Depending on how old you are you may remember a time when you knew each member of the team that worked at your bank and they wanted to keep you as a customer and would rectify any problem no matter how small. Or when you received bad service at a large store even online you would receive great customer service to rectify the issue?
I can recall the early days of Twitter when there weren’t that many of us on there. I posted a tweet about a particular issue I had with a product one time and within the hour the company was in touch asking how they could resolve the issue to my satisfaction. Today you’d be hard pressed to be able to reach a human. You are more likely to encounter chatbots running on a pre-configured algorithmic loop, or AI of some sort. If you do manage to reach a human they probably don’t work for the company and are following a script delivered in broken english from a country far far away.
In the search for cheaper products and services, and larger profits, quality has suffered and when you want to complain there is no person to complain to.
You could use OSINT to reach the CEO and try complaining that way. I tried that once and he said he’d resolve the issue asap then behind the scenes got his PA to tell me to go away. One face for the publicity another for the actual service. We care, we care a lot.. about our profits and shareholders.
Remembering computer fairs
I saw an advert on FB recently for a local computer fair and it took me back twenty years to when I used to be a frequent visitor to them. I’d buy everything I would need to build a desktop PC from scratch and I would assemble it immediately when I got home. I’d haggle over each and every component umming and ahhing over specifications and budgets. Those were the days.
Today I prefer portability. Either a laptop or a bluetooth keyboard to turn my smartphone into a laptop. Something that I can slip into my backpack and set-up anywhere. Desktops seem so.. retro. Bulky, heavy, taking up too much space and not portable at all.
Still, it was enjoyable, albeit briefly, to recall the fun I had going to computer fairs and building a PC from scratch all those years ago.
The life of an SD card
I’ve purchased many SD cards and USB sticks over the years and I have a few thoughts on them.
You can shop around, do your research, and then buy cheap or expensive ones but regardless of what you buy you will still usually encounter the following:
1. The specs may not be as advertised. It may be slower than advertised for example.
2. It may be a fake. Even if bought from a legitimate source it may still be fake as there are so many of them about.
3. It may just die for no reason and you can’t return it if it has your private data on it so you are out of pocket.
4. It may need resizing on one OS and then fixing for use with another. Especially if being used to install or upgrade an OS like Linux.
5. It may corrupt your data, especially large files.
Smaller cards, especially microSD cards, die quickly in Kindle devices and dashcams. It’s something about how they are mounted and continually written to that just causes them to expire.
I go through SD cards and memory sticks fairly often. I have yet to find a make or model that can last years.
Some thoughts on procrastination
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to avoid doing something that you keep telling yourself you really need to do? Yet for some reason you find yourself doing unimportant chores or mindlessly surfing YouTube. Each day you beat yourself up for not doing the thing that you tell yourself is really important to you but you just keep finding reasons not to do it. Why do we procrastinate so much? Is it because we are afraid of the task in question? Maybe it’s just too hard or scary? Rather than avoid it why not think about it, not do it, but think about it. Do you really want to do it? Why not?
For me I wanted to be the best lead guitar player in the world. I even own several guitars and associated equipment but I never play them. I had music lessons as a teenager, and I still know a few chords and riffs. But I never play. Occasionally I’ll pick one up but I’ll soon put it down again. You see, I like the idea of being an amazing axe man, but I have no passion for it when I really think about it. If I did I would be picking up a guitar every chance I got. It’s like I don’t want to let go of this dream I had as a kid, but part of me knows I have no real passion for it and the adult me doesn’t want to upset the child me.
Unlike wanting to be a Speedway rider (another childhood dream, which I am now too old to be) I still have time to master the guitar as age is not a restriction. Yet I continue to procrastinate. I think it’s time to let that dream go and focus on what is important to me, what I am passionate about, and how I really want to spend my time. It may even reduce the procrastination.
Maybe.
Musings on buying a laptop
I’m often asked how I purchase a laptop. What sort of things I consider. So I thought I’d jot them down here:
1. First I need a minimum spec as a starting point. You can get this by looking at the software or games you want to run as they publish the minimum and optimum PC specs they require. Do you want to run virtual machines? How many?
2. Once I have a rough idea of the spec I look at screen size and case. Do I want a small compact laptop that I will dock at home/office so I can use external monitors and peripherals, and it takes up less space when travelling? Or do I want a big screen?
3. Next I look at battery life and the battery itself. Is it replaceable and is there a market for third-party batteries for that range of laptop?
