Technical

Computers, Phones, Gaming. Hints and tips for technical things.

Spammers on your Blog.

~ Ron Walker ~ 14 Comments

Spammers, the bane of the Internet. Spam helps spread malware and viruses. It is said that the first spam mail was sent in 1978. Gary Thuerk, an employee of Digital Equipment Corporation, figured out a way to send mass emails, and fired off a mass email to 398 others, to notify them of a product demonstration. From there it mutated into the monster of today.

I thought I would share a few tips that I have used or learned for those of you that are not sure what Spam mail really is. Spam mail is, in a word, unstoppable. You can slow it down, you can stop the majority, some will still make it through. The filters that our ISP’s and even WordPress use just serves to slow it down some. Sometimes the filters even catch our subscribers to our blogs.

Most Spammers are automated, and just firing off an ugly response to one just goes back to a robot/computer that lists you as “alive” and then they share your email address among every spammer in the world. Most of the spammers get paid for every time they post a link for someone. That is why you get a nonsensical email or blog post in your spam folder. Among all the gibberish will be one or more links to a product. There are times that spammers just grab a chunk of test out of an e-book for filler.

There are two golden rules you should follow regarding Spam.

  • Never EVER click a link contained in spam email.
  • Never respond to spam in any way.

Spammers come from everywhere. Sometimes they hide behind faked IP addresses, to make them appear legit. Should you ever get curious, and not already know how to look up information on spammers etc. Here are a couple of sites that I use.

  • Stop Forum Spam: A free service that allows you to search by name, email, or IP.
  • CIPB (or Country IP Blocks): Free service to look up an IP and see what country it originates from.

Since this past March when I reset my spam counter, I have blocked 4,859 spam posts. I still get a few every couple of days.

This is how I feel, about spammers…

Comments welcome,

Have a little Pie with your Internet. Zero calories to boot!

~ Ron Walker ~ 23 Comments

I know many don’t care for technical type posts as a rule, but just in case someone happens to be searching for information on a RaspberryPi, they can see the set up I have made.

I thought I would try one of these small computers that were developed in the UK just a few years ago. They are very small, some can be had for as little as $29 bare bones. I wanted a better one so opted for the newer version. Raspberry Pi 3 B. This one has a quad core processor that runs about 1.2-1.6ghz. It has 1GB of on board memory you share with video. (4) 2.0 USB ports, Wireless, Bluetooth HDMI and Ethernet. A lot packed into a small computer slightly smaller than a playing card. Michelle ordered this for me as a late birthday present. She ordered the deluxe Kit, which is more at around $69 but comes with everything including a fan, and SD card 32GB, HDMI cable, power adapter.

  • 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU, 1 GB RAM
  • 802.11n Wireless LAN, 10/100Mbps LAN Speed
  • Bluetooth 4.1, Bluetooth Low Energy
  • 4 USB ports, 40 GPIO pins, Full HDMI port, Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video
  • Camera interface (CSI), Display interface (DSI), Micro SD card slot (now push-pull rather than push-push), VideoCore IV 3D graphics core.

You can get a kit with everything but the micro SD card, for around $49.

For something to play with it is fun and interesting. Much cheaper than a desktop. It runs  various Linux distributions which are free, the most popular being “Raspian” which is a mix of some Raspberry programs and Debian Linux. You can install Ubuntu or other Linux flavors. It has an HDMI port so you can hook it to a monitor, I don’t have a monitor with HDMI so I am using VNC to connect into it and use my computer monitor. Parts are cheap for the Pi, a simple case around $5-$6, power adapter $8 or cheaper, 32 GB SD card, if you want one that big. $14 at Walmart. The latest Pi with all the above listed features, just the board is $34. Webcam for it that plugs onto the board with short or long ribbon cable is only about $19 for a 5 mp or $26 for an 8 mp! I am going to save up and get me a 5 mp camera. Which brings me to the only shortcoming.

Shortcoming: The only thing I found wrong with it was limited webcams that work with it. It is hit-and-miss. Some super cheap USB cams work, some don’t. Unfortunately, none of my cheap ones work. But I can solve that with a Pi camera for what I pay for a cheap USB cam.

I have posted to the forum from it, after all it is a full Linux computer, just small and not super charged. You won’t do video editing I don’t think (but I bet I try). It has office software, mail, chromium or Firefox browser, just like larger computers. You can install what you want just like from a normal Linux computer.

I got this one to learn on, I wanted something that could run my weather station 24/7 and not use the main computer for that. So this tiny machine can sit on the desk off to itself and happily monitor the weather station and generate the pages and upload them to the website. I am still working on it, Trying out a simpler weather software. Anyway… here are some pictures of it’s size. This one is in a layered clear plastic case, with a tiny fan to cool the CPU. It currently is running wireless on the WiFi here in the house. The pictures and a video may show it with an Ethernet cable. I used that to set up the vnc and configure the wireless. The only cable running to it now is the weather station.

