Author: Dave Farquhar

Whitelist vs blacklist

Dave Farquhar security
Whitelist vs blacklist

I’m not a big fan of the whitelist and blacklist terminology. The language is potentially harmful, but besides the racial implications, it’s also unclear. In this blog post, I’ll go over the traditional meaning of whitelist vs blacklist, and you’ll see why I say the alternative, dare I say progressive, terminology is also much more clear.

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Should you buy an IBM PS/2?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Should you buy an IBM PS/2?

At the dawn of October 1988, the IBM PS/2 was looking like a success. As it closed out its third quarter of 1988, IBM announced the PS/2 had sold 3 million units in its first year and a half on the market. The pace of 2 million units a year made it one of the best-selling machines in the world at the time. But it ultimately proved to be IBM’s downfall in the PC market. So it’s historically significant, however you feel about IBM. But should you buy an IBM PS/2? Is an IBM PS/2 a good retro computer?

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Marx 29609 train set

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx 29609 train set

Marx train set 29609 was an electric train set from 1953. While some Marx collectors joke that the only rare Marx train set is the one that doesn’t run, this diesel transition set is rare and valuable today.

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CVE-2023-33140 OneNote Spoofing remediation

Dave Farquhar security
CVE-2023-33140 OneNote Spoofing remediation

If you need to resolve CVE-2023-33140 OneNote Spoofing remediation, the best way to do it is to uninstall it. Here’s why this is OK to do, and how to do it. Fixing Windows Store vulnerabilities is hard.

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80s penny loafers

Dave Farquhar 1980s
80s penny loafers

Although never as big as some of the other more memorable trends of the time, penny loafers were absolutely something you saw people wearing in the 1980s and 1990s. Here’s how a traditional shoe design from the 1950s came to be remembered as an 80s and 90s trend.

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Tandy CM-11 monitor

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Tandy CM-11 monitor

The Tandy CM-11 monitor, introduced in 1988, was the more expensive CGA-compatible monitor from the Tandy 1000’s heyday. It had a reputation for being reliable, but more importantly, it included a better picture tube than its entry-level counterpart, to provide a display more worthy of the Tandy tagline of “Clearly Superior.”

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Marx Happi-Time 9632 train set

Dave Farquhar Toy trains
Marx Happi-Time 9632 train set

Marx train set 9632 was an electric train set Marx that Sears sold in 1953. But you may also hear collectors refer to it as Happi-Time train set 9632, because that’s what Marx printed on the box. While some Marx collectors joke that the only rare Marx train set is the one that doesn’t run, this entry-level set is surprisingly rare and valuable today.

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Early home computer blank 80

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Early home computer blank 80

It seems like a good Jeopardy question. This early home computer was called the blank 80. In this blog post, I’ll fill in the blank, explain what the number 80 meant, and why the number was more memorable than the initials.

The early home computer blank 80 was the TRS-80, manufactured by Tandy Corporation and sold in its Radio Shack stores.

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Radio Shack Armatron

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
Radio Shack Armatron

The Radio Shack Armatron was a toy robotic arm manufactured by Tomy, the Japanese toy maker, and imported and sold at Radio Shack stores from 1984 to 1991 and again in 1994. It was a robotic arm that you controlled with joysticks and it came with game pieces so you could make a game of trying to pick up objects and perform simple tasks.

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Force a Nessus agent scan on demand

Dave Farquhar security
Force a Nessus agent scan on demand

Tenable’s Nessus agent has a fair bit of underappreciated power. The ability to force a Nessus agent scan on demand is a feature I hear people ask for a lot, without knowing the capability already exists. There’s a bit of setup that needs to happen in the cloud, but once you do that, a sysadmin can perform scan on demand from the host.

You can force a Tenable Nessus Agent scan on demand by dropping a file into a user-specified location, or running the nessuscli command. Read more