This has been a busy busy week, and I haven’t had a chance to work on clearing out the news chum until now. This first collection is all computer related:
- Going Phishing. Hopefully, you’re all cyber-aware. You know not to trust links in email you receive. You’ve been trained to look at where a URL goes before you click on it. You know not to click on links in email; you’ll copy the link and paste it into your browser bar. You know not to trust sites that aren’t the well-known version. But https://аррӏе.com is safe, right? Right? RIGHT? Actually, no. It may look like it reads “apple”, but that’s actually a bunch of Cyrillic characters: A (а), Er (р), Er (р), Palochka (ӏ), Ie (е). The security certificate is real enough, but all it confirms is that you have a secure connection to аррӏе.com – which tells you nothing about whether you’re connected to a legitimate site or not. This is what is called a homograph attack. It is something that can fool the best people, even if you hover over and check the link before browsing — unless you’re using IE or Edge or Safari. Ars Technica has even more information, but the short and skinny is: If you use Chrome, make sure you’re at Chrome 58 or later; if you use Firefox, enter “about:config” in the address bar, agree to the displayed warning, and then enter “punycode” in the search box to bring up a line that reads network.IDN_show_punycode. Next, double-click the word “false” to change it to “true.” From then on, Firefox will display the “dumb ascii” characters and not the deceptive, encoded ones. I’ve done that, and now I see xn--80ak6aa92e.com when I hover over the link.
- Secure Coding. I grew up programming in Fortran, PL/I, Algol 68, RSTS/E Basic, and C. Except for perhaps Fortran and C, the rest are mostly dead. Today, kids program in C++ and Java — but they aren’t necessarily writing better programs. But following good standards can help. Here’s a link to a discussion on how to do secure coding in C++.
- iPod without iTunes. If you are like me (and fewer are), you use your iPod for all your music (and you plan on adding more this Record Store Day). But do you backup your iPod? I do — via iTunes to my M: drive, and I back that up on my X: and W: drives and on a backup iPod. But most don’t — and most abhor iTunes. Here’s how to backup your iPod without using iTunes. I’ll not that I’ve used copytrans in the past (especially before I just kept everything in iTunes), and I’d recommend it.
- Never Too Late. As I’m typing this, iTunes is playing “Never Too Late” (to tell the Truth) from Scottsboro Boys. If you’re like me, and like to tell the truth, you’ll be happy to know that Snopes is now embeddable. Here’s an example of an embedded article:
- Decluttering Apps. If you’re like us, you need to declutter. The NY Times recently had a review of a number of apps that will help you do just that.
- Pushy Microsoft. Microsoft is continuing to push people to subscribe to Office 365. The latest is restricting the ability to use Skype for Business and One-Drive if you are using a Microsoft Office Standalone Office product. You’ll see more and more products insisting on the subscription model: Adobe, Quicken, Microsoft, ….
Over the last week or so, a number of interesting history articles have been tossed across the transom. Here are some I thought you might find of interest: