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Mr. Robot, a show on the USA network is one of the most accurate representations of technology I have seen on TV. Hollywood has always dumbed down computers, coding or even technology in general, but Mr. Robot is changing the game.  Lets be real almost everyone in modern society is on a computer, smartphone or at the very least using credit cards. Much of the workforce use computers daily...Mr. Robot should scare the crap out of all of us.

The show's technological accuracy is extraordinary. The tools and techniques are hyper-accurate, and their use of social engineering really exposes what's going on in todays world. Sure the show feeds into some Hacker stereotypes with the socially inept black hoodie wearing main character, but it probably helps sell it to the masses.

Beyond the technology the acting, writing, and production stands on its own as one of the best psycho thrillers I have seen on TV. You are the imaginary friend made up by Elliot the lead character.  This immerses you into his world, and with House of Cards level inner monologue, you become an active part of his life. His paranoia becomes your paranoia as you are looking for clues or hints of whats going to happen next.

What should happen next? Everyone should watch this show. Mr. Robot shines a light onto real life events set in a fictional world. Evil Corp, fsociety these are fictional representation of companies and groups that are in our headlines every week. The genius of this show is its position to not only create this fictional world but draw on real life events as they happen, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Links to other articles about the show:

• USA Network http://www.usanetwork.com/mrrobot?cid=ps_Mr-Robot__Launch_2015Q2_
• Wired Article http://www.wired.com/2015/07/mr-robot-fact-check/ 
• Forbes talks with Show Consultant http://onforb.es/1HiC4tN

From LARPing to competitive scrabble, here is a list of a few documentaries I have enjoyed on Netflix.

Interesting post on gigaom.com today. Netflix and Comcast have come to a peering agreement and Netflix is paying for the privilege. First lets understand what this means, according to wikipedia:

In computer networking a peering agreement is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the users of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free, "bill-and-keep," or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the other in association with the exchange of traffic; instead, each derives and retains revenue from its own customers.

So why is this significant? These types of agreements have been between the big internet players, the Level 3's, and AT&T's of the world. What makes this more insidious are the reports that Comcast and Verizon have targeted Netflix traffic. Here is a post on Arstechnica.com discussing there discoveries. Also Comcast and Verizon have refused to install Netflix's free bandwidth solution Open Box on their networks.

What does this mean? This mans that Comcast and Verizon may be altering Netflix traffic to force them into a payed peering agreement. The fact that they do not want to work with Netflix is appalling. For the short term Netflix has agreed to pay Comcast, so Comcast should allow Netflix to work.  In the long term this agreement sets a precedent for ISP's to discriminate or targeted traffic. And at the end of the day threatens Net Neutrality.

Overview:
BitTorrent Sync is a recent addition from BitTorent Labs. Using Sync you can securely sync files between many users. The BitTorrent p2p protocol takes care of NAT and user discovery issues. Just launch the application and generate or type your shared key. The client will create a point to point encrypted tunnel and start syncing.  The application creates a sudo random 20 bytes that used to creates an AES 256 bit key that encrypts data during transit. For a more in depth security explanation you can visit Steve Gibson's Security now pod cast episode 402. https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-402.pdf. BitTorrent Labs has not released their encryption documentation. So Steve Gibson has not provided an in depth analysis of the security implemented in BitTorrent Sync.

Use Case:
BitTorrent Labs has an active forum and an entire thread dedicated to use cases. The one use case I didn't see and thought of immediately was a p2p secure media network.  I understand the legalities around sharing media so this would be for non copyrighted material of course.

Example:
Say you have three friends one is using Windows with Plex, the second Linux running ps3 media server, and the third a Mac running servo.   As stand alone DLNA solutions they are all capable. If each wanted to share content they would need an SFTP, or cloud solution like Dropbox. This could possibly expose their data to a third party. Because BitTorrent Sync is multi-platform you can sync these media liabraries seamlessly.

So how do you do this?
All three installs BitTorrent Sync
One user creates a folder for shared media
Selects the new folder
Creates a Key
Clicks Finish
Then shares the key among his friends
Each friend opens Sync and adds the shared key
Chooses the folder they want to share
Click Finish
Now everything starts syncing.

The elegance is in the design.  When a users adds content to their shared directory BitTorrent Sync will send that data to all systems.  So If your DNLA server is indexing that directory on a regular interval the new content automatically shows up on your TV.  Below is a high level digram of how the data sharing would propagate to your TV.