Done Since 2019-08-18
2019-08-25 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearNot a bad week. I had one of my brief fits of productivity and made hotel reservations for Conflikt and Westercon. Still have to get the Westercon memberships, but there doesn't appear to be a hurry with that.
The week started with a scary article on medium.com: "KRACK: The Most Dangerous Hack Since Equifax & What To Do About It.".. Not so much. It showed up Sunday in medium's digest, but the article was written in 2018, and the exploit itself was discovered in 2017. It turned up in the notes on this post and I didn't think it was worth mentioning. It still isn't; I'm only mentioning it in case someone worries unnecessarily after seeing the medium article, and to show the kind of reasoning that goes into assessing a threat.
The exploit, which has been patched in all operating systems for nearly
two years now, lets someone tap into a supposedly-secure WiFi connection.
Tl;dr: WiFi is not secure even if your network has a password.
Think about it: you go into a coffeehouse and there's the WiFi password
written on the wall. The access point you're connecting to probably
hasn't had its admin password changed since the owner bought it five years
ago. The only sensible way to use WiFi is to make sure that everything
you send over it is encrypted all the way from your computer to the server
you're talking to. In a browser, that means using HTTPS. Most browsers
put up a warning if the site you're connecting to doesn't use it.
If you're doing anything other than web browsing, you're doing it over
ssh or a VPN.
Meanwhile, of course, Facebook is happily telling all your friends and a thousand businesses you never had anything to do with exactly where you are and what you just ordered, and showing you ads for the thing you ordered on Amazon yesterday.
I should probably write a curmudgeon post -- I'm overdue.
0818Su * Up 6:15; S=6:00; 0818Su litter boxen ! mood: okay @ KRACK Attacks: Breaking WPA2 Key Reinstallation attaCKs. Not as bad as the following 2018 article makes it sound: KRACK: The Most Dangerous Hack Since Equifax & What To Do About It.. NOTE: the exploit was discovered in 2017; the Medium article was written in 2018, but it showed up this morning in their digest. :P It's not a problem if you're using HTTPS for sensitive communication, or a VPN. (It's a problem for IOT devices, but it's not their only (or worst) problem.) @ I linked to Tips to Secure Your Network in the Wake of KRACK in 2017 and it wasn't worth highlighting then, either. Just don't treat WiFi as a trusted connection. Ever. * SL (S) mushrooms, distilled water, salsa, raisins, summer sausage, + breads, etc. & put on music (Dave Carter, of course) for C. % not sure how to indicate "giving myself credit" when I do more for/with C * make Westercon hotel reservations 2020 0702Th-0705Su arrive Thursday, leave Sunday % suddenly very congested. Allergic to something in dinner?? Weird. -> a second round of nose-watering worked, and fairly quickly @ America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One - NYT (siderea) (see @siderea's post if you need to bypass the paywall) % 10:45ish - feeling very cold. Closed bedroom windows and put on fuzzy bathrobe 0819Mo & awake several times; 12:30 and something like 2am at least / C has been up and out in the living room since 2am. Probably why I woke up * up 5:30ish; S=6:07; mood: not quite awake; * grumped at C and told her to go to bed. She'd been planning to stay up all day; that wouldn't have worked. ~ 10am wake C -> more like noon ~ C fasting labs prior to the 20th * make Conflikt hotel reservations; 0124Fr - 0127Mo conf# 32M9RV57 con starts Friday, plan to arrive Friday and leave Monday? -> yes: Setup starts at 3pm Friday, sound checks 4, opening ceremonies 6:30. (800)222-8733 refer to group code: C13 or group name: Conflikt 13 / 10:00 checked on C; she was just getting up for a bathroom run. Back asleep now. -> got her out of bed at noon * Signed, scanned, and returned permission forms for interview Wed. about RDNA questions and notes in PJ/rdna-interview-questions.html % 3pm feeling somewhated bloated -- V's French toast was undercooked / C had a shower while I was out at the pharmacy * check on