF!
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski chiming on on REUTERS?!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... EFTTopNews



Does ANYONE know WTF is going on?

I remember when we were worried about information blackouts. Now we have information overloads, which is almost the same thing as a blackout in that you cant find anything solid and are sifting through a million things only to find pretty much nothing (that is to say conflicting reports.)

I personally dont think google would take a stance like this but you never know.
Business has killed many a mans morals.
I guess we'll see how it goes and hope for the best.

...Also I promise to drop a somewhat interesting post on you all soon, much unlike this one.
Cheers.

*No more links. Seriously.

Allow me to let you all know that informationleak is not hosted on a commercial server. Rather, it is hosted by yours truely in the privacy of my own home. I will also have you know that the server has been moved and upgraded several times in its lifetime (at one point it was a laptop. Seriously) and is actually getting yet another face lift in the near future.
May I elaborate in saying that this decision was not an excuse to my wife to constantly buy new hardware, upgrade networking devices and indulge myself in general geekery.
No, this was done because I was sick and tired of moving from hosting company to hosting company because of TOS (terms of service) violations.
Apparently, just having the word "hack" or "hacker" is a violation of several companies terms of service - despite the fact that no illegal content is hosted. Just the word "hacker". Lovely, no?
So I took it on myself to host the site and make sure it continues to run, or at least exist.
Ive spend countless hours and a decent chunk of money over the years in an effort to run IL as smoothly as possible for as cheap as possible, thus Information Leaks original slogan, "Running on broken and stolen hardware, exclusively".
Network and hardware costs have come down dramatically through the years and due to the hard work of some dedicated members I really don't have to play the one man admin game anymore. In fact, the entire place is running off the hard work and code of some great members. You wouldn't be reading this if it weren't for them and the time/effort they put in.

Anyways, I was reading that thousands of bloggers had their sites shut down because they shared a platform with organizations promoting terrorism.

Yeah. I WTF'd at that too.

Long story short, some asshat posted a link to some some terrorist site on their blog. The host got contacted by the authorities, and decided to axe the entire account without notifying the site admin. Just pulled the plug. Poof. Done.
The site admin, clearly upset, contacted the host and promised to remove the offending account, as they had done in the past with torrent links and the like. The host refused to reactivate the account/access to the account.
The site admin asked for access to the server (or hard drive) in order to backup important data. The host refused.

So then, that my friends and neighbors is why I host in the privacy of my home.
All I have to worry about is:

Backup
Paying my internet bill
Paying my electric bill
Paying my domain name(s) bill(s)
Hoping the server/router doesn't take a shit
Convincing my wife this hobby (see:IL) is worth the time/money

Please note that no where above is "hope someone doesn't decide to axe the account without warning and deny any access to it afterward" listed, though I do admit the last part is still probably the hardest. My wife is pretty awesome though. I admit it. Not many folks would deal with their husbands obsessing over something that doesn't make a dime and hasn't paid for itself in years. Oh well. God bless her... and I'm not sucking up because to be honest I'm 99.999% sure there is no way in Hell she reads anything even remotely related to this site. I'm pretty sure shes had her fill of it just listening to me talk about it or some of its members years ago.
Just to address that .001% however...
Hey Baby! I Love you!
(PS - We could really use a new NAS, maybe something in a 6TB Raid 6... Just saying.)


But I digress...
This site is my little world that I raised from a text file some years ago and I welcome you all to enjoy its awesomeness without fear of random take downs.

Some donations wouldn't hurt, either.

Read on! Links! References cited! OMGWTFAHREFALQAEDA!:
http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law ... aeda-links
http://blogetery.com/
https://www.burst.net/news/blogetry.shtml
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=964013