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Topics - wraith808 [ switch to compact view ]

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101
Living Room / PSA: OneLogin Breached.
« on: June 01, 2017, 04:07 PM »
Single sign-on provider OneLogin has experienced a breach. If you or your company uses OneLogin to sign in to applications, or if you use any of their other services, you need to be aware of this and may need to take several actions immediately.

In the past 24 hours, OneLogin sent out the following notice about a security incident:

“On Wednesday, May 31, 2017, we detected that there was unauthorized access to OneLogin data in our US data region. All customers served by our US data center are affected; customer data was compromised, including the ability to decrypt encrypted data. We have since blocked this unauthorized access, reported the matter to law enforcement, and are working with an independent security firm to assess how the unauthorized access happened and to verify the extent of the impact. We want our customers to know that the trust they have placed in us is paramount, and we have therefore created a set of required actions.”

(More at link on Wordfence)


102
General Software Discussion / Android Question on app purchases
« on: May 30, 2017, 04:50 PM »
When I first started with Android, I set up my Play store account using my Google for App Domains account, finding out later that they changed their policies for non-paid vs. paid, and just app domain accounts from accessing Google services.

I'm fed up with the limitations, so created a plain google account, and am in the process of trying to migrate.  In the end, however, I'll have purchased apps on my old google for app domains account, but be using my new account for everything else.  Does anyone know if this works?  Or do I have to repurchase the apps in order to get things to work seamlessly.  (some of these it would be my third purchase, as before I had an android device, I purchased some things under my old, old account).

Any thoughts?

(And as an aside, it's crazy that google doesn't support it's own infrastructure that it was trying to get people to use...)

103
Living Room / HP distributes keylogger infected audio drivers
« on: May 11, 2017, 12:57 PM »
https://www.modzero....io_driver/index.html

TL;DR: HP distributed an update for Conexant audio driver that also included a keylogger. The drivers were correctly signed and this keylogger has already existed on HP computers since at least Christmas 2015. It's unclear who's responsible for this situation.

104
Living Room / Windows 10 S and Surface Laptop
« on: May 03, 2017, 11:28 AM »
So, Microsoft launched the Surface Laptop with Windows S.  The Surface has needed to be updated for years (Microsoft's financials show this).  The Book and Pro have given them a good name in the hardware market, but new people entering the market has really diluted their market share, and people are doing a good job of emulating what they've done, and catching up to them.

So, their plan?  Release Windows S, which is another failed attempt at Windows RT.  They just don't have the app support to try do do the things that the Pixel does (and that's not particular a smashing success, considering Google is abandoning the Pixel Laptop).  And then they sully the Surface name with the Surface Laptop, which seems to fit in the product line in name only.

It's very subpar:

128GB SSD
4GB RAM
Intel® HD Graphics 620


All that priced at $999?

What are they thinking?  And it seems they know it, as until the end of the year, they'll offer an upgrade to Win10 pro for free, and after that, they'll offer an upgrade for $50.  Like they already knew it would fall flat on its face.

Other perspectives:

https://www.theverge...ing-system-confusion

https://www.theverge...e-specs-release-date


105
Living Room / Game Design Kit
« on: April 20, 2017, 12:42 PM »
There was a thread a while back about prototyping games, and the high costs of doing so.  But now, there's a kickstarter for that.

the_white_box.png

The White Box: A Game Design Workshop-in-a-Box

The White Box is a learning, planning, and prototyping tool for tabletop game designers.

It contains a book of 18 essays on game design and production, covering subjects like where to find a great concept, how to use randomness, what to ask playtesters, and whether it’s wise to self-publish.

It includes an abundance of components to get you started right away, from cubes and meeples to dice, discs, and chits.

Maybe you have a golden idea inside you burning to come out. Maybe you want to tell a story or explore a problem. Do you dream of seeing your name on a box at your local game store? Or perhaps you see game design as a path to fame, fortune, and a satisfying career.

The White Box is for aspiring professionals, creative young people, and literally anyone who’s ever wanted to build their own game without having to plunder their game library for bits.


106
General Software Discussion / Malwarebytes goes full Anti-Virus
« on: March 17, 2017, 02:50 PM »
So, I was praising the fact that Malwarebytes stays in it's lane dealing with certain types of malware, and leaving the more in depth anti-virus functions to others.

