Nonstop Sysop - SoundSage

NonstopSysop Episode #5 - Hams and Cheese

Intro

Welcome to Episode 5 of Nonstop Sysop titled, Hams and Cheese. I’m your host, Phil Williams. Thank you for listening. I hope this podcast makes your commute to work or time at your desk more enjoyable and informative.

Please take a moment to check out my site, nonstopsysop.com. I would love for you to subscribe to the podcast and follow our show on one of our outlets including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts to name a few.

The show can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook: @nonstopsysop

Please take time to share the podcast with friends, family, and coworkers who might be interested.

You can find your host on social media at Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit: @pvols1979

Sponsors/Patrons

Please consider donating to, or sponsoring, the show. One of the ways you can support the show is through Patreon.com. As a paying patron subscriber, we will provide you with exclusive access to our Slack community and early previews of upcoming episode content. Becoming a patron subscriber will currently cost you $5 USD a month and we think it is well worth the investment. All patrons will have direct access to me, your friendly host, and the special ability to participate in members-only polls that I will be using to help guide the future of the show.

https://www.patreon.com/NonstopSysop

On of the most important contributions you can make to our growth is to share the show with others. From your favorite listening platform, you can share the show or a single episode through email, text, etc. When we post about a new episode on Facebook or Instagram, share those updates with your followers. If you have not done so already, please find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and follow us there for updates and additional content.

Share comments, letters, follow-up materials, etc from previous episode

Please remember that good password hygiene is not going to keep you 100% safe. Good security is multilayered and never relies on a single factor. I have been bringing up the idea of multi factor authentication for multiple episodes now. It is important to understand the times when it is appropriate to enable MFA, such as with your bank account or credit card companies. Practice good password hygiene and utilize MFA, where it makes sense, to help ensure your online account safety. This leads us into our Tip of the Week. In August of last year, Last Pass reveled that it had been the subject of a breach and that sensitive user data, including encrypted password vaults, were taken by attackers. While the encrypted vault data is encrypted, and could take years to potentially crack, having an offline version of the data in the hands of cybercriminals where brute force attacks can be run indefinitely is a major issue.

Due to this incident, I would suggest that all prior Last Pass users change their master password, the one used to access the encrypted password vault, and all passwords for services that were stored in the vault as well. This is a lot of work and may be unnecessary, but I think it is a prudent step to ensure your passwords and access to systems are safe.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/lastpass-issues-update-on-data-breach-but-users-should-still-change-passwords/

Tip of the week (Security, apps, hacks, etc)

Now for our Tip of the Week! This week’s tip is related to keeping your passwords safe. Gone are the days of simple passwords. It is now more important than ever to safeguard your passwords and to use unique passwords for every website and service. I have been using Bitwarden’s password manager for many years. There are a number of features that I love about Bitwarden. There is an app available for most operating systems and browsers.

https://bitwarden.com/

2 -3 news stories, articles, interesting nuggets from the web

Hams and Cheese story

TikTok time limit

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2023/03/01/tiktok-screen-time-limit/11372810002/

Closing comments

https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.m4a/

Music by Yrii Semchyshyn from Pixabay

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NonstopSysop Episode #4 - Yes Man

Intro

Welcome to Episode 4 of Nonstop Sysop titled, Yes Man. I am your host, Phil Williams. I am glad you took time to tune in to the show. I hope this show makes your commute to work or time at your desk more enjoyable and informative.

The show can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook: @nonstopsysop

Please take time to share the podcast with friends, family, and coworkers who might be interested.

You can find your host on social media at Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit: @pvols1979

Sponsors/Patrons

https://www.patreon.com/NonstopSysop

Share comments, letters, follow-up materials, etc from previous episode

Tip of the week (Security, apps, hacks, etc)

Our tip of the week this week is related to the home lab. I am sure many of you, like me, have servers running in your home that you tinker around with. For those of you who have reached the point where it is difficult to remember which servers applications were installed on, or even more importantly, want to help your family members know how to access them…I would like to introduce you to Heimdall, an application dashboard. With Heimdall in place, you can simply remember one page (or save it in your bookmarks) and from there you will have graphical buttons pointing to various applications that you configure on your page. These can be web applications or simply URLs to resources. You can set Heimdall up as your browser start page, and it even includes the ability to add a search bar with Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo.

