Author: db

  • What is the temperature of a feral cat’s butt?

    What is the temperature of a feral cat’s butt?

    Said no one ever. Until this post. Imagine what you can talk about in idle conversation now. Earlier I introduced you to outdoor kitty, he inhabits the area in and around my backyard. And he has a little house outside. And, until now, it was presumed warm. Presume no further, through the power of zigbee…

  • Upgrading the Insecure Army of Internet Things… onwards to the cameras

    Upgrading the Insecure Army of Internet Things… onwards to the cameras

    OK, you voted for me to ‘not be lazy’ and just find a way to update the firmware on the army of electronics that failed the latest security sweep. OK, so I have, or, am in progress. The NAS, well, that was a bit of a pain in the butt, but I soldered on a…

  • Is your meltdown fix working?

    So by now you have patched everything you own because you read about meltdown and spectre. You are exhausted, but feel pretty good about yourself. After all, some of those beasties had a lot of uptime and other stuff happened when you rebooted them. But is it really working? Well, it turns out, your Anti-Virus…

  • OK, I’m diving in, the garage NAS shall run Debian

    OK, I’m diving in, the garage NAS shall run Debian

    OK, i dove in. Backed the truck out of garage, got the ladder out, rescued the NAS from its shelf, brought it down. Here it is all innocent looking. Its been running in the garage for about 4 years now… I’m going to open it up. After running in this environment so long (with a…

  • Ignorance is(?) bliss: the agony and ecstasy of home sysadmin

    OK, a lot of us have large home networks. And our security strategy is simple… “Allow all outbound, deny all inbound.”. Mission accomplished, right? We bought the $100-$150 router, it must be better than the $50 one? Well, it turns out that we might have erected a house made of tissue, a floor which is…