Baby Photo Shooting Santa

Some babies are afraid of Santa. This baby saw an opportunity for a photo shoot. She knows how to handle her favorite Best Camera App and took plenty of shots to get just the right one.

She also insisted that they smile for her and face the camera.

Say Cheese Santa! 

Hashtag Verification Certificates

Did you know you can obtain verification certificates for any of your hashtags? Hashtags are available on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and more, so you may want to register and verify any important hashtags.

Engage your tribe.
"Hashtags are everywhere but no one knows where to find you. Twubs offers a single social landing page for you to communicate with your tribe."

Registration is free. Verification is currently $7 per hashtag. 

I just created this one for #BaseReality on Twubs. I want to do a #hashtag marketing campaign for my book.  It's important to fill in all the details about your hashtag. I originally made the mistake of not filling in the details and I noticed my certificate was not much. Here's what it looks like now. Still tweaking.

If you are planning #hashtag marketing campaigns, then I recommend this service.

Best RoboCall BLOCKING Apps

With over 7 billion robocalls from spammers per month, spamming has become a big time-wasting nuisance.

Did you know that all Robocalls, regardless of what they are selling, are illegal?  Robocalls roam through carriers and a maze of networks, making it difficult to identify their origins.

And the government's Do Not Call list has been spoofed. So as the government works on this problem, you still need to protect yourself. Blocking Apps have collected records of literally billions of phone numbers, and they update them regularly, much like anti-virus apps. 

Spammer's deceptive measures have become more sophisticated. The latest trick is “neighborhood spoofing.” Robo callers use local numbers to increase the odds you will pick up. NS is indeed a dirty trick. 

18 Billion Robocalls so far this year (2018)

Source ROBOCALL INDEX™

The FTC is where you are supposed to complain. Their number is 1-877-FTC-HELP. Their web is ftc.gov/robocalls.

Here's my list of recommended RoboCall Blocking Apps. 

__________

Android version

Hiya - A Blocking and Caller ID finder App.  Hiya helps you identify calls you want and block other requests, like spammer calls. The App is free for preventing spam calls. Caller ID comes with a cost. This App also works with text messages.  The developers claim to have a database of hundreds of millions of spamming numbers.  The App works well for blocking robocalls, telemarketers, and IRS scammers types.

__________

Android Version

Call Control  - A Blocking App. Call Control can block entire area codes if that's become a problem. Call Control provides a personal Whitelist and Contacts Protection to make sure you get the calls you want. This App lets users report spammers to help update its database. Spam text blocking is supported by this App also.

__________

Android Version

TrueCaller - A Blocking and True caller identifier App.

Have you ever waited for an important call that is not in your contacts list? This can be tricky. You could be tempted to not answer and then block the caller. Whoops!  The TrueCaller App can help. The App is free and it helps you find out who is calling. You will need to copy and paste the number into the app though. 

Truecaller then searches the unknown number in its database of over 250 million users.

The App is also a Blocking App like the others above.

__________

Android Version

RoboKiller - A Blocking App.  RoboKiller won the FTC's anti-robocall competition. The New York Times, NBC, Wired, Engadget and Vice gave them good reviews. 

But the App is not free. On the right is a screenshot of their pricing. 

...

Hint - You can install multiple blocking Apps and have them all active at the same time.

...

What about the FTC? 

"The Federal Trade Commission has recently filed a complaint in federal district court seeking to stop two related operations and their principals who allegedly facilitated billions of illegal robocalls to consumers nationwide, pitching everything from auto warranties to home security systems and supposed debt-relief services." Here's the article on the FTC website. 

Magical Thinking

I'm off on a biking adventure. Magical thinking requires exercise. 

Science considers magical thinking a fallacious concept. The concept that thoughts, wishes, or desires can influence the external world. Tell that to a 4-year-old. Tell that to a quantum physicist.

Merry Christmas!

NY Resolution to write some helpful App reviews for amazing Apps.

Rob Adamson

Hacking the Universe on HackerNoon

HackerNoon just picked up the article Hacking the Universe first published here on Best Camera.

The moral of the article is to choose your friends wisely. They may be VR players from the future.

It's a good read.


