Geek Stuff category archive
Accounts Receivable (Updated) 0
Afterthought:
I am not surprised that the right-wing bubble is filled with statements and political cartoons attempting to place the blame for the temporary interruption to gas supplies to the southeastern U. S. on President Biden, even though it was caused by (likely Russian) cyber-gangsters and an American company’s inadequate security practices.
Fact is absent from right-wing discourse.
Anyone who has paid attention to businesses’ attitudes towards cyber-security has seen that security is often treated as an afterthought–a troublesome expense to be minimized–rather than as an essential aspect of doing business.
No, the blame for the success of this ransomeware attack rests squarely on the pipeline’s operator’s incompetence.
Addendum:
In the Tampa Bay Times, cyber-security expert Mark Khan’s article supports my conclusion as to where the responsibility for this security breech lies and offers hints for protecting systems from being pwned.
Geeking Out 0
Listening to The Circular Staircase with the VLC media player on Ubuntu MATE under the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpaper is from my collection.
Geeking Out 0
Updating a VirtualBox virtual machine of Fedora from v. 33 to v. 34 on Unbuntu MATE under the Fluxbox window manager.
Geeking Out 0
One of the things I miss from my old place in Delaware is my 21 rose bushes. But I still have virtual flowers. (And, to be honest, we have lots of other flowers on our deck.) On the other hand, living in a condo, I don’t have to mow the lawn. That’s something I don’t miss.
It’s All about the Algorithm, Abysmal Algorithms Dept. 0
I have a Gmail account (mostly because I have an Android phone and a Google account is required for updates to the device), which I use mainly for news alerts. It is not my primary email address and I do not share it with others except by accident. (That is, when I’m using my email client, I sometimes accidentally compose a message when the Gmail account, as opposed to my primary email account, is in focus.)
The IMAP interface for Gmail includes a mailbox labeled “Important.”
I have observed that the emails which Google considers to be “important” to me are invariably not.
Indeed, in this case, Google is never right and always wrong.
Frankly (I do everything frankly), I find it rather gratifying that their algorithm is not infallible.
Geeking Out 0
VirtualBox VM of Windows 8 on Ubuntu MATE under the Fluxbox window manager.
Afterthought:
When I use Windows, I always place the taskbar at the top of the screen.
And you can too.
Geeking Out 0
Updating a VirtualBox VM of Bohdi Linux on Ubuntu MATE under the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpapers on both are from my collection.
Aside:
Updating a Linux install is nowhere nearly so annoying as updating Windows. Linux updates are much quicker, and reboots are necessary only when the kernel has been updated, so as to start utilizing the new kernel. And you can reboot at your convenience.
Almost all Linux distros have a GUI application for managing software installs and updates. I prefer the command line because I learned very early in my DOS 3.2 days that the command line is always faster (provided, of course, that you know the commands).
Windows requires a reboot after every update so as to update the Windows registry, which is a kludge of unimaginable proportions.
Geeking Out 0
Listing to The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart with the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu MATE under the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpaper is from my collection.
I Get Mail Spam
0
This one was from
no rep Iy @ amazo n.co m
Following that was this string:
auto.confirm-[nonsense sequence of letters and numbers]@webmails-service.com/
It claimed that my account with a retail establishment was on hold because reasons.
I logged into said account, going to it directly on a whole nother computer. The account was not on hold.
Note the spaces in the sender address and the “I” instead of an “l” in “no rep Iy.”
An inspection of the headers showed that the message was sent from a NAT address and therefore, for all practical purpose, untraceable. I used whois and dig to track down webmails-service.com and the results were most interesting. Needless to say, they had nothing to do with said retail establishment.
You might want to give that a whirl, just to find out how dig and whois work. They are useful tools.
This has got to be one of the clumsiest phishing attempts I’ve ever seen.
Geeking Out 0
Debian Buster/Sid with the Plasma desktop on my new ThinkPenguin laptop. The wallpaper is from my collection.
Geeking Out 0
Listening to the BBC adaption of John Dickson Carr’s The Mad Hatter Mystery from The Old Time Radio Theater with the VLC media player on Ubuntu MATE under the Fluxbox window manager. The wallpaper is from my collection.
Geeking Out 0
Updating a VirtualBox virtual machine of Fedora v. 33 on Ubuntu MATE v. 20.04 LTS with the Fluxbox window manager.
The Trollish Trait 0
Frontiers in Psychology presents a study of those who participate in hate-full conduct on line and finds a common trait. The full report detailing the study’s methodology and findings is at the link; here’s a bit (emphasis added).
It’s All about the Eyeballs 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Susan A. Nolan and Michael Kimball cite research that persons care more about eyeballs than accuracy when they “share” stuff on “social” media. Here are their main points; follow the link for a discussion of each.
- New U.S.-based research finds that we’re good at spotting inaccurate social media headlines, but if they are in line with our politics, we often share them anyway.
- When deciding what to share, we value getting likes and demonstrating our political allegiances more than we value accuracy.
- The pattern of sharing inaccurate posts occurs among both Republicans and Democrats.
Facebook Frolics 0
Zuckerborg assimilation frolics. Here’s a bit from the EFF’s deep dive into Facebook’s proposal for “reforming” the decades old law that regulation the internet; follow the link for the complete piece.
Afterthought:
I believe that law is long overdue for a second look. The central provision currently in question was designed to protect neutral platforms from liability for content posted by users.
At the time the law was enacted, the primary platforms were web hosting providers, BBSes, and services such as AOL and Compuserve.
The era of the algorithm had not yet arrived. I believe that now, in the era of the algorithm, when platforms manipulate content to promote “engagement” and “attract eyeballs,” those platforms are no longer neutral in any sense and should be held accountable for the actions of their algorithms.
But the Zuckerborg’s plan to perpetuate its predominance is not the way to go about it.
Rather, what we need is another Teddy Roosevelt.