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AngryBeaver

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Everything posted by AngryBeaver

  1. It is time for the FCC to step in and get rid of these carrier locked phones in the first place. Which sure as hell doesn't benefit the consumer and makes it possible for stuff like this to happen. Then again the FCC is next to worthless these days as they are in the pocket of the large corps and isps. What good is a consumer protection group that doesn't actually protect us. If they had a massive exodus to other providers they would quickly change their tune on this. but what we truly need we will never see since these companies pay millions of dollars blocking any competition that might offer us something worthwhile . The biggest slap in the face is if I OWN the phone and it has all of the functionality, but is being blocked by their crap software/bootloaders... then why do they have the right to tell me what I can and cannot do with said device. With all of these bootloaders it is becoming increasingly hard to root these devices an gain the proper admin access we should enjoy on these from DAY ONE!
  2. I guess I will chime in on yet another vpn discussion. Vpns are good for offering encryption for items sent in plaintext which is pretty rare these days. They are good for getting around regional content filtering. They can even be good at making your activity more anonymous (more on this in next paragraph) Now while vpns technically hide the true source it doesn't actually do it completely on it's own. You are first off at the mercy of what information said vpn collects and retains. If you have not blocked cookies and ensure you are not collecting new ones then you can and will still be tracked and identified. If you are not using encrypted dns then you still are exposing your usage and traffic to each domain you access (not the specific url though). Now i have seen people mentioned TOR and have seen people say it is not safe. I would say that while it isn't as fast as other vpns it is more secure in most regards. I have seen mention of MITM attacks, but I don't think people understand how they work. There are scenarios where you can be MITM without knowing or doing anything, but in the vast majority of situations that matter you have to give permission. Anything in plaintext can be seen at various times in the transmission. So something like an unsecure wifi, a span port on a router on the web, etc. Now if you are accessing your bank or a website using https this data is encrpyted and no visible. Now when someone attempts to MITM a encrypted connection you normally get a certificate alert or error. Now corporate networks do put their certificates on the image for their machines so this doesn't occur and it effectively allows them to MITM everything even encrypted data. So back on point for an attack on the web to do this you would need to accept their fake cert and basically ignore the warning. If you don't do that then they have no way of getting your private key to decrypt the communication. Now when it comes to a vpn it basically eliminates your plain text communications from being seen on public wifi, but once the data exits the other end of the vpn it is still succeptical to the other risks I mentioned. So when you look at activity most people perform on a daily basis the majority of it is already encrypted so this isn't something that can be easily MITM without the user activily accepting it. So in most cases a vpn is used for anonymity, but unless you are blocking cookies, using a secure dns, and using a service with NO logging this will fall short. Even then vpn ips are known after a little time so some services will restrict access. TOR on the other hand while slower has changing ips and nodes so it is better in that regard, it has the same level if not better in some cases encryption, and it is free. All of these methods need to block cookies and use a encrypted dns though. I won't even get into security of these popular vpns who often times so not properly invest into their cybersecurity teams. They try to operate and bigger profits and cut corners a great deal of the time. Plus anytime you require authentication to log on there will be risk of being exposed.
  3. I want to add this on as well. Apple 100% has a global risk and compliance team. There is NO WAY that these issues were not assessed and brought forward. The only way Apple wouldn't have done something to mitigate or protect consumers is because executive staff (high up the chain) signed off on the risk as being acceptable. It isn't like apple was blind sided or didn't know this was going on. They decided to turn a blind eye and train their support staff to tell people there was no recourse. I mean why do you think the scammers use these cards as a source of payment? They do so because there are literally no safeguards in place and no options for the victims.
  4. I thought you were just going to use said system in your home. If this is a rented machine then yes it will be fine. I mean if you are just wanting to do a seed box then you could save some money and go with a VPS with a guranteed link speed and the amount of storage you need. Would be cheaper and perform just as good if not better since you also get to tap into the shared resources.
  5. You could go with something like a raspberry pi 4 too. Just need a decent usb storage solution. It would definately be a cheaper option when it comes to energy use.