Today, I received notice of an upgrade and a requisite e-mail touting the fact that it's going full anti-virus replacement.

https://blog.malware...tivirus-replacement/

I'll have to see where they go from there- most antivirus these days are worse that the problems they purport to solve, which is the reason I stopped using anything other than Malwarebytes and Windows defender.  They're also bloated, and tie up your computer forever, and block things that shouldn't be blocked with false positives, so I'm not optimistic...

107
General Software Discussion / LessPass password manager
« on: March 15, 2017, 09:56 AM »
I haven't seen this discussed here:

https://lesspass.com/#/

https://blog.lesspass.com/

I found out about it reading Jeff Atwood's Blog: https://blog.codingh...-rules-are-bullshit/

But as with many things, it came from the comments, not the article: https://discourse.co...are-bullshit/5033/23

(the reason I can't just stop reading the comments *sigh*)

A short blurb from the site (full info can be found at https://blog.lesspas...742dd18a4#.d6uu4xx1q)

The trick is to compute passwords rather than generate and store random passwords.

LessPass generates unique passwords for websites, email accounts, or anything else based on a master password and information you know.

LessPass is different from other password managers that you can find on the Internet because:
It does not save your passwords in a database ;
It does not need to sync your devices;
It is open source (source code can be audited).

The system uses a pure function, i.e. a function that given the same parameters will always give the same result. In our case, given a login, a master password, a site and options it will return a unique password.

What about sites with strange requirements?

From the same link:

What about complex password rules?

Sometimes sites have specific password rules. For instance, some banks only accept passwords made of numbers. So you have to remember both a strong password and complex rules.
Well, we built a “connected” version to tackle that. It works by saving your password’s profile, i.e. everything –except the master password and the generated password– to be able to generate the password. Then, next time you need this password you just have to select the profile and type the master password.

Source is available on GitHub: https://github.com/lesspass/lesspass

And you can host your own instance in a docker container, if you don't want to use the public database.

Not quite sold enough to switch from lastpass, but I am thinking about it, and wanted to find out if anyone had seen/taken a look at this?  Seems very simple, but very logical...

108
Living Room / Removing Spam classification from your mail server
« on: February 24, 2017, 02:50 PM »
I run my own server on a highly regarded data center's infrastructure, and have a lot of different domains, and troublingly for this issue, mailing lists for several PbEMs.  One of the sites on one of the domains hosted by a client had a wordpress vulnerability that was exploited to send spam.  I've closed that hole, and made sure that it won't happen again as I'm now aware of the wordpress site, and have made it have autoupdates.

However, I'm dealing with the fallout from the spammer's e-mails.  I've contacted yahoo, setup spfs, and contacted barracuda, but it's so bad now that I can't even send e-mail from myself to my family, as my family's e-mail forwarding is on my domain hosted by google.  A couple of those spam lists are totally automated also, so I can't even request for leniency nor a re-evaluation.  How can I facilitate getting my reputation restored?  Or is there any way?

109
1-wjy2CLgP3nuKfXysepDzyQ.jpeg

I’ll never bring my phone on an international flight again. Neither should you.



Crazy stuff!  On the one hand, I don't have anything to hide.  But then, I think... everyone has something to hide.  And who knows how they will construe the information they have.  And as pointed out in the article:

“We should treat personal electronic data with the same care and respect as weapons-grade plutonium — it is dangerous, long-lasting and once it has leaked there’s no getting it back.” — Cory Doctorow

I was just concerned with the price and discrepancy of international flights before.  Now I have a whole new worry... :(

110
Developer's Corner / Windows Update Controller
« on: January 02, 2017, 12:08 AM »
This project started as an entry for NANY 2017, but because of issues detailed in the thread, I didn't feel great releasing it.

As I already have the app ready to go, and just need to iron out said issues, I figured I could workshop it here with some others if anyone was willing.  I'm also going to add a couple of other features around Windows Update and controlling it, so I figured I'd change the name.

