Tag: tech

Aluminum Foil and RFIDs

7/2017

RFID, radio frequency identification (or maybe, radio frequency idiot), chips are here and more will come. You think cell phones, wifi, and computers are easy to hack?  This makes that kind of hacking seem like child’s play.

If you’ve seen one of the modern movies, like a James Bond flick, where they put this little capsule under his skin, that is a RFID.  They aren’t all that large.  Or maybe you’ve seen retailers brush your intended purchase across a scanner before you leave a store so that the alarms don’t go off?  Some companies put one in the hand of it’s employees so they can automatically log in/out, charge food at the commissary or track their movements.

The RF part means that the chip puts out a radio signal when stimulated by a scanner.  It broadcasts whatever information is on the chip.

A simple radio scanner can read and reproduce said information.  The scanner can be as small as a cigarette lighter with a remote antenna that is as inconspicuous as a small coil of wire.  A small computer (like a raspberry Pi, the size of a pack of gum) can overwrite the information on the chip to what the hacker wants.

RFID chips are everywhere – companies and labs use them as access keys, Prius owners use them to start their cars, and retail giants like Wal-Mart have deployed them as inventory tracking devices.  Drug manufacturers like Pfizer rely on chips to track pharmaceuticals.  The tags are also about to get a lot more personal: Next-gen US passports and credit cards will contain RFIDs, and the medical industry is exploring the use of implantable chips to manage patients.  According to the RFID market analysis firm IDTechEx, the push for digital inventory tracking and personal ID systems will expand the current annual market for RFIDs from $2.7 billion to as much as $26 billion by 2016.”(1)

That was the news 11 years ago.

From your Grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave, wrapping my credit cards in aluminum foil as I lament my Maui experiences.

Weary.

1. The RFID Hacking Underground, Annlee Newitz, 05.01.06, https://www.wired.com/2006/05/rfid-2/

12/19/2020, Edit; The following links are YouTube videos on how easy it is to defeat RFIDs in your credit cards and key fobs. The Lock Picking Lawyer has a video showing that the shielding sleeves are easily defeated.

  1. How to Bypass RFID Badge Readers (w/ Deviant Ollam and Babak Javadi). The Modern Rogue. January 29, 2020. Retrieved 12/17/2020 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccm1caB6bao
  2. How Hackers Steal Card Info, Just by Standing Nearby. The modern Rogue. March 27, 2020. Retrieved 12/17/2020 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt2Gn2CoJ74

The Devil You Don’t Know

7/2017

Disclaimer: This is NOT a political comment but an example of poor financial planning and a lesson learned in life.

OK now. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I owned a 1972 Cheby Nova (spelling intentionally incorrect) with a V-8 engine.  My wife would run along beside it with a gas can to make sure we didn’t run out of gas between home and the store 2 blocks away.  Well maybe not really, but you get the idea.

A young (to the US) upstart Japanese car company (Subaru), Jimmy (then President), and a lot of the national media strongly urged everyone to ditch their gas guzzlers for a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle.  Kinda sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  “You will save money,” they said.

Young and stupid was I, I traded in the perfectly functional but less than efficient Nova.

The new Subaru did indeed get better fuel mileage.  When it ran.  Unfortunately, it was one of the first vehicles (at least for Subaru) to have computer control of the engine.  It didn’t work too well.  In addition, the little 4 cylinder engine didn’t have enough oomph to make the hills of Kansas without downshifting, if there was more than one adult in the vehicle.  The car was in the shop almost every week for months.  Subaru finally threw in the towel and said, “We don’t know what is wrong and you are on your own.  Sue us if you want.”  This was before the current impotent Lemon Laws,

I ended up trading the Subaru, on which I still owed a significant amount of the original financed note, for a new Jeep Wagoneer.  Loved that Wagoneer, but wish, even now, that I had the Nova and all the money wasted in finance charges, maintenance, lost equity and rental expenses for substitute vehicles.  If I had, instead of following this woe-some path, invested in say Walmart, lookout Donald.  I’d of been firing people on TV instead of him.

