How to Prevent Identity Theft - Basic tips w/laughs
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Misplaced Lens Cap
Cosmic Funnies

if i look back, i am lost

@theartofmadeline
i don't do bad sauce passes
RMH
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

ellievsbear
Claire Keane
$LAYYYTER

⁂

★
🪼

pixel skylines
YOU ARE THE REASON
almost home
Sweet Seals For You, Always
h
seen from Vietnam

seen from Germany

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from South Korea

seen from Canada
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia

seen from Indonesia
seen from Canada

seen from Iraq
@derrickdavidson
How to Prevent Identity Theft - Basic tips w/laughs

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Chaos vs Order - Working in IT
What can one do when you find yourself in a work situation that feels chaotic?
I have been recently thinking a great deal on this and how an unbalanced state of chaos vs. order does dramatically effect work potential. I want to offer a philosophical ideology that may be helpful and meaningful. My intention is not to be sanctimonious nor is it geared towards attribution. I have presented these concepts to various individuals and the response is positive. It resonates with others who work in IT and I hope with you.
Here is what I concluded; Too much chaos (the unknown) requires extraordinary mental fortitude and easily depletes one's ability to cope. In a working environment, the direct impact is to lower one's morale which leads to dis-engagement and a bend towards a nihilistic work-ethic - A very real and dangerous waste of potential. This danger cannot be overstated; bad things happen when folks no longer care. This notion is evidently true to the people I have spoken with.
As represented by the yin & yang principal, achieving balance is believed to be where humans thrive. It's then true that chaos is needed (and unavoidable) and that complete order is also overwhelming or stifling. One needs to have a foot firmly planted in ‘order’ an the other towards ‘chaos’ to move forward productively.
What can you do? Advocate and encourage the ingress of order (or at least to actively avoid the chaos) for everybody in the work environment.
I've put together some traits that represent chaos and order as applicable to any organization but particular thoughtful in relation to IT workers. Many of these traits can be applied to process and people. The people aspect is of equal importance. Not surprising, many traits of chaos are the inverse of order:
Chaos
Unknowns
Lack of definition
Lack of goal/target
Lack of visibility
Lack of planning
Lack of automation
Lack of resilience
Lack of integration
Lack of repeatability (one offs)
Best effort
Conflict
Toxic workers
Irrelevancy
Lack of value
Stagnation
Variation
Order
Coherence
Standards, Protocols and Policies
Service Level Agreements
Method of Procedure
Metrics and Key Performance Indicators
Demarcations
Communications
Visibility
Planning
Direction
Automation
Dependability
Fit for purpose
Integration
Competency
Conflict resolution
Innovation
Consistency
The path to embracing ‘order’ into your work envrionment, as represented by the above traits, is by attempting to manifest these traits into all aspects of your work. The absence of this effort will defacto generate chaos. However, on any scale, if successful will increase human resources.
We know things can be always be worse however we don't know what the upper limits can achieve when we all pull together.
Cheers!
Fake News Indeed
Haven’t posted in a bit (yet again) but every once in a while something triggers me. Here is what got me this time. I hear/see lots of folks having a go at ‘fake news’ these days. Unfortunately I hear just as many stating that fake news isn’t real, is made up or a Trumpism. Worse yet, folks seem to believe much of what is posted in social media regardless of who is posting it (especially when Facebook suggests it!). No fact checking, etc. Others still deny that Facebook can or will snag a piece of your personal information, such as browsing history (so they may target you for ads, etc).
Well... this is where those two worlds collide. Below you will find a screen cap I took last night as it appeared in my Facebook feed. Aside from the horrible picture of GSP, the article/post is complete bullshit. It clearly states that the return of GSP has been called off. It even goes on to tempt (clickbait anyone?) with ‘heart breaking’ rumours. Notice that this post was suggested by Facebook!
I’m not on Facebook all that often anymore and I rarely look anything up (search within Facebook). I’m positive the only place I had searched for details about UFC 217 was via Google. I’m quite sure this is why this post appeared.
Once again, I’ll have a look at my security controls because this bit of fuckery really burns me.
Server virtualization has gained tremendous popularity and acceptance to a point now that customers are staring to host virtual machines from differing secur...
This topic was recently discussed w/colleagues. IMHO, physical isolation provides the highest security model in terms of risk mitigation and management. I always ellude to the standard mantra of tight security comimg at the price of flexibility, ease of use and cost. Brad Hedlund does an excellent job of detailing this scenario.