  6. Pi hole with DOT or DOH for dns sec and filtering. If you are trying to just protect your family for free then Filtering out malicious sites 1.1.1.2 1.0.0.2 For filtering out adult content and malicious sites. 1.1.1.3 1.0.0.3
  7. My point is that it isn't super obvious because of how fast internet speeds are and once the connection is established dns delay isn't part of the equation. https://www.dnsperf.com/ So the fastest average is 12ms the slowest average is 132ms so yes one is 11 times higher that the other... but we are talking about a 100th of a second compared to a 10th of a second. That, IMO, much quicker than most people would ever notice. Now if the DNS speed is super slow (in the range of seconds) it is possible to have a webpage load and have ads and pictures that might be coming from other domains take that delay to show up... which can make things pop in or cause the page to load images and scroll on you, but again we aren't talking about a huge amount of time here.
  8. Dns latency for most is rather pointless. It only affects the time it takes for the name to Ip translation to happen. So even if we are talking about a 2000 ms ping we are talking 2 seconds. So it isn't even a big inconvenience in that case. I mean if you KNEW to look for it you might be able to notice a 30ms vs 2000ms delay from dns, but I think the vast majority wouldn't even know it was slow. Plus 2000 ms isn't even a real scenario just an example I am using.
  9. Intel is going to be in a tough spot for the gaming crowd and those needing high core counts. For the rest of the world though it isn't going to hurt them too bad. They still have the majority of server market share and that is where the money is. AMD is encroaching on them, but still hasn't taken it away despite having really good high core chips. Intel really needs to kick the monolithic chips though. It is hurting them when it comes to yields and binning. Now there new 10xx processors with the new IHS is actually pretty nice for gaming, but I would rather have more cores for the similar price if we are only talking 10-20fps loss at levels that are already higher than a lot of monitor refresh rates. So if AMD can either get clocks or IPC up enough to close the gap... then they have a true win. If dx12 moves away from single core draw calls then AMD has a win. I mean don't get me wrong... it is amazing what intel is able to milk out of this old architecture, but it is reaching it's limits so they need to move to a better process soon if they want to stay competitive.
  10. https://www.amazon.com/XPOWER-Airrow-Multi-Use-Electric-Computer/dp/B086WRHRSJ?th=1
  11. If we look at vpns from a business stance they are almost a legacy thing. I am sure it will take another 5-10 years before it is dead, but SDP and zero trust are the new hotness. I mean 10-15 years ago this would be a completely different argument, but now (even more so after the Snowden leak) secure communication is enforced by most places, tools, and apps. It was mentioned earlier that your isp or the government can see your dns request when visiting a website, but even that can he encrypted now via various means like DOT ( dns over tls), DOH (dns over https), and dnscrypt. The biggest tracking mechanism now is cookies.
  12. Encryption is point to point. I won't go into too much detail on public and private keys, but basically your machine and thr end machine establish a secure connection that only the end machine can decrypt (outside of a few scenarios). You also have certificates issued by a cert authority to establish identity for a server. Which is why a mitm attack throws a certificatd error because it isn't an official signed cert for the end connection you are trying to establish. So being on an unsecured wifi or even connection only affects clear text communications. Now it does open your machine up to some different vulnerabilities on that segment or even web wide if the firewall rules are too liberal. Also by clear text I mean any type of obfuscation an computer can read like plaintext a good example of this would be base64.
  13. You can use the two in tandem for a little extra layer of security, but unless you are using plaintext the connections will already been encrypted by something like SSL. You have a similar chance of someone sniffing plaintext traffic on normal, vpn, or TOR. So depending on what type of information it was also tells us how effective anonymity is. TOR and a VPN make it harder to identify you and also provide a secure channel when on something like an insecure wifi. Though anything encrypted would still be safe in that scenario. Now once that traffic (again if plaintext) exits TOR or a VPN it is again just as succeptical to being seen. We are at a point where most connections either already use 100% or flip over to a SSL connection. So your random Google search might not be safe from prying eyes, but your login, email , files, etc all will be.
  14. This is correct. A mitm attack like is being mentioned requires you to have the cert on your machine to avoid the message everytime data hits that router. In the corporate world this is done via custom OS images that includes it and allows the company to see all of your data going over the network. If you are on a work machine thougjg your activity should never be considered private. Now the way these mitm routers work is that when you establish a secure connection via say ssl. The data from your machine to the smart switch (what we call them) is encrypted. Once it hits the switch it decrypts and views the packet, header, etc information. It then reestablished another secure connection between that server and the end destination so the data is encrypted again. As I said in an earlier post a lot of information is encrypted these days. So the only way for people in my field to have full visibility is to be able to see the packet data. So the corporate mitm becomes a necessary evil. I feel bad for a company that doesn't have one setup since domain fronting would be a major threat.