To the primary issue- when I set the correct registry keys, the Windows UI for Active Hours does not register the change, though the registry keys are set correctly.  Not only does it not register the change, it changes back to the default.  I also made a change in the windows UI, and it does affect the registry keys that I expect, and saves the changes.  I've tried it on 4 different machines, and the behavior is the same on all of them, so I don't think it's anything machine-based.  They are all Windows 10 Home (1607/14393.576).

I figured that a picture is worth a thousand words.

First, the interface.



Basically, if you set the active hours for longer than 12 hours, it will find a 12 hour window that works based on your current time, and set the config file to be the whole length, and the registry keys to be that 12 hours.  I was working on this very early in the morning, so when I set the span from 8AM to 11PM, it saved that to the application config (the bottom controls), and set windows to the computed span, i.e. 8AM to 8PM.

Then, the registry.



As you can see, the ActiveHoursStart key is set to 8, and the ActiveHoursEnd key is set to 20, as I expected.

Then I open the active hours dialog.



It was set to 10AM to 10PM before this, but as you can see, it reset the dialog to 8AM to 5PM.

The registry still shows the correct thing.  But will it honor the registry?  I don't know.  I've set 3 of my computers to never reboot unless I manually reboot, so I only have one computer to test on.  I have it currently set in the registry to active hours that do not overlap the 8-5 timespan, so I guess if I'm paying attention at the time, I'll see.  But the kicker is that I have to be paying attention.

The code to make the change is quite simple:

Code: C# [Select]
  1. public void SaveData()
  2. {
  3.         if (this.DataHasChanged)
  4.         {
  5.                 this._LoadingData = true;
  6.  
  7.                 try
  8.                 {
  9.                         using (RegistryKey registryKey = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings", true))
  10.                         {
  11.                                 var activeHours = this.GetActiveHours(Convert.ToDateTime(this.UserActiveHoursBegin).Hour,
  12.                                                             Convert.ToDateTime(this.UserActiveHoursEnd).Hour);
  13.                                 registryKey.SetValue("ActiveHoursStart", activeHours.Item1);
  14.                                 registryKey.SetValue("ActiveHoursEnd", activeHours.Item2);
  15.                         }
  16.                         this.Config.AppSettings.Settings["ProgrammedActiveHoursBegin"].Value = Convert.ToDateTime(this.UserActiveHoursBegin).Hour.ToString();
  17.                         this.Config.AppSettings.Settings["ProgrammedActiveHoursEnd"].Value = Convert.ToDateTime(this.UserActiveHoursEnd).Hour.ToString();
  18.                         this.Config.Save(System.Configuration.ConfigurationSaveMode.Modified);
  19.                 }
  20.                 finally
  21.                 {
  22.                         this._LoadingData = false;
  23.                         this.DataHasChanged = false;
  24.                 }
  25.                 this.LoadData();
  26.         }
  27. }

Any thoughts?

111
Living Room / IndieGoGo to go after delinquent campaigns
« on: December 09, 2016, 12:30 AM »
https://www.cnet.com...ter-flaky-campaigns/

Indiegogo campaign owners be warned: The crowdfunding platform can send a collection agency after you.

As of Wednesday, a new addition to the site's terms of use lets Indiegogo take more serious measures to return pledged funds to backers after a campaign has breached its terms of service, or hasn't fulfilled its promise to those backers after the a campaign has ended.

"Indiegogo periodically makes changes meant to improve the experience for both backers and campaign owners on the platform," the company said in the statement.

Otherwise, Indiegogo's refund policy, which allows the platform to withhold money until the campaign ends, remains the same.

There's an inherent optimism in having a small mob of people give a little bit of money in order to bring a product to market, and thereby subvert the traditional way product development and manufacturing works. But there have been plenty of cases where campaigns buckled after becoming overwhelmed by demand, ran into unexpected issues or were outright fraudulent in the first place.

A December 2015 study from the University of Pennsylvania, which crowdfunding site Kickstarter now has housed on its site, found that 9 percent of Kickstarter campaigns did not deliver rewards promised to backers.

Sometimes campaigns are flagged and suspended on time, sometimes they're not. For instance, in January 2015, a project called Zano launched on Kickstarter for a small drone that could take video and pictures. It raised more than $3 million, but production and delivery issues meant that most backers never got their drone.