-DD
A special version designed for the classroom.
I’m not a minecraft fan but I thought this was very interesting for two reasons; 1) My son recently wrote a grade 6 paper about the benefits of gaming, particularly as it realtes to learning and he used Minecraft as a star witness. Seems he was ahead of the curve. 2) Gamimg and education have always gone hand in hand in my mind. I started played ‘quest’ style games since I was 11 and I beleive it helped me develop in all kinds of ways (logic, imagination, basic computer operation, etc).
Cool beans.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I had to laugh at Facebook digging into my iPhone (or perhaps correlating it from others) and grabbing my phone number to assist in further securing my account. Yes, adding a mobile number does further secure but I didn’t give the app any persmission to mine data. :-(
BTW, nice touch with the quasi-pressure tactic of showing 5 other people having already done this. lol
Want to stop Windows from nagging you about Windows 10?
Check out the link posted below for all the gory details. I reccomend using the ‘Computer Configuration’ method as modifying the registry can cause serious issues with your OS.
If you are having trouble finding ‘Computer Configuration’ or the ‘Administrative Templates’ on your PC:
Click Start
Type gpedit.msc
Press Enter
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351
Cheers!
UPDATE: FEB 5th, 2016
The above seems to work some of time so for those of you who understand registry manipulation, here are the keys that need to be adjusted/created and populated:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001 The second file is DisableGWX.reg:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GWX]
"DisableGWX"=dword:00000001
Remote Home Monitor - Use what you may alrady have.
The idea is not new, however I had never explored this option before. I have always kept an eye out for a good deal on a wireless camera for home use. Perhaps to watch for a delivery man, maybe as a nanny-cam or in my case... to monitor a dog who loves to chew. :-(
It dawned on me one day that we have a older iPhone just laying around (not activated) as a spare. It has a good camera, speaker and microphone built-in and there must be a way to leverage that. Well of course there is, I was way behind the curve on this one.
A quick few searches lead me to an app called ‘AtHome Camera’. It looked to fit the bill quite nicely. Remote viewing, remote talk, remote listening, screen captures and/or recording. All for free….sweetness!
I have to say after playing with the viewer app (installed on device where you monitor) and the streamer app (installed on device that monitors) I am pretty impressed. Actually impressed enough to create a blog entry. As a free product it’s great. The limitations for it being free appear to be that the viewer only supports one camera at a time and there is no motion detection and alerting. However, the remote viewing, remote talk, remote listening, screen captures and/or recording all work with that one camera. All you need to do is use the ‘generate QR code’ feature on the streamer and scan it on the viewer (via the the camera) to gain access. You must have that QR code (not sure if dynamic) in order to access that device. Neat.
When I say ‘free’ I literally mean I did not have to spend any $$. Yes, there is some in-skin advertisement but it’s not a big deal and it’s why its free no doubt. Full-screen mode doesn’t have the ads BTW. I’ll be sure to post an update if get a barrage of SPAM, etc. I believe there is a professional version out there (appears to be $8.99) and a Cloud storage option for a fee (for recorded videos). However, you can ‘register’ and create an account which opens up the ability to add more cameras, bind cameras to an account, setup motion detection that generate alerts and schedule recordings. Whoa! I have no idea what the professional version offers but so far I have not spent a dime and have some pretty excellent functionality. As always, when creating a new account please use a different password from anything else you may be using.
One minor thing of note; once you register, sign-in and then sign-out on the viewer application it appears to require you to sign-in after that. Not a huge deal but before signing-in I was just able to launch the viewer and go. Truth be told, it’s good thing rather than an annoyance (security usually is) as you should sign out when you’re done using the viewer application. This way nobody can launch the viewer without authentication. As I mentioned earlier, once you register and sign-in to the viewer you can also ‘bind’ a camera to your account (only your account can now view that camera) as an added security measure. After all, you can install the viewer application on mulitple devices which maybe convienent but also introduces risk in another sense (greater chance that someone else may gain access). This extra security measure now ensures authentication to cameras and will prevent another person (perhaps a family member) from gaining access to the device by simply using the ‘Generate QR Code’ function.
