Geek Stuff category archive

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.

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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.

No good can come from this.

Researchers at Microsoft are developing a “smart bra” embedded with physiological sensors that would monitor a woman’s heart activity to track her emotional moods and combat overeating. The sensors would signal the wearer’s smartphone, which would flash a warning message to help her step away from the fridge and make better diet decisions.

er, yeah.

More at the link.

One thing is certain: the boys at the NSA will find a way to listen in.

This did not affect my Linux world, but you might want to change a bunchload of passwords.

Hackers have stolen usernames and passwords for nearly two million accounts at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and others, according to a report released this week.

The massive data breach was a result of keylogging software maliciously installed on an untold number of computers around the world, researchers at cybersecurity firm Trustwave said. . . .

On Nov. 24, Trustwave researchers tracked that server, located in the Netherlands. They discovered compromised credentials for 93,000 websites, including:

• 318,000 Facebook accounts
• 70,000 Gmail, Google+ and YouTube accounts
• 60,000 Yahoo accounts
• 22,000 Twitter accounts
• 9,000 Odnoklassniki accounts (a Russian social network)
• 8,000 ADP. accounts
• 8,000 LinkedIn accounts

. . .

Facebook and Twitter told CNNMoney they have since reset passwords for all of its compromised users. Google, Yahoo, ADP and LinkedIn did not provide immediate responses for comment.

None of my passwords have been reset, and I did actually log into Facebook and Twitter yesterday because I maintain feeds for a group of which I’m a member. Windows viruses and Trojans don’t work here, just as automobiles don’t float and speedboats don’t run at Indy–two different worlds.

One of the nice things about using Linux is not worrying about viruses.

Oh, I do take precautions–I run an AV, though many experienced Linux users don’t think it’s necessary, and my firewall is locked down tight. I also don’t have to defrag, as Linux file systems handle fragmentation on their own, and I don’t have to “clean” the registry, as there is no registry–that is an affliction peculiar to Windows.

Perhaps you should join me.

Linux is not hard (it used to be, when it was young, but that was then), it’s just different.

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, December 5.

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)

I pay attention to terms of service and licensing agreements (not that I read all of them all the way through). I read the “What This App Wants” when I look for software for my cell phone (and have chosen to forgo some apps as a result). I follow tech news.

I know that the internet is a public place and try to govern myself accordingly. Anything I say here in my little backwater of the inner webs is something I would say among friends on a sidewalk without caring that I could be overheard.

I know that most stuff on the internet that calls itself “free,” at least outside of FLOSS world, isn’t. Especially in smartphone “app” world, a “free” app may want access to your contact list or browsing history, so it can sell your information to spammers marketeers, or to your GPS location (I keep my GPS turned off most of the time) so it can send you ads when you enter a store, and so on.

So, when I saw this story, I couldn’t help wondering what exactly the authors of those apps want.

Whatever it is, I suspect that Miss Grundy would not approve.

Late this afternoon, one of my friends called me for tech support. She is not a computer expert by any means, and would never claim to be.

Ultimately, I asked, “Would you like me to come over?”

“I am so glad you asked me! Yes!”

I won’t go into all the gory details, but what an ordeal! Windows fought me every step of the way. But, in the end, I out-maneuvered it and the mission was accomplished.

I left there thanking my stars that I use Linux, because

Linux

just

works.

The more I use my Zareason tablet, the more I like it.

I’m using it primarily with FBReader to plough through ebooks from Project Gutenberg at a record pace, and, when necessary, to jump to my browser or to Google maps to investigate references and explore the contexts of mentions in what I am reading.

It also beats hell out of a smartphone for email and browsing. Something to do with 2GB RAMs, I expect.

This device is a nice job of work.

Something–I forget what–interested me in learning more about Japan, not the distorted Japan that we westerners know, but actual Japan, if you will pardon the laborious construction. At some later time, I will post some links to free ebooks that I have accumulated in my quest.

Also, for you mystery buffs out there, I’ve got a bunch of Victorian mysteries for you.

In which I talk about my new Zareason Zatab ZT2 wireless Android tablet, with which I am quite satisfied, thank you very much.

Download the handout (PDF) here.

Click the image for a larger view.

Zareason specializes in Linux-based computers.

Not at all what it seemed–from Der Spiegel:

The Belgacom employees probably thought nothing was amiss when they pulled up their profiles on LinkedIn, the professional networking site. The pages looked the way they always did, and they didn’t take any longer than usual to load.

The victims didn’t notice that what they were looking at wasn’t the original site but a fake profile with one invisible added feature: a small piece of malware that turned their computers into tools for Britain’s GCHQ intelligence service.

This, by the way, is an example of a “man-in-the middle” attack.

Details at the link. And take care social networking–it is becoming anti-social.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source.

I’m on the agenda to talk about my new tablet.

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, November 7.

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)

Fakebook.

From the Inky:

CryptoLocker, a new form of malware infecting computers nationwide, locks up files and holds them for ransom.

CryptoLocker, is not a myth or rumor, says Snopes.com, and it makes files “as good as deleted,” unless you pay as much as $300 dollars or euros, according to Sophos, an Internet security provider.

(The article goes on to detail how to protect yourself.)

I have one Windows computer; it’s set to dual-boot with Linux, meaning that, at boot time, I can choose one or the other. Mostly, I run Linux (currently, I have Mageia installed), but I periodically boot into Windows to grab updates and keep my Windows knowledge up-to-date.

Thursday, I booted over to Windows.

Thirty minutes and two reboots later, Windows declared that it was updated. Yesterday, the AV declared that it needed to be updated; as part of the update, it wanted to add a search bar to my browser and other useless stuff to the program load. It also demanded a reboot.

Then Java demanded an update, and it tried to sneak McAffee on the computer. Finally, as I tried to watch a video, the video player I have been testing wanted an update; it tried to sneak four additional things onto my computer.

It was 30 minutes before I could start watching my video.

When you give Linux permission to update programs, the updates run silently in the background and no reboot is required and no attempt is made to smuggle unwanted stuff onto the box (the only time a reboot is required is when the Linux kernel itself is updated, so you can start using the new kernel).

So this is my question for Windows users:

Why the hell do you put up with this?

Deep background in the background of the background twits.

Having worked in passenger rail, I can attest that a passenger train is a public place and should be considered as such.

The twitter may have been, at worst, rude to twit about twittees talking in a public place, but the twittees were stupid.

Also, fewer anonymous sources grinding axes on “deep background” and more willingness to stand behind one’s opinions in public would likely benefit the polity.

Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the US Senate committee charged with holding the intelligence establishment to account, declared on Monday that the National Security Agency’s mass collection of phone records is “not surveillance” and should be maintained as an essential tool to combat terrorism.

(Much more at the link.)

She’s right, though I disagree with her conclusion.

Surveillance is mindful, directed, and rational. It selects a target and follows it, whether for noble or ignoble ends.

The NSA is a mindless vacuum cleaner sucking up everything it finds just because it can, hoping it might find something. It has become a candidate for Hoarders.

I do think it’s quite wrong and illegal for it to do so, but I also think that recognizing the difference between “surveil” and “suck” is vital. The NSA doesn’t surveil.

It sucks.