Month: January 2017

Wide Impact: Highly Effective Gmail Phishing Technique Being Exploited

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2017/01/gmail-phishing-data-uri/ }}

infiniteviking:

suricattus:

Signal boosting the hell out of this.  Because awareness is the best defense against hackers, thieves and assholes (and asshole thieving hackers).

Important for anyone on gmail!

Details:

  • You get an email from a familiar address
  • It has an attachment which also looks familiar and trustworthy, because that person has sent it to you before
  • You try to open the attachment and are shunted to a very realistic gmail login screen to “log back in”
  • If you do, your account is compromised.

To verify the incorrect login screen, check the url (shown above). The green lock symbol does not appear, and the actual url has spaces after it and extends way, way out into a string of more text.

Basically, if you’re logged in and click on something and are prompted to log in again, don’t do it.

Tags:

#PSA #phishing

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

singular-they:

I really wanted to bring u guys some of the highlights from Chuck Tingle’s AMA (the guy who writes the “pounded in the butt by improbable gay things” books on Amazon) but I ended up screenshotting almost every comment he made so here are some of them

Bonus

Chuck Tingle AMA

Tags:

#Chuck Tingle #I cannot believe I actually understand this #(I mean I don’t understand *all* of it) #(but like) #(I did not know until just now that there is erotica entitled ”Pounded by 2016”) #(and yet somehow I am completely unsurprised by this fact)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

captacorn:

ultralaser:

literally all you learn from the voyager opening credits is that it’s deliberately paced and tom paris is a bad driver

“tom don’t fly the ship through a fucking solar flare”

“tom planetary rings are mostly big ice crystals and they’ll damage the deflector and hull”

“tom we don’t even know what’s in this gas cloud, please don’t ‘hang ten’”

“tom stay away from that-”

“I’M GOING IN”

“TOM NO”

Every single one of these happened on the overnight when Harry was in charge and Tom was at the helm. Just FYI. 

Tags:

#Star Trek #Voyager #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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Yesterday afternoon, upon further reflection, it occurred to me that whatever Mysterious Problem is keeping me from 1.5 GB of my hard drive space could very well have other ill effects. It’s probably worth at least *attempting* to eliminate the problem before I resort to routing around it.

…of course, it would have to be a *Monday* that I conclude this, wouldn’t it.

Tags:

#no brain it’s okay #we don’t have to Fix Everything Right Now #the phone’s current functionality level is good enough to get us through the rest of the week #(if it makes you feel any better) #(it’s supposed to be a windchill of 0 and non-precipitating tomorrow) #(that might be good enough for at least a *little* Wi-Fi mapping) #((…except since the time I drafted this post the highest windchill temperature has dropped to -1)) #((*and* it’s more like -3 at the time of day I would actually go out)) #((normally I don’t tend to mind being cooped up inside that much as long as I have Internet)) #((but not right now)) #oh look an original post #oh look an update #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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Brother’s identical phone model hasn’t had this problem. All of his internal storage is accounted for.

Options:

1. Perform a factory reset in an attempt to reclaim the missing 1.5 GB. Cons: requires mostly starting over on configuring the phone to my liking (though I’ll be able to skip some of the problems I ran into along the way, now knowing their solutions), might not work (whatever mysterious thing caused me to lose the 1.5 GB could just as easily happen again; I can’t learn from my mistake if I don’t know what the mistake was). (Note: re-configuring the phone will probably consume some time I would otherwise have spent working, perhaps $1 – 10 in opportunity costs depending on how successful I would have been in finding suitable jobs to claim.)

2. Configure the SD card I already have as internal storage. Cons: slows down the phone by an unknown amount (may or may not be significant), requires wiping the SD card and re-downloading everything I currently have stored on it, causes the real internal storage to become user-inaccessible (but still in use behind the scenes, so I might find that I have a need to see it and can’t), originally had trouble getting Dropbox to work on internal!SD but I think I *might* (maybe) know what I did wrong. Other people tell horror stories of losing their data to their internal-configured SD card breaking, but any data of any importance has at least two additional copies (one on laptop, one in cloud), so I’m not too concerned by this possibility.

3. Convince Brother to swap SD cards with me, and configure it as internal storage: turns out his *is* high-speed, and currently external. Cons: the non-slowing cons of 2, plus Brother might not agree.

