Windows 10 and hardware incompatibility

A few months ago, I replaced my laptop and my desktop.  The move was motivated by a need to reinstall the OS (Windows 8) due to slowness and broken system components.  My desktop was particularly nasty - the Windows update mechanism broke, causing it to take 3 hours to boot up.  I spent the 2 months leading up deftly avoiding reboots, lest I lose a half-day of productivity.  Reinstalling the OS is somewhat traumatic, as I have lots of configuration to do, so I decided that I might as well update my hardware as well.  I also decided 2 other things:

1. Try to switch away from Windows dependency as much as possible.
2. For things that require Windows, try Windows 10, since it will eventually be the only Windows choice anyway.

Linux

On both my laptop and desktop, I am running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS - and I have to say, I am doing remarkably well.  To my amazement, I can still do all of my mixing in Reaper, on Wine.   The MOTU 896 FW interface is another story - Apparently MOTU is not friendly to Linux, so I have gotten rid of it and gotten a Focusrite Sapphire Pro 40 instead.  

There are a few things I need Windows for - such as Quickbooks, Corel Draw, Sketchup, Vegas, and some apps I need to run for development work... But for now I am doing okay by running these things in a Windows 7 Virtualbox VM.

Windows 10

I have also set up dual boot to Windows 10 (on demand, not the default) on my desktop and laptop.  I wish I could report as much success with my Windows 10 tests.  Unfortunately, I have had no joy, due to the following issues thus far:

• Touchpad driver in my new HP Spectre x360 is buggy (jumpy and misses clicks). No fix found (Note: this may seem minor, but stuff like this really pisses me off, and reinforces the fact that paying top dollar for a laptop doesn't mean everything is going to work right, or even better than a cheap laptop).
• Behringer X-Air audio driver is buggy (audio interface shows up intermittently, and sometimes stops responding in the middle of a recording). 
• MOTU 896 doesn't work on Windows 10 either.

All told, these issues are significant the point where I will have to roll back to Windows 7 or 8 until things settle out a little more. 

Sweetwater.com has published this list - sort of a "state of Windows 10 compatibility" for various recording hardware.  As of now, it's rather bleak - with some pretty notable entries not being compatible at this time.  But I suppose if you are a "real recording engineer", you only use a Mac anyway, right? (Bleahhhh...)

It is pretty clear that, despite Microsoft's big push to roll out Windows 10, there are hardware vendors who are just not ready.  If you are on the fence and depend on a lot on certain hardware, make extra sure that everything works perfectly before you plan to leap.  However, since that's probably a lot of trial and error, I would just hold out as long as possible, until the hardware vendors get a chance to catch up.

Bonus tip:  You can take advantage of Microsoft's free Windows 10 upgrade offer without having to switch! 

I may go into more detail in another post, but here are the steps in a nutshell:

1. Temporarily install a blank hard drive in place of your existing hard drive.
2. Install a fresh, stock Windows 7 or 8 onto it (must be the exact version that came with your computer), and activate using your product key.
3. Upgrade to Windows 10  - this will create a NEW product key associated with your hardware fingerprint, and stored on Microsoft's servers.  If you ever want to install Windows 10 on this computer in the future, it will use the same product registration automatically. 
4. Remove the drive and replace with your original.  You don't need to keep Windows 10 installed on the spare drive, but it may be handy.
5. Switch to Windows 10 whenever YOU want - even after the free upgrade deadline.

Perl script for comparing files: List missing lines, regardless of order

The other day, I was comparing two different sitemap files of the same site. One had more links than the other, and I was trying to get a list of what was missing from the shorter one. However, since they were from different sitemap generators, the order of the links were completely different in each file.

Surprisingly, this turned out to be a much bigger challenge than I thought. I figured I could use some variation of a grep command line, or diff, but I wasn't able to find a simple combination of command line options for either that would do what I was looking for. It seems like everything I found was more geared toward comparing files that were in the same order. Diff simply dumped a large list of all the lines in file2; since the order was different than file1, every line was considered a mismatch.