This product looks to support Windows, Macs, iPhone/iPods, Android, Android set-top boxes as well as some IP cameras. Pretty slick to gain access to a home device just sitting around doing nothing else throughout the day. Go to the website (see below) or your preferred App Store and search ‘AtHome Camera’ and you should see the viewer and streamer apps available.
There are lots of alternatives out there and some may be better but I’m just focused on this product for now. Have not played w/motion detection or alerting just yet. Even if they suck… still toats worth it.
Techie Note:
The viewer application appears to use TCP port 8001 to establish connection to the monitor application and then use standard web ports (443, 80) beyond that connection. Something to keep in mind when behind a firewall (pretty much anywhere beyond cellular connectivity).
The web site is:
http://www.ichano.com/index.jsp
Happy Viewing!
Choosing Apple over Microsoft.
As I talk to my techie friends it’s clear the divide regarding Apple v.s. Microsoft is still very strong and runs quite deep. Just as most mainstream Apple users adore the Apple ecology, Microsoft users hate them for it.
Yes, I admit… I’ve become somewhat of an Apple fan boy over the years but it’s not without a solid history of Microsoft usage. Since the age of 12 I’ve used Microsoft desktop products in one version or another. I recall the early days of Apple producst being proprietary and haviong a huge lack of software support… but those days are long gone. I moved from Microsoft to Ubuntu to Mac on my desktop at home in 2009 and haven’t looked back since.
Rather than bash Microsoft or highlight some frustrations (yes they do exist on both sides) I’m going to speak directly to what I’ve observed over the past 8 years or so as to why I think Apple really is a leader in technology. I’m not just talking about the hipster appeal but rather how they have innovated and forged a new world. I won’t deep dive into the actual technology because it would be insanely difficult to do so.
I mentioned earlier the notion of an Apple ecology. It’s the cornerstone of the argument. Its the way I view what Apple has done with their products and services since the introduction of the iPod (alone stands as a groundbreaking advancement). Folks probably don’t think about it but Apple users have come to expect it. The ecology ties directly into the end user experience and is a critical piece in customer satisfaction. Both Apple and Microsoft have been guilty of ‘gaffes’ that have aggravated customers but one need to consider a high level point of view.
Take an average user who can comfortably use technology and mobile devices. Now transition that same person between a desktop and a mobile device. THIS is where Apple has always really shined. The end user experience is relatively seamless. iPod, iPad or OSX; users can pick up and go. I understand that most hard-core techies crave for customization and the ability to get under the hood (hardware included). This is all very possible with both OS flavours but lets be honest; the majority of users want something out-of-the-box that simply works consistently, feels familiar and meets their basic needs. Apple has lead the way here. The customer satisfaction numbers show it too. At 40 + I’ve grown out of the ‘hot rod’ PC phase and great software out of the box is fine by me.
Only recently with Windows 8/10 do we see Microsoft starting to build the framework for a common user experience between desktop and mobile devices. That doesn’t even cover the difference between OS upgrades paths. Consider this: I have upgraded my 2010 iMac 4 major versions since I’ve bought it… no hardware upgrades! That would never be the case with Windows. Again only recently has Windows started going the way of in-line updates and now talk of no new major revisions. Behind the times they are and its mostly a result of no product ecology.
Exploring the idea of user consistency a bit further you’ll see that Apple paved the road for the notion of a modern day ‘app’ (thanks largely to its Unix core). I would describe an app as a self-contained piece of software that can be installed on the fly. In Apple’s case via the App Store. This idea has now been cloned by Microsoft, Google, etc. There is a lot of talk regarding virtual applications, etc. What is a virtual application? I believe it is a self-contained piece of software that can be installed on the fly into a given OS. Rinse, wash and repeat; it’s the same idea as an app. Windows tiles and applications are now resembling this basic notion of an app (or v-app). Again, playing catch-up.
And what about the availability of said apps? The App Store has been around since 2008 and that is well ahead (by about 4 years) of Google, BlackBerry or Microsoft. Having access to the world’s largest online repository of applications was an Apple thing and only recently has Google taken this crown. Of course that is pretty predictable considering Apple doesn’t let just anybody publish an old app. Anyhow, the idea that you could pay for even download a free application in one spot and then re-install on the same or some other device flawlessly was championed by Apple. The point is; The notion of an App Store is all thanks to Apple and their vision.