4. Next is the manufacturers themselves. I opt for ones I’ve used in the past and trust such as DELL or ASUS.
5. And lastly I’ll look to buy from a reputable source that I trust with a good return and repair service.
When buying a laptop spec you need to take into consideration the processing power (Intel/AMD, speed, number of cores), the amount of memory (8GB, 16GB, etc), the amount of hard drive space and whether it is solid state (no moving parts so less drain on the battery), the battery life and replaceability, and screen size. You may also wish to consider the amount of ports and type of ports it offers but you can get adaptors and splitters to enhance those.
Temporary email
It’s very annoying when you come across something useful online that you want to access like an ebook or article that states that it is completely free, you just have to provide your email address before you can access it.
When we think of something that is free we tend to think in terms of monetary value. But cost comes in other forms as well, such as our time, and our data. By providing your email address you are giving away information, for free. The individual or company that you are giving this information to may use it to sell you something or to sell the actual data that you just freely gave. There are data brokers, email harvesters, etc, that will pay real money for valid email addresses, especially if it comes with context. For example if you were trying to access a free eBook on investing they now know that your email address belongs to someone that is interested in investing and that is valuable information.
The trick with such sites and asks is not to give your real email address yet still get access to the free content. To do this there are free temporary email services. Just google temporary email to see what I mean. With the click of a button you can create a randomly generated email address with a short time to live in minutes that you can use with the site offering the free content. You can then read the article or download the eBook (obviously scanning it for viruses and malware before opening) and when you are done no one has your real email address. Simples!
Infinity lists
Have you ever noticed that you never really complete a to-do list? At the end of the day I’ve usually crossed off a handful of entries only to have thought up a few more to replace them. These lists never end as we very rarely have nothing to do. These infinity lists are never complete and can become frustrating if you believe that the goal is to complete them.
The truth is that to-do lists are never meant to be completed. They’re just a way for you to track your chores and tasks. You could delete the list altogether and improve your memory by remembering what you need to do yourself. You may forget a few items, but that just means they weren’t really that important or urgent. You’ll still have a list, just in your head.
Maybe you’ll feel better about yourself if you don’t have a physical list to look at. Or you could try creating a new list and transfer incomplete tasks to that just so you can get rid of the original thus attaining some feeling of achievement, however brief.
To-do lists are just a list of reminders, not a record of achievements. They do not need to be completed.
Life moves pretty fast
Alone time. Taking time to just be on your own can do wonders for your mental health. You don’t have to go far. It could be a quiet room in a busy household, or the garage or shed. Maybe go for a short or even a long walk. Maybe sit in your favourite coffee house and read (or write) or just think. You could meditate or clear your head and just enjoy the sights and smells of being outside or somewhere different.
Too often we feel the need to fill all of our time with doing something. Whether reading a book, watching TV, surfing the web, or doing jobs, crossing things off from our to-do lists. We forget that there is joy and comfort in just doing nothing, just being, embracing the moment.
In the immortal words of Ferriss: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”.
HTB peer snooping
HTB (Hack The Box) offers a free and premium (VIP) tier for its members. It’s a great platform for learning ethical hacking (along with Try Hack Me). I promised myself that after I’d gotten through the free content that I would treat myself to VIP membership, but have yet to do so. You see, I discovered that there are unintended benefits of free membership. In addition to lots of free content including the seasons machines, there is a little known way of learning on HTB: Peer snooping.
You see, when you access a machine via a non-VIP account you are essentially sharing the (virtual) machine with other users. And when you have a foothold on a box and you are stuck on privilege escalation you can snoop on other players. You can look at who else is logged on and you can monitor what they are doing. You can see what tools, commands, CVEs, etc they are trying and can learn from them.
So next time you are trying a HTB machine and you have a foothold (a login with shell) try snooping on others that are also trying to pwn the machine. You may learn something.
Avatar tracking
People are attached to images, especially the ones they use to represent themselves online. Even if it’s not a photo of themselves, it will usually mean something to them and can be unique on a pixel-level.
With services like Gravatar it’s easier to track someone by their avatar. Grab a copy of their avatar and paste it into reverse image search engines and you could find where that image has been used across the net. You could find the email addresses and accounts associated with that individual. You could build a map of their haunts online.
Your avatar is like a fingerprint. It allows you to be tracked almost as much as an email address. So take care when creating yours.