Knowing this was a fairly trivial operation to do in Perl, I decide to write a quick script to do it. I'm sharing it here in case it can benefit anyone else:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# The purpose of this script is to print the lines in file2 that are not present in file1, regardless of order.

unless ($#ARGV>=1) {die "Usage: different-lines.pl [file1.txt] [file2.txt]";}

open (FILE1,$ARGV[0]) || die "Unable to open $ARGV[0]: $!\n";
open (FILE2,$ARGV[1]) || die "Unable to open $ARGV[1]: $!\n";

# Store the contents of file1 in array
while (<FILE1>) {push (@lines_one,$_);}

close FILE1;

# Iterate through each line of file2, checking for presence in file1, and setting a flag if it's found.
while (<FILE2>) {
        $flag=0;
        foreach $line (@lines_one) {
                $line=~s/\s+$//g;
                s/\s+$//g;

                if ($line =~ /$_/) {$flag=1; last;}
        }
        unless ($flag) {push (@missing_from_1, $_);}
}

close FILE2;

# Dump the results (missing lines)
foreach $line (@missing_from_1) {
        print $line."\n";
}

People of the world beware: An assault on our privacy is coming, of unimaginable proportions.

Yes, that's kind of hyperbolic, but it's really the only way to get the point across.  Your personal data and information is quickly becoming digital - and almost everything digital is accessible online.  Here are a few small examples of the things that you probably don't think about being accessed by someone you haven't authorized, and how it could impact your life:

• A GPS track of everywhere you have been in the last year, from your phone or your car
• A list of the radio stations or music you listen to every day
• Pictures/video of you taken as you sit in front of your computer

There is no denying that we are heading toward a completely on-line existence.  Progress has spoken - social networking has propelled much more than photos of you and your friends to be put online.  Devices like exercise bracelets, music sharing websites that advertise what you listened to, refrigerators that track what you've eaten, cars that log your speed and driving habits, and SO MUCH MORE.   And the convenience of the cloud means that all this data is likely to be housed not in your hands - but those of someone else (like Facebook or Google).

The big question is this:

What stands in the way of someone you don't know getting access to these things?

In today's world, 9-times-out-of-10, even in the best case scenario, it's a single password.  Yes, a single password is all it takes for someone who wanted to completely ruin your life.  Even if you are conscientious and maintain a separate password for each website (which most people don't), most systems utilize your e-mail address to reset your password, making the point of vulnerability for almost of your data a single password - the one on your e-mail account.

Ask yourself another question:  What is my attitude toward passwords? How about my family's? And my friends'?  I'm willing to guess that the answer for at least one of these contingents is something along the lines of this:

"Passwords are a pain in the neck, I invest the minimum amount of effort I can get away with."

Unfortunately, it gets worse.

As your data footprint gets wider, the chances that someone will make a human error that exposes your data rises.  That means your data could be compromised even if you are diligent about security.

So if we look at all this in perspective over time, we have the following factors:

• More sensitive data being created, 
• More of that sensitive data being put on online, 
• With basically the same type of security we have had to protect our data since the invention of e-mail - at best, a single password, and
• At worst, diminishing security, as any of the increasing number of online services housing our data are vulnerable to compromise.
• As people are becoming increasingly aware, government agencies like the NSA are becoming more powerful (by necessity?), and can requisition your data from those services whenever they want

And still worse.

Up until now, you probably have a friend or two who have had their computer "pwned", or their e-mail account hacked.  Most likely they had to reformat their computer, change their e-mail and other passwords, maybe send an apology to their friends for spam they received from their account, and in the more extreme cases, change their credit card numbers and notify their banks.  

But this is NOTHING, in terms of the amount or severity, compared to what we will see in 5-10 years from now, as more of our data is made digital.  The stakes will be far higher.  If a hacker gains access to your Facebook account today, that counts for some amount of value - perhaps they can advertise something or blackmail you into paying some amount of money.  But if they can gain access to your banking info, your living habits, the vehicles you own, all of your financials, and other things we can't even imagine, hacking becomes more lucrative.  Instead of script-kiddies and people who write in broken English sitting in front of a home computer, we are talking about highly paid, technically adept, convincing actors, whose job it is to gain access to your data.  These people could even be blurring the lines between malicious or illegal activity, working for government contracts for organizations like the NSA.  They will stop at almost nothing, and they will move on to someone else before you even know anything happened to you.  Eventually, privacy is going to become one of the most valued (and valuable) things on the internet, and in the world.

The point of this article isn't to generate paranoia.  It's a wake-up call about where we're heading, and how our (collective) attitudes are going to need to change, if this is all going to be sustainable.  Sadly, we are most assuredly going to have to weather a few major storms before there is a widespread change in the way we all approach security.

