Tony's Take On Tech

Government cybersecurity bill passes!

Leave a Comment / Security / tony / 2022-03-02 / #cisa, #cybersecurity, #government, #hacking

Last night, a few hours before the State of the Union address, congress passed a cybersecurity bill…finally! Some of the details, summarized from the article
* Businesses in certain sectors (e.g. financial, transportation, energy to name a few) MUST alert the government when hacked or when they pay ransomware
* Updates to rules how government agencies manage information security
* Changes to how the government assesses and manages the security the the cloud systems in use
CISA should get much more information and insight into the number and type of attacks U.S. companies are being subjected to on a daily basis and be able to share it with concerned entities in a more timely fashion.

Details at https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/02/senate-is-finally-passing-big-cyber-bills/ if you’re interested in more details.

#cisa, #cybersecurity, #government, #hacking

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Search engines

Leave a Comment / Misc / tony / 2022-03-01 / #search, #tips

Everyone knows about Google search…so much so that it’s become a verb. Many know about some of the other search engines like DuckDuckGo.com and DogPile.com. But the search engine market is apparently not saturated because there are new ones entering all the time. One of my favorites is Neeva.com which promises not to track you, is free (including spaces which is kind of a persistent search) but offers additional features for a fee ($50/yr right now) but is perfectly serviceable on the free tier (and is my preferred search engine right now).

Another that I like to use occasionally is You.com. No ads like Neeva but You says they summarize the web based on your searches, providing answers from a limited list of sites they call your preferred sources, in different categories (e.g. web, news, shopping, etc). You can “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” sources but that’s about it. Still, its format and output can be useful.

A new one (to me) is AndiSearch.com – another that promises privacy It’s still in “alpha” status (which means they’re actively working on it and haven’t really finished the product) so it may break on occasion, They say they fight spam, won’t track you and won’t present you with ads. Its approach is a little different in that it’s conversational meaning that you interact with their “bot” and can type in queries as sentences. Sure, it has a command language so you can do things like “go facebook” and it’ll take you right to Facebook (although it’s beyond me why you would want to do that). The results are also presented differently from what I’m used to seeing – the bot takes up the left side of the window so the results are restricted to the right side of the window. You have some control over how the results are presented (mostly cosmetic) but overall I think it’s an interesting approach and one to keep an eye on. Do I use it much? Not right now but maybe, depending on how the product progresses…

#search, #tips

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Learn git

Leave a Comment / Tech / tony / 2022-03-01 / #development, #git, #tips, #ubernerd

If you’re new to git or you just wanna brush up on things, go to https://learngitbranching.js.org/ and have a look. It’s an interactive graphical representation of a lot of the concepts including basics like committing code and branching to more advanced things like cherry picking

#development, #git, #tips, #ubernerd

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Free LISTSERV (email discussion) hosting

Leave a Comment / Email / tony / 2022-02-21 / #email, #emaildiscussion, #free, #listserv, #tips

https://gaggle.email/ provides completels free email discussion hosting for up to 1000 members with moderation and a 3 month searchable archive. You can get additional features by purchasing either a 10 cent a month per user or a 15 cent a month per user subscription. But, honestly, I think I can get by with the free plan.

#email, #emaildiscussion, #free, #listserv, #tips

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Crostini, the heart of Chrome OS

Leave a Comment / ChromeOS, Tech, Virtualization / tony / 2022-02-14 / #chromeos, #crostini, #lxc, #ubernerd, #virtualization

Chromebooks seem simple but under the hood there’s quite a bit of code that makes it all work. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/crostini_developer_guide.md has an excellent fairly high level diagram of Chrome OS (CrOS). The Termina VM (right, Terminal without the trailing L) is where your “standard” Linux container (known as “penguin”) is started which gives you your full blown Debian environment. But note that at its very heart is a Debian container which starts up everything else. The reference above talks about how to MAKE CrOS.

If you want to learn more about how to USE CrOS and maybe launch your own containers instead of or in addition to penguin, read https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/containers_and_vms.md which talks about the mechanics of things

https://www.reddit.com/r/Crostini/comments/squfcz/trying_to_understand_what_chrome_oscrostini/ is the source article for this.