Me thinks what I am saying is consider carefully, the devil you know versus the devil you don’t know.

Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave, who didn’t fall for it the second time around.

Weary.

Wind farms and rotisserie chicken

7/2017

As I sit here contemplating my glass of iced tea, I thought of something.  It came to mind that the globing-warming crowd has been predicting that the oceans are gonna rise and coastal communities are gonna go swimming.  But, something is not right in this argument.

Now, I am not a physicist, but I decided to try an experiment.  I filled my glass full of water and poured it into a graduated beaker (if you haven’t been to science class for a while, that is what scientists call a measuring cup).  The glass held 12 0z of water. Then I filled it with ice and water and measured.  It held 12 oz of ice and water.  I then let the ice water warm to room temperature, i.e. I let the ice melt.  Shazam, there was less than 12 oz of water after the ice melted.

OK, so I didn’t really do this experiment but it can be confirmed easily even if you don’t trust the internet for correct answers. See, water expands when it freezes as opposed to other substances that shrink when they freeze.

So, the global-warmed melted ice in the oceans will lower the oceans, not raise them.

But what about the land ice melt runoff?  Huh, Uncle Dave?

Just maybe, the runoff will bring the shrunken coastline back to where it was thereby preserving the exorbitantly inflated coastal property values?

But, what if the windmill huggers are right?

To prevent global warming, as the story goes, wind farms will save the planet because it will decrease the dependence on fossil fuels.  Most can see the use of wind-generated energy (actually the energy is not generated at all, it is just converted from one form to another) to reduce the dependence on fossil-fuel-generated energy, but it takes a real visionary to see the use of wind sails for personal and commercial transportation, for moving products across this great nation and for powering all those energy consuming devices still miles from any generator.  Enter the law of unintended consequences and friction.

As we increase the Earth’s resistance to rotation, that is what all those windmill blades do, the velocity (speed) of the earth’s rotation may eventually slow down.  As the rotation slows, the time allowed for the sun’s rays to contact the earth will increase, increasing the core temperature and causing the ice to thaw.  Hence, the oceans will rise.  Exactly what the wind farms were touted to prevent.

I prefer to think it in terms of the rotisserie chicken on a July 4th BBQ.  If the rotisserie turns at the proper speed, you get nice juicy run off and moist perfect chicken.  But, if it turns too slow, or not at all, you get dry burnt crap on one side and near raw chicken on the other.

Just what the global-warmers are offering us, half ass’ed chicken crap.

Just some more random thoughts from your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.

The US Secrete Service and You

7/2017

The United States Secret Service has put out a bid order for someone to develop computer software (compatible with Windows 8) that can detect whether or not a communication in the social arena is sarcasm or not.

The contract is on a 5-year cycle, essentially giving hackers 5-years to “catch up”.  Remember when the iPhone came out.  It was touted as un-hackable?  It took some 14-year old in NYC 36 hours to hack it.  Or something like that.

So the fact that they are experiencing problems determining if a piece of com data is sarcasm or not means they are reading the com data, right?  Well, of course they are.  Everybody knows that!

And if everybody knows that, why is the news so full of squalk about NSA reading com data?

But wait a minute, the Secret Service?  Aren’t they responsible for the President’s and other’s security and financial crimes?  Why would they be interested in com data that is 99.9% teenage twits, flicks, sexting and selfies?  Maybe they are looking just at the President’s social media participation and not yours?

Nope, the Patriot act added the phrase, “Use of new technology as a means to commit a crime.” to their mission. Rather broad scope, if you ask me.

Or, I guess they are just bored.

Never mind.

Grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.

Global Warming Gardening

4/2017

I worked out in the shop and in the garden, briefly, on Friday.  It was about 73′ F.  I got over heated and nauseated.  Monday morning (April, the friggin 17th of APRIL!), I got off work and there were snow and ice on the windshield of the truck.  The highway west was closed over the bridge for a couple of hours ’cause of the wrecks.  It was a sheet of ice.

I think it’s supposed to be 67’F today.

Happy global warming gardening! Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.