So as crazy new gadgets that find new and novel ways to computerize your life emerge, think carefully about what you choose to adopt.  Consider the gains against the risks to your privacy.  If you do decide to adopt something, think about what you can do to prevent your data from falling into the wrong hands, and take the opportunity to do it.  

Suggestion: Just turn off your Facebook privacy settings

That's right, the title of this post is not a typo.  You should strongly consider disabling all of your Facebook privacy settings; by that I mean making them the most publicly visible (to the entire internet).  To see why, read on.

Windows 7 & 8 Install New Updates: anytime it wants to?!

Today, both my desktop (Windows 8 Home Premium) and my laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium) shutdown and rebooted to install Windows updates WHILE I WAS USING them.  Yes, sitting there, typing, not idle, not at 3 AM when I have supposedly configure updates to auto install, and not with any warning or chance to postpone or override...  Just, boom!  Programs start closing, Windows logs me out, and "Windows is configuring updates".  Then computer completely reboots, Windows starts back up, and resumes "configuring updates".

My question is, how is this acceptable?  This is the default behavior of Windows.  I have not modified it in anyway, I simply chose "install Windows updates automatically for me (recommended)" during the initial setup of Windows.  Last I knew, that should not sign me up to have my computer randomly shut down while I am using it for something, possibly in the middle of typing a very LONG post on a forum or website.

And what of the only configurable setting I have access to (without making registry tweaks) in control panel, the one that says "Install New Updates: Every Day at: 3:00 AM".  Should this actually read "Install New Updates: anytime Windows wants to?"  My only other option is to disable automatic updates, and I highly doubt Microsoft wants to encourage that.

So essentially the Windows user world is supposed to put up with the possibility that their machine could shut down at any time while they're using it?  How is that acceptable?!

Windows 8 audio clicks and glitches narrowed down to Malwarebytes

Ever since I got my Windows 8 PC, I have been having serious problems with audio.  Basically all sound playback on my system experiences a brief  but frequent click, skip, glitch, stutter, whatever you prefer.  I can reproduce the issue on any sound card or firewire sound interface (devices tested include the onboard Conexant SmartAudio HD, my external Phonic Helix 12, and my Edirol FA-101).  All of them seem to have audio clicks, with the firewire interfaces' clicks seeming more harsh for whatever reason.

Stop using Dropbox to send a file

Dropbox.  It's becoming the household name for the way to transfer files, and I don't understand why.

Galaxy Nexus Tales of Woe

One of my ongoing battles with my Gnex is the charging port.  In the past, it has stopped working, and after lots of Google searches, I found out that a common issue is the little inner tab not making contact with the cable (fixed by bending it up slightly).

After a recent vacation, I found once again that my phone wouldn't charge.  This time, it seemed that the charging port was somehow mutilated, and the cord didn't seem to go in correctly.  The contacts were bent inside the phone.  I don't have the insurance, and I'm kind of used to being on my own warranty after rooting, ROMing, etc.  After researching, I promptly ordered this replacement USB flex board, for about $50 w/ shipping, and replaced the board following this iFixit how-to.

The procedure was a little tricky, but not too bad. In general everything felt like it went smoothly, and I expected no issues.   However, after putting the phone back together, the phone still wouldn't charge.  I disassembled the phone again, double-checked all my connections, and tried multiple cables.  It's a very curious (and frustrating) issue.

After some more thorough testing, the situation seems to be as follows:

• The microphone and notification light, also part of the replacement board, are working (ruling out a missed connector or a completely non-functional replacement part).
• The phone WILL charge off a wall AC adaptor, at the fast rate.
• The phone WON'T charge off my 12V lighter charger, which used to charge at the fast rate.
• The phone WON'T charge, or acknowledge a connection in any way, to a computer.  It's like it's not even plugged in, to both the computer and the phone.

So that rules out pretty much everything as I understand how the port works.  I could see maybe some of the pins not working in the port, but the 12V charger and the wall charger should be using the exact same pins, so I can't see how only the wall charger would work.  And above all, I don't see how a brand new replacement part, with such a straightforward replacement process, would fail to work in any way.

Not really sure what I'm going to do.  The temptation is to buy a used replacement off eBay, they seem to be selling for around $250-$300.  

AT&T Throttling Their Top 5% Unlimited Data Users

You may or may not be aware of it, but there have been reports that AT&T is throttling their "Unlimited Data" customers, essentially making a limit of a supposedly "unlimited data plan".

