Category: Software

Linux is pretty amazing in that regard. It will boot just about anything and faster than Windows. If you own an old computer that refuses to work, get yourself a copy of a “live” Linux (google it), and revive your old computer for anything you want it to perform like holding photos, use it as a router, use it as a security camera, etc.

You might have to do a little research into booting from a CD/DVD or USB stick, but it is worth the trouble. Every computer is different in that way.

 

My laptop runs on Linux Lite, one of several open-source operating systems specially designed to work on old computers. The use of a Linux operating system is not a mere suggestion. There’s no way you’re going to revive an old laptop if you stick to Microsoft Windows or Apple OS because the machine would freeze instantly.

 

solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops.html

I had bad experiences with many kinds of ‘whole disk encryption’ schemes. They do not seem to survive the test of time. A simple one file encryption is far better and Veracrypt will do for most users. Encryption, like a lot of things, is more an economic problem than anything else. What is it that you are trying to protect, against who, and can you afford it? I think that for the average person, the answers are; What: My personal data. Against who: A possible thief. Can I afford it: Veracrypt is free.
It might not hold decrypting from some of the world’s superpower countries, but do you really need that?

>>> “What is the benefit of having FIPS hardware-level encryption on a drive when you can use Veracrypt instead?”

security.stackexchange.com/questions/241202/what-is-the-benefit-of-having-fips-hardware-level-encryption-on-a-drive-when-you

Yes, like in the Shaw citation below, progress might be made by “unreasonable one” but is it the right progress to be made?

I think that we should try to adapt to the world instead of trying to bend the world to our needs. Technologically, we might seem to be advancing a lot, but scientifically, we are more or less stagnating.

There has not been any major discovery in physics for the past century or so, and physic is the base of all sciences. We invent new theories but we are stagnating comparatively to the centuries before.

We need some new goals. We need to go back to be advancing knowledge for its own purpose, not to enslave nature. I am ready to bet that it is also a lot less work or wasted resources.

>>> ” “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw ”
” I don’t think that these people, all of a sudden, had an epiphany after they retired. They knew all about the rot in the system they were part of, while they were part of it, but they’ve had too much to lose. You could argue that they should have said something before they retired, but that requires a moral backbone we can’t expect most people to have.
When people retire, the threat of getting fired disappears. Old people can speak freely to a degree most other people can’t. “

blog.ploeh.dk/2020/09/14/we-need-young-programmers-we-need-old-programmers/

I could not agree more. It used to be decentralized and it should go back to be just that. We need to look at the Web3 protocol a little bit closer.

>>> “Decentralizing the web through new technologies like blockchain and decentralized protocols can ensure that the web remains community-focused and user-oriented, just like it was originally intended to be.”

modernconsensus.com/commentary/the-future-is-decentralized/

Backup is an art. Third parties are bad like banks and retirement plans, in the sense that you do not have the ultimate control of your data or money.

For doing backups, I think that ‘tar’ is the best, but try not to go too much fancy (like incremental backups). When you think about it,  backup is just data processing.

A word of advice, do not compress and encrypt at the same time. Some specialist on encryption will tell you that is a bad idea because it really weakening the encryption. Encrypting WILL compress your data anyway.

Also, do not use file-system or operating system encryption. They change too often and when ‘upgrading’ your operating system, you may find yourself with an unusable file-system. It is better to use some sort of ‘bucket’ encryption like Truecrypt (now Veracrypt), and store your sensitive information on it. That way, you are also not wasting resources on encrypting everything and you will have more atomic control over what you encrypt. The backups will also be simpler.

Like always, your main problem will be to remember or storing your passwords.

>>> “Like so many things I’m supposed to do but don’t — getting exercise, eating right, sleeping well, standing up for women and minorities in public spaces — backing up my data has always been something I’ve half-assed at best.”

magnusson.io/post/backups/

Peertube is a P2P emulation of YouTube. You can publish videos with Peertube and have complete control over them. Nobody can ban your videos from it

>>> “PeerTube is just one of many open source tools that content creators should look at and evaluate, in order to prepare for a time when your channel, or YouTube as a whole, disappears.”

battlepenguin.com/tech/moving-from-youtube-to-peertube/

I have high hopes about peer to peer technologies. The less we encourage centralization the better we will live.

Again, it is only an illusion that control is better. I think it is always good to leave nature takes its own course and not interfere with it.