To this point, backers have mostly taken the hit as platforms don't always guarantee projects. In May, PayPal ended protection it offered customers investing in crowdfunding campaigns, meaning no more refunds when the campaign goes awry.

Indiegogo also published a blog post on trust and safety saying, "We will do everything in our power to recover funds for our backers, including contacting third-party collections agencies." Though, the post also said in certain cases, the platform will reach out to the campaign owner first.

113
I just had to post this when I had the idea after Windows 10 asked me to reboot my computer again, and I dreaded when it automagically reboots.

Problem: Windows Active hours are only 12 hours max.  For contractors like me, this sucks.  My active hours for work are 8AM to 12AM.  Many people have said that it checks if it's outside your hours to see if there's activity, so you don't need it.  Bull!  I went upstairs outside of my active hours to make some coffee.  And came back to find my computer unusable for over an hour while it did it's thing.  Unacceptable!  I could turn updates off- I found something to do that.  But not to extend my active hours.

Solution:  I found the registry key, tested it, and it does actually set the hours in the app.  Not sure if it works beyond 12 hours though... but I came up with my idea for the NANY entry... an interface that allows you to set your active hours to however long you want to set it.  Then, every hour on the half hour to make sure I don't miss it, it updates your Active Hours start to 1 hour after your span, and updates the end to 1 hour after your revolving end.  Basically using the algorithm: -6 hours < current time < +6 hours.

I can be the change I want to see!  Hopefully, it won't trigger the Microsoft update to fix the hole in their scheme.

If someone doesn't want to wait for me to do it, the keys are as follows:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings\ActiveHoursStart
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings\ActiveHoursEnd

Though, given that it's trying to restart my computer NOW, it will probably be up in some form sooner than later.

114
DC Website Help and Extras / Editing a post is creating a new post?
« on: October 18, 2016, 03:34 PM »
In the thread https://www.donation...ndex.php?topic=39119, I noticed that another poster had a strange post in which they quoted my post twice.  Then, I tried to edit my post (am sure I clicked modify) and when I saved, it created a new post.  I'll keep a look out for the exact behavior (it doesn't happen all the time), but wanted to at least put up the symptoms I've seen.

115
Living Room / BleepingComputer being sued for a bad review
« on: October 17, 2016, 12:51 PM »
I went to Bleeping Computer today, and was met with this popup:

bleeping_computer.png

It's crazy that people try to censor bad reviews instead of getting better...

116
General Software Discussion / OneDrive Crashing in Windows 10
« on: October 12, 2016, 07:52 PM »
I just purchased a new surface.  One of the reasons I went with the 128GB is because I could add that much via the micro SD slot for cheaper than upgrading.  So I did.  My plans were to put all of my sync folders and dev folders on that card, and use the other for programs.  I had to jump through some hoops because Dropbox doesn't allow you to use an SD Card, but I created a junction, and everything is fine.  Or I thought so.

Suddenly, OneDrive started crashing on startup with no message.  I checked the event logs, and that was not very useful - fault in ntdll.dll.  I was about to give up, and just change my plans, when I came across a link that gave a possible solution- change it from exFAT (the default on those cards) to NTFS.  So, went through moving everything to my internal, then formatting it... then moving it back... and lo and behold, it started working again.

Just posting this here in case anyone else has a similar problem (and hoping that it stays stable).

117
Living Room / The Walled Garden Closes In
« on: September 08, 2016, 02:55 PM »
The End of Headphone Jacks, the Rise of DRM

I'm sure that everyone now has heard of the fact that the iPhone 7 will remove the ubiquitous 3.5mm jack.  They give a lot of reasons for it, but in the end, it's more about securing the walled garden than anything else in my opinion.

So what do you do?  The part that I have a problem with is that even among those that in the know on technology, the blame is placed on the user for buying it, rather than with the company where it firmly belongs.  "Just buy another phone" is a refrain that I've seen multiple times.  It's not just the phone- phones have stopped being just phones a long time ago if we're honest.  It's an ecosystem, and when you look at the investment, it's hard to just throw that away.

So in the end, is it the fault of the consumers?  Or are the companies doing measured things to inhibit choice, and being given a pass in the name of capitalism?

