Russian DNC Hack Crock

Posted on by John D

Russia continues to be the bogeyman in Democratic distractions to blame anyone and everyone else for their failure to win the election. Now, the Washington Post is stirring up the pot again in “Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House“. The truth is that the supposed story is a Russian DNC hack crock.

In another example of how far the Washington Post has lost its way (along with all the other so-called “news” media), it recently posted. True, at least they tried to “balance” the article with some dissenting voices sprinkled here and there, but the real fact is that very few “news” outlets have really investigated the truth of the matter in any kind of fact-based way. Continue reading “Russian DNC Hack Crock” →

“Snoopers Law”: UK Officially Gives Up Any Pretense That It Is Not George Orwell’s Nightmare Come True

Posted on by John D
Tim Berners-Lee on the Internet as a human right
Tim Berners-Lee on the Internet as a human right

I heard about the UK’s “Snooper Law” just the other day on Jupiter Broadcasting, and the most surprising part is that it “sailed through” parliament. Where is the uproaor?

Older But Geeky has a write-up on it in “UK Officially Gives Up Any Pretense That It Is Not George Orwell’s Nightmare Come True”.

Apparently, spying on all of your activities has become a priority for many “freedom loving” nations and forget about any notion of privacy. Do you still believe you live in a democracy?

“This snoopers charter has no place in a modern democracy – it undermines our fundamental rights online. The bulk collection of everyone’s internet browsing data is disproportionate, creates a security nightmare for the ISPs who must store the data – and rides roughshod over our right to privacy. Meanwhile, the bulk hacking powers in the Bill risk making the internet less safe for everyone.”

~ Sir Tim Berners-Lee, as quoted by the BBC News in “‘Snoopers law creates security nightmare’“

Old Goat Guide: Chrome Browser Kicks Flash To the Curb

Posted on by John D

About time someone kicks Flash to the curb!

Just last week, I sent an email to a website as to why, why!, can I access their videos on my Android phone but not on my PC. It kept insisting upon me downloading Adobe Flash, which I not only did not have installed but even have the built-in PepperFlash turned off. I should be able to access it via HTML5, but instead I get a stupid message to download an obsolete and often abused plugin. Maybe now more sites will get off their cans and fix this.

The latest version of the Google Chrome web browser (version 55) has finally kicked Adobe Flash to the curb, by giving preference to HTML5 on most websites. There are a small number of exceptions to this, at least for a time, with YouTube and Facebook being notable ones.

~ , Old Goat Guide: Chrome Browser Kicks Flash To the Curb

How to Reset WordPress Admin Password on Localhost

Posted on by John D

Ironically, I recently had to do just this. I had to reset WordPress admin password on a backup copy of an archived website, for which I had long forgotten the password. Since it was not a live site but only a local copy (i.e., running on localhost), I could not do the email reset. However, the stored password is hashed, so how is this supposed to work?

Fortunately, WPBeginner filled in the missing pieces on doing a password reset on a WordPress site running only on localhost:

Do you want to reset WordPress admin password on localhost? In this tutorial we will show you how to easily reset WordPress admin password on localhost.

Source: How to Reset WordPress Admin Password on Localhost

Geek Friday: Setting up Epson Scanning on Raspberry Pi

Posted on by John D

This is a reprint of a previous article, by request. The information contained therein is probably out-dated by a few years. Therefore, I make no promise that the instructions below for setting up Epson scanning on Raspberry Pi is any way accurate.

This is the article that almost didn’t happen.  I need my Epson all-in-one for scanning, and if I couldn’t get it working, then I was going to disconnect the Pi, reformat and repurpose (and I have other purposes for one, certainly).  In fact, I had gotten printing working even over Airprint, so this was the last obstacle.  I was prepared to disconnect it, but I decided to give it yet one more try, and I finally got some success. Continue reading “Geek Friday: Setting up Epson Scanning on Raspberry Pi” →

Systemd Wars Continues: Notify and PID 1

Posted on by John D

Systemd vs System V init wars continues with latest “How to crash systemd clickbait

When it comes to certain “holy wars” in the IT realm, I’m certainly not inclined to root for one side or the other when it comes to certain complicated items like system init. However, I feel that when it comes to foaming at the mouth clickbait posts filled with the sky-is-falling logic due to one bug (that must be done locally, no less), then I feel compelled to highlight the other side to re-balance the ship.

What I really don’t understand is the human tendency to put the same intensity into certain aspects of computing as they do in politics or religion, and the systemd vs System V init wars are certainly that.

The systemd team has recently patched a local denial of service vulnerability affecting the notification socket, which is designed to be used for daemons to report their lifecycle and health information. Some people have used this as an opportunity to throw a fresh tantrum about systemd.…

Source: How to Throw a Tantrum in One Blog Post – Medium

Understanding the Windows Credential Leak Flaw and How to Prevent It

Posted on by John D

Some scary stuff that affects all versions of Windows since at least XP!

This week there has been a lot of news about a flaw in Windows that could be used by web sites to easily gain access to a visitor’s Windows login name and password. This article explains how this flaw works and how you can prevent it.

Source: Understanding the Windows Credential Leak Flaw and How to Prevent It

How-To GRUB2 for UEFI and LUKS Encrypted Volumes for Arch Linux and Windows 10

Posted on by John D

Using GRUB is a little harder than using syslinux, but it is required if you want UEFI support. Here’s how to use GRUB2 for UEFI and LUKS encrypted volumes for the .Arch Linux side and still dual boot into Windows 10

[UPDATE: I should have mentioned that this article is built upon previous work I did using LVM on LUKS on an MBR system. There are scripts with comments that can be used to be a recipe for that at https://github.com/JDCNS/ArchVMInstall.]

This article is partly the result of Microsoft’s constant giving of five confusing names for the same thing and just plain backwards way of doing things. It is also partly because overall GRUB is such a flexible and customizable tool that finding all of the information in one spot is unlikely.
Continue reading “How-To GRUB2 for UEFI and LUKS Encrypted Volumes for Arch Linux and Windows 10” →

Logged in with Temporary Profile to Windows 7 – Microsoft Community

Posted on by John D

It gets aggravating trying to find the right registry keys sometimes. In order to resolve or prevent the error message about being logged in with temporary profile in Windows 7, the following Microsoft solution points to the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList that lists the subkeys of users that have logged in. Be sure to also remove any User folders as well, if they still exist.

I switched on my PC and when I entered my password to log in I was told that I was being logged in with a temporary profile because my real one was unavailable. Logging out and back in again appears

Source: Being logged in to Windows 7 with a temporary profile – Microsoft Community