Power Outage Preparation Tip
If you live on the East Coast of the United States, you are no doubt bracing for hurricane Irene.
In addition to all of the precautions that your local news is broadcasting on a loop, you might want to think about your gadgets.
In the event of a power outage, I can live without pretty much everything, but I do want to keep my mobile functional so I can maintain communication with loved ones. My plan is to charge up the two batteries I have, which is obvious. My less obvious precaution is that I am charging up old laptops so I can plug my phone into them should I need additional power.
Know Your Digital Rights
Police are becoming digitally bold, and asking to search the phones of citizens during traffic stops. As with anything, it’s important to know your rights. The EFF put together a one page card detailing the rights of American citizens as they pertain to your digital devices.
EFF – Tips for Talking to the Police
Stuxnet: A Weaponized Computer Virus
Stuxnet is a super-virus that debilitated Iranian nuclear enrichment by destroying their centrifuges. The virus accomplished this by making the centrifuges spin out of control while telling the monitoring systems that everything was functioning properly. It was genius, and it worked, but that’s just the middle of the story.
The beginning is a total mystery. We have no clue who actually made the Stuxnet. The US, Israel, China, Russia, a company, some other organization, or some combination of forces are all plausible as many groups have an interest in keeping Iran nuke-free.
The end of the story is unwritten. What will become of Stuxnet is anyone’s guess.
This short video by Patrick Clair brilliantly breaks down the most relevant information about the Stuxnet story.
Our media organizations and governments are freaking-out about hacktivists, leaked passwords, and web-vandalism, but I promise you that Stuxnet is far more interesting and dangerous.
Stuxnet accomplished a good thing in delaying Iranian nuclear enrichment, but I suspect that the longterm ramifications will be much more grey.
Check if Your Personal Data was Released by Hacktivists, LulzSec
LulzSec are a group of hackers who have stolen and published piles of data, as well as defaced many corporate and government websites over the last two months.
LulzSec has released an insane amount of user data from tons of different organizations. So, you’re going to want to make sure that your information wasn’t part of the leaks.
You can do that with a quick search here.
Check your email addresses against this database.
My feelings on LulzSec are complicated to say the least, so I will dedicate an entire post to the matter.
In the meantime, I recommend you check your emails as well as your loved one’s emails to make sure their data isn’t part of the leaked information. If it is, it’s time to change your passwords… Even if your data isn’t part of the leaks, you should change your passwords regularly.
Practice safe computing.
Sign Up For Netflix, Save Net Neutrality (I’m Serious)
Yesterday I read that Netflix streaming now accounts for about 30% of bandwidth use in North America.
As I was laying in bed I came to a startling realization. We can use Netflix streaming to save net neutrality.
Step 1: Get Older Folks Using Netflix
Over the last two weeks my girlfriend and I bought Roku XD boxes for our parents so they can stream Netflix.
They are thrilled.
Step 2: Get Older Folks Streaming a Ton of Video
High definition video takes a ton of bandwidth, thus the 30% of North American traffic.
The argument that internet service providers like Comcast and Time Warner Cable make to attack net neutrality, and impose bandwidth caps is that the only people who use a lot of bandwidth are pirates on BitTorrent. This is clearly not the case anymore as BitTorrent is now #2 on the bandwidth consumption list.
If everyone is a “bandwidth hog” then no one is. Hogs become the rule, not the exception.
Why can’t we just get more young people streaming with Netflix?
Politicians actually listen to older folks. Older folks don’t necessarily understand technology, they just want it to work. They will be pissed if their connections get throttled, and people will listen. No one cares when a 25 year-old dude’s connection is throttled, but it will be on the local news when it happens to grandma.
Netflix is another big corporation in addition to Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon with good reasons for putting money behind net neutrality. It’s great to have money and corporate champions behind the cause, but what we really need are older people who care about getting their movies.
I’m getting my grandfather a Roku XD and a Netflix subscription for father’s day. I’ve already setup two of them this month, why not go for the trifecta.
(Source: TechCrunch)
Find a Stolen Camera
A number of my readers are great photographers. I love viewing their work, so I’d hate to see their camera’s stolen.
Stolen Camera Finder allows you to drag and drop a photo into their site; then it yanks the hidden EXIF data that every digital camera attaches to a photo (make, model, date, serial number); finally it searches the web for other photos that have matching EXIF data.
If your camera thief publicly posts photos taken with your camera, you can hunt the bastard down.
(Stolen Camera Finder)
(Via BoingBoing)
Sony Hacking Incident – What You Should Know
Sony screwed up bad.
They screwed up really bad, but did they screw up enough to warrant federal legislation, and a class action lawsuit? I’m not so sure, but when something big, bad and newsworthy happens you can always count on an ambitious lawmaker to beg for attention, and for a small army of lawyers to get erections at the thought of filing a lawsuit.
As I mentioned in earlier posts, I have boycotted Sony for months because of their lawsuit against Geohotz, and their company policies that led to said suit. That being said, I still think the media, legislative, and legal frenzy surrounding this circus is a bit much. Here’s what you need to know:
What did the hackers steal?
They basically hijacked everything Sony had on the PlayStation Network. This includes:
- Usernames
- Passwords
- Birth dates
- Home addresses
- Password retrieval question answers (ex. “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”)
- And probably a slew of data about the games you play and things you’ve downloaded from the PlayStation Network
Credit cards
While the hackers did steal credit card information, all of that information is encrypted.
That means that the credit card data should be safe, and unusable.
I have a Playstation Network account, what should I do?
Most of the the stolen information is the kind of stuff that is uncoverable through thorough Google and Facebook stalking… except for the passwords.
If you have a PSN account, and you used the same password from your PSN account in other places, you need to start changing your passwords.
Typically web services that require a password protect that password by passing the text through something called a hashing algorithm before storing them. Hashing turns your password into a unique string of characters, and the process cannot be reversed. Sony failed to hash their users passwords, leaving them vulnerable.
What Sony did was boldly stupid. I can’t even begin to imagine how a tech company to stored millions of customer passwords unhashed, but they did it… And that may warrant a lawsuit.
A PlayStation is a computer, so you still need to practice safe computing while you’re on it. Change your passwords, and while you’re at it, don’t use the same one over and over again.
