David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Although interest in 4K television is understandably lukewarm at best–high definition only arrived about 15 years ago, the standard it replaced lasted half a century, few people are itching to replace the sets they’ve bought in the last decade when they still work, and there’s precious little 4K content–39-inch 4K televisions are proving to be popular.
But they aren’t going in living rooms. They’re going on desks, connected to computers.
As you probably know, last year some still-unknown criminals stole a whole bunch of credit and debit card data from Target. And the story keeps changing. First there weren’t any PINs. Then they got the PINs, but no personally identifiable data. Well, the latest news indicates they got credit card numbers, names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and for a whole lot more people, and probably from a longer length of time than just late November to mid-December.
There are a few things you ought to do if you shop at Target, which many people do. Read more
In the 1950s and 1960s, it was possible to walk into Sears and see Allstate electric train sets on the same shelf as Lionel and American Flyer. These trains are still somewhat common today. That leads to some further questions. For a number of years, Marx made train sets for Sears and put the Allstate brand on them.
In the 1950s and 60s, Sears owned the Allstate insurance company and therefore the Allstate trademark. Sears had Marx put the Allstate brand on train sets that were exclusive to Sears, which they sold alongside Lionel and American Flyer electric trains.
Ars Technica wrote last week about Samsung developing a 12-inch tablet, and asking who wants it?
I actually think a larger format tablet makes sense. Think of people in their 30s and 40s. They buy tablets. They like to read magazines on them, and have enough disposable income that they’re inclined to do both. Read more
My wife is a Type 1 diabetic. She’s the type of person insurance companies go out of their way to deny coverage for, and while I suppose I can say I’m used to them not covering her without a fight, I’m not exactly good at fighting the system. What I’ve learned the hard way is that you need to make sure, every time you change health insurance, that you have at least 12 months’ worth of certificates of creditable coverage. And don’t expect them to tell you this.
You see, the more you don’t know, the more they can deny coverage and rake in profits. Health insurance isn’t about health, you see. It’s all about profits. Read more
Last week, another Snowden leak surfaced that stated that the NSA is working on a quantum computer capable of breaking all known current encryption, trivially.
I didn’t find this shocking. Read more
There’s an addition on the back of our house, probably added in the 1970s or 80s, where the wi-fi reception is exceptionally poor. Something about the walls makes it tricky, and I also suspect we get some interference from the neighbors behind us. I solved the problem with a cheap router running DD-WRT as an access point. Read more
If you want a nice router or access point, you can do a lot worse than upgrading a TP-Link TL-WR841N to DD-WRT. The TL-WR841N is inexpensive and reliable, and DD-WRT runs well on it once you get the right build.
You can configure it to be a router, an access point, or a repeater, based on what you need. It usually costs $25 and sometimes you can find one on sale for $20 or even $15, so it’s a huge bargain. Even if you want 802.11ac speeds, a TL-WR841N makes a fantastic secondary access point to improve your connectivity.
Let’s get on with the upgrade. In the case of the TP-Link TL-WR841N (or TL-WR841ND, which uses the same build), it’s really easy–10 steps. Read more
I had a Lionel RW transformer that I bought nearly 10 years ago, at one of my first estate sales. I’m sure I remember using it after I bought it, but it was far from in working order when I found it this time. The accessory posts all showed voltage, but the critical A and B posts showed zero volts when connected to the U post, no matter how I turned up the handle. So while the transformer could power accessories, I couldn’t run a train off it using the variable output.
And I was uncomfortable using it without knowing exactly why part of it wasn’t working.
Fixing turned out to be easy, however.
Bad news everyone: There’s a backdoor in Linksys and Netgear (and possibly other) routers. The exploit works on a weird port, so it’s not remotely exploitable, nor is someone going to drop it with some crafty Javascript like the recent D-Link backdoor, but it’s not out of the question at all for malware to do a pivot attack. Here’s how it would work: Once a computer is infected, it could attack the router and infect it too, so that once someone disinfects their computer, the router could re-infect the computer at a later date. A router is a great place to hide, because nobody looks at it, and they have ample storage on them to exploit..
What can you do about it? Read more