Interesting Links for 26-8-2011

[andrewducker]

• The awesome Rosamicula writes about her experiences of being invited on news shows to talk about the riots.
  (tags: news riots media uk EpicFail)
• 6 Reasons The Guy Who's Fixing Your Computer Hates You. I have felt this way many, many times.
  (tags: computers funny malware)
• Nick Clegg defends Human Rights legislation. It saddens me that someone needs to.
  (tags: rights uk law NickClegg politics)
• Sad Etsy Boyfriends
  (tags: men photos funny)
• Labour joins Tories to stop trams even reaching Princes Street. Saving £9m/year, at the cost of not having a useful system.
  (tags: trams edinburgh headdesk)
• Females choose mates for their personalities (in zebra finches, obviously)
  (tags: personality reproduction birds)
• Robonaut R2 tweets from outer space
  (tags: robots astronauts space)
• We lose Steve Jobs _and_ Rob Malda on the same day? What is the world coming to?
  (tags: slashdot)
• Doing away with the dentist’s drill by helping teeth regenerate themselves
  (tags: health medicine body teeth dental)
• Some clarifications on the Iceland story from a few days ago.
  (tags: iceland finance banking)
• When Not To Quit: Man Revived After 96 Minutes
  (tags: health medicine body technology)

Comments

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I always wonder where, exactly, people are going to pick up this malware. For work I have to go to many, many sketchy porn sites and have never picked up any malware. I've never installed any toolbars (I turn them down because they confuse me) but honestly even after visiting the darkest corners of the web my Norton has never alerted me to anything other than cookies it wants to remove.

As far as I can tell as long as you turn off "Active X" (whatever the fuck that is) and run Norton it's nearly impossible to pick up malware.

[andrewducker]

What browser do you use?

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Firefox.

[andrewducker]

That might explain it :->

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

If you're using on OS post XP SP2 and a browser with resonable malware protection, you're pretty safe.

We fire up VMs and go surfing russian porn sites for work stuff every now and then. The only way we've ever got infected was deliberately downloading a poisoned toolbar (and we knew that in advance).

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

So, I'm right, you have to almost deliberately try to infect your computer.

I mean about four months ago a guy wanted me to do ads for his new "shemale" site (I know this term is offensive, but it was porn and calling it a transsexual site would not be accurate) and for competitive research I had to go through some of the sketchiest sites I'd ever seen and when I was one I had Norton do an unscheduled scan and all I got was a bunch of tracking cookies.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Hmm... you say below you're on firefox. You also probably keep your system moderately well patched. I end up fixing quite a few computers.

The people who get malware tend to have one or more of the following habits:
1) Using internet explorer
2) Putting off doing patches and software updates
3) Installing lots and lots of software they "found on some website"
4) No good mental model of what software "should" do. (E.g. "the porn I was trying to view said it needed to install a downloader program to work" -- they don't usually admit to the porn part but I bloody know that's what they mean. These are also the people who open that email which says "Here is the v3ry important invoice for u." and then click on the box which says "yes, I do want to run this.").

If you are even moderately careful about keeping a computer patched and using a single good piece of anti-virus software (free ones are just fine) then you most likely won't have an issue. If you know what you're doing you probably don't even need the AV.

One guy's computer which was "running slowly" had six different viruses. He never patched and the taskbar was just a mess of a dozen bits of crapware he'd installed and never removed. This is an extreme case but I come across lots of people who have picked up malware from various sources.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Gotcha. Anytime any site tells me I need to install something to look at what I want I click away on the general assumption that anything on the Internet is redundant so if, for example, one site wants me to download some shit to watch a Kim Kardashian sex tape, I'll be able to find another site that doesn't require me to download something.

And, yeah, whenever Microsoft, Java or Firefox want me to update I update - not because I'm trying to protect my computer but I just figure the best way to get them to stop them bugging me about an update is to just do the update.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

That said - holy fuck has anyone else noticed that the most recent Firefox update generally sucks? It's much less stable than the last update (though I figure all I have to do is wait a week or two and they'll be another update that will work better.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

ActiveX is IE's built-in application code - like Java or flash, but part of the browser. It's used to make a web page do stuff like a program instead of like a web page.

Question: Are you running as an Administrator user while you surf? And you mention this is for work - are you part of a company? Do you have a Domain and an IT department, etc?

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I work from home.

I'm a freelancer. I have no idea if I'm running as an administrator while I surf. I am whatever Windows 7 defaults me to.

[steer.livejournal.com]

After this discussion I was thinking "You know, this is absolutely right -- a modicum of common sense and a bit of basic laziness and no sensible person should pick up malware unless they're super unlucky."

Then, this about a massive hack into probably the world's most trusted computer security company.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/082611-was-this-the-e-mail-that-250136.html

[andrewducker]

Unfortunately, "a modicum of common sense" is incredibly rare...

[naath.livejournal.com]

Targeted attacks like that are rather harder to avoid than the general "cruft you pick up on the internet" type stuff I think.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Porn gets blamed for a lot of malware, but really you're more likely to get it from hunting down random online free games than you are from porn.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

I was invited to appear on radio in Canada and TV in the UK because of a piece I wrote on BBM and interception powers. However I turned them all down and sent them to someone who knew the law better than me. And would look better on TV. Oh, and who wasn't just another journalist.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Was there any good evidence that BBM was used more than any other messaging system (apart from the fact that blackberry is prevalent in that age group). It seemed that the rumour sprang from nowhere with no evidence other than that some people were seen to receive some messages using blackberries (which were, after all, the phones they use) and immediately it became accepted fact.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that it was used more because BBM messages, unlike text messages, are free to send, hence more likely to be used in poorer neighborhoods.

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

Labour joins Tories to stop trams even reaching Princes Street. Saving £9m/year, at the cost of not having a useful system.

Where did the 9m come from? Is that factoring in interest for the loan? Looking at the operating costs alone, running to St. Andrews Square would be 6m/year better than just to Haymarket, since they're projecting a 4m/year loss on the Haymarket option and 2m/year profit on the St. Andrew's Square option.

I despair. I really do...

[andrewducker]

Yup. Saving $15m on the loan, spending $6m more from the 4m+2m.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Likewise. I vaguely heard about this the other day, and now I read the full thing, I'm just astounded. How stupid can these guys be?

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

Cheers for the recommendation, patel!

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

I meant 'petal', but I rather like the idea of 'patel' as a term of endearment.

[andrewducker]

Me too! I was confused there for a moment, but I like it.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

The awesome Rosamicula writes about her experiences of being invited on news shows to talk about the riots.

Interesting, but sadly unsurprising. This sounds like a somewhat quieter version of similar events in the US.

I had not seen the original post before, and it also reminded me of writing I'd seen in the US from both conservatives who are either clueless idealists and those who are bitter cynics (but who at least remain within realms of sanity, unlike so many conservatives over hear) - the same unwillingness to accept that benefit cuts make people justifiably angry, and the same willingness to consider the worst off levels of the underclass as essentially sub-human.