Geek Stuff category archive

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Learn how to use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do.

It’s not hard; it’s just different.

What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, February 6.

Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)

Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)

George Smith explains why you shouldn’t succumb to the cyberwar hype.

You know that nice new car you just got, the one with the built-in Facebook and all those neat monitoring systems?

MidAtlantic AAA’s Ronald Kosh reports that it may be phoning home without your having been informed of it in any way. A snippet:

A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on automobile telematics systems found that location-based data are being collected, stored, and shared. It also questioned whether consumers were aware of or in agreement with all the purposes for which their data were being used. This is similar to companies that sell their mailing lists or Internet companies that track the online activity of visitors. The GAO also noted that location data can be used to infer other sensitive information about individuals, such as their religious affiliation or political activities.

Folks clutch their pearls about the NSA (with some justification), while, unnoticed, corporations make the NSA look like pikers.

Read the rest.

I cannot understand why persons carry gadgets that cost several hundred bucks in their hip pockets like they were handkerchiefs, yet I see it every day. I would worry that the over-priced doohickey would break; I would not, however, expect this:

Thanks to the quick action of students and staff, an eighth-grader at the Middle School of the Kennebunks has been treated and released from a hospital after her iPhone caught fire in her pocket Friday.

(snip)

EMS Division Chief Andrew Palmeri said it appears that when the student sat down, with the phone in her back pocket, the phone’s battery “shorted out.” The state fire marshal is investigating, he said.

According to the story, students and teachers responded promptly and competently and the girl was not seriously injured.

Picture of the iJunk at the link.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

(That’s a rhetorical question.)

I was talking with my friend yesterday about how rapid-fire “reply-to-all” business emails can be dysfunctional, leading to confusion, crossed wires, and duplicated efforts.

Now comes Science 2 dot 0 with a list of the Seven Deadly Email Sins. Explanations at the link.

1. Ping pong – constant emails back and forth creating long chains
2. Emailing out of hours
3. Emailing while in company
4. Ignoring emails completely
5. Requesting read receipts
6. Responding immediately to an email alert
7. Automated replies

Very early in his career, before getting into movies, Woody Allen used to tell a joke about a man whose toaster mailfunctioned and burned his toast. He cussed the toaster up and down, then chucked it in the trash after it cooled.

Then he left for work. He stepped into his elevator, pushed the “G” button, and the elevator started down.

Halfway between two floors, the machine stopped, the music ceased, and a voice came out of the speakers: “Aren’t you the guy who was cruel to his toaster?”

Turns out it wasn’t just a joke, it was a prophecy (details at the link).

Computer security researchers said this week they discovered a large “botnet” which infected Internet-connected home appliances and then delivered more than 750,000 malicious emails.

A major cause of this sort of stuff is that, in the rush to market, those who make all these “connected” devices think about sales, not security. And buyers don’t ask themselves, “Why does my refrigerator need to browse YouTube?”

Connecting something to the internet just because you can is likely a bad idea.

Learn more.

(“Sticky” status removed because the campaign is over.)

Read more »

A Virginia Beach company is working on a GPS tracker that can be shot at and stuck to a car fleeing the police from a gun mounted behind the grill of the police cruiser. The idea is to render high-speed chases superfluous.

Respess, who led instruction for police vehicle pursuits, now works for StarChase, a Virginia Beach company that wants to put the brakes on high-speed, high-adrenaline pursuits.

The StarChase system fires a GPS “bullet” that sticks to a suspect’s vehicle and transmits its location. Respess shows clients how the system works in a demonstration vehicle.

The story says that the prototype is the size of a soup can and accurate up to two car-lengths away, which doesn’t seem like much, but it’s just a start.

Google moves closer to being the kinder, gentler Facebook, by changing its TOS to allow it to use user information in targeted advertisements. From Wednesday’s Inky:

The terms of service update allows Google to automatically attach info from your profile—like photos, your name, and endorsements—to advertisements aggregated by their system. The result, of course, is your face, name, and other personal info popping up randomly on your network.

So, basically, the internet privacy apocalypse. And, what’s more, Google announced the change via a blog post that insisted that “you’re in control of what you share.” Now, to be fair, at this point that doesn’t seem technically true, given that they’re about to start plastering our average mugs all over our beloved internets.

If you have a Google account, follow the link to find out how to not be used as a mannequin in the Google storefront. (I did that last night. To Google’s credit, the announcement with the “opt-out” checkbox displayed immediately after I logged in. As I said, “kinder, gentler.”)

I will say this for Google–when they do stuff like this, they do explain it in plain language, unlike almost everybody else in Terms-of-Service World.

. . . the Zuckerborg has developed a new tactic for sucking–your personal information, that is. The “Donate” button:

Though Facebook does not earn any money from donations you make with the button — 100% goes directly to the organization you choose — the social network does reap some benefits, particularly collecting credit card numbers and other billing information that could bolster its e-commerce initiatives.

