GeekTyper Hacking Simulator, Bitburner Game, Hackable! Podcast

Hey there! Welcome to my blog! Today’s post is going to be all about hacking. Hacking has been portrayed many times in movies and TV shows but have you ever wanted to do it yourself? Maybe without breaking any laws? Well, there are hacking games of course. If you just want to learn weird interesting things about hacking, I’m going to talk about a podcast I really like about hacking.

It’s okay, I also have no idea what these mean.

Okay, let’s get right on to it. If you want to look like you’re hacking, look no further than GeekTyper. GeekTyper is a hacking simulator. It is perfect if you want to prank your friends that don’t really understand how hacking works in real life. It is straight out of a movie. You can pick from different styles such as NASA, Anonymous, Matrix, FSociety from Mr. Robot, SHIELD from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Minecraft and many more.

Here’s the link: geektyper.com.

Just randomly click keys and the terminal will unfold for you, with random “hacking” text that will make your friends think you’re the world’s fastest typer. It is complete with missile, security breach, HAWK, Access Granted/Denied displays that will amaze your friends.

Or maybe not. Obviously it is humanly impossible to type that fast, and maybe your friends aren’t fooled. There is another option, which will also be the option if you want to play hacking games.

The game I am talking about is Bitburner, and it is a pretty good game. It’s not exactly perfect, but I’ll talk about the pros and cons later. For now, just understand that BitBurner is a hacking game set in the future inside a computer where you’re supposed to hack businesses to earn money. This can be done through scripts, hacknet nodes, and other options through the game. Just follow the tutorial and you should be able to understand it.

So, Pros and Cons? Pros, it really feels like a hacking game. If you know how to manage it, you could get to millions of dollars in about an hour of gameplay.

Cons, first, it isn’t very realistic, I mean of course it isn’t actual hacking, but that doesn’t really make it less fun. Second, it’s a bit like cookie clicker. When you already have a lot of money and scripts/nodes that produces lots of money, there isn’t really a lot of things to do. Technically there are augmentations which gives you a new perspective of the game but honestly in a few days I lost interest. It is though still a really interesting game and worth a try.

By the way, here’s the link to the game: https://danielyxie.github.io/bitburner/.

Okay! Next up, real, fun hacking! Hackable? is a podcast by McAfee, and trust me, it’s a lot of fun. The hosts have tons of humour and it’s quite funny. The latest episodes as of today are about hacking smart plugs, drones, even toasters!

At the same time, this podcast can also be very helpful/educational. At the end of every episode the hosts will talk about the hack and how to protect yourself from it. Really, try listening it for yourself on Apple’s new web podcast interface as well as hackable.com!

So that’s all for today! Not too long, but it’s a pretty fun look at the world of hacking from an outside perspective. I don’t know, you could even learn something from these. That’s all for this week’s Tech Thursday! Cath you guys back tomorrow on Film Friday!

#2: The Journey – 1 Month Later

Well, hello there! My name is Ryan Ethan Yeo, and I am the only writer of my blog, Ryan’s Brain. I’ve been doing this only for a month now, but so far it’s been really interesting. So, today I will “review” my first 1 month blogging, maybe sharing some things I learned during this 1 month.

Also, yes, I did not post anything during the whole of last week, mainly I was just busy but I also wanted to think about this blog more and what it means to me.

I thought I’d first explain what was hardest for me blogging, then continue, getting to the easier stuff, so to start, I’ll first talk about post schedules. In this case, I suck at getting posts done on time. Most of the posts so far have been pretty last-minute posts, where I had to basically force myself to finish the post to fit with the weekly posts (Random Monday, Tech Thursday, etc.). It’s really hard for me to put in the effort, but starting from this 1 month milestone I’m going to try to get the posts ready maybe at least 1 day before. It’s a pretty good thing to learn in my opinion, I learned that I should really manage my time better, and to prioritize some things.

Second is building an audience. Building an audience is hard, to put simply, but I really think it is important. I have to have/know my audience to be able to constantly do this. I mean, there’s no point of doing this if nobody is reading, right? On the sidebar on the right, you can see how many hits this blog has gotten, and the number of followers. Problem is, those followers are just my friends who just followed the blog basically because well, they’re my friends. Building a real audience is much harder. While still on a WordPress free plan, I can’t get my hands on any SEO* plugins so the site is basically unknown.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.

It’s a catch-22*, I need to build an audience to pay for SEO, but without it, I cannot meet my audience, therefore I cannot get it. Of course, there’s more about WordPress plans and the economic aspect, but I’ll cover that in the next section.

Catch-22: a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions

For now, understand that you reading this means a lot to me, and it could really help me. If you like what you’re reading, please follow and share this blog. Also, this blog is also part of my goal on building a YouTube channel, so yeah. Thanks a lot for being here.