118
Site/Forum Features / Registration Keys
« on: September 06, 2016, 09:32 AM »
There was formerly some place on your profile where you can easily get registration keys.  I looked all over, but I couldn't find it.  Ended up having to navigate to a piece of software's page, and click donate in order to get my key.

Am I just missing the easy way to get to it?  Or is it gone now?

119
DC Website Help and Extras / Links in Posts
« on: August 31, 2016, 08:01 AM »
It appears that the bots have a new approach.  They put links in responses to posts.  In some cases, even creating the topic, and then responding with links.

What do we want to do about this new threat?

120
DC Website Help and Extras / Links in Signature
« on: August 15, 2016, 11:05 AM »
Do we have a limit in place on the number of posts people have to have before posting links in their signature?  I've seen a user with links in their signature, that have posted not spam but not useful comments on older threads that have links in their signature.  I was wondering if the reason for the non-useful posts was to get past the threshold to post links in their sig?

121
Developer's Corner / HockeyApp
« on: June 03, 2016, 02:18 PM »
https://www.hockeyapp.net/

HockeyApp - The Platform for Your Apps

The world's best developers develop the world’s best apps for iOS, Android, OS X, and Windows on HockeyApp. Bring Mobile DevOps to your apps with beta distribution, crash reporting, user metrics, feedback, and powerful workflow integrations.

It is apparently an app distribution platform recently acquired by Microsoft.  I found out about it when I went to build in VS2015.  Anyone have any experience with and/or knowledge of it?

122
I don't know if this is intentional, but you have to post spurious text when posting just a youtube video, but you don't have to do the same when posting an image.

123
DC Gamer Club / DC Board Game Night
« on: April 27, 2016, 09:50 PM »
So, mouser talks about board games a lot, and other people do too.  So I figured why not try to organize a DC Boardgame night?  Especially as Tabletop Simulator is on sale again.  For like the 100th time in the last few months.

https://www.bundlest...e/tabletop-simulator

Some easy to follow rules I cribbed from somewhere else.

Find board games you are interested in playing here: https://boardgamegeek.com/
Then look them up here: http://steamcommunit...app/286160/workshop/
And finally add them here!: https://goo.gl/kppGnj

We'll prioritize them by order in the doc- or by some other method we decide.  All we need to do is decide on a date and time to start...

Anyone game for this?  Want to find out how many we have before we start organizing...

124
Living Room / Android - Observations from Long Term Use
« on: April 20, 2016, 09:44 AM »
I purchased a couple of Android devices, and have been trying to remove myself from the iDevice infrastructure with this being a first step.  I am now back to using my iDevices full time.  How did that happen?  And what went wrong?  I'm just putting this here to get people to chime in.  Many say it's because I got a Samsung device.  But the problems I have are not specific to the interface, but rather intrinsic things in the device.  I'll lay them out, and people can chime in.

125
Living Room / Mechanical Keyboards
« on: March 30, 2016, 01:56 PM »
Is anyone else overly interested in mechanical keyboards and buying/modding/making them?

I discovered that there was a difference quite by accident.  I've been using a logitech k811 to connect to my laptop while it's docked and still have the keyboard in front of me- just in case multiplicity isn't responding, or I don't want to switch screens (gaming and such).  I realized that the size felt better to me, after typing on it for a prolonged period.  And I never took the time to program my Orion Spark or indeed, any of my massive keyboards before it.  Nor did I really care about the lighting patterns.

I was going to begin with the infinity 60% on massdrop, but got cold feet, and instead started with a Poker 3 (MX Brown).  Shortly after that, I ordered a Poker 3 (MX Clear) for work, and haven't looked back!  I just got a Qisan 68-key (MX Brown) to replace that k811, and it's working great.  Still haven't decided if that's better than using the function layers to get to the additional keys.  Now I'm looking at trying a planck or preonic keyboard- but those have to have the switches soldered, and my soldering days were long ago, and not sure if I want to get to that point.  I'm also negotiating for a Race2 on Reddit.

If you're interested, and not already in on it, the best communities I've found are at deskthority and geekhack and reddit (mk and mechmarket).  I've bought all of my goodies from massdrop and amazon, though I did delve a bit into AliExpress and Store Uni.

Anyone else caught this particular bug?

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