In This Episode: Think your backups are safe because you have a big RAID drive pack? Think again. Another week, another data breach …or five. Ransomware targets 911 centers. Renewable energy meet electric school buses.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 57:22 — 26.3MB)
This Week’s Hosts
- Randy Cassingham, founder of This is True and the Internet Spam Primer.
- Leo Notenboom, “Chief Question Answerer” at tech education site Ask Leo!
- Gary Rosenzweig host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
- Kevin Savetz, web site publisher and Computer Historian at Atari Podcast.
- Longer Bios on the Hosts page.
Show Notes
- In the warmup, Kevin mentioned doing a neat episode of his Atari podcast on early computer musicals, and gave an update on his eero WiFi system that he mentioned in Episode 16. Leo got a new high-quality microphone for the podcast (the same one Randy uses), the AT-2020+ (the “+” is what provides the audio going IN to the mic, as well as the computer system audio). Randy‘s RAID (“Redundant Array of Independent Disks” — formerly “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks”) “Network Attached Storage” backup system failed, revealing a flaw of having the redundancy (but thanks to other backups of critical files, he didn’t lose anything critical). The new NAS Randy got was the Western Digital. When buying a NAS, make sure the hard drives used are rated for continuous use; this one uses WD’s “Red” drives, which are. And Gary talked about Game AI systems — he’s writing his own for an upcoming Cribbage app.
- There was no “Breach of the Week” this week — there were five (though we were so on top of Panera Bread last week, it was really only four). Leo talked about how third parties were responsible for several (Fox Business, and the same problem seems to be behind another at Best Buy (KING-TV). Leo also mentioned a site that will help to let you know if your own info has been leaked, via Have I Been Pwned. Leo also mentioned his own Internet Safety article
- We also talked about credit locks (or a Credit Freeze).
- Randy brought up Ransomeware, which seems to be especially targeted at 911 centers, including Baltimore’s (Ars Technica). He found an Op-Ed on The Hill that’s an excellent rant on who’s really to blame about the problem (hint: you pay them with your tax money).
- Gary notes Apple now uses 100% renewable energy (Mac Rumors), and Leo notes that electric school buses are now a thing (Electrek) We thought it was dumb for an electric city bus being tested to put its batteries on the roof (it rolled over), but the manufacturer defends the idea, saying it was a driver error (Inside EVs).
Lots of fun listening to you guys talk about old computer tech, and I mean OLD tech. Not that I’m a serious computer maven, but I’ve been mucking around with them since 1981. My first computer job (essentially just data entry) used a Northstar Horizon running CP/M. Whenever I ran into a problem or screwed something up (once I accidentally hit “Delete” and deleted all the data on the C: drive, which was only 5MB — a big deal at the time) my boss would laugh his ass off and say, “Here’s the book. Read what you need.” So I learned how they work, how disks store the data (128k 5-1/4″ floppies), and how “Delete” only replaces the first character of the filename with a “?”. There are huge holes in my knowledge base, but it’s been a fun ride from then to now. Jeeze! We get 64GB on a little piece of plastic the size of my fingernail for $30? What a long strange trip indeed.