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Google is bringing full on KVM to Android 13

Leave a Comment / Android, ChromeOS, Mobile, Tech, Windows / tony / 2022-02-14 / #android, #kvm, #ubernerd, #virtualization, #windows

Yeah! Now, you’ve gotta wonder how well it’ll perform but someone has already run Windows 11 on their Pixel 6 running the Android 13 preview. Here’s the tweets https://twitter.com/kdrag0n/status/1492754683445669893 and here’s a link to an asrticle that goes into more detail about the KVM implementation https://blog.esper.io/android-dessert-bites-5-virtualization-in-android-13-351789/ if you want more info.

https://www.androidauthority.com/windows-11-android-13-3107906 is the source article with some higher level info

#android, #kvm, #ubernerd, #virtualization, #windows

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Quantum entganglement and some subtleties

Leave a Comment / Quantum / tony / 2022-02-12 / #quantum, #quantumcomputing, #quantumentanglement

I found this to be a good article discussing and to some extent explaining quantum entanglement. Not only the broad brush explanation that I usually see but some of the more subtle elements like a particle is likely partially entangled with more than one other particle so knowing the state of one may not completely convey the state of the other. https://interestingengineering.com/quantum-entanglement is the article I reference.

#quantum, #quantumcomputing, #quantumentanglement

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Good analogies help understanding and hacking bitcoin with quantum computers

Leave a Comment / Blockchain, Crypto, Quantum / tony / 2022-02-09 / #bitcoin, #blockchain, #quantum, #quantumcomputing, #qubits, #superposition

About half way thru the article explains superposition and entanglement using an analogy of spinning coins. It’s an interesting analogy and one that could help folks who don’t understand those concepts. Aside from that, the article is interesting because it discusses hacking bitcoin (or, more generally, a blockchain) and why more qubits are needed as a sort of error correction..
https://www.cnet.com/news/quantum-hackers-could-break-bitcoin-in-minutes-but-dont-panic-just-yet/

#bitcoin, #blockchain, #quantum, #quantumcomputing, #qubits, #superposition

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Linux in a browser

Leave a Comment / ChromeOS, Linux, Tech / tony / 2022-02-08 / #containers, #docker, #linux, #opensource, #ubernerd, #webtop

Now that you’ve got docker set up on your Mac or Windows box or even on your Linux machine or NAS or chromebook (see https://tonystakeontech.com/2022/02/08/a-cookbook-to-run-docker-on-your-chromebook/), what can you do with it? Well, I could send you over to https://hub.docker.com/search?type=image but that just shows you some of what’s available in the world of docker containers. Instead, how about running Linux in a docker container that you can access locally in your browser? Yeah, I know, it’s a bit funky in that you may already be running Linux, with or without a GUI, but it’s an easy project and even kinda fun.

Head on over to https://tech.davidfield.co.uk/webtops-linux-desktop-in-a-web-browser/ for the cookbook to bring up Webtop (more info at https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop including different base images like XFCE Ubuntu, KDE Alpine, etc). And, BTW, there are quite a few more images available over at linuxserver.io so check them out, too. That link to docs.linuxserver.io lists other images.

#containers, #docker, #linux, #opensource, #ubernerd, #webtop

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A cookbook to run docker on your chromebook

1 Comment / ChromeOS, Linux, Tech / tony / 2022-02-08 / #chromebook, #chromeos, #containers, #docker, #linux

I know, if you’re running Linux on your chromebook then you’re already running a virtual image but until Google releases the code that makes it easier to add images alongside Linux, this is probably the easiest way to run them, albeit in your existing Linux container. https://dvillalobos.github.io/2020/How-to-install-and-run-Docker-on-a-Chromebook/ is a cookbook approach which makes setting it up even easier and you can be up and running docker images in…well, it took me less than 10 minutes (I already had my Linux environment set up on my 11th gen Acer Spin 713)

#chromebook, #chromeos, #containers, #docker, #linux

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