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redbeard0x0a

470 karma · joined February 16, 2012

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redbeard0x0a··on Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained
"Military Grade Encryption"

Immediate giveaway that its just PR...

redbeard0x0a··on Smart homes will turn dumb overnight as Charter kills security service
I think the most important hire for this startup would be a brilliant marketer. It would be an uphill battle because a vendor isn't going to want your service if their customers don't even know to ask about it. It would be 99% educating people about this service so they can look for your logo on the box when they buy their next smart doorbell.
redbeard0x0a··on Mistakes were made: ERP screwups
don't make a table called Transactions that everything needs to go through to balance. It will create a bottleneck that slows _everything_ down (I'm looking at you Axapta/Dynamics AX - at least older versions, dunno if they ever fixed it).
redbeard0x0a··on Drivers Refuse to Put Down Their Phones. People Keep Dying
Driverless cars need to get here sooner rather than later.
redbeard0x0a··on Google Forcing Nest Cameras’ Visual Indicator Light To Be On
Everybody who gets a smart thermostat needs to keep their old one in a box for the day the server gets EOL or the device and/or network gets hacked. When that happens, you aren't going to be able to go to HomeDepot and buy a new dumb thermostat.
redbeard0x0a··on Users hate change
The best analogy of finished software I have heard is this:

> Software is done, like mowing the lawn is done.

We live in an imperfect world, if we want to keep ourselves safe and prevent bad actors out of our data/technology. Updates are a part of the process. You don't mow your lawn once, it has to be maintained. Which is the same as software.

This is something that we would be all better for if we could teach this concept to everybody so that updates are just a normal part of life.

redbeard0x0a··on Vulnerability in the Mac Zoom client allows malicious websites to enable camera
Removing the BlueJeans from your machine is a little more involved because they actually used launchd.

launchctl list

Then you need to find where the plist files are (i.e. com.bluejeans.app.detector.plist).

You can disable an entry from launchctl list:

launchctl disable uid/<your user uid>/com.bluejeans.app.detector

You can also unload if you find the actual file

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.bluejeans.app.detector.plist

There were a couple differently named bluejeans agents.

redbeard0x0a··on Safer Nuclear Reactors Are on the Way
> How do we prevent/contain states go rogue ...

By using different fuels. The fuel we currently use (enriched uranium) was chosen because we could also use it to build weapons. A different fuel (i.e. thorium, etc) could be used that couldn't be used in making weapons.

redbeard0x0a··on Samsung TVs should be regularly virus-checked, the company says
The mobile network providers can say you visit netflix, but it cannot determine what you are watching. This data fills in certain holes in data sets that companies cannot get.
redbeard0x0a··on How to Track Your Kids (and Other People's Kids) with the TicTocTrack Watch
This might be an interesting case with GDPR now in effect.
redbeard0x0a··on How much Americans make in wages
One problem with the aggregate household income being added up is there isn't an accounting for worked hours (basically doubling the hours by having 2 people working for a company).

A different, but simple comparison would be to take minimum wage in 1968 ($1.60), adjust for inflation ($11.62 - 2017) and then compare to our current minimum wage ($7.25). So had minimum wage been tied to inflation, it would be right around $12/hr right now.

redbeard0x0a··on How Did Our Medical Notes Become So Useless?
"Protects" you. It just gives some penalties to the companies for gross negligence, kind of like the GDPR is trying to do for all of personal data in the EU.
redbeard0x0a··on How to Use JSON Web Tokens
The JWT has a built-in field called exp, which is the time the token is expired. This is built in.

However if you need to 'expire' a JWT token early, there isn't a good way to do it. If your token has a JTI, then you could add a blacklist for that JTI (say in redis, with a TTL until the token's exp time). But that is left to the implementor.

redbeard0x0a··on Marriott hack hits 500M Starwood guests
Such as a company knowing better than to keep their servers patched, to have a process to make sure their servers are patched, to have a process that shows a list of servers that are _not_ patched, etc.