Next, we go on to the WordPress Pricing/Economic side. This blog is run with a free plan. What that means, is of course I’m not paying anything, but that means there are a lot of limitations for me. These limitations vary from small things to large things, like limited themes, no plugins, and most importantly, no ads/revenue. Yes, I am not making any money from this. Yet. If you see ads on this blog, I’m not getting anything from them, the money goes to WordPress. So, if I want to earn, I’d have to get a Premium plan, which is $8, which may not seem much, but really, there’s not much readers here anyway, so I’ll just have to wait, and continue producing good content for you guys.

WordPress’ Prices, you can see for yourself here: https://wordpress.com/pricing/

Still, I feel this is fair. Honestly, I think WordPress is a great platform for this. Even the possibility of doing this, hosting the actual site, giving you means to do something great for free is wonderful, and I am really grateful for that. Blogging may not have changed my life, but it is something I enjoy, being able to share my voice.

Okay! I’m done complaining, not that I meant to, I love blogging, I love this platform, and above all I wanted to meet you. Yes, you, a reader possibly on the other side of the world. It’s truly amazing.

Now, it’s time for the good things, things I really enjoy about blogging. First, I now realize all this time I wanted to find some type of platform to just share, to write, and have an online presence, and this is how I start. This is my. step to a larger world. Of course, I intend to have something come out from this, but even if I didn’t, I get the pleasure of sharing “a piece of thought” to the world. This is actually the main reason I actually called this blog Ryan’s Brain.

I don’t know, I just feel happy doing this. In a world full of distractions you could easily get lost in, it also feels good for your voice to be in the pile too, knowing it will/may be appreciated. Overall, this has been a good experience, and I definitely intend to continue this.

Alright that’s all for this week’s Random Monday, currently for me writing this, it’s actually midnight Sunday-Monday, so I better get some sleep. Please, if you can, follow, comment, and share this blog! Goodbye everyone!

Counting 1+2+3+…+n and Inscribed/Circumscribed Circles Within an Equilateral Triangle

Yes, we are doing math! After Science, then a little bit Science and History, then English, now we have some math t0 do! Okay, if that title made zero sense to you, well you’re not alone. Math may seem hard, confusing, and ridiculous at first, but eventually you’ll get the gist of it.

Okay! First, counting 1+2+3+…+n super quickly. In that statement, “…” means basically all the numbers between (in this case) 3 and n. So for example, you could have 1+2+3+4+5+6, where in this formula, the n equals 6.

Oh, we haven’t gotten to the formula yet? Here it is:

That’s a sigma symbol, which I won’t explain today, but I kinda understand.

yes I know it looks really confusing but the point is this, 1+2+3+…+n is always n(n+1) divided by 2. So, if like in our previous example, n=6, it’ll be 6 * 7 / 2. Which is 21, and if you try to check it using the normal boring slow method, it’ll be correct.

This will work with any value of n, so if you would like to know 1+2+3+…+98+99+100, you know it’ll be 100 * 101 / 2, which is is 5050. Not really that hard when you’ve got the formula right?

Okay, next one! This one’s a little bit harder but the key is always logic, and most of the time requires a formula. Here we go! Imagine three equal-sized circles inscribed/circumscribed/tightly packed into an equilateral triangle. Each of the circle has a radius of 1 cm. Now, try to find the perimeter of this triangle:

So, let’s start by first making a small triangle at the corner:

Okay, so how did I find these angles? Simple. The bigger triangle is equilateral, so each angle is 60°, and now we’ve halved it. 30°. Next how did I get the 60°? Obviously the other angle is a right angle (90°), so then 180-30-90=60°. Understand so far?

Alright, now we reach the formula part. For every 30-60-90 triangle, there’s a formula to find out their sides:

*Yes, there’s a formula for everything!*

So well yeah. Just put in the radius, which is 1 in this case, into a, and boom. We’ve got all the side lengths. The rest is easy.

So yeah. The rest of the side is just the radii of the circle, 1 cm each, so for every side it’s 2 + 2 √3 cm and so for the perimeter, it’s just (2 + 2 √3 cm) * 3 = 6 + 6 √3 cm!

Okay, so today we finished two pretty hard-looking but essentially easy enough (with the formula) questions. How did you feel about this week’s Weekend Lessons? Leave your comments below and have a good day!

Apple’s Latest Services/R.I.P. AirPower

The event in 7 minutes. / The Verge

So, on the March 25th event, Apple announced its upcoming services. Apple already has multiple services, ranging from AppleCare, iCloud, and Apple Music. But this time, Apple has gotten into new territory. Today I’ll be discussing the new releases as well as speculate on Apple’s strategy here.

