• Category Archives Computers

  • Imagine a life with no computers……ahhhh……bliss…..

  • Computer reading thoughts

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Just a quick read here.
    http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/29/scientists-predict-human-thought-in-real-time-nearly-every-time/

    The participants viewed a series of houses and faces that appeared on a screen for 400 milliseconds at a time, and were told to look for the upside-down building. An algorithm tracked the brain waves of their temporal lobes, which deals in sensory input. By the end of each session, the program was able to pinpoint with roughly 96 percent accuracy which images the patients were looking at, in real time. The program knew whether the patient was seeing a house, a face or a gray screen within 20 milliseconds of actual perception.

    So in a nut shell, while it was only a few different images, the fact remains, the computer could tell with high accuracy, in very little time, what the person was ‘thinking’.

    If this sort of stuff is making the press, what is going on in the labs with more money?


    Computers

  • Network issues at home – continue

    Posted on by beno 2 Comments

    Help. I need some help.

    Quick recap.
    We had a Linksys WRT54g router running Tomato firmware for the longest time.
    It finally got too slow with a bunch of devices and faster Fios.
    Retired it for a Asus RT-AC68u. 1 year and 3 weeks latter, its WAN port died.
    Drama ensured.
    Ran down to BestBuy and bought a Linksys WRT1900ACS. Thinking it was the sweet spot for power and performance.
    It has no static DHCP and so made a total mess of my network.
    It’s last straw was that the VPN only works if your internal lan is 172.0.x.x address space, so I would need to readdress around 50 devices just to use their VPN. No. Just. No.

    So, took a step back and thought, time to man up. Get a real router.
    Looked at pfsense. Did not like the idea of running another PC as my router.
    Looked at Microtik (Dan gave me one a while back), but could not find a clear walk through on how to set up as a router, it is probably the best option, but very complicated and probably a huge time sink.

    Decided to go with a Ubiquity EdgeRouter Lite. Not happy.
    It took around 5 hours to get it in and limping. Its fast, but does not have the features I need (DNS, Static DHCP and VPN).
    Running the busted WAN port AC68 as a Wifi AP with it.

    This is where we are at now.
    Its last straw was in trying to turn on the VPN it took down the whole network and I had to drive home to reset it. (Terry has online classes, we can not be without the internet for a whole day).
    I have never had to do a truck roll to fix my network before, that is just totally unacceptable. (Think about it, tick the VPN box, click save and lock yourself out???).

    So, we have the EdgeRouter in and running the place for the moment. I can take a breath (sorta).

    What do I do?
    I really need VPN. I have around 100mbs speeds, and want to keep that.
    We have around 50 devices total. Solid mix of wired, 2g and 5g.
    We have 23 port forward rules.

    Looking at the usual mix of Nighhawk, Archer, TP-Link and Netgear is a mess.
    I can not find one router that has those features.

    I am looking again at pfsense. Wish I could install it on my headless Ubuntu server, but it seems to be a VM on a PC that has a desktop GUI or physical machine only.

    Budget of around 300 bucks. (For just the router, or combined).

    Help. I need some help.


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Network issues at home

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Just a super quick post, to give you blow by blow would take hours to type!

    Yesterday (Sunday) my home Asus router died on the WAN (Internet) port.
    Long story short, had to nick down to the local Best Buy to get another router….. Replacing it turned into a 11 hour saga that is still not over some 24 hours latter…..

    Long story short, the new router (Linksys) has some issues and so will be going back for a refund, but I still need a router….
    Am looking at my options, including a little MicroTik device that Dan gave me.

    The point of all this is yes, I know my website has been offline here and there, and yes, it will probably drop in and out a little over the next 2 days. I will try and keep the outages as short as possible, but I am fighting with Verizon and their stupid policy of binding the router MAC address to their fibre optic cable modem. You need to ring their automated tech support line to get them to release it and the computer does not understand my accent….. DO NOT GET ME STARTED!


    Computers 📎and tagged

  • Seawater antenna

    Posted on by beno Comment

    Kinda bemused by this one….

    http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/28/mitsubishi-seaaerial-seawater-antenna/

    Mitsubishi has developed an unusual alternative to conventional antennae, and it uses seawater instead of metallic conductors. The new system called SeaAerial shoots conductive plumes of seawater into the air to emulate a tall tower and transmit/receive radio-frequency waves.

    The company developed a special nozzle to spew out the seawater plumes, since they need to be insulated to work. It also had to determine the plume diameter ideal for transmitting signals and managed to compute for a size that achieves a 70 percent efficiency. Since SeaAerial is comprised of only two components (a pump and an insulated nozzle), it can be installed anywhere where seawater is accessible.

    A more perfect example of a solution seeking desperately for a problem would be hard to come by.

    I mean, full marks to them. It is very clever and compact and all, but what in the world would you use it for….. and more of a question in my mind.. what sort of pub trash talk-dare went down for someone to even come up with the idea???


    Computers

  • Amazon is easy to social hack

    Posted on by beno Comment

    If you have registered a website URL, you have to put a physical address for your ‘home’. You can pay extra to keep it unlisted, but that’s a yearly fee for what?
    After reading this poor guys hassles, I am rethinking my listing…..

    http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/how-amazon-customer-service-was-the-weak-link-that-spilled-my-data/

    As a security conscious user who follows the best practices—using unique passwords, two-factor authentication, only using a secure computer, and being able to spot phishing attacks from a mile away—I thought my accounts and details would be pretty safe. I was wrong.

    That’s because when someone went after me, all those precautions were for nothing. That’s because most systems come with a backdoor called customer support. In this post I’m going to focus on the most grievous offender: Amazon.com. Amazon.com was one of the few companies I trusted with my personal information. I shop there, I am a heavy AWS user (raking up well over $600/month), and I used to work there as a software developer.

    My story began with a rather innocuous e-mail:

    It is a bit of read, but the long story short is that a hacker got his web site registered address and used that to call Amazon and by asking them about where a ‘their’ last order was sent (turns out, the guy was smart and used the address of a nearby motel to register as his website URL address) and thus got his home address and phone number.
    They then used this information to get his bank to send them a new credit card.
    Once they had that, they went back to Amazon and got more information about the guy via their online chat.

    Enough to say the guy has closed all his Amazon accounts and will never do business again with them.

    I have no answer for this one. I am in the same place… I have a website, I have an Amazon account.
    I am a ticking clock, just waiting to have my details leaked by some clueless customer rep. Bleh.


    Computers 📎and tagged