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Buckleless Belt Fooled the TSA

This article has nothing to do with Apps, but I couldn't resist.  It's so cool!

I love this belt with no buckle

Can I promote a product? I work at my computer and around the house on projects. This belt with no buckle stabbing me is great. I can even ride my bike with long pants. 

Click on Image

But what I found to be both funny and surprising is how the belt fools the TSA. I’m not kidding. I hate taking off my shoes and belt at the airport, especially my belt because you need to thread it back into your pants. 

Justin Bieber at Airport

Before I found this belt, I was at the Airport standing with my hands up in the scanner. Then my pants fell down.

When I tried to pull my pants back up, the agent got upset and said I need to keep my hands up

. 

“This is nuts!,” I said.

I believe this is a photo of Justin Bieber suffering the same fate. 

Later, I was working on a new railing for my house when I injured my stomach with my belt buckle. I leaned over to grab my drill and it stabbed me.

As I googled for a belt with a soft buckle, I found this belt with no buckle at all. I had my doubts that it would work, but I gave it a try. It works!

Then, while at the airport, I decided to see if they would stop me if I left my new belt on. They use that hand scanner on your belt buckle and tell you to remove the belt. What a pain! Anyway, I got through the big scanner and the hand scanner. Then as he patted me down, he tapped my side and asked this was a belt. I lied and said it was part of my pants.

“Ok,” he said and waved me on. 

On the way back, they didn’t even question me about it. 

I hope the TSA never reads this and that you have less exposure at the airports. 

Hacking the Universe

Silicon Valley Billionaires have secret plans to live forever.

Imagine a new startup that offers on-sight virtual reality tours. You enter their futuristic building by the Bay and select a destination, a destination in time. You chose Ancient Rome. You buy your ticket, and they provide you with their latest equipment. Next, you find yourself standing by the original Flavian Amphitheatre, in the center of Rome.

Imagine VR Tours has perfected their technology to where you cannot tell the difference between reality and the virtual world. You soon forget that your experience is an illusion.

Now imagine you are living somewhere in the future, say 15,000 years from now. VR Tours has come a long way. They have endless worlds and time periods to explore. There is no required equipment to wear. Your stay is no longer limited to an hour. You are not bound to one planet. Now imagine you have chosen 20th century Earth and your time there will be 90 years. You stroll through a Gateless Barrier, and your new life begins. Is this possible? Definitely.

An astounding new theory that goes beyond String Theory is the Simulation Theory. It is what the Ancient Greeks and Einstein and others have called the Unified Theory of Everything, the holy grail of modern physics. And it is a theory that more and more computer scientists, physicists, astronomers, and venture capitalists are believing in. Elon Musk is outspoken in his belief that our odds of not living in a simulation are next to impossible. And if we are living in a computer simulation, many believe it can be hacked — hacked from the inside.

The ramifications of such a hack are mind-boggling. Programmers could change the very laws of physics and reality. Time travel, aging, and instant transportation are all possible because those things are just code and data. But let’s back up. What are these wealthy hackers thinking? What are they really up to?

The question they must be asking is who among us are players from the future and who are part of the simulation? Let that one sink in. The simulation could be so advanced that the simulated life forms have consciousness. To them, the simulation is their #BaseReality. And when their simulated life ends, it ends, perhaps forever. The players, on the other hand, return to the Gateless Barrier with new knowledge from their virtual adventure.

With no way of knowing if they are players or sims, the wealthy tech-savvy group has more than one solution. There is an excellent article by Douglas Rushkoff called Survival of the Richestwhere he tells about doomsday survival plans like building underground bunkers, colonizing Mars or uploading their minds to supercomputers. These are the wealthy that have no interest in altering the future for the good of humanity. Survival is their game. 

Curiously, they believe that humans are nothing but objects processing data. They see themselves and all humans as Base Reality objects not worth saving. Only the elite winners survive. This quote comes from the Survival article: “Technology development became less a story of collective flourishing than personal survival.”

But not all of these escape plans are entirely selfish. Some scientists want to enhance the human body and mind with computer technology. Humanity survives as transhumans. Here is an interesting article about Neuralinkby Harbind Kharod. But like the survivalists, these transcendence developers are not hacking the universe. Where is their faith in the Simulation Theory?