I have provided a link to the GitHub page for the project in our show notes:

https://github.com/linuxserver/Heimdall

I came across this project while I was researching ways to keep up with all of the services I have set up at my home. I have my firewall, various hardware devices that have web interfaces, multiple websites/blogs that I manage, etc. It is hard to remember how to get to all of them and which servers they are installed on. Just keeping up with the names and IP addresses of all my servers has become an issue as well. I think Heimdall provides a great solution to for the organization of all the web applications. However, I am still on the lookout for something that can help me organize my systems. I created a spreadsheet on Google Sheets that I can access from anywhere that has links to my devices. Of course, I can only access them when I click on the link from within my home network or from my VPN. I use OpenVPN which is included as part of opnSense. Honestly, the spreadsheet is great for me right now because most of the services I am running at this time are for my own personal use and others do not need access. However, Heimdall is great for the situations where others need to know where to go to log in. The web interface to Heimdall is really nice and can be modded. You can set up your own background image for the page so it is themed to your liking. The project is coded in PHP and JavaScript, for those who care to know.

I know there are similar projects out there. I am eager to learn more about how my listeners are managing their home labs. If there is a cool project you are using, please let us know on Twitter, Instagram, or the Facebook Page. Take time to sign up as a patron on Patreon.com and share with others in the Slack community. It is always exciting to learn from the audience and to watch my audience helping one another. That is our tip of the week. Now, for our main content.

2 -3 news stories, articles, interesting nuggets from the web

Yes Man story from SMSI

Jury Duty Scam

The death of IE

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/microsoft-will-forcibly-remove-internet-explorer-from-most-windows-10-pcs-today/

Closing comments

Music by Yrii Semchyshyn from Pixabay

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NonstopSysop Episode #3 - Paycut and Probation

Intro

Welcome to Episode 3 of Nonstop Sysop titled, Paycut and Probation. I am your host, Phil Williams. I am glad you took time to tune in to the show. I hope this show makes your commute to work or time at your desk more enjoyable and informative.

The show can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook: @nonstopsysop

Please take time to share the podcast with friends, family, and coworkers who might be interested.

You can find your host on social media at Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit: @pvols1979

Sponsors/Patrons

https://www.patreon.com/NonstopSysop

Share comments, letters, follow-up materials, etc from previous episode

One of the topics we discussed last week was the story around Chinese spy balloons which were sighted over the US and Latin America last week. One of those was shot down over the Carolina coast. News articles began to emerge shortly after the downing of the balloon off the US coast line stating that other Chinese spy balloons crossed into US airspace during the Trump administration, but were not detected by our military. On Thursday, February 9th, CNN reported that the Biden administration had determined that the balloon downed off the coast did, in fact contain signal intelligence collection capabilities. On Saturday, two more “high altitude” objects were downed over Alaska and Canada by US forces. The object in Canada was downed by a US fighter at the request of Canadian authorities.

Something is clearly going on here. There are multiple factors here that are concerning from the multiple geographies involved, to the sheer number of aircraft, and still the lack of a compelling story from the Chinese government. Since, China admitted at one point that at least one of the balloons was Chinese, I suspect that the others are as well, but it will be interesting to watch this story as it develops. From the technology standpoint, I am interested in learning more about the payload on these balloons, especially if they were instrumented for the collection of signals intelligence.

