GeekAmongUs

A Brilliant Analysis of the Battle of Hoth

willc — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:59:46 +0000

My favorite scene from my favorite movie, the Battle of Hoth led to many recreations of snow speeders tangling up AT-ATs in my living room as a kid. Who’d ever have thought that it was so…well, poorly executed? The menacing Imperial walkers, the ominous snow troopers, and the cocksure ground commanders reporting their success to [...]

Cable Companies: Monopolizing Progress Prohibitors

willc — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 01:54:10 +0000

A good read about how the cable industry in the U.S. is getting away with highway robbery, monopolization, and stifling progress. This really needs to change. “If you’ve got a commodity that everybody needs as an input into their businesses, like take railroads for example, and it costs a lot to initially build that network [...]

Carbonite for Mac Eats Up CPU

willc — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 21:12:43 +0000

If you use the Carbonite cloud-based backup tool for Mac, you may notice that your computer’s fans are running loud and often, and that the Carbonite daemon is running at 80-120%. This gets really, really annoying after not too long. I’ve dealt with it for two years by pausing backups while I’m working on my [...]

Your Personal Details – Shared

willc — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 23:04:27 +0000

A pretty interesting analysis of major websites and what they do with your personal data. Why would ESPN want to send my username to Adobe? Why is Pinterest sending my name to Google Analytics? I’m interested to see who is bothered by this, or if anything is done about it.

Private Security Drones

willc — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 20:16:24 +0000

They are coming in 2014, according to this. Just imagine what it will be like walking out of the mall to your car, looking up to see a drone checking you out. And you know that sooner or later they will be outfitted with tasers. This is the impending wave of the future. I look [...]

Internet Explorer 0-day

willc — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 12:58:55 +0000

Still using Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8? WHY? Targeted zero day attack being used against Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 Microsoft have published a security advisory for a zero day attack being used against a “targeted audience” using Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8. This atypically means corporate or business users still locked [...]

Free Flash Drives

willc — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 01:39:09 +0000

These folks are giving away free flash drives in a back to school promotion. Get em while they are hot.

Failed WordPress Upgrade

willc — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 20:04:43 +0000

The error message: Fatal error: Call to undefined function update_core() The Cause: You don’t have enough disk space on your hosting account anymore. The Fix: Pick one: Ask your web host to bump up your allowed disk space Delete unneeded files on your account Move to a new web host Conclusion I never ran into [...]

Quick, Easy, and Cheap VPN for Mac

willc — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:29:13 +0000

If you are not paranoid about using open Wifi service at coffee shops, hotels, and other public establishments, you should be. Time and time again it has been proven that such locales can be extremely dangerous for doing mundane things such as checking your email or posting to your Facebook account. If you are unlucky [...]

PHP-CGI Exploit is in the wild. Get protected ASAP.

willc — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:41:10 +0000

The vulnerability that sat undetected for 7 years was disclosed last week, but today it has been announced that exploits have been seen in the wild. They are working on releasing a new patch. This is pretty bad as it’s not exploiting one particular web application, rather, it is exploiting web servers running PHP in [...]