>>> “Orchid takes a new approach to digital privacy with the first peer-to-peer, incentivized privacy network.”

news.bitcoin.com/orchid-bringing-decentralization-to-vpns/

I remember being asked how many words per minute I could type, in a programmer/analyst job interview. I was greatly surprised by the question. Are you hiring a programmer or an office assistant? It turns out that this ‘house’ never did really needed programmers. They were hiring people to go on customers’ sites and ‘type’ some updates into their software at high ‘programmer’ rates.
That job was pretty boring. The most fun I had was handling support for customers. I endured that situation because I needed something to do between contracts elsewhere.
On another contract a few years later, I produced about 30000 lines of C code (Informix esql/c) in about 2 months. I did not type faster, I just used some common sense to reuse the same code. The first ‘templates’ took longer to write because the end goal was to be able to reproduce the code.

>>> “It might seem a reasonable question, but it makes some terrible assumptions:
lines of code = effort
lines of code = value
all lines of code are equal “

www.mrlacey.com/2020/07/youve-only-added-two-lines-why-did-that.html

I was never a fan of SAP. I think that the SAP popular wave was based on false assumptions, like “One can never go wrong by choosing IBM”, yeah right…, tell that to the Canadian Phoenix payroll system… (more on that in a future article).

I was a reseller/consultant of SBT ERP systems for many years in the 80s. They were not “Open Source” but, they were giving the source code to customers as a guaranty for buyers to become independent of the provider.

I believe that open source ERP is a better alternative for many reasons. Less bugs is one of the reasons, no dependency on a provider is another reason.

I do hate the hidden mentality of providers that “They have thought about everything.”. That is impossible and leads to many problems. Being open about your weaknesses is a better way to get rapid improvement.

>>> “According to an alert from the Department of Homeland Security, successful exploitation of the bug opens the door for attackers to read and modify financial records; change banking details; read personal identifiable information (PII); administer purchasing processes; sabotage or disrupt operations; achieve operating system command execution; and delete or modify traces, logs and other files.”

threatpost.com/critical-sap-bug-enterprise-system-takeover/157392/

I like him. He is a little bit too adventurous for my taste, but I find him interesting. He has a few good stories on his blog site that are worth reading about security in Latin America. This new venture has good chances of succeeding.

>>> John McAfee announced Tuesday the launch of his new product called the “Ghost Cell Phone Data Service,” which he described as “the first 4G data service to make connections to the network untraceable.

news.bitcoin.com/john-mcafee-ghost-phone-service-cryptocurrency/

I like OpenStreetMap. I think theirs maps are prettier. The response time is quick and the details are amazing. They do not have satellite view and “Street View” but for real mapping usage they are great.
They have the best rendering of rivers in my view (with the Transport Map).
There is also a OpenSeaMap that is getting very good. It is more popular in Europe than North America.

>>>
“Its unparalleled global coverage — from roads and rivers to pharmacies, forests, and much more — makes OpenStreetMap a vital resource for building high-quality visual maps and navigation services for every part of the world.”
blog.mapbox.com/openstreetmap-a-global-map-for-worldwide-insight-4e041cbf1ec1

I will generally use exiting code to complete a task. I am able to create new code but I am also very good at understanding existing code. With the years, I find that using existing code is very often the best economical (read least effort) way to go.  I have also used whole systems of software to accomplish something it was never designed to do. With success. It is just a matter of how you look at things. I you can picture the stock market as general store, you might be able to use a sophisticate inventory replenishment system to pick up what stock to buy and what to “put on sale”.

Lately I have been using a trick I call “encapsulating”.

Say I am frustrated with a program like “vlc” that is not doing what I want. Instead of trying to change the source code and spending multiple hours of study, I would just call it from a script (or even another program) and then I can do whatever I want before and after that program (again, say “vlc”) executes.

It is working 90% of the time currently. In other words, with very little work, I am able to get what I want.

This guy is saying that deciding to rewrite from scratch is the worst idea.

>>>
“The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed.”
www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/

I am not a fan of drug dealers but I would never use an encryption scheme that is in the hand of a single entity.  Open source systems and fully distributed peer to peer systems (a la tor or bitcoin) are best for me.

I use pgp whenever I can.  It is not easy to use and I think it is not widely available because some entities are putting the brakes on a general acceptance.  That alone is a good reason to trust it.  The problem is always in the implementation and the underlying support structure.  The more sensitive your needs are, the more investigation you need to put into these underlying support structure.

BTW, if I was an Encrochat associate, I would lay low for a while… hehe!

“Police monitored a hundred million encrypted messages sent through Encrochat, a network used by career criminals to discuss drug deals, murders, and extortion plots.”

www.vice.com/en_us/article/3aza95/how-police-took-over-encrochat-hacked