Musk does believe in diversification, and he might be one of those funding efforts to escape the simulation we find ourselves in. We know that some billionaires are paying scientists and computer gurus to break the barriers of simulated reality. How they intend to accomplish this greatest hack ever is not entirely clear. However, according to an article in The Newyorker by Tad Friend, “Two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation.”

One of the men mentioned in Friend’s article is Sam Altman. Altman is also interested in uploading minds to the cloud. So, in all likelihood, the secret tech billionaires and their teams have multiple approaches to survival:

1) Selfish Survival
2) Human transcendence
3) Hacking the Universe

By far, the most interesting of these is number 3. And Hacking the Universe is the most secret. The billionaire hackers prefer to remain anonymous. So we are left to ask necromantic questions. How do the worlds best minds escape from our simulation? How is it possible to hack a computer from the inside? We do have clues. There are high profile people jumping on the simulation theory bandwagon.

Converts include astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, Elon Musk, theoretical physicist S. James Gate and even philosophers, like Nick Bostrom. They all believe in the simulation argument. Surfer and theoretical physicist Garrett Lisi has made a groundbreaking discovery about a strange 8-dimensional mathematical object that seems to encode all the particles and forces in what we perceive as our 3-dimensional universe. The code name for this discovery is E8. 

Quasicrystal

The E8 movie, Hacking Reality, and narrated by Marion Kerr, is fascinating and well done. Learn why a group headed by Klee Irwin believe our world is a shadow of an 8-dimensional Quasicrystal code or language. Perhaps the language of simulated reality. Finding the language of this universe is a step towards Hacking the Universe.

And quantum physics itself provides big red flags with the famous Double Slit Experiment and Particle Entanglement.

Double Slit Experiment

I’ve been a programmer for a long time. I’ve even written a few hacks myself, like HardRunner for the original Lotus 1-2-3. To me, the only way for humans to Hack the Universe, from inside, is with full-blown Quantum Computing and Artificial Intelligence.

The hacking system would need chaos theory algorithms for trial and error and quantum chips to harness the power of atoms. Quantum processing is faster than any silicon-based computer ever developed.

Quantum chip enhancements would encode information as quantum bits, or qubits. These qubits exist in superposition at more than one state at a time. The quantum chips for the new AI computer will be unimaginably faster than any supercomputer in existence. Learn about IBM’s efforts with Quantum Computing on their site.

But there is a big problem. There is no true Artificial Intelligence yet. We have not yet reached what is called the Singularity. And there are no actual Quantum Computers that we know of. One of the strangest mysteries in physics is that if you attempt to look at subatomic particles, they will change their values. Observation changes their behavior. If you look at a qubit in superposition to determine its value, the qubit will assume a value of 0 or 1, but not both. By simple observation, a quantum qubit becomes digital.

However, in quantum physics, if you apply an outside force to any two atomic particles, they will become entangled. The second particle will take on properties of the first regardless of their distance apart. Entangled particles, separated by the width of the entire universe remain entangled. A change to one entangled particle is instantly reflected in the other. They care nothing about Einstein’s speed of light limitation. A billion light years of separation does not affect entanglement. The entangled response takes no time at all.

So the magic our brilliant tech billionaires need to find is a way to use entanglement to observe a qubit indirectly. The qubit’s state remains unaltered through indirect observation. That would be some magic trick. 

If these anonymous tech giants want to live forever, their best chance is the Hack-of-all-Hacks. We know that a secret wealthy tech group is pouring big money into an AI system that far exceeds human intelligence. They are building an AI in hopes of communicating with the prior level AI. They are hoping to knockon the Gate of the Endless Barrier.

Epilogue

Peru’s Aramu Muru Doorway to the Gods

If we do exist in a simulated reality that was built in the future, then why hack it? Why not enjoy? Let us stroll through the Gateless Barrier beyond #BaseReality. Let us stroll through the Hindu’s Mumonkanor the Gateless Gateway.Let us stroll through Peru’s Aramu Muru, or Another Universe. 

So enjoy your simulated adventures. And choose your friends wisely if you are not a player. A player may take you back through the Gateless Barrier. Let that sink in. You will have Hacked the Universe with basic friendship. 

by Rob Adamson