So first, Apple released its news and magazine subscription service, Apple News+. Basically, Apple now offers means to access news and magazines digitally, right on your devices for $9.99 a month. Also, this is the only service already available and if you want to get it, just update to the latest firmware and you’ll get a 1 month free trial.

Ready to play? It’s time for Apple Arcade. It’s another service, this time focused on gaming. Apple has joined forces with “the world’s most innovative” game developers to create really cool-looking games. This’ll come out this fall, and although I might not play these games myself, I really appreciate that these artists get a chance to show their creativity and love in such an amazing and interactive format.

Side Note: the Apple Arcade works differently from Google’s Stadia. Stadia is streaming, this still requires downloads so it can be played offline, but to access it you will pay a flat monthly fee.

Next, we have the Apple Card. Simply put, it’s a credit card made by Apple, joining with Goldman Sachs. I have to say, the laser etched Titanium card looks amazing.

I’m really aboard with the idea of having your wallet in your phone. It’s definitely something nobody expected a decade ago and today it is going strong.

Finally, we have the main show. Apple TV+. In the really interesting Keynote, various celebrities came up on stage, from Steven Spielberg, Jason Momoa, to Oprah Winfrey. Basically, Apple TV+ is a streaming service, a platform for filmmakers to share their creativity, just like Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime Video. Still, I’m interested in what this can bring to the table.

Okay, so the big question. Why is Apple doing this? So, maybe you’ve heard that iPhone sales aren’t doing so well, a reason why Apple is increasing its prices. Basically, less and less people are updating to the latest iPhones, instead reselling or buying used iPhones.

At first you might see this as a bad thing for Apple. A really, really bad thing. But then you realise they are actually encouraging this. The reason? Software, not hardware.

These services mark a new beginning for Apple. Th old Apple is dead, long live the new Apple. As long as Apple devices are used, you will still be paying Apple some way. Maybe through App Store purchases, ads, or one of these services. These services weren’t designed to draw new iPhone customers, iPhones are designed to draw services customers.

Services are meant to be the future. Now we can just sit back, press a few buttons on our phones, desktops, or laptops, and watch the future come to us. Or maybe not.

This brings us to the last part, and that is the cancellation of AirPower. Though it technically hasn’t even been released or failed yet, the AirPower wireless charging mat is sadly dead. It shows where technology may fail, where reality takes a back seat while the spectacle drives the hype to the grave. As always, reality catches up.

Anyway, that suddenly went really dark and depressing, but don’t let that get you down. I might be starting yet another category of Random Monday, “Shower Thoughts” as per my friend’s idea/advice. Anyway, enjoy the rest of the week, guys and girls, and that is an exit.

P.S. Go subscribe to Pewdiepie if you haven’t. Don’t know why I haven’t mentioned this but yeah. Basically it’s some Swedish guy fighting a war with an Indian corporation. Sounds real weird when you put it like that…

Page Turners #1: Ready Player One/Pac-Man High Score

I was planning another post talking about the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy and a Robert A. Heinlein classic as my first Page Turners post today but I got stuck doing something that I thought was a better use of my time. Pac-Man. Not even playing it, just watching it.

Recently I re-read Ready Player One, which I had read a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed. It’s very geeky and has really interesting plot points, as well as a lot (maybe too much) pop culture references (which has been covered extensively, I’ll leave this IMDb link about all the movie and TV shows references in the book, it has 117 titles by the way).

So, about this book. Some say it’s God-awful, maybe because of the long sections that might not be the best for people, one of them I’ll talk about today, and that is the part where the main character Wade/Parzival looks for clues to the puzzle in some museum thing and plays a perfect game of Pac-Man for five hours and reaches the perfect top high score of 3,333,360.

Well, after a quick YouTube search, I found this video:

YouTube Source: Jamey Pittman

Yeah. Five hours of Pac-Man. Now, it was mentioned in the book and clearly shown in the above gameplay, that there were these spots in Pac-Man, where you could “hide” from the ghosts. Basically, especially for high score runs like these, hiding can be a way for you to take toilet/food breaks.

Here’s a video demonstrating the glitch/loophole/bug/feature:

YouTube Source: Phreakwar

What do you think about this? Comment below!

Unfortunately, this won’t work on newer versions of the game, only the original arcade and some MAME implementations, so don’t bother trying it out on an emulator or something. Still, this is a really cool bug/feature in the game and I thought I would share it.

I might review/analyse Ready Player One more in the future, but that’ll be all for the Random Monday this week. Wathc out for the Tech Thursday post, it’s going to be an interesting one. Okay, have a good week and see you later!