I have included a number of links in the show notes for further reading.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3846363-pentagon-did-not-detect-previous-chinese-spy-balloons-us-general/

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/politics/spy-balloon-technology/index.html

https://news.yahoo.com/trudeau-us-fighter-shot-down-183055776.html

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pentagon-says-us-detected-third-flying-object-alaska-day-shooting-canada

We also discussed ChatGPT and some of the hype that was causing companies to look into their own solutions to compete against the AI chat bot. This week Google introduced Bard. Bard will roll out in “coming weeks” and utilizes a similar AI model. Evidently, there is already a small test base of users who are working to address quality and accuracy challenges in the chat bot’s responses.

https://www.wired.com/story/meet-bard-googles-answer-to-chatgpt

I am also sharing a link to an article by QZ where they share a story about a promotional ad Google shared on Twitter on February 6th. The ad was supposed to expose the public to the power of Google’s chatbot. However, the tweet actually showed an example of Bard providing an incorrect answer to the question provided. There was a question showed which was related to which space telescope took the first picture of an exoplanet outside of our solar system. Bard answered incorrectly and provided the wrong telescope name. This is not a great way to introduce the power of your AI chatbot to the world.

https://qz.com/google-bard-rival-microsoft-chatgpt-ad-error-1850092796

Microsoft announced on February 7th, that they have a new AI-powered Bing search engine. The term I see being used a lot around this product is “copilot”. There will be a new release of Edge coming out as part of this AI update. The new Bing uses a more recent version of OpenAI’s language model.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/02/07/reinventing-search-with-a-new-ai-powered-microsoft-bing-and-edge-your-copilot-for-the-web/

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/microsoft-unveils-crazy-new-bing-powered-by-chatgpt-ai-tech

This is CLEARLY the Year of the Chat Bot!

Tip of the week (Security, apps, hacks, etc)

Are you looking to get more out of your Google searches? Are you not seeing the types of results you are looking for when you search? Try some of these operators to be more explicit:

site: This tells Google to return results only for the given site. This can be useful if you know the source of the material you are looking for, but do not have an actual link

The minus sign will tell Google to exclude certain terms helping you to remove unwanted returns in your searches

“” Utilize quotes to search for exact phrases. This will search for the entire phrase as one piece instead of each term individually

~ Use the tilde before terms to search for that word or synonyms of that word

.. The use of two periods between numbers automatically tells Google to search as a range

filetype: Use the filetype operator to return only files matching the specified filetype

Google is a powerful search engine and there are tips and tricks that many people are not aware of. Some of these can save you time and others can provide more exact results. I am interested to hear if any of my listeners have other Google search tips to share. Please feel free to reach out and share some with me that you think our listeners would enjoy.

Here is a freebie tip for this week. I hope most of my listeners know that they are not limited in which search engine they choose to use. You are free to use any browser available for your OS and you are able to use any search engine as well. There is one search engine that I would like you to consider if you haven’t already. DuckDuckGo is a great search engine that is privacy focused. They do not keep records of your search history and, therefore, can never share your search history with anyone. I would expect many of my listeners to be concerned about overall privacy, so this is a great place to start. If you use Google Chrome, there is an extension for DuckDuckGo as well.

https://duckduckgo.com/

2 -3 news stories, articles, interesting nuggets from the web

Paycut and probation story

Trickbot sanctions

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/02/u-s-u-k-sanction-7-men-tied-to-trickbot-hacking-group/

Closing comments

Music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

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NonstopSysop Episode #2 - AI, May I? IntroWelcome to Episode 2 of Nonstop Sysop, titled “AI, May I?”. I am your host, Phil Williams. Thank you for tuning into the show. It is my goal to make your commute or time at your desk more enjoyable and informative.

The show can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook: @nonstopsysop

Please take time to share the podcast with friends, family, and coworkers who might be interested.

You can find your host with the most on social media at Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit: @pvols1979

Sponsors/PatronsPlease consider donating to or sponsoring the show. One of the ways you can give financially to the show is through Patreon.com. As a paying patron subscriber, we will provide you with exclusive access to our Slack community and early previews of upcoming episode content. Becoming a patron subscriber will currently cost you $5 USD monthly, and we think it is well worth the investment. All patrons will have direct access to me, your friendly host, and the special ability to participate in members-only polls that I will be using to help guide the future of the show.

https://www.patreon.com/NonstopSysop

Follow-upLast episode, we discussed Apple ID supporting hardware security keys. We spent a few minutes discussing Mastodon. We finished up with conversation around the current season of layoffs we are seeing in the tech industry. If you missed that content, I invite you to go back and have a listen to our first episode, playfully entitled…Episode One. Please keep in mind that last week’s episode was our first and we have a lot of room to grow in both quality and content.