Don’t believe those “Likes.”

They are more of what George Smith calls the “Culture of Lickspittle.”

. . . an Associated Press examination has found a growing global marketplace for fake clicks, which tech companies struggle to police. Online records, industry studies and interviews show companies are capitalizing on the opportunity to make millions of dollars by duping social media.

For as little as a half cent each click, websites hawk everything from LinkedIn connections to make members appear more employable to Soundcloud plays to influence record label interest.

Follow the link for more on how “social” media sites are fighting back, as well as the click-fakers’ justifications for fake clicks.

Addendum, Later That Evening:

Words fail me. (Not that I’m all that surprised, but, really, now.)

Here’s an excerpt from an email that appeared in my inbox.

Here’s a glimpse of where spam comes from.

America 175 Million Email Address $599 US
Europe 156 Million Email Address $599 US
Asia 168 Million Email Address $599 US
China(PRC) 80 Million Email Address $499 US
HongKong 3.25 Million Email Address $300 US
TaiWan 2.25 Million Email Address $300 US
Japan 27 Million Email Address $300 US
Australia 6 Million Email Address $250 US
Canda 10 Million Email Address $350 US
Russia 38 Million Email Address $399 US
England 3.2 Million Email Address $300 US
German 20 Million Email Address $300 US
France 38 Million Email Address $399 US
India 12 Million Email Address $350 US
CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICAN AREA 40 Million Email Address $399 US
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA 45 million Email Address $399 US
SOUTH EAST AREA 32 million Email Address $399 US

These people are scum.

Details at the link.

Facebook Inc. was sued over allegations it systematically intercepts its users private messages on the social network and profits by sharing the data with advertisers and marketers.

When users compose messages that include links to a third-party website, Facebook scans the content of the message, follows the link and searches for information to profile the message-sender’s Web activity, violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California privacy and unfair competition laws, according to the suit.

Three words.

Terms. of. Service.

I find the Zuckerborg to be as skeevy as the Republican preoccupation with the sex lives of others, but, once you agree to the TOS, you have given away your privacy. You’ve given them permission to watch you run naked through the innerwebs.

(In case you wonder, that’s why you seldom see me on Facebook–if I didn’t use it to pimp this blog, I’d have deleted all my data and left there long ago. That’s also why my FB page is mostly blog posts and photographs and why I visit there only in a “private” tab that, when I close it, deletes all the Facebook tracking cookies.)

Today I said good-bye to Alan Collins’s “My Local Weather” plugin. I have been using it since I started blogging eight years ago (long before “widgets,” back when you actually needed to know how to edit code onto your sidebar, which I used to do with KDE’s kedit, now deprecated, since I was self-hosting back in those days). When I first started this thing, it was the first item I added to the sidebar; I was reluctant to let it go, but its time has passed.

I replaced it with the NOAA Weather plugin, which is more detailed and versatile, and pointed it towards Norfolk International Airport, which is about three miles away in a straight line (12 by car–something about a lake).

I tidied up the Blogroll, eliminating sites that seem to have gone dormant and adding some others, as well as added “Southern Beale” to the RSS feads; I also rearranged and edited several items on the sidebar hoping to make them more noticeable and accessible.

I’m hoping to find a way to move the “Categories” from the bottom of the sidebar to the Navigation Bar under the banner picture (I could just code them in a “page,” but I’m looking to automate the process if I can because they would be updated automatically if I changed them, plus I’m lazy).

Feedback is welcome.

Read more »

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Learn how to use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do.

It’s not hard; it’s just different.

What: Monthly TWUUG Meeting.

Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.

Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room. See directions below. (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.

When: 7:30 PM till whenever (usually 9:30ish) on Thursday, January 2.

Directions:
Lake Taylor Hospital
1309 Kempsville Road
Norfolk, Va. 23502 (Map)

Pre-Meeting Dinner at 6:00 PM (separate checks)
Uno Chicago Grill
Virginia Beach Blvd. & Military Highway (Janaf Shopping Center). (Map)

From time to time, George Smith blogs about the lunacy of bitcoin mania and the type of glibertarian geek who buys into it at his place. I know what bitcoins are and how they purportedly work because I move in geeky circles, which can make one dizzy at times.

Last night, at LQ, one of the regulars there delivered a masterful takedown of bitcoins. A nugget:

But someone’s already out there offering “Bitcoin mining computers,” which cost several thousand dollars apiece. (Notice that you can’t buy one with bitcoin … heh.) They’re selling you the dream of a “magical money-machine.” There’s a sucker born every minute, and that sucker … his “mark” … is you. Be aware. (One unit sells for $14,500.00 and “ooh, hurry up hurry up and buy one before they all get sold-out!”) You should know better. But they’re counting on you having gold-fever.

There is no delete key on the Zuckerborg.

. . . your television may be watching you.

I think we’ll be keeping our “dumb” TV a little longer.

Afterthought:

The NSA are pikers compared to marketeers.