There are a lot of really stupid mistakes made in a lot of these data disclosures that a competent IT team (and dev team) can prevent from happening. The current state of things is that there are hardly any consequences for losing people's data, just make a bulk purchase of credit monitoring and call it a day. This is cheaper than actually hiring the right people and implementing the correct processes.

redbeard0x0a··on Supreme Court rejects industry challenge of 2015 net neutrality rules
Splitting up the "wire service" from the "Internet service" would be another way of dealing with the issue. Regulate the wires (making it so any ISP could start up and use the wires). Then the market could differentiate on things like net-neutrality - _as long as_ there continued to be competition.
redbeard0x0a··on Stop using JWT for sessions (2016)
Traversing a list of 100,000 users/sessions in a db to pull up the session is a different beast compared to traversing an in memory list of 10-100 revoked JTIs in redis. It is a lot less data to store and optimize (the full session vs. a small list of revoked JTIs)
redbeard0x0a··on Kids’ Apps Are Crammed With Ads
I've been paying for Youtube Premium (was "Youtube Red") for a while. While there are product placements and sponsorships in videos, not having to watch ads placed in the middle of videos is awesome. It makes YT a million times better, it isn't something you realize fully until you start watching a video on somebody else's phone/laptop/etc.
redbeard0x0a··on Thermometer Tells Your Temperature, Then Tells Firms Where to Advertise
> Large Penalty Maximums

This is needed, otherwise there is no real reason to actually protect personal data. Equifax losing the personal data for 50% of Americans should have resulted in major penalties due to the nature of their security.

The other requirements raise the cost of storing this data closer to the damage that can be done by the loss/theft of that data (from the perspective of the data subject).

redbeard0x0a··on How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry
> I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag

We forget that people are extremely varied, there is room for everybody. An infinite God probably doesn't create only ~3 "right" ways of worshipping, living, serving, teaching, etc.

redbeard0x0a··on DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf]
It wasn't far from what the FCC called the repeal to net-neutrality: "Restoring Internet Freedom" Order - https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-releases-restoring-internet...
redbeard0x0a··on Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
> Companies are easier to not do business with.

Some companies, however at a certain point, it becomes extremely difficult to not doing business with specific companies.

For example: describe how you would stop doing business with Equifax.

Also, how would you stop doing business with Google. You cannot simply stop using the search engine or Gmail. You would have to block (or stop using) websites using Google Analytics, stop using sites/services that use Google's Cloud, etc.

redbeard0x0a··on Don't learn Dvorak
Hard to "hack" your machine by typing things when you step away for a minute. Also makes it harder to capture your passwords by looking over your shoulder...
redbeard0x0a··on Don't learn Dvorak
Same here, I switched to Dvorak 14 years ago, I was having problems with my wrists and this change fixed most of that. I can get around a qwerty machine pretty well, typing on my phone (qwerty) seems to be fine since I don't seem to use the same muscle memory when typing on a phone (makes sense to me).

The most I had to do was to learn my password (into muscle memory) in both qwerty and dvorak (since corporate windows was qwerty until you login and then user settings take over).

redbeard0x0a··on Comodo issued valid certificate for [scam URL] amazon buckets
Fortunately, this is not the actual S3 domain, but one that is very similar. s3<dash>amazonaws instead of s3<dot>amazonaws.

Regardless, this is still shady.

redbeard0x0a··on Google will lose $50M or more in 2018 from Fortnite bypassing the Play Store
No, Google got in trouble for mandating other companies/products to include Google products (gmail, chrome, etc) in their products (Samsung Galaxy 9, LG whatever phone, etc).

Apple doesn't mandate any other company to change something with their product (Apple installs mail, calendar, music on their own iPhone, iPad, etc). They aren't using their market position to coerce another company to do something in Apple's favor. (as far as Android vs. iOS and the associated hardware phones and tablets).

redbeard0x0a··on Facebook Wanted Gizmodo to Kill Investigative Tool
Looks like CBS is bringing back Picard for a series - https://twitter.com/SirPatStew/status/1025840545216823296
redbeard0x0a··on Why Kubernetes Is the New Application Server
Software getting recreated, sometimes without the security promises (linux containers as they started vs. solaris zones) the previous solution had. To be fair, Google didn't really need the security in linux containers, they didn't run multi-tenant workloads, so it wasn't their top concern when submitting code to the linux kernel...

We like building new things, from different angles, but in the end it seems like everything cycles through the same ideas.

redbeard0x0a··on Smart TVs Track More Than What’s on Tonight
samba can use fingerprinting to detect what you are watching, even if you are watching using a roku (and have somehow opted-in to samba on the tv itself). It can even detect games, etc.
redbeard0x0a··on Facial recognition CEO: software is not ready for use by law enforcement
Hey, I see they updated the styles at some point. This is awesome!
redbeard0x0a··on The US startup is disappearing
Also, the cost associated with running a company is a lot lower now than it was in the past. So it is also easier to last longer than 2 years.
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