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The trouble with routers

Dave Farquhar Hardware, security August 30, 2013May 17, 20171980s, antivirus, asus, d-link, firewall, Justification, linksys, netgear, vulnerability, Windows XP

I see the advice going around, again, to disable the Windows firewall and rely on an external router, the justification being that it makes your computer “invisible.” It doesn’t. Only IPV6 can do that–and then, only if you don’t use it for anything.

The trouble with that advice is that there are botnets targeting routers. Routers are nothing special; they’re small computers running Linux on an ARM or MIPS CPU, typically outdated versions with old vulnerabilities that can be exploited by someone who knows what to look for. One example of this is the Aidra botnet. Typically Aidra is used to attack outside targets, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility for an infected router to turn on and attack the machines it’s supposed to protect. And if you’ve turned off your firewall, then you have no protection against that.
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How to make an LG LD301EL dehumidifier drain the water out of a hose instead of the bucket

Dave Farquhar Landlording August 29, 2013November 28, 2015Adobe Acrobat, computer security, hardware store, LG, malware

I recently came into possession of an LG LD301EL dehumidifier. It was supposed to be draining out of the hose, but it wasn’t. I figured out why.

If you have one of these or a similar dehumidifier, chances are you have the same problem. The instructions on the back of the dehumidifier aren’t as clear as they could be and the diagrams are tiny. The manual doesn’t quite seem to explain it either. If you don’t have the manual and don’t want to download one from a dodgy web site–and as a computer security professional I recommend that you don’t (more on that at the end)–here’s how to get it done.

LOAD “*”,8,1 – what it means

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing August 28, 2013September 27, 20181541, 1571, commodore, commodore 64, IEEE, nintendo, tape drive

The smartest guy in the room cited the Commodore command LOAD “*”,8,1 as something he used for years but never understood why it worked except it was the command he used to load games on his Commodore 64.

So I explained it. Now I can explain it to you too. Read more

Better than the shirt off my back

Dave Farquhar Parenting August 27, 2013January 22, 2015classmate, costco

My oldest just started kindergarten, and he needed some school supplies, of course. Among those supplies was a paint shirt, and the instructions said an old adult-sized shirt would be fine.

We sent him with something, but he wanted a different one his second week of school–something bigger than what we sent him initially, so that it would cover his legs too. “I want a plain shirt,” he told me. “One with no writing on it.”

Then he paused. “The shirt you have on looks good.” Read more

Calibre turns 1.0

Dave Farquhar e-readers August 26, 2013November 27, 2018calibre, microsoft word, public domain

Calibre, the free e-book management software, hit the magic version 1.0 this past week. That’s not to say the previous versions were unstable, because they weren’t. In the world of open-source software, frequently software doesn’t hit version 1.o until the authors decide that it’s reached a certain level of feature completeness.

In that sense, Calibre’s time has come.

Cringely takes on Ashton Kutcher’s movie about Steve Jobs

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, Retro Computing August 25, 2013July 17, 20171990s, apple, Apple Lisa, capitalization, IOS, os x, Steve Jobs, unix, windows nt

Mark Stephens, a.k.a. Robert X. Cringely, wrote last week about his disappointment in Ashton Kutcher’s movie Jobs, about the late Apple co-founder and CEO.

Here’s the most important part of his quasi-review:

[S]omething happened during Steve’s NeXT years (which occupy less than a 60 seconds of this 122 minute film) that turned Jobs from a brat into a leader, but they don’t bother to cover that. In his later years Steve still wasn’t an easy guy to know but he was an easier guy to know. His gut for product was still good but his positions were more considered and thought out. He inspired workers without trying so much to dominate or hypnotize them.

Indeed. Read more

Bombshell: Ballmer steps down from Microsoft

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized August 24, 2013March 25, 20251980s, 1990s, Bill Gates, Digital Research, IBM, office 2007, Spare Parts, Steve Ballmer, vista, windows 8, Windows Vista

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Steve Ballmer is retiring. It’s time. If anything, I agree with the people who say he would have been better off retiring years ago. But I really didn’t expect it. In spite of the immense pressure to step aside, at least in public he never gave any indication of having any intention of doing so. Read more

DoSing your cubicle neighbor

Dave Farquhar security, War Stories August 23, 2013August 22, 2013unix

My baby at work is a centralized logging tool. That means my system has to touch every other system in this large company’s large network, which is kind of cool. Not many projects deal with that many different things, and I’m seeing some things I haven’t seen since college–and never expected to see in the real world, actually.

A week or two ago, we had some trouble pulling the logs in from a highly specialized system. That happens. Unix is easy, Windows is almost as easy–yes, the world of logging is a little bit upside down–but the one-off systems that don’t fit into neat categories take a lot longer to bring into the fold.

The problem was that the user account my tool uses kept getting locked out. Read more

How I fixed a dead electrical outlet. Sort of.

Dave Farquhar Landlording August 21, 2013September 6, 2016

As I was getting a property ready for inspection, I had to take care of some electrical issues. All of them were trivial, except one. In the end, I had one last dead electrical outlet to figure out.

All of the advice I found online said to call a professional. All of it. Here’s the exception, and here’s how I found it.

Don’t build a drill press out of PVC pipe

Dave Farquhar Saving money August 21, 2013December 5, 20151980s, estate sales, garage sale, garage sales, lifehacker, PVC

This past weekend, Lifehacker posted instructions for building a makeshift drill press out of PVC pipe. Although the finished contraption looks kind of cool, it’s not something you want to build yourself.

My drill press cost me $40. It’s far better and far safer, even though it’s still possible to injure yourself with it. But structurally it’s as sound as it gets, and acquiring it didn’t take me all weekend, either. Read more