C's spironolactone -> got it. * schedule C's vision appointment (print list of current appointments and let V do it?) (while waiting for the spironolactone) * Flu shot. The vaccines just came in. ! somewhat pleased with myself to have gotten three things off my stack with one trip % TMJ seems to be stabilizing somewhat 0820Tu & awake several times at night * up 6:30ish; S=7:27; % mood: slightly annoyed (new pants' legs too long) * Q/A open chat with a therapist on 7c. somewhat frustrating @ Best Whidbey Island Restaurants Front Street Grill – Coupeville Christopher’s – Coupeville Frasers Gourmet Hideaway – Oak Harbor Pickles Deli – Clinton Rustica Cafe – Wine Bar – Kitchen Alfy’s Pizza – Oak Harbor Gordon’s on Blueberry Hill–Freeland Charmers Bistro–Freeland China City–Oak Harbor and Freeland The BBQ Joint – Oak Harbor * chatting with N; starting to work on concert set list * 2:20 C Dr. Rochier - leave 1:45 -~ flu shot -> Rite-Aid -~ blood thinner. Alternatives to warfarin? -> not in A-Fib so aspirin ok -* anti-inflamatory for Crohn's (e.g. balsalazide) -* spironolactone refill to ES (he was on vacation last week) -x the amount she's sleeping -> see if we can get her sleep sched. back to normal % mood: okay. Dr's appointment came off well, C's in decent for her health, I'm not hurting anywhere (although there's an incipient headache I'm keeping an eye on) & made sure that all working trees under ~/vv on DH use local origin, not ssh * have T' do the kitchen counters - move stuff, clean behind, spray / major cleanup. She wasn't in any shape to take a shower; have to do that in the am % throat feels kind of raw. Honey Ginger tea. Have trouble controling voice when under stress. I think a kind of loud semi-robotic monotone is the best I can do sometimes. 0821We / C up several times with diarrhea * up 7ish; W=200.4, S=7:52; * $900 tuition to YD. UB checking account is low; BECU outrageously high. * request $900 from TD * 11am Zoom interview with (rising senior religion major at Carleton) Owen Yager about the RDNA - basically an oral history project. My memory is poor; I had notes but probably still missed a lot. % fun, but it may have been stressful regardless & chat with chaos, who is trying to update his website. I've made some bad assumptions. -> "quick" walkthrough with git % same analysis as previous: fun but stressful : there was a home health visit on today's to-do items, probably from weeks ago. C checked, and there was nothing scheduled. % 5ish between chaos and trying to filter multiple conversations elsewhere in the living room (headphones helped some, but not enough), I'm pretty much out of verbal spoons. ! 7ish feeling _something_, but damned if I know what. Maybe anxiety. Though about what I have no idea. Tension? (is there a difference?) % Tight muscles in vicinity of the chest. _not_ out of breath, so unlikely to be heart attack. _Are_ there even muscles there? Follow-up to social overload? Is that even a thing? Somehow related to repeating myself talking to C, and likely to my crosstalk overload reactions earlier. On wikipedia, Tension_(psychological) redirects to Psychological stress -> So that's probably it. Accumulated stress. Possibly exacerbated by the feeling that I'm not attending to C's (and other people's) needs fast/well enough. -> I should also realize that if I ask C if she needs anything, I have to expect that she may want something unreasonable. : IRS says I owe $414 -- apparently I missed a payment from Vanguard. 0822Th & Awake 3:30ish. C was in living room; came back while I was using bathroom. * up 7:30ish; S=5:31; * last week's weekly quiz in mondly. Still have to do this whole week / C up ~10am - cleanup and goop * btw 10 and 11 - C Home Health Orlanda and (her supervisor)Jennifer ~ wake L before shopping trip; wants to go with -> maybe give her the card and let her do it, since I want to be here for the PT : interesting: 7cups pages raise CPU temp by 10 degrees or so. Probably true of other pages with lots of JS. :P * 2pm C PT * LaTeX to HTML failing to terminate `\emph{...}` properly · Issue #2 · ssavitzky/MakeStuff ... also * \spoken{...} isn't handled at all -> actually it's an {\em...