Geek Stuff category archive
Gadget Overload 0
Mark W. Anderson is fed up.
Calmer reflection later made me remember what E.B. White wrote in the New Yorker magazine in 1948. “Like radio, television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all things may lose whatever rarity values they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear everything, will be especially interested in almost nothing.”
Stupid Is a Powerful Thing 0
Trading in secrets:
Unlike most such cases, however, officials with Atlantic Marine Construction Company aren’t arguing the employee stole their proposal sheets and other records before he was fired. Rather, the company claims Christopher McGrath, formerly of Virginia Beach, stole them after he was terminated via a widely available computer program he secretly installed on a work computer.
The nefarious software that McGrath used to steal these “trade secrets” was a fairly straightforward VNC program called Google Chrome Remote Desktop.
My friend uses VNC software to work from home almost every day. I use X11vnc myself to connect to my server remotely, because Klaatu recommends X11vnc.
As someone quoted later in the story points out, McGrath’s employer was too stupid to wipe his computer or, at the least, disconnect it from the company’s network or maybe even just turn it off. (The person in the story was a bit more tactful.)
Having worked in corporate America, I can attest that stupid is a powerful force in organizational dynamics.
Afterthought:
How secret are these “trade secrets”? How many secrets can a “construction company” have? Do they give away the con? Inquiring minds want to know.
Afterthought X2:
Computers are a tool. They are not magickal mystickal boxes of binary voodoo. As with any other tool, from a hammer to a circular saw to a CNC machine, if you want to use them, learn how to use them safely. If you don’t care to learn how to use them safely, don’t blame others when things go wrong.
Decorated 0
For persons who care, that’s Fluxbox running on Slackware –Current. Santa and the snowflakes are courtesy of Xsnow.
I tricked out my laptop, which is currently running Mint 17.1 LTS, in a similar fashion. The persons at Thurday’s TWUUG meeting got a nice chuckle from my interface when I made my little presentation about Qmmp (that’s Qmmp playing Cleek of Scotland Yard in the upper left). “Okay,” I said, “so I decorated for Christmas.”
And, no, you can’t do this in Windows, at least, not anywhere nearly so easily.
The Farce Awakens 0
Afterthought:
There are and will always be only three Star Wars movies.
No Place To Hide 0
The EFF explains its complaint about how Google spies on students using Google’s chromebook laptops. Here’s a bit (emphasis in the original):
In other words, when a student logs into their educational account, and then uses Google News to create a report on current events, or researches history using Google Books, or has a geography lesson using Google Maps, or watches a science video on YouTube, Google tracks that activity and feeds it into an ad profile attached to the student’s educational account—even though Google knows that the person using that account is a student, and the account was created for educational purposes.
The whole thing is worth a read, especially if you care about companies stripping you nekkid on the interwebs.
Smitten and Bitten 0
Anyone who has looked into it has figured out that bitcoins are a mug’s game. Meet some mugs.
More at the link.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 0
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 3.
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)
Join the forums.
Dialectic 0
The EFF points out the inherent contradictions in governments’ efforts to weaken encryption (in this case, the United States FBI, but the same thing has been happening in the UK and other countries which call themselves “democratic”).
A snippet (emphasis in the original):
In related news, Italy decides to eavesdrop on gamers.
You may worry about the gamers’ privacy. I used to hear Second Son chat with other gamers while playing on his XBox Three. I worry about the eavesdroppers’ sanity.
No Place To Hide 0
Computer security is always an afterthought when there’s money to be made.
(snip)
. . . US security researcher Matt Jakubowski discovered that when connected to Wi-Fi the doll was vulnerable to hacking, allowing him easy access to the doll’s system information, account information, stored audio files and direct access to the microphone.
Play it safe. Give your kid a Raggedy-Ann, not a Mata Hari Barbie.
Details at the link.
QMMP 0
I have a new podcast at Hacker Public Radio about Qmmp, the Qt-based MultiMedia Player.
Qmmp was inspired by Winamp, the venerable but now defunct Windows player, and XMMS, a similarly venerable and defunct Linux media player. It runs on Linux, BSD, and Windows; I’ve tested it on all three.
If you are an old Winamp and XMMS user, as I am, you can use your legacy Winamp and XMMS skins with it. You can also easily make your own skins with skinamp for Windows.
Qmmp is a nice job of work; I use it daily to listen to streaming audio and OTR (though it can be quirky with URLs that have unusual characters, such as parentheses, in them).
If you’re a Linux or BSD user, it’s in your repos, and, if you are a Slackware user, there’s a Slackbuild. If you’re a Windows user, you can get the install program at the Qmmp website.
You too can podcast at HPR; all are welcome. Contribute a show and join the community.
Gremlins in the Garmin 0
Get a Garmin and see Preitenegg.
Since July, Garmin has received notifications that customers all over Europe, including in the UK, were being advised to divert their route through the small Carinthian town near the Styrian mountains.
Garmin says that they are–er–recalculating.
“The Listener at the Hearth” 0
In The Guardian, Rory Carroll muses on his experiences with the Amazon Echo, which is sort of a stand-alone Siri. He suspects that it is compiling a list and checking it twice. Here’s a snippet:
I am a long-time fan of H. P. Lovecraft. Granted, his plots have a certain sameness about them, but no writer I’ve encountered is more adept at creating atmosphere.
On wonders what horrors he could have imagined had he ever conceived of the Amazon Echo (or even Siri, for that matter).
Nagomatic 0
Reg Henry has a Fitbit fit.
He has a point. Fitbit and the like are stupid tech. Ditch the nagomatic and go for a bicycle ride.
. . . Where Everybody Knows Your Name Everything (Updated)
0
David Shariatmadari suggests that privacy was an ephemeral and transitory concept which is coming to an electronic end.
(Open tag fixed.)
Addendum:
There is an excellent discussion of internet privacy towards the end of this podcast.