When TVs attack!

When TVs Attack!

Last week my trusty HTC 10 had it. Had to let it go. I had battled with it for a couple of weeks trying to figure out what the fuck HTC an/or Google had done to this once perfect phone. After I'd thrown every trick in the book outside of rooting at the thing, I was done. Fuck it. I just wanted something in my pocket that worked. Seeing as there's no perfect smartphone out there I'd resigned to trying a Google Pixel 2 XL (go big or go home, right?). Wanting to get the most out of that new phone of mine I decided to pick up a Daydream VR viewer. The experience was good but I wanted to share what I was seeing on our living room TV. So two days ago I took the plunge. This is where shit went wrong terribly quick. Not fully understanding how casting to my Samsung model UN55JU6500 TV worked, I thought that if I unplugged the Ethernet cable and put the TV on the same WiFi network as my phone then it would be able to cast to the TV. I set it all up and it didn't work. No harm done, right? Abso-fucking-lutely not! Not only was there something wrong, I had zero tools at my disposal to stop it. What happened you might wonder? Well after my failed cast to TV attempt, all of the Android devices in the house running Norton Mobile Security started throwing up this warning:

Yeah, not cool. Now I've been on the receiving end of malware false-positives before so I wasn't too freaked out yet. That changed when I logged into manage my Asus RT-AC66U. This was because it's language had changed from English to KOREAN! What. The. Fuck. I was still in denial. I thought I could beat this. Fuck it I thought, I'll reset it then swap the firmware and it'll all be good. It's gonna be OK, right? I mean, who can attack a router and own it forever more? Some Korean that was way smarter than me, that's who! Even after the reset and firmware swap the warning bells from Norton persisted. Fuck. Better sleep on it. It's not going anywhere. So I left it all unplugged and dismantled and went to work the next day.

I get to work and drop into Norton's support queue. Three hours later someone with the last name of "Mula" answered. Now, I've got no problem with someone trying to improve your station in life no matter where you live in the world. However, if your job is to listen and advise customers on network and/or computer security then you'd better be able to communicate properly. After clearly laying out the situation to Mr. Mula, he went on to tell me that the warning was due to an error in the server. I just needed to update the Android app to the latest version. Thing is, it already had that morning before heading off to work. What now Mr. Mula? So I gave him remote access to my phone via a Logmein session. One thing of note, he couldn't navigate himself on the Pixel 2 XL. I had to move to where he wanted to go. So I opened up Norton Mobile Security for him. His response? "I see that your app is in English. Has the problem been resolved?" ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!? What an asshole I thought, this guy can't be that dense. I forget exactly what I said but the gist of it was asking about how he would feel if he sat patiently waiting for three hours JUST TO GET A PERSON TO HELP HIM and then another half hour accomplishing nothing? I told Mr. Mula that I was done wasting my time with him and amateur hour and slammed that session shut as hard as my finger could hit the screen of my phone. I was PISSED! Not only did some Korean STILL own my router and TV, I still wasn't anywhere closer to a solution. I didn't have any tools to fix the problem. That's what bothered me the most. What to do....

At this point, the TV and now the router clearly sat at the center of my woes. Fuck that router but the TV? I paid a lot of money for that thing! I didn't want to just toss it out to the curb! So my solution was that if Samsung couldn't secure their "smart" TVs, they don't get to see my internet. Dickhead TVs! After a visit to my local MicroCenter I came home armed with a new router, Apple TV 4K for the zombie Samsung, Chromecast, and Roku Stick for the other non-zombie Samsung "smart" TV in the bedroom. With a new set of different SSIDs, passwords (for nearly every device), and logins Ultron was safely contained in my living room TV. No more warnings from Norton Mobile Security either. Thinking about it, had it not been for those warnings there's no telling what the attacker would've gotten away with. Bank accounts? All our pictures and videos of our family stored on the NAS ransomed? Pulsing the Hue lights in the bedroom at 2 am? There's so much attack surface and I'm at the mercy of the manufacturer to make sure it's able to be secured. Keep in mind that all security settings where enabled on the now zombie-fied Samsung "smart" TV. So it didn't matter what I did. The malware was already on there waiting to set sail. The only thing that saved my ass was those warnings from Norton. After I got everything set up again and back to normal I thought about how little attack surface a really well prepared attack really needs to be successful. That shit bothers me. It should bother you too if you're reading this. Because even if you follow the rules and do as you're told you can still get nailed like I did. Shout out to whoever writes code for Norton because you helped our family stay safe (no, I'm not sponsored by Norton in any way at this point). As for Samsung, WTF!? Secure your shit assholes! I can see a partnership between anti malware software vendors and smart TV manufacturers in the future as there's clearly a need for better security on their part. For now Ultron rages about inside of my TV. Trapped forever more. My only revenge against the malware that costed me a pretty penny worth of technology.