I have droned on enough about product ecology and apps I suppose but I did so because from my point of view… everybody else has lagged or is lagging and it is crucial to the end user experience.
As much as I know this is next bit is not a great argument I will touch base on the ‘curb appeal’ aspect. Apple branding is pretty genius. They tapped into the culture and tied it to the ecology with near perfection. I think they stand alone here. But more importantly Apple products are solid, functional and a thing of beauty. It would be hard to discount that every other phone manufacturer has emulated the iPhone design in some way. How about any recent all-in-one PC? Look no further than the iMac. All-in-one PCs are now very prevalent in the PC market. Look at Beats products; unboxing a Beats Pill is now eerily similar to an Apple product. Why? Because they do it so damn well. This argument quickly leads to the largest bone of contention for non-Apple users; Price.
Are Apple products more expensive; Yes. As to why some folks choose to spend more money on Apple products, well there are many reasons (some I have spoke about here). It’s about value. More to the point good value. That, is in the eye of the beholder. BTW, take a look at Microsofts fairly recent entry into the laptop/tablet market under the brandname ‘Surface’. These devices are easily as expensive as Apple. It’s what it takes to be innovative and produce a platform to showcase your OS.
Humor me for another paragraph as I highlight a personal experience I had with a MacBook Air. This MacBook Air was defanantly more expensive than other laptops available and nay-sayers always relished pointing this fact out to me. However, these same folks never compared apples to apples… so to speak. The MacBook Air in this case weighed a fraction of any other, had a slightly larger but exceedingly more brilliant display and came with an SSD drive. Solid state drive (SSD)… you could not even get that with other manufactures at the time. This laptop was blazingly fast and was absolutely amazing to work with. It really was state of the art in many ways. Really? You think I’m blowing smoke? Consider this seemingly tiny detail; the power adapter was held in place, to the laptop, magnetically. This meant that if your dog flew by and ensnared himself in your power cord the adapter would simply de-couple with no harm done laptop. Do you know how many people have had to replace adapters and/or motherboard connecters on standard laptops? A lot. How do you put a price on this simply design choice when having these conversations? Again, it comes down to value and that is the eye of the beholder. For me… that innovation was fantastic.
Some random last minute thoughts:
Backup and Restore - Time Machine (comes with OSX) is very slick. Restoring files or the entire OS. Slick. This was around way before Microsoft started to get it right.
Macs are based on Unix. Unix was around way before Windows. Unix is known for its stability. Unix has far fewer exploits. This means you will have far fewer issues in general with crashes, viruses and malware.
Media (Music and Photos) - Apple has included software to import, store, edit, flip, twist and play media from the start. Some people don’t like iTunes. Most often these same people seek out 3rd-party software to learn and familiarize that equally results in time spent just learning how to use iTunes. It’s really not that hard.
There are many more points and counter-points but these basic areas have caught my attention over the years. So there you have it, my 0.02 cents on having worked with Apple and many others over the years and why Apple is a leader in technology.
Cheers!
Weekend upgrade. Roughly 700 ports. #Cisco #Geek #Overtime

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
One of the truly fascinating things about networking is how much of it ‘just works’. There are so many low level pieces of a network stack that you don’t really have to know (although you should) to be an expert at something like OSPF, BGP, or any other higher level networking protocol. One of the …
A nice example of Ethernet, IP and MTU/MSS in action!
Handy system status page for Apple services.
Home of Kali Linux, an Advanced Penetration Testing Linux distribution used for Penetration Testing, Ethical Hacking and network security assessments.
Kali Linux is great… whether you’re looking for a LIVE CD or to install the best collection of free Pentest tools out there. Check it out! MetaSploit, OpenVas, nap, burpsuite, etc
Step-by-step instructions on how to recover your Outlook.com account, email, and contacts if your account has been hacked or compromised by hackers.
Has your Outlook/Hotmail account been hacked?
Join Robb, Jimmy Ray, and network security experts now for a deeper look at something too often overlooked: the network and how it can be used to accomplish your security objectives.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Not bad for a Friday afternoon....
Great article... written by an actual teen