I did receive some feedback from one listener around last week’s material. Evidently the topics hit the mark and were interesting. There was mention of a high pitched sound in the audio. I have updated some of my recording steps and I am using some new software for the recording in this episode, but please do let me know if the quality is not what you are expecting. This listener suggested that the audience look into another option for hardware security keys, Nitrokey. https://www.nitrokey.com/ These keys appear to be very similar to the Yubikeys mentioned in our previous episode and are similarly priced, but are manufactured in Germany. This might please some of our users who question the practices of our nation’s intelligence community and fear any pressure to create backdoors into security products. Thank you to our listener for sharing this valuable information with the audience. Remember, these security keys can be used to provide additional security for websites, services, and apps. Facebook, Gmail, Reddit, and some financial institutions support hardware security keys. Use them.

Tip of the week (Security, apps, hacks, etc)Last week we suggested that reuse of usernames and passwords across various services is a bad security practice. Please heed that advice. This week, our tip of the week is also related to security on the Internet. Have you ever logged in to Facebook from a shared computer or a disk at a hotel? Maybe you logged in from a friends house while visiting. Later on, you wonder if someone might be able to get in to your account and you wish you had remembered to log out. I have some good news for you. You can remotely log out of your Facebook. Go to Settings —> Security and Login —> Where You’re Logged In. You will see all the locations and devices from which you have logged in to Facebook. You can individually log out of selected devices or you can scroll to the bottom of the list and log out of every device. It is good to check this list often to see if there are locations or devices that you do not recognize. Security and Login is also the place in settings where you can change your password enable 2FA (two factor authentication).

Best practice is to not log in to devices that you do not own and control. However, from time to time, you may need to use someone else’s device. I like that Facebook provides a mechanism to check your logins and disconnect those that might no longer be secure.

News and Interesting NuggetsChatGPT https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

Fast Ramp Up - potentially the fastest growing app in history

Underscores interest in artificial intelligence

Mashable article - https://sea.mashable.com/tech/22479/chatgpt-is-the-fastest-growing-app-of-all-time

Investment Bank, UBS, claims ChatGPT had 13 million unique visitors per day in January 2023 - CBS News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chatgpt-chatbot-tiktok-ai-artificial-intelligence/

Faster ramp up than TikTok or Instagram per analysts

Where is this going?

Potential use cases all across the map. Google is concerned about search engine competition. Microsoft and other engines are already looking at incorporating the power of ChatGPT into their search engines

Code debugging, Social media interaction, Customer service implications, and education are just a few areas of impact

I would love to hear your thoughts on the value and, maybe even more importantly, the dangers of this type of technology.

Chinese Spy Balloon over Montana - https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153997635/chinese-spy-balloon-montana-pentagon

https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government-china-antony-blinken-51e49202f2a0a50541cde059934c4cfb

During the week of January 29th to February 4th, from an office building in Billings, Montana, a legitimate UFO was spotted by one bystander. It appears NBC news was the first to report on the balloon and it’s path from the Aleutian Islands, over Canada, and down into Montana.

At this time, the Chinese government is claiming that it is looking into the report and has “no intention of violating the territory and airspace of any sovereign country”. I have heard that the Chinese government has stated that the ballon was some type of weather balloon that veered off course uncontrollably and accidentally.

Of course, many Americans are rightly concerned over the particular location that the balloon is in due to specific US military assets in the area. It would make sense that the balloon could be doing some type of military reconnaissance, but at the moment, the US military does not seem to be giving much attention to the potential dangers due to the balloon being such a limited aircraft. There are certainly better packages and vehicles that could be used for this type of military intelligence activity.

Just moments ago, at the time of this recording, the Associated Press reported that the US government HAD downed the Chinese balloon off the Carolina coast and operations were underway to attempt to salvage debris from US territorial waters. According to the AP, the FAA and Coast Guard had worked to clear the airspace and waters below.