Why Observe & Disrupt?

Why Observe & Disrupt?

I've been thinking about a question. Do I have a unique perspective on the world today? I dunno, maybe? I guess this would be why I started this blog. To find that out. So much of what we view and interact with today is from the safety of a "bubble" that may or may not be of our own making. It was inevitable that I also found myself in one. I think humans naturally have a tenancy to do so. I think it used to be for protection mostly. Those people aren't like us! They're coming to get us! We need to stick together! Stay with your own kind 😱 run away!!!! As I get older, I see things with a bit more clarity I'd like to think. I mean, what's the point of living if you don't learn from your mistakes? With the advent of social media though I began to observe a disturbing trend. As opposed to my childhood in the 80's where the parents in my neighborhood would get together frequently and discuss what's going on, people nowadays would go right from their car on into their house and never come back out unless they HAD to. No chatting with the neighbors. No welcome to the neighborhood. No freshly baked apple pie. It was, "Fuck those people, I don't know them!" Side note: I tend to be an imposing figure physically. Most people give off a vibe like they're trying REALLY HARD not to seem intimidated. When I shake their hand and they can't pull it away fast enough, I get a vibe like something's up. Always thought it was me until my wife who happens to be a foot shorter than me filled in the blanks (dummy me). So from 2002 until my awesome divorce in 2010 I lived in the "country" according to most people in the area. I was always given the impression that people out there would be more outgoing and engaging. Not so. Nobody conversed, not even idle banter. It was hi then bye. Car to house again. Maybe it was a Michigan thing? So come 2010 I'm renting a condo and I'm doing what I can to reach my hand out to my neighbors. Funny thing about it was that the Macedonians living upstairs where the first ones to allow the wall to come down. Who would've thought, right? DISRUPTION ACHIEVED!!! After that we'd make food for each other, talk about what's going on, it was cool. Not just because the wall came down. It was because I was able to peer through a window of a culture that was different to mine. They looked white, like me. Their language was different though and so where their values. I learned a lot from them. Then one day they were gone. Into the ether they went as so many renters do. I put it on a shelf until today. Life went on. I got married again. I had a son. Work got crazy (still is). My wife's mother, uncle, cousin, and grandmother died. My grandmother died. I moved into a house. My father battled alcoholism and lost several times. My mother had a stroke. My favorite aunt died of cancer. All within five or six years or so? Shit just seemed to fly by. So this past year I made my mind up that shit was going to be different. It needed to be different. The status quo just wasn't working for me. I began to reach out to my neighbors. Get involved. Help people out (as I always had done given the opportunity). Disrupt the "norms" in my life. What I noticed was not only did I feel better, I felt as if I was undoing damage that's still being done to our world today. Like walls were being smashed apart one person at a time. More work continue to be done but it's a positive start 😀.

So what am I trying to Observe & Disrupt now? Well it starts with me. I'm a white, middle-aged man, who's lived in the Detroit suburbs nearly his whole life. Prejudice, religion, and all manner of poison has been shoved into my head over the years. Some with good intentions, some not so much. So yeah, that's were it all starts. Then I plan on letting it radiate outwards from there. Next my street. Next my block. Next my township, state, and who knows maybe the world if I may be so bold. What I do know is that the "old" ways and the current ways aren't moving me forward. And they aren't moving society forward. It's so very stagnant. We're all on this boat and there's no fucking wind. We all want that shit to blow like hell and push us along but I don't feel like we're moving anywhere. Maybe because as individual participants in society we can't agree on which direction we should prioritize? So why don't we capsize the boat if you will? Learn to swim? Fuck that. I want to learn to fly 🙌.

