Author: Dave Farquhar

I got hacked. I did it to teach you a lesson, and I’m sure you believe it.

Dave Farquhar security , ,

The other day, this showed up in my e-mail:

A file change was detected on your system for site URL https://dfarq.homeip.net. Scan was generated on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015 at 5:25 am

A summary of the scan results is shown below:

The following files were removed from your host:

/var/www/wp-content/cache/supercache/dfarq.homeip.net/wordpress/index.html (modified on: 2015-11-03 03:23:52)
======================================

The following files were changed on your host:

/var/www/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/functions.php (modified on: 2015-08-19 22:24:04)
/var/www/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/header.php (modified on: 2015-08-19 22:24:04)
======================================

Login to your site to view the scan details.

I didn’t make those changes. Fortunately fixing it when changes appear in functions.php and header.php that you didn’t make is pretty easy.

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Yes, you can replace an Insinkerator in a hurry AND on a budget

Dave Farquhar DIY , ,

After having a second Insinkerator garbage disposal in about three months give it up and start leaking, I started wondering if there might be a way to get drop-in replacement at a lower price.

I found it. Actually, I found several.

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Need an emergency paint remover? Use baby wipes.

Dave Farquhar Landlording

I don’t remember where I picked this up, but baby wipes are surprisingly effective at removing paint. So if you get paint on some trim or on the floor and you don’t notice right away, reach for the baby wipes–or buy a package of baby wipes.

Paint that’s only a few hours old will come off with little effort. Paint that’s been on a while longer will take more effort.

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Tinted primer paint makes painting easier

Dave Farquhar DIY, Landlording
Tinted primer paint makes painting easier

It took a few years but I discovered a non-obvious way to make painting easier. Use tinted primer paint to cover in fewer coats. If you’re asking if Kilz primer can be painted, the answer is yes. Absolutely.

I’ve painted more than a few rooms in my day, and the majority of them have been difficult to cover shades like red and yellow, or really bright colors. Sometimes when I’m really lucky, they’re the shade of the color that was popular in the 1970s. Those colors haven’t aged well.

Correcting other peoples’ violations of public nuisance laws requires a few steps. The first step is primer. But buy the right one, and don’t use white primer.

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Make your own null modem cable

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Servers and Networking , , ,
Make your own null modem cable

One of my coworkers needed to make a null modem cable last week, and most of the sites he found made it far, far too difficult. All you really need is 3 wires. Here’s how to make your own null modem cable.

Most of the time, you only need three pins. In fact, I never needed more than three pins, no matter what I was connecting. Usually, a 3-wire null modem cable is more than sufficient.

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Use F.lux to help yourself sleep better

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

I was listening to a podcast when the talk went off on a tangent, to a utility called F.lux. Whoever was talking made it sound like it was just for one platform, so I went looking for an alternative for Windows, given that merely 90.53% of us use it. The answer was F.lux! F.lux is also available for Linux, for what it’s worth. So I downloaded it.

The concept is simple. The lighting on our screens can interfere with our sleep patterns, so F.lux adjusts the screen based on what time it is, so that it interferes less.

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When HO is 1:87 scale and when it’s 1:64 scale

Dave Farquhar model railroading , , , , ,
When HO is 1:87 scale and when it’s 1:64 scale

I get a lot of questions about the difference between HO scale and 1:64, and it occurred to me that I missed something. I was thinking of model train HO scale, which is 1:87, which is about 25% smaller than 1:64. But for whatever reason, slot car HO scale is 1:64. So here’s how to know when HO is 1:87 scale and when it’s 1:64 scale.

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Another reason to block fonts at the proxy

Dave Farquhar security , , , ,

Last week Apple released a bunch of patches up and down its product line. One of the vulnerabilities it fixed in OS X was a vulnerability in its font parser.

In the past you could mitigate vulnerabilities like this by only installing fonts from trusted sources, but since it’s now possible for web pages to transmit fonts along with other content, there’s a limitless number of untrusted fonts out there in the world.

Since it may take a while for all of the major operating systems to shake out all of the problems in their font subsystems, that’s the reason I’ve recommended filtering fonts at the proxy.

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The problem with ditching Flash and Java

Dave Farquhar security , , ,

Last week Adobe issued an out-of-band Flash patch, and once again Brian Krebs urged people to ditch Flash, noting that he’s done so and hasn’t missed it.

We decided to try ditching Flash at work a few months ago, but it didn’t go quite so smoothly for us. I thought I’d share my experience.

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Pogue’s attitude is unfortunately far too common

Dave Farquhar security , , ,

According to David Pogue, since hacking a car is “nearly impossible,” we shouldn’t talk about it anymore.

That, my friends, is precisely what’s wrong with security and security awareness today. Flying to the moon is nearly impossible, after all, and you could easily kill yourself trying. David Pogue has never done it. But Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did.

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