The Pentagon has acknowledged reports that there was a second balloon over Latin America, per the AP. Is this some type of mass operation with wide geographical coverage? What could the intent be? One thing is certain, the Chinese government is downplaying the event and attempting to portray Americans as overly concerned and melodramatic. I am sure my listeners have already begun to see the memes being posted across social networks related to this event and, no doubt, there will be more to come.

Discord Impacting Nvidia Video Memory Clock Speeds https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/31/23579759/discord-nvidia-graphics-cards-memory-slowdown

This in from The Verge @ the verge.com. A recent Discord update is slowing down the memory clocks on some graphics cards due to a bug introduced in a recent update. In some models, including the RTX 3080 and RTX 3060 Ti, memory clocks are being slowed by up to 200 MHz.

This is very concerning as one of Discords primary uses is for gamers to interact in voice chat while playing video games. It is certainly not ideal for your voice chat software to down clock your memory on your graphics card while you are playing a game. Nvidia has now released a fit which is being automatically pushed to users to resolve the issue. The bug was introduced in an update that was supposed to allow Discord users with certain Nvidia graphics card series to stream at specific resolutions and bandwidth, which is where the connection comes in between Discord and Nvidia.

Closing commentsThat wraps up the content for today’s show. I want to thank you for taking time to listen. Tune back in next week for more exciting content and commentary. I hope you will take time to visit Patreon and consider subscribing as a patron to our show so that you can gain special access to our Slack community and so much more. I look forward to your feedback on Twitter and our Facebook page. I hope you will take a moment to share our podcast with someone today and encourage them to become a regular listener to the show.

We will release a new episode next Sunday evening and our Patrons will receive early access to a preview of our next episode at least a day in advance. I hope you have a great week and I look forward to connecting with some of you soon. Don’t forget that our show is available on multiple outlets including, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. Take care.

Background music provided by Pixabay. Track is Lifelike by AlexiAction. This track is available on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/album/1yHGAmcy2cUDhq1xJyoYvs.

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Show Notes

About me

Geek, Husband, Father of 6
Two special needs children (blind, nonverbal, etc)
20+ years in IT

a. IT Operations - NetOps performance monitoring

b. Security Operations - Host based intrusion, perimeter security, etc

c. Big Data

d. Technical sales and leadership roles in two large software companies on the West coast

I mentioned my son was a streamer...Check out JustVelocityy

About the Show1. SysOp - The system operator of a Bulletin Board Systema. First BBS (CBBS) software created by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess in 1978 as a way to stay connected with their computer club during a brutal winterb. BBS’s were computer systems set up as servers which allowed others to connect over dial-in modems to exchange messages, chat, share files, and interact in other ways. These humble systems were often simple desktop computers sitting in someone’s homec. BBS’s tended to be very personal as users typically dialed into local numbers in their vicinity as to not incur long distance chargesd. The SysOp was the admin, owner, and facilitator of the BBS and would often communicate directly with users.2. Formata. Introb. Sponsors/Patronsc. Share comments, letters, follow-up materials, etc from previous episoded. Tip of the week (Security, apps, hacks, etc)e. 2 -3 news stories, articles, interesting nuggets from the webf. Closing comments3. Schedule

Content1. Security keys with Apple IDa. Available with IOS 16.3b. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213154c. Yubico - hardware security key manufacturer - https://yubico.comd. Multi-factor auth Authentication using two or more factors to achieve authentication. Factors are (i) something you know (e.g., password/personal identification number); (ii) something you have (e.g., cryptographic identification device, token); and (iii) something you are (e.g., biometric).Source(s):NIST SP 1800-12b under multifactor authentication2. Mastodona. My recent blog post - https://www.nonstopsysop.com/mastodon-a-decentralized-social-media-experience/3. Tech Layoffsa. November 2022 Meta laid off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforceb. Google, IBM, and SAP, and others have made significant layoffs already this yearc. Many of these layoffs are being blamed on slowdowns in customer demand, recession worries, and issues related to the COVID pandemic

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Phil Williams