4. Buy the same SD card Brother has, configure as internal. Cons: the non-slowing cons of 2, plus costs $30.

(Note: Brother says he is *much* more skilled at taking this style of phone apart–he proceeded to tear the back off of his phone to demonstrate, making it look easy–and thinks that as long as I wait until a time he’s available, he can perform any SD card swapping I need done without any trouble.)

(Pros of each option: doesn’t suffer the cons of the other options, except where specified.)

Currently leaning towards attempting them in the order 2, 1, 3, 4. If I have to resort to option 1, try to arrange my schedule so that the re-configuring occurs over a weekend.

Tags:

#I don’t expect it to be very easy to arrange to do a factory reset over the weekend #unless I happen to give up on Plan A at the right time of week #there’s already enough things I want to do with this phone that I’m being forced to wait on #it’d be hard to convince myself to wait when I *don’t* have to #oh look an original post #oh look an update #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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System memory: 3.79 GB

Apps: 2.12 GB

(various other categories of stuff: a couple dozen MB combined)

Total: 7.55 GB

“Warning! You are running low on storage space!”

where did that gigabyte and a half go?!

I needed that gigabyte and a half!

I uninstalled a couple apps I don’t really use and it’s now dropped to 7.45 GB, which stopped its complaints. (Presumably the complaining threshold is 7.5.) But…goddammit, one of the reasons I got this phone was so that I would stop having to juggle app installations.

(Fuck, I might have to wade back into the morass that is configuring an SD card on Android 6.0, so I can convince it to keep some app data there. Apparently configuring it to store app data on the SD card slows the phone down unless you have a high-speed SD card. I do not have a high-speed SD card, and I doubt we have any lying around. Even if I obtained a suitable card, in order to take SD cards in and out of this model you have to literally tear the phone in half, and it’s a fucking miracle we’ve managed to do it twice with only minor cosmetic damage.)

Tags:

#this hard division in the new Android version between SD-card-as-external and SD-card-as-internal is not working out well for me #and of course there’s still the question of where my gigabyte and a half went #*sigh* *headdesk* #I’m going to bed #I’ll have to deal with it later #if I’m lucky Brother will have already had and solved this problem and will be able to help me #but my hopes on that are not high #oh look an original post #rants #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #I thought I was done setting it up but apparently I am not

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spookphantom asked: Crack AU where Anakin can all of a sudden hear the background music that we all hear. Those pleasant chats with Palpy become a lot more ominous. Though Anakin admits that the fights have become a lot more epic. Thoughts?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

goddessofroyalty:

Hahahahaha. Love it!

And okay, my first though was “and the galaxy was saved because even Anakin Skywalker would struggle to keep trusting Palpatine with that music playing in the background”

Anakin think he’s gone COMPLETELY insane (maybe he’s finally been electrocuted too many times and its fried his brain). He doesn’t tell anyone though because he can still fight just fine just… everything is a lot more musical. He doesn’t want to be thought crazy and taken off the front lines.

Once he figures out what the various musical cues mean he actually finds them useful in figuring out how dangerous a situation is. Also battles are so much cooler now and boring landscapes are slightly less boring because at least now they have mood music. Yep, he can live with this.

(Although he is always confused why the ominousness that is The Imperial March starts playing at some of his decisions)

 

angelqueen04:

*cracks up*

 

forcearama:

Anakin: I’m so worried about something. I should probably keep my feelings to myself and attempt to solve my problems by working with Palpatine. He seems like he has my best interests at heart.

Music: DUN DUN DUN, DUN DA-DUN, DUN DA-DUN!

Anakin: [pauses] [looks around] Uh…OK. I mean, I’ll…go talk to Obi-Wan?

Music: [hopeful woodwind instruments]

Anakin: …and be open and honest about my life and what is bothering me, and try to work out a non-violent resolution to my problems?

Music: [Force Theme plays]

Anakin: [smiles] All right! Huh. This is helpful. 

 

angelqueen04:

Positive reinforcement at its finest. ;D

 

ialreadyreadthatfanfic:

#lol#i’m just imagining the force throwing its metaphysical hands in the air like ‘subtlety obviously isn’t working with this one so have a whole#symphony of hints young reckless one’ (via @likealeafonthewind)

I’m crying from laughter, this is beautiful.

Anakin: *fucks up*

The Force: Son, please… Guess I’m gonna enable the hints menu.

 

forcearama:

THE HINTS MENU. *dies* 

Maybe Obi-Wan hears the music, too, and then the day is saved. 

