Computer and technology related topics
A cryptocurrency that’s actually productive! I came across Gridcoin (Ticker: GRC) the other day. Gridcoin helps with cancer and malaria research as well as studying astronomy and solving math problems. It caught my eye because Bitcoins and most cryptocurrencies require miners to spend a lot of computing power mining hashes that aren’t really useful. Some argue that … Read more
I suppose sending the actual statement as an attachment in an email isn’t an option? If security is a concern encrypt it to my PGP key.
Catching up on email, I saw a Newsletter from iX Systems announcing the FreeNAS Mini XL (the irony). On the new FreeNAS Mini page it looks just like the FreeNAS mini but taller to accommodate 8-bays. Available on Amazon starting at $1,500 with no drives. Here’s the Quick Start Guide and Data Sheet. The pictures show what appears to be equipped … Read more
We’re Getting Fiber in Sandpoint! Thanks Ting! I just pre-ordered 1 gigabit up / 1 gigabit down! After years of being in the dark ages in rural North Idaho with nothing but slow DSL, high latency cable, with the only reliable option being Verizon Wireless. We now have real internet! Sandpoint is finally getting … Read more
The last few days I have been getting a lot of calls from “Unknown Caller” for which I didn’t pick up. This morning I got a call from a number in the 845 area code so I answered. It was my friendly Dell Support rep from India! Hello, this is Dell support, we detected some malware activity … Read more
Last year I started looking at 2FA (Two Factor Authentication) solutions and came across YubiKey which is a fantastic little device. I ordered a few NEOs to play with. There are several models, I opted for the NEO since it supports the most features and has an NFC chip that Android phones can use. It’s $50 on Amazon or … Read more
We’ve been using Ting for Kris’s phone the last 3 years, it’s been great (see my Ting Review)–but at our new house Sprint’s signal isn’t that good–it can’t really pull in a 3G signal consistently. In rural North Idaho the best coverage is indisputably Verizon, so I limited my search to Verizon MVNOs which have … Read more
The stock ROMS on Verizon/Samsung phones are awful. The phones come shipped with Samsung Touchwiz which makes the UI ugly and a half a dozen apps that you can’t uninstall—some eating up battery, some sending telemetry data to Samsung (using up your data), some changes Samsung does introduce vulnerabilities not to mention it takes Samsung … Read more
Last night, I was attending a LAN party remotely and between games I noticed my pfSense router needed to be updated but of course an update brings down my internet for 30 seconds while it reboots which I didn’t want to do–and then I thought, I should really cluster this. I found a straight-forward pfSense HA … Read more
Here’s my current battlestation… since the office and guest bedroom are shared I recently migrated from a desktop to a Dell Latitude E5450 with a docking station so I could use the room as an office most of the time but undock when guests are staying the night. Starting with the Lackracks… 2U server running VMware and … Read more