This has been a long time coming.  Last year, AT&T and Verizon Wireless began forcing new users into tiered (limited) data plans, with a certain amount of data allowed per month.  The typical allotments are 500MB, 2GB, 5GB, 10GB, etc.   The price of the plan rises with the amount allowed.  Meanwhile, old users are supposedly "grandfathered" into the unlimited data they signed up for.  Apparently, AT&T has decided that there needs to be a certain amount of pressure to steer people in the direction of tiered data plans.  I haven't heard of anyone having this experience with Verizon Wireless.

As a side note, I find it interesting that people use that much data on their phones.  As an example, I consider myself to be a smartphone power user, and my cell data usage is somewhere between 500M and 1GB a month.

On one hand, I think a lot of new smartphone owners are prone to much higher cell data usage than they actually need, because they don't bother to set their phones up to use their own WiFi connection at home.  Going by my own experience, I've had 3 users in the last 2 days tell me they didn't even know that was possible, let alone preferential.  At the risk of sounding like I am inciting a holy war between Android and iPhone (trust me, plenty of others have done this for me, thank you very much), I'll also point out that they were all iPhone users.

On the other hand, in fairness, I don't have 4G coverage, and I don't watch Netflix on my phone when I am not at home.  Also, after some quick research, most of the major data consumers do appear to be Android users, and that makes sense when you consider that the iPhone doesn't have access to real 4G networks.  I got a chance to play around with 4G the other day when I was out of Vermont (see my previous post about Vermonters being Verizon Wireless second-class citizens), and my first thought was, "Wow, look how quickly I rack up some serious data usage!"  Not having to wait for anything removes all of the subconscious internal limiters I have about using certain functions (or, put simply: my phone is more fun to use!)

I still think there are a lot of people using cell data when they don't need to, and as smartphones become more and more accessible, this issue will become more of a trend.

Congratulations, You're BLACKLISTED!

A long time ago, I posted The Trouble With Greylisting.  My latest rant is brought to you by the current state of e-mail server blacklisting.  I'll relate to you the following anecdote, to help with the specifics:

My client recently purchased a new internet pipe from their ISP - (I won't specify, but let's just say they're "Vermont's largest wireline provider.")  Along with this new connection came a new block of public IP addresses.  This has been standard fare - they have switched connections 3 times in the last 2 years, and for a variety of reasons, each time it's been a fiasco to get everything migrated to the new block.

This time it almost went incredibly smoothly (without question, this was at least partly due to the help of an Astaro Security Gateway, and its almost infinite flexibility).  The only snag was when I moved the mail server over to the new IP block.  Within 20 minutes, people were reporting bounces (undeliverable message reports).  The new IP address was blacklisted for sending spam.  I moved the server to another IP in the block, and an hour or so later, received another report of the same issue.  For the record, this server is totally clean, and sends maybe 50 totally legit messages an hour, during peak.

The only explanation is that some (perhaps all?) of the IPs that were given to us were previously used by spammers.  As I played the scenario through in my head, it all made sense.  Due to the severely overtaxed IPv4 address space, addresses are constantly recycled.  Furthermore, every IP address in that space has probably used by a spammer at some time or another, given the number of spammers in the world.  Ok, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but still...  It was enough for me to get the picture.

I moved the mail server back to the known good IP, and then set out to start the long and arduous process of delisting all these IPs.  Even though I don't plan to use more than one for sending mail, I need to have options, as obviously I can't predict what is going to happen to my IP reputation, regardless of what is actually my fault.

Throughout the process, one interesting thing I got to see was the variety of different types of blacklists out there.  They range from reasonable and responsible (think Spamcop), to strange, and obscure.  Some blacklists are very straightforward about removal requests.  The policy is simply "check yourself, and then click the removal button."  Some blacklist providers investigate reports of spam before listing a host.  However, the lower end providers take a very lazy approach to blacklist management.  They blacklist everything based on loose criteria, don't expire anything, and make it very difficult for hosts to request removal.  One delisting form was actually punctuated with a lecture about how

So, to review, we have 2 problems:

1. (some) ISPs sell IP blocks with no guarantees about the reputation of IPs within that block

2. (some) Blacklist providers use lazy tactics to manage their lists, including listing without due process, with complicated and indefinite delisting requirements, and without expiration of highly outdated listings.

With these 2 factors at work, it's a very disconcerting direction for private mail hosting in general.