I should wrap up with a few more things. I don't what to make money with this blog. I don't intend to advertise. If you see a link or post it's not putting cash directly into my pocket. I have no other agenda than my own to push. I vote but it's usually for independent candidates out of principal although I'm not opposed to dems or reps as long as they're not shitty people. It's just supposed to be me and my observations on disruptions peppered with sarcasm and obscene language. There's probably going to be technology talk. Lots of it. I don't intend for it to be talk about technology for the sake of technology though. As always, comments are welcome. It's the only way to stay out of the bubble 😉.

Social media-waging war from the inside!

So for a little while now I've been stuck. I've been sick of the shit platforms I've seen for social media. Namely, the cesspools that Facebook and Twitter have become. I mean, what in the fuck happened? At first I had this cool new way of communicating that was so very unique. It was right there for the taking. On the surface their goals seemed so noble. Connecting people no matter where they lived on the planet. All you needed was an internet connection (we'll just leave that one alone). Then something happened. First, the trolls invaded. Shit-posting and vomiting their anger/hate all over the various platforms. No longer was there room for meaningful conversation without some asshole lacking the ability to self-censor jumping in a shitting all over your post. Next came the ads. Ads so stealth that I barely noticed what was happening. Before I knew it the goddamn ads where all over the place like a bad STD on my fun parts. Now it's nearly impossible to get rid of them. I know, you might be thinking, "How else are they going to pay for server space and computing resources? Without ads how do the platforms get revenue?" Interesting question. That brings me to my next issue. Mother. Fucking. Tracking. Everything I did (especially on Facebook) was cataloged and sold to the highest bidder. Next thing you know there's disturbingly accurately tailored ads following you around 😱!!! FUUUUCK!!! So yeah, there's more than one way I saw that I was turning into just another product to be bought and sold on Wall $treet. There was valiant efforts made by extensions like social fixer for Chrome and such but I never really felt like it did indeed fix the problem. It was like capitalism ran rampant and raped the shit out of something that had so much potential. Not so much as a cuddle when I logged off. Fuck it. I gave up on the twat missile that is Facebookery and locked up Twitter like a death-row inmate, only to enjoy the freedom of the "yard" when I needed to get something off of my chest. Then, I recently tripped and fell face first into a glimmer of hope. What was this new platform that could do what the rest couldn't. Enter Mastodon. I won't get into the fine print but the framework of how Mastodon works but it hearkened back to the days of chat rooms with the cozy nature of "instances" and how they're akin to privately moderated Twitter feeds tailored to your interests and language(s) spoken. In the past two days of using it, I felt like I had more meaningful conversations than I can recently remember with all of the other major social networks combined. Personally IDGAF about the drama. I hear enough at work. But hey, if that's your thing I'm SURE you could find a lively catfight on Mastodon.

As for me, I'll pass. That's what sets Mastodon apart. The effort it takes to avoid the ads, scammers, and trolls is minimal. Could it be that's it's such a new platform? Sure! However, I don't think Mastodon will turn out like the rest. Just the instances model alone lets YOU be in control of the content as a user. No longer are you at the mercy of some apathetic douchebag of a moderator asleep at the wheel (in a fairness some are actually pretty good). Maybe I'm seeing things from inside a bubble of my own making with Mastodon. Or perhaps the detox provided by it is so very refreshing. Whatever it is I like it. I don't care to ponder the reason why at this point. Give Mastodon a try. It doesn't cost you anything but your time and it gave me an experience the others yanked away long ago. Hope for humanity 👏. Well done.

One last note. All images where obtained from copyright free sources as far as I know. If not, point the offending images out and I'll gladly remove them if that's the case.