Obi-Wan: [walking away] Welp, guess it’s off to kill Grievous I’m sure Anakin will be fi – 

Music: [Duel of the Fates] 

Obi-Wan: OMG not this shit again [runs back down the hall towards Anakin]

Anakin: [running back towards Obi-Wan] Obi-Wan I just heard that Ominous Music again and also I secretly married Padme and she’s pregnant and I haven’t slept in 6 days and I keep thinking she’s going to die and I AM FREAKING THE FUCK OUT and if you leave I will 100% end up killing everyone and –

Obi-Wan: – oh my God! OK…it’s OK, I heard my own ominous music a second ago when I was getting ready to leave and so I won’t and we’ll fix th – 

Anakin: – I heard mine when I thought about maybe talking to the Chancellor instead of y–

Palpatine: [sidling up behind them smugly] Everything all right, gentlemen?

Music: [scary ass music from the opera scene] 

Anakin and Obi-Wan: AHHHH

 

deadmomjokes:

On a non Star Wars note, there’s a Space Center– basically this Star Trek simulator–near my university, and you do full scale missions in replicated federation ship bridges with uniforms and roles like Captain and first mate and tactical and navigation; it also has really epic background music. And the three rules of the missions are: 1, if you have to die, go out with style (this is in the captain’s manual, too); 2, get into it/ham it up; and 3, the background music doesn’t exist. You can, however, “get a bad feeling.”

So, like, every time the music gets all tense and stuff and you know something is about to go down in the plot of your mission, you get to shout “I have a bad feeling about this, Captain!” And the music legit does act like a guide for what’s happening in the story. One time the music went out and it was so disorienting, and our first mate just turned to the rest of us and screamed “I DON’T KNOW HOW I’M FEELING ANYMORE CAPTAIN!”

 

inquisitivefeminist:

@shedoesnotcomprehend

Tags:

#Star Wars #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

~ Brin ~ 3 Comments

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Updates:

SD cards turn out to be a lot more complicated on Android 6.0 than they were on 4.2, so it took longer than I thought it would, but I’ve finished the transfer. All of my stuff (give or take a weather app) is on my new phone, and my old phone is now officially Mom’s.

—

Re: Internet access, it remains to be seen how much can be done with option 1–I might still use it at least partially–but it’s looking like the primary answer is going to be option 3.

Mom was remarkably agreeable to switching to my old smartphone as her primary cell phone, under two conditions: that nobody expects her to use the smartphone to anywhere near its full functionality (she doesn’t want to have to deal with getting to know a new kind of computer, at least not beyond a shallow level), and that I figure out a reasonably practical way for her to carry it around with her (she currently carries her phone in a flip-phone-sized pouch in her backpack).

(Dad suggested sticking her SIM card into a smartphone when I wanted to use data, then putting it back in the flip phone afterward for routine use. I said I didn’t think flip phones had removable SIM cards. Turns out the real answer is in between: *modern* flip phones have removable SIM cards, but her phone is so old it predates PC Mobile flip phones becoming the type of phone that has a removable SIM. In order to switch a SIM card back and forth, she’d need to get a new flip phone; if she’s going to change primary phones anyway, why spend money on an additional phone when we have a perfectly good smartphone available?)

It seems we can’t get a monthly or yearly graph of how much phone credit she’s actually using, but judging from the amount of credit she currently has built up, over the six years she’s had her account she’s used an average of ~$70/year. Put another way: if the average usage rate holds, we could buy a $10/month basic data plan May – October and not run out of spare credit for about 6 years. That’s long enough to be getting on with; hell, for all I know, I’ll have a need for my own phone plan by then.

I already borrow Mom’s phone on those occasions I need access to the cell infrastructure. This will just be an extension of that.

I’m not going to take any action on obtaining a data plan until it gets close to spring. If all goes well, Mom will keep her old flip phone for the rest of the winter, and she’ll have some time to get used to having a smartphone before trying to do any actual phone stuff with it.

(It’ll have to be Brother who gives her the tour of how to do actual phone stuff on a smartphone. I’ve never done it, after all.)

Tags:

#I looked it up and it turns out PC is actively encouraging people with SIM-less phones to upgrade to SIM models #so they can consolidate their networks #for us personally I consider this a good sign #because it means it *probably* won’t be a huge hassle to switch her account to a new phone #people usually make things easy to do when they’re trying to convince you to do them #hopefully running a mobile hotspot will also be non-frustrating #*knocks on wood* #oh look an original post #oh look an update #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(and not three) #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon

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