Geek Stuff category archive

A college student explains why he is stepping away from the Zuckerborg.

There is hope.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do. Learn how to use GNU/Linux and its plethora of free and open source software to get stuff done with computers.

It’s not hard; it’s just different.

When: Monthly TWUUG meeting at 7:30 p. m. on the first Thursday of the month (July 6, 2017). Pre-meeting dinner at Chicago Uno, JANAF shopping center, 6:00 p. m. (map)

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 (map). (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.

Computer security always seems to be an afterthought in the enterprise.

Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello was hit by a ransomware attack this week that hampered the historic home’s electronic systems.

The attack was discovered Tuesday, and since then, Monticello has not been able to use its computer or phone systems.

Devuan v. 1 with the XFCE desktop environment in VirtualBox on Slackware –Current. Peeking out from behind Devuan is a virtual machine of Windows 7, on which QMMP is playing music from KCEA (KCEA doesn’t rock; it swings).

Devuan has reached a full release version, though the beta was a darned find piece of work. I upgraded from the beta using the commands

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get autoclean
apt-get autoremove

In case you don’t know (and there is a good chance you don’t unless you are in my Linux World), Devuan is a fork of Debian without SystemD. It still uses SystemV, because many folks have issues (mostly philosophical because SystemD, however annoying it can be, does indeed work) with SystemD.

Give it a try. It installs like butter.

H/T to SystemAU (NSFW–those Aussies swear bigly) for informing me that Devuan was out of beta.

I have a new podcast up at Hacker Public Radio.

El Reg looks at how it works. A snippet:

Among poker players, it’s commonly understood that if you look around the table and you don’t see the sucker, it’s you. The situation is the same in the knowledge economy because you can’t see anything. There’s almost no transparency into how data gets bought, sold, and used to make decisions that affect people’s lives. When people make decisions about the information they share, they seldom understand how that data will be used or how it might affect them.

For example, a person’s mobile phone usage could affect the ability to get a loan. The Cracked Labs report describes how Singapore-based Lenddo calculates credit scores based on online behavior. It assesses mobile data, browser data, application data, transactional data from telecom companies, and web and social network data.

“The company even includes computer mouse click data and data about how people fill out web forms,” the report explains. “In this vein, ‘always running out of battery’ might impact one’s credit score; conversely, an extremely well-maintained smartphone might raise a red flag in the system, too.”

________________

*What a well-turned phrase.

I am doing some site maintenance to implement SSL. Please make a note that, if http: doesn’t work, try https:. Or just wait until I fix it. (Update 2017-06-12: The cert has been issued and I hope to install it tomorrow after voting. There’s a primary. Voting is not a right; it’s a duty. Update 2017-06-14: Still working on it, being very careful and not wanting to break my site, and still learning stuff.) (Update 2017-06-25: Clearly implementing SSL is not one of my priorities. I do not find security theatre a compelling cause.)

Update 2018-08-11: I still don’t have that round tuit. Tomorrow I shall unstick this post from the front page and stick it back when the tuit arrives.

I don’t really need an SSL cert, as this is not a commercial site and no credit card numbers or the like pass through here, but I got tired of Firefox’s nagging about it, plus I might learn something. I started this to learn stuff. The outrage came later . . . .

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do. Learn how to use GNU/Linux and its plethora of free and open source software to get stuff done with computers.

It’s not hard; it’s just different.

When: Monthly TWUUG meeting on the first Thursday of the month (June 1, 2017).

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.

Bruce Schneir discusses how the ballyhooed “Internet of Things” will increase the threat of malware. A snippet:

Patching is how the computer industry maintains security in the face of rampant Internet insecurity. Microsoft, Apple and Google have teams of engineers who quickly write, test and distribute these patches, updates to the codes that fix vulnerabilities in software. Most people have set up their computers and phones to automatically apply these patches, and the whole thing works seamlessly. It isn’t a perfect system, but it’s the best we have.

But it is a system that’s going to fail in the “Internet of things”: everyday devices like smart speakers, household appliances, toys, lighting systems, even cars, that are connected to the web. Many of the embedded networked systems in these devices that will pervade our lives don’t have engineering teams on hand to write patches and may well last far longer than the companies that are supposed to keep the software safe from criminals. Some of them don’t even have the ability to be patched.

If you have or anticipate having or may already have without realizing it internet-enabled stuff (refrigerators, door locks, “digital assistants,” light switches, televisions, “fitness trackers,” medical devices, just to pluck a few devices from the news), read the rest.

Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do. Learn how to use GNU/Linux and its plethora of free and open source software to get stuff done with computers.

It’s not hard; it’s just different.

When: Monthly TWUUG meeting on the first Thursday of the month (May 4, 2017).

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.

From El Reg:

Amie Stepanovich, the US policy manager at Access Now, said that the FTC “must send a clear message to the adult Internet of Things industry that bad security will not be tolerated. These devices can give access to people’s most private information and they are being put on the market with laughably weak security settings.”

Access Now urged the FTC to investigate the $249 sex toy, stating such an investigation was “even more important given the growing trend to provide internet connectivity for sex toys and other related products without proper thought given to digital security problems.”

Honest to Betsy (Pete’s off today), you can’t make this stuff up.

For a short while, this blog was throwing the dreaded “Error Establishing a Database Connection” error.

I was able to fix it (quite impressing myself along the way). Here’s what I did, in case you encounter this error yourself.

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