inportb

Almost every conversation on Omegle contains the ubiquitous “ASL” (age/sex/location) query. You might be asked if you were American (“STAR”) or if you live near the city of St Albans (“STA?”). More recently, a band of Twitter users have set out to find each other on the Web service for strangers. An instant messaging service that pairs random strangers anonymously, Omegle attracts a variety of users.

The majority of users behave as expected. Anonymity leads to abusive language and general silliness online. Advertisers have taken advantage of the unfiltered and unmoderated service using robotic and human zombies alike. Still others engage in cybersex. In a world where identity does not matter, sophomoric behavior is the norm and civility has no bearing.

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I now have a shiny new cover for my Kindle 2 (okay, it’s matte, but you get the idea). With a gutted notebook, a bit of felt, and some time, I stitched together a lightweight carrying case. It’s not going to protect the Kindle against a fall, but it’d sure keep it clean. The only drawback is that it covers the speakers, but I’m happy as long as the 3.5mm audio jack is available. As a bonus, the transparent cover shows what’s on the screen even when closed.

The felt back keeps the device strapped to the cover.

Since the introduction of Omegle Group Chat, a netizen by the name of OmLeif (presumably Leif K-Brooks of Omegle) joined my IRC channel and expressed his dissatisfaction with both the spam bots and my solution. Although he declined to discuss his plans for improving Omegle, he did promise to work on the problems. We knew that change was afoot.

When I checked my chat bot this morning, I discovered that it was being subjected to reCAPTCHA challenges. This welcome change has drastically cut down the amount of spam seen on Omegle. While it appeared that Group Chat was no longer necessary (its original purpose was to create an oasis amidst the spam) or viable, those in my IRC channel asked for more. Knowing that Group Chat still had a place, I set out to rewrite the entire framework.

The fundamental changes are:

• the bot no longer needs to maintain tens of simultaneous connections, since the spam rate is much lower
• IRC support sits at the core of the system instead of having been added on as an afterthought
• should the bot encounter a reCAPTCHA challenge, users present in the channel will be able to solve the challenge via the reCAPTCHA API

To see Group Chat in action, feel free to join #inportb on freenode. Or if you want, you might just luck out on Omegle… Have fun out there!

Omegle is a website used to communicate with random, anonymous people across the Internet. Thousands of users troll the website every day, following its slogan to “talk to strangers.” Because of the lack of moderation, there has also been a recent proliferation of spam bots and human spamvertisers, and sometimes it takes 20 wasted connections before one could have a normal conversation. Now, with the Omegle Group Chat extension, users can finally talk to multiple strangers simultaneously while avoiding spam! If you have been using Omegle lately, you might have come across this introductory message:

You have been randomly selected to join an exclusive Omegle group chat…

The fundamental rules are the same: there is no need to reveal your identity and you may leave at any time. I hope Group Chat has been an enjoyable experience for you. Since you’re here, I might as well answer some common questions:

• Group Chat is neither part of nor endorsed by Omegle
• Yes, this is a real chat room on Omegle
• Up to around 20 people are in the chat room at once
• The chat room is powered by a proxy bot written in Python
• The script uses less than 4MB of memory and less than 40MHz of processor time
• The chat lags purely because of Omegle’s AJAX interface
• Group Chat is bridged with IRC! Join #inportb on freenode for less lag

Due to the recent proliferation of spam, I have implemented a number of spam filters, both automatic and manual, designed to keep the chat clear of junk. Here’s a sampling of the cruft caught by the filters:

** STAT:        spambots/s      22.2272497218
13317 :: bot filter – hi, 18/f/new york, wanna see my nüde video? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE
85117 :: bot filter – hi, 20/f/florida, wanna see my naked video? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE
67937 :: bot filter – hi, 20/f/new york, wanna see my pr0n video? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE
54294 :: bot filter – hi, 20/f/new york, wanna see my pr0n video? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE
83998 :: bot filter – hi, 19/f/new york, wanna see my pr0n vid? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE

Here’s some other crud that I would not dare post on any blog… and on average, the spam rate is approximately 80%. Enjoy spam-free Group Chat!

Update: there has been more work on Group Chat.

I had always wanted a small distiller that I could use to purify some of the substances that I have been collecting, but it was just hours ago that I came up with a simple working design. The distiller is pictured below. As you can see, it is simply a small plastic tube punched through a large plastic tube (poke a snug hole through the large cap), with a glass tube connected to the large plastic tube by a bent needle. Here’s what each part does.

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I’d designed few alcohol burners in the past, and they’d all depended on using metal rods or shims to vaporize the fuel. One end of the metal would be submerged in fuel while the other end would be in contact with the flame, thus conducting heat back into the fuel and generating combustible gas in situ. A benefit of this approach is that much more power is generated due to the pressure and mixing with air. Because of this, the alcohol burner has become a useful part of my toolkit.

Recently I spent an hour or so reading up on Bunsen’s design of his gas burner. Though a Bunsen burner relies on pressure from the gas line rather than generating its own pressure, some of the concepts are nonetheless helpful in improving my own design. Incorporating some of Bunsen’s ideas, I came up with yet another alcohol burner design: this one allows fresh air to be drawn into the flame by the Venturi effect, thereby improving efficiency and power output. The result is a clean and non-luminous flame.

Here are a couple of pictures of the burner in action. In the first, it is burning 70% ethanol available at most pharmacies; in the second, it is burning 100% acetone. I also tried 100% ethanol, but the flame is barely visible; it works very well, but it is not worth photographing…

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Tyvek is a material made of high-density polyethylene fibers flashspun and bonded into a paper-like sheet. This lightweight and highly breathable plastic resists tearing, moisture, and chemicals, but can be folded and cut like paper. Tyvek is often used in protective clothing, backpacking groundcloths, CD sleeves, and mailing envelopes. It can also be used to make weather-resistant pouches for electronic devices. In this case, Tyvek from a used USPS Priority Mail envelope was engineered into a T-Mobile G1 smartphone pouch.

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Insects are a ubiquitous part of our lives. Some of the most versatile insects belong to the order blattodea. Cockroaches are amazingly quick and hardy critters. They can run a meter a second and change directions 25 times a second. Their small size and sleek form factor make them easy to work with and difficult to capture. Their tough exoskeletons allow them to survive harsh environmental conditions and their muscular limbs allow them to carry weighty loads. In other words, this lean little beast is a perfect platform for robotics.

Imagine a tiny harness containing measurement and remote control mechanisms that can be strapped onto a cockroach, turning it into a remote-controlled probe. Now let’s scale the scenario up to tens, hundreds, or thousands of mobile units. Each unit carries a tiny camera and can be directed to any location via radio signals. Together with a computer control center, the swarm could be used to rapidly map out areas that humans would be loathe to investigate. This is just one of the many applications of such technology. But how can such a system be designed?

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