It’s small!! Just un-boxed it.

We have the case assembled and on it now. You can stack them one atop the other with some cases. Note the small, half-dollar size fan.

My car-keys look nearly bigger than the computer.

Future plans: Since it will run 24/7, I plan on

Running the weather station.Setting up a service on it to monitor my websites and alert me by email. Seems my “free” monitoring service, isn’t too reliable notifying me at times.A Time lapse, and picture upload program, for the forum, blog, and Wunderground weather service. It already uploads weather conditions to my Wunderground reporting station every 5 mins. Currently It updates the weather web page of my website every 10 minutes.

It seems to run very snappy for a 1.2-1.6ghz. It is running a server and SQL database, without noticeable lag. It is using about 400mb of the 1GB of memory when running the graphical interface through the monitor, but just running as a machine, it is using about 150mb of memory. Running cool as well. 36c

I scrounged around and found a Blue-tooth keyboard we aren’t using, and a wireless mouse. I stopped by the thrift store last week, there sat a 14 inch monitor for $10. I was pleased to see it worked being just $10.

Now I can say, I have Raspberry Pie (Pi) in my office. I just hope it doesn’t attract ants.

Comments welcome,

Note: I receive no compensation of any type, for mentioning, linking to, or posting about an item. All references are for informational consumption.

The Age of disposable Electronics

~ Ron Walker ~ 26 Comments

It’s a good thing that electronics evolve at a fast pace. This brings down the cost in a relatively short time. However, the cheap labor, design, and components assure that consumers would rather buy a new unit rather than repair the old one.

My 50 inch Plasma TV cost me $700 at Walmart in 2007. It was the thing back then. It is, or was since it has passed onto TV heaven, not a “smart” TV of today. I can replace it now with a 50-inch LED version for $269 on sale (standard no smart version). It decided to not come on the other morning, and then it started coming on for 20 secs, and turning itself off without producing a picture. A taunt?

Just for kicks though, and because I’m a glutton for punishment, I brought it into the office to tinker. First I had to enlist the help of two people to remove it from the wall, the thing weighs in around 80+ pounds. Once in the office I treated it like the alleged aliens treat humans, I poked, prodded, probed and otherwise dissected its inner workings.

YouTube provided me with warnings of death, which I was already aware of, since my oldest brother had been a TV repairman in years past. The Internet provided me with Instructional YouTubes of others that like to tinker with these mammoth throw away’s. To narrow down what it might be, I had to wedge a screw in some prongs on the circuit board, Sounds real barbaric and crazy huh. Then I had to add a jumper wire, which if you don’t know what you’re doing, will produce plenty of noxious, stinky smoke, from all sorts of things. We all know once you let smoke out of electrical components they stop working, that’s my theory anyway.

So I gathered up my trusty poking around tools and set about checking it. The YouTube instructions placed it in a self-test mode which revealed most of the major parts were working, it could be the main board that controls all those parts. Checking online I discovered,  1.) The main board is $140.  2.) The board is half the price of another TV. So even though I could fix it, another computer board could go out at anytime since the TV is 9 years old.

(Dr. McCoy) “He’s dead Jim”

Anyhow, I learned a bit, and will donate it to some repair shop so they can use the plasma screen and other good components.

On the positive side, I didn’t release any toxic smoke, melt anything, start a flame, or as the YouTube videos cautioned, “feel like you just held defibrillator paddles to your head and shouted Go!”

So in all the crazy Initials we use today I will say, RIP MCB that controlled PSB which maybe sent too much power from the PCB, ultimately killing the whole TV. Whew!

Comments welcome,

Massive Global Ransomware Attack Underway

~ Ron Walker ~ 19 Comments

This is a late post, I was prompted to do it after seeing it mentioned on the news again this evening.

A form of Ransomware seems to be gaining momentum. Please make sure that you are up to date on any Windows updates. I would recommend extra careful Internet usage practices for a while. Resist opening, or clicking on links that are in emails you receive. Be cautious of any documents someone sends you, that you are not expecting.

How to Protect Yourself From the Vulnerability

According to Microsoft a fix for this vulnerability was released on March 14th for all affected versions of Windows. If you are running Windows and have automatic updates enabled you should be okay. If you don’t and haven’t updated recently you should update to the most recently released version immediately. It is important to note that unsupported versions of Windows, like XP, did not receive this security update. Those systems should either be isolated or shut down.

Source: Wordfence Security

Comments welcome,