The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘LifeHacker’ Category

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Getting hacked often involves social engineering and corporate policy flaws (involved: Apple, Amazon, GMail)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/10

With more and more stuff being linked together in the cloud, getting hacked becomes increasingly more simple.

This time, it involved Amazon, Apple and GMail, some good knowledge on how the system works, and social engineering to sound trustworthy.

The goal was to get access to a 3-letter Twitter account, the collateral was someones digital life.

Lessons to learn from how Mat Homan got hacked:

  • Make local backups often
  • Use two-factor authentication
  • Don’t have all your devices on “wipe from the cloud”
  • Don’t bind your primary accounts together on the clouds
  • Have distinct reset accounts for your primary accounts
  • Make your primary accounts use a distinct name

Applause for Mat for coming forward on this. I know lots of people that wouldn’t.

–jeroen

via:

Posted in GMail, Google, LifeHacker, Power User, SocialMedia | Leave a Comment »

Pricetracker/-watch/-drop alters/-history charts for Newegg.com, Amazon.com, Best Buy, BackCountry.com, Zzounds.com

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/06

Cool: sites that allow you to do track prices, get history charts, get alerts for price drops, etc. Got there through SSD prices in steady, substantial decline – The Tech Report.

Your account works at all of our price tracking sites:

And your account will work at any new sites we launch!

The SSD price drop together with the HDD Prices Not Expected to Decline Until 2014 makes me think: if/when I should finally ditch my RAID 5 storage server and build an ZFS server with server hybrid storage (which is totally different from desktop hybrid storage).

Many of the great references at Understanding how to use SSD as Hybrid Storage Pools for ZFS point to the old sun.com site, and suffer from link rot. A few I found back: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Hardware, Internet, LifeHacker, Power User, SSD | Leave a Comment »

Twee goede behulpzame zaken met vakkennis in Amsterdam: Muco Electronica en Modelbouw, Meijer IJzerwaren

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/07/27

Ik had wat spullen aan electronica en ijzerwaren nodig, en onderstaande zaken hebben me uitstekend geholpen.

Ze zijn beide niet groot, maar dat is juist hun kracht: ze weten alles van wat ze verkopen, geven juist advies en hebben vriendelijke bediening.

Daarnaast hebben ze beide naast hun winkel, ook een webshop.

Allereerst Meijer IJzerwaren. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About, LifeHacker, Opinions, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Google Map Maker – submitting your own corrections to Google

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/07/01

Interesting: Google Map Maker.

–jeroen

Posted in Google, GoogleMaps, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

France requires car drivers to have 2 alchohol testers in their car (via: Frankrijk: alcoholtester verplicht | ANWB Motor)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/07/01

As of today, France requires all car drivers to have 2 alcohol testers in their car. Either an electronic version that can be used multiple times or a chemical version for single use, as long as it is NF certified.

–jeroen

via: Frankrijk: alcoholtester verplicht | ANWB Motor.

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Fun things to know: Sextant

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/29

Always wanted to know how a Sextant works?

Look at the animated GIF on Wikipedia

–jeroen

via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextant

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Updating our Philips BDP5x00 BlueRay/DVD player, Philips PFL767x 3D TV and MyRemote apps for Android & iOS

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/06/01

Since the auto-update nor manual update feature of Philips devices over the internet never seems to work:

Today is Philips firmware using USB stick and app update time (:

One bummer is that the “firmware installation instructions” do not mention that you have to start with a cold boot one time before updating the devices. If you don’t, then the devices (especially the TV’s) do not recognize there is an update available.

So: always start with cutting the power (either by switch or by plugging the cable) then enabling power again. You only need to do this once before plugging in a USB stick with the update.

Another bummer there is that Philips does not publish direct links on their site either, so you have to browse through pages, select languages, then download the stuff. But the actual files are still static.

So below are the URLs of the pages and download links I used.

Note the links have been static, even over firmware versions.

Some tips on the links of the Philips site above:

  1. Replace the 42 in the URLs with the screen size of your TV to get the download specifically for your TV.
  2. Replace DEU or ENG in the URLs with your own language abbreviation to try getting it in your language.
    This is the list of language codes and languages that Philips uses: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Android Devices, HTC, HTC Sensation, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, LifeHacker, Power User | 1 Comment »

Gbridge: Free instant VPN for everyone! – wow, a portable version of this…

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/04/23

Hmm, interesting*:

Gbridge lets you sync folders, share files, chat and VNC securely and easily between friends or your own computers. Google Apps users can create their own free VPN within the organization instantly!

  • EasyBackup: Backup to remote computer!
  • DesktopShare: Technical support made easy.
  • SecureShare & AutoSync: Share files within group!

Either a portable version of Gbridge (currently non-existent) or Gbridge running under a portable VM solution (would vbox.me or VirtualBox on a USB stick work?) running as a non-admin would open up a can of worms for syadmins, and at the same time make a lot of life hackers extremely happy :)

–jeroen

via: Google Apps Marketplace – Gbridge: Free instant VPN for everyone!.

PS: *If you hear a programmer mumble “Hmm, interesting” be wary as either something very smart or very stupid came to mind.

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Wikiquote

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/04/20

Found this out 9 days before my birthday: wikiquote.org: of course with the one of the most famous quotes from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galazy:

almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea

–jeroen (who won’t be 42 forever)

via: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Wikiquote.

Posted in About, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Please web-people, post screen shots as PNG, not JPEG!

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/04/16

Don’t post screen shots as low quality JPEG.

Use PNG, which results in smaller files and better looking images.

Not like ING did: no screen reader can help visually impaired, and it gives a very bad user experience to the rest of the world.

Low quality JPEG screen shot; someone at ING has been sleeping again.

–jeroen

Posted in LifeHacker, Power User, Usability, User Experience (ux) | 1 Comment »

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