  15. These companies are out to make a buck and they do so via scare tactics. For probably 95% of people a vpn isn't needed and spying on you isn't worth the effort to analyze your data. Even then most sites and services of note are encrypted and you can even use an encrypted dns to hide what you are doing even further. Now let's look at vpns. Some don't retain user information or some only hold it for a short amount of time, but a lot are holding that data. So you are shifting visibility from your ISP to your VPN provider. Then you have these wonderful things called cookies. That means people like Google can still track you even over vpn unless you take steps to stop it. If you really want to be anonymous and for the low low cost of free then you can use the TOR network. Now this isn't a great solution for gaming or moving massive amounts of data, but it is a better solution than most VPNs. Heck you might as well pickup the TOR browser to and discover that the dark web doesn't necessarily mean illegal (though it is used for that too), but actually just means an untracked portion of the web.
  16. This is a GB connection that has constant traffic. So my blocked percentage would be lower. Mind you a high block percentage isn't good. It could mean you have lots of devices beaconing home. This could be Spyware, adware, virus, or just your smart devices. So in my home the 20% would mostly include a few ads from people browsing the web, some smart devices, etc. Then again like I said my internet usage is a pretty steady 100 down/100 up before even accounting for my home users. Oh I am also redirecting to another dns that blocks malicious sources (cloudfront)
  17. Apple doesn't really manufacture any of their own stuff. Yes, they do have their own proprietary connectors, main boards, etc. Yet the majority of those are variants on normal retail versions that are modified to only work with the apple products. They do not have or add any functionality you cannot get elsewhere. What they are really doing is just trying to make all upgrade and/or repair paths go through them, which is just another form of greed trying to lock you into their ecosystem. Don't get me wrong... other companies like dell and HP also use proprietary stuff, but they are no nearly as limited in options to repair or even upgrade those systems. Apple on the other hand wants to control every aspect down to the exact video cards they allow in their systems which if anything limits the ability of the consumer to fully take advantage of the system. I mean the inventor of the biggest and most successful OS is also the biggest philanthropist in the world... he even stepped down as CEO to make a company dedicated to that.
  18. Yet IOS is built on top of a linux/unix which is an opensource OS. Maybe Unix should change their ToS to state it cannot be used in a manner where you profit on it. Then since it is included in the apple fees they can start demanding payment for each sale. I mean apple wants everyone to think they own and invent everything, but these days that isn't even the case. They aren't the same innovative company they use to be. They just piece together hardware they get from other people and slap their logo on. They took a opensource OS and basically made their own distro, but want to limit who can use it. They over-charge for everything they make and then make it next to impossible to get parts or fix YOUR own damn products. Apple is not a good company. They are greedy and have been makings sure to get all the politicians needed in their pockets to make sure they can keep at it. I have owned Apple products in the past and I wouldn't buy another one no matter what. My employer has supplied me with a Dev MacBook and it is still collecting dust.
  19. Well luckily that is only your opinion. Since someone doing this as a side career can easily offer a guarantee and warranty service. They might even be able to have similar turn around speed since they would just need to ship back the bad component and then install the new one that gets sent. Instead of trying to ship a whole system like you might need to with some prebuilts. As for after service support depending on the person that would probably be much faster than other prebuilts could offer. I mean the market is saturated, but it doesn't mean it can't be viable as a source of side income. I once upon a time did a very similar thing mostly via ebay. Now they did change their policy on when payment is released which made it less feasible, but if you do it via FB market place or craiglist you can make it work in a very similar way. I think the biggest problem is that these days the task of tossing together a pc is much easier and a simple youtube video could walk most people through the process. Now where they would get hung up is if they DID encounter an issue. In the end it means the target audience has shrunk even more. In any case these are not "second hand computers" even more so if they are taking your budget and needs then piecing together the parts to meet those items. There is a big difference from someone tossing up a 2k gaming machine and someone who is working with you to customize a machine to your exact needs.