} split over two lines. Added \emph and \spoken anyway * when I was a lad should be long format & made myself a cranberry blood orange margarita. Not half bad. $ trainwreck: UB checking acct overdrawn. Amazon on top of E's tuition transfer. I'll get that back, but not immediately. / (6pm)acetaminophen - note the timing info. This time is according to C. 0823Fr * Up 4:30; S=5:27; 0823Fr litter boxen / (4:30am)a woke up because C did. She was taking tylenol for shoulder pain ~ 9:30 wake C -> / she actually got up ~6:30 and went out to the LR. * Fixed flktran.pl to handle line breaks and chords inside TeX blocks (braces) / C's bag got under her chair and was leaking when I retrieved it -- there's probably a connection but I suppose it could have been the cats. Used a clothes pin on the tube to keep it from dripping while I swapped bags. There was still quite a bit to clean up. Emptying the bag while trying to keep it from dripping on the floor was a challenge. % back pain -> heating pad. If it doesn't clear up soon I'll go for the naproxen. * SL: biokleen bathroom cleaner (refill?), small notebook (for C's food diary), nitrile gloves, Equal packets (box of 100) ~50, milk, chopped walnuts, mushrooms, crackers, bacon, english muffins, onions, x angel hair cabbage package, matzoh, biryani etc. % what fun! NOT. I appear to be passing a kidney stone. :P : music via 7c -- not -really-_at_all_ my demographic. / C slept most of the day * two daily lessons on mondly % 10:30ish sleepy 0824Sa & awakened briefly ~4ish?: C coming back to bed. I didn't even get out of bed % weird dream involving a huge old brick building (school?), a house badly in need of repair, and a group of volunteers working on it that somehow led to the Christian trinity sitting down to discuss business details, which by that time had become revenue from help desks associated with various Commodore operating systems and automatic payments getting stuck on old OS (*86) versions. * up 6:451sh; W=200.4, S=6:26; shower % mild blow-up with C about lunch % angry, but I shouldn't be. Need to sit down and discuss lunches. (See list of stuff she can eat. Included several of the things that she blew up at me for suggesting) % still feeling a lot of stress; will take a while to come down & another session in the garage. No sign of the huge pot; I think we abandoned it. Did find all three volumes of Grooks. : The scale I ordered for C arrived. It turns on when you step on it, and holds the reading for aout 10 seconds after you step off. Only real problem is knowing when it's ready (which it indicates by blinking three times), but with a spotter present it won't be a problem. It's also extra-wide. & dragged up a piece of 1x14 from the garage for C to use as a top on her white rolly. " Warning: talk to your financial advisors. Soon - like next week. You want to know whether you ought to be rebalancing your investments in light of the coming recession, which Trump's trade war is bringing on much faster than it had been. There is money to be made in this situation, but it'll be in different areas than it has been the last few years and you should find out if you ought to be adjusting things. " (G via N) % completely lacking in motivation. I've been this way for days. If not years. * fix URLs in lyrics.txt et. al.
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Date: 2019-08-25 05:32 pm (UTC)But the article says, "If you’ve ever used a WiFi-enabled device to transmit a password, social security number, home address or bank information, then this is a big, freakin’ deal, to put it mildly." I'd say rather, "If you're willing to send those things over unencrypted HTTP because you've got a 'secure' Wi-Fi connection, you've got a big freakin' problem."
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Date: 2019-08-25 06:33 pm (UTC)IoT devices are a whole different kettle of worms.
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Date: 2019-08-25 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-26 10:47 am (UTC)An acquaintance of mine is looking for advice on upgrading her very-out-of-date Debian-based computer. She’s knowledgeable but stuck in too many variables. https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1531234.html
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Date: 2019-08-26 08:16 pm (UTC)