  20. Clickbait and giving some pretty biased numbers 100% does benefit those channels. Everyone like yourself will run there to back there point. In the end there are lots of bad comparison videos out there. Some of them have cpu's that bottleneck one of the gpus before you can see any real difference in speed. Others knowingly tweak settings to get skewed results. Now I am not saying the 5700xt is a bad card... it is a great card for the money. If you are willing to do the powermod and push your OC really high it can even come close to the 2070s and even surpass it in some cases, but this isn't a realistic use case for most users. In the end I would side with other posters that the 5700xt is very similar in performance to a 2070, but with that 2070 you get all the nice ray tracing, dlss, etc that comes with owning an nvidia card right now. When we talk about a 2070s though... it is slower in the vast majority of titles. Now it can be overclocked to produce higher numbers than the 2070s, bu then if you overclock the 2070s in the same way it once again pulls ahead by a good margin. On top of that nvidia cards are painless to OC right now. You bump up the power limit, run the new auto OC tool, crank your memory up to 700+ oc and watch your performance jump another 5-10%. It takes all of maybe 15-20 minutes. If you want to get good OC on the 5700xt you need to play with power tables and most of the other items manually. So it comes down to what you are looking for. If you want to save some money go with the 5700xt for a little performance hit (i wouldn't even say it is enough to care about since the fps is still very good). If you want the best performance or want all of the extra features then Nvidia 2070S is the way to go.
  21. The custom building market is saturated already and there are enough big players out there that can buy in bulk you will be hard pressed in making a decent profit. You are much better off just offering your services via craiglist or facebook market. If you build a 2k pc and it doesn't sell you are out the 2k. If you offer the services then provide them a custom build... then they are more in control of their price and can provide the cash for the parts + your build fee. I would probably also toss on some kind of cheap warranty for like 30 bucks or so. More than likely it wouldn't be needed, but gives them peace of mind and since it should be covered by the manufacturer warranty you are only going to be out the time in the case one does fail.
  22. I would also look into the Infosec path (information security). The roles range from extremely technical to just needing to understand principles and make sure they are enforced. I mention Information Security, because it has a massive deficit of people in the field (Tons of open positions and no where close to enough to fill them). Then you have to look at the pay and generally it is VERY good. Entry level Cybersecurity pays in the 65-80k range depending on background, education, etc. After 2-3 years that jumps up again to the high 80s to mid 90s. 5+ years and you can easily be making 6 figures. Now some of this changes depending on where you live... so if your cost of living is low you might need to drop that by 10-15% across the board, but I am mostly speaking to averages which are some of the best in IT.
  23. That is an Anecdotal Fallacy. While I did give a personal example myself, my example is backed by Intel doing some actual research on this and looking for the root cause as it was a big ordeal when the 7 series hit. I would know since I am actually a Intel Power-user (merit based mod). So there were some issues with the 7 series that caused these issues on the higher clocked chips. First was a slight change in the architecture that moved to a theory of the faster something can be completed the more time the cpu can spend in an idle state. This caused a lot of cpu temp spikes that caused cpu fan speeds to fluctuate wildly which annoyed users. Second was there were inconsistency to the amount of silicon adhesive used to keep the IHS on... this meant that the thermal transfer from DIE to IHS was a problem on a good % of chips. Then we have the fact this chip had a 300mhz higher clock which resulted in requiring more volts than your 6700k which results in MORE heat. A quick google search would have revealed all of that, but instead you decided to tell me to shut up instead of do a little research. There is a reason that when these chips were delidded the temps would drop anywhere from 10-25 degrees C under stress testing. Now what YOUR cpu does in games does not mean his next gen chip with higher stock clocks will produce the same. There are a ton of variables here that can greatly impact temps. You have Ambient temp, case temp (if bad air flow), the cpu cooler being used, the quality of the chip, the voltage needed to hit stock boost clocks, etc etc etc. So again instead of telling someone to "shut up" maybe you should try educating yourself to avoid showing your own ignorance.
  24. It doesn't mean those servers and/or cloud platforms will not have a place. You are also assuming that the blockchain is going to be managed and maintained by customer owned machines. We will still see the same SaaS type setups we see now, just they will move to their own blockchain solution. Blockchain doesn't immediately make all of these things obsolete. It is just a way of managing, securing, and storing data. There are many ways to implement it and it will be dependent on what the app/software developers want to do. Microsoft and amazon aren't going to magically move away from their cloud environments.
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