NonstopSysop Episode #5 - Hams and Cheese

Intro

Welcome to Episode 5 of Nonstop Sysop titled, Hams and Cheese.  I’m your host, Phil Williams.  Thank you for listening.  I hope this podcast makes your commute to work or time at your desk more enjoyable and informative.

Please take a moment to check out my site, nonstopsysop.com.  I would love for you to subscribe to the podcast and follow our show on one of our outlets including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts to name a few. 

The show can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook: @nonstopsysop

Please take time to share the podcast with friends, family, and coworkers who might be interested.

You can find your host on social media at Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit: @pvols1979

Sponsors/Patrons

Please consider donating to, or sponsoring, the show.  One of the ways you can support the show is through Patreon.com.  As a paying patron subscriber, we will provide you with exclusive access to our Slack community and early previews of upcoming episode content.  Becoming a patron subscriber will currently cost you $5 USD a month and we think it is well worth the investment.  All patrons will have direct access to me, your friendly host, and the special ability to participate in members-only polls that I will be using to help guide the future of the show.

https://www.patreon.com/NonstopSysop

On of the most important contributions you can make to our growth is to share the show with others.  From your favorite listening platform, you can share the show or a single episode through email, text, etc.  When we post about a new episode on Facebook or Instagram, share those updates with your followers.  If you have not done so already, please find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and follow us there for updates and additional content.

Share comments, letters, follow-up materials, etc from previous episode

Please remember that good password hygiene is not going to keep you 100% safe.  Good security is multilayered and never relies on a single factor.  I have been bringing up the idea of multi factor authentication for multiple episodes now.  It is important to understand the times when it is appropriate to enable MFA, such as with your bank account or credit card companies.  Practice good password hygiene and utilize MFA, where it makes sense, to help ensure your online account safety.  This leads us into our Tip of the Week.  In August of last year, Last Pass reveled that it had been the subject of a breach and that sensitive user data, including encrypted password vaults, were taken by attackers.  While the encrypted vault data is enc

NonstopSysop Episode #4 - Yes Man

Intro

Welcome to Episode 4 of Nonstop Sysop titled, Yes Man.  I am your host, Phil Williams.  I am glad you took time to tune in to the show.  I hope this show makes your commute to work or time at your desk more enjoyable and informative.

Please take a moment to check out my site, nonstopsysop.com.  I would love for you to subscribe to the podcast and follow our show on one of our outlets including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts to name a few. 

The show can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook: @nonstopsysop

Please take time to share the podcast with friends, family, and coworkers who might be interested.

You can find your host on social media at Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit: @pvols1979

Sponsors/Patrons

Please consider donating to, or sponsoring, the show.  One of the ways you can support the show is through Patreon.com.  As a paying patron subscriber, we will provide you with exclusive access to our Slack community and early previews of upcoming episode content.  Becoming a patron subscriber will currently cost you $5 USD a month and we think it is well worth the investment.  All patrons will have direct access to me, your friendly host, and the special ability to participate in members-only polls that I will be using to help guide the future of the show.

https://www.patreon.com/NonstopSysop

Share comments, letters, follow-up materials, etc from previous episode

Tip of the week (Security, apps, hacks, etc)

Our tip of the week this week is related to the home lab.  I am sure many of you, like me, have servers running in your home that you tinker around with.  For those of you who have reached the point where it is difficult to remember which servers applications were installed on, or even more importantly, want to help your family members know how to access them…I would like to introduce you to Heimdall, an application dashboard.  With Heimdall in place, you can simply remember one page (or save it in your bookmarks) and from there you will have graphical buttons pointing to various applications that you configure on your page. These can be web applications or simply URLs to resources.  You can set Heimdall up as your browser start page, and it even includes the ability to add a search bar with Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo.

I have provided a link to the GitHub page for the project in our show notes:

https://github.com/linuxserver/Heimdall

I came across this project while I was researching ways to keep up with all of the services I have set up at my home.  I have my firewall, various hardware devices that have web interfaces, multiple websites/blogs that I manage, etc.  It is hard

NonstopSysop Episode #3 - Paycut and Probation

Intro

Welcome to Episode 3 of Nonstop Sysop titled, Paycut and Probation.  I am your host, Phil Williams.  I am glad you took time to tune in to the show.  I hope this show makes your commute to work or time at your desk more enjoyable and informative.

Please take a moment to check out my site, nonstopsysop.com.  I would love for you to subscribe to the podcast and follow our show on one of our outlets including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts to name a few. 

The show can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook: @nonstopsysop

Please take time to share the podcast with friends, family, and coworkers who might be interested.

You can find your host on social media at Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit: @pvols1979

Sponsors/Patrons

Please consider donating to, or sponsoring, the show.  One of the ways you can support the show is through Patreon.com.  As a paying patron subscriber, we will provide you with exclusive access to our Slack community and early previews of upcoming episode content.  Becoming a patron subscriber will currently cost you $5 USD a month and we think it is well worth the investment.  All patrons will have direct access to me, your friendly host, and the special ability to participate in members-only polls that I will be using to help guide the future of the show.

https://www.patreon.com/NonstopSysop

Share comments, letters, follow-up materials, etc from previous episode

One of the topics we discussed last week was the story around Chinese spy balloons which were sighted over the US and Latin America last week.  One of those was shot down over the Carolina coast.  News articles began to emerge shortly after the downing of the balloon off the US coast line stating that other Chinese spy balloons crossed into US airspace during the Trump administration, but were not detected by our military.  On Thursday, February 9th, CNN reported that the Biden administration had determined that the balloon downed off the coast did, in fact contain signal intelligence collection capabilities.  On Saturday, two more “high altitude” objects were downed over Alaska and Canada by US forces.  The object in Canada was downed by a US fighter at the request of Canadian authorities.

Something is clearly going on here.  There are multiple factors here that are concerning from the multiple geographies involved, to the sheer number of aircraft, and still the lack of a compelling story from the Chinese government.  Since, China admitted at one point that at least one of the balloons was Chinese, I suspect that the others are as well, but it will be interesting to watch this story as it develops. 

Welcome to Episode 2 of Nonstop Sysop, titled “AI, May I?”.  I am your host, Phil Williams. Thank you for tuning into the show.   It is my goal to make your commute or time at your desk more enjoyable and informative.

Please take a moment to check out my site, nonstopsysop.com.  I would love for you to subscribe to the podcast and follow our show on one of our outlets including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts to name a few. 

The show can be found on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook: @nonstopsysop

Please take time to share the podcast with friends, family, and coworkers who might be interested.

You can find your host with the most on social media at Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit: @pvols1979

Please consider donating to or sponsoring the show.  One of the ways you can give financially to the show is through Patreon.com.  As a paying patron subscriber, we will provide you with exclusive access to our Slack community and early previews of upcoming episode content.  Becoming a patron subscriber will currently cost you $5 USD monthly, and we think it is well worth the investment.  All patrons will have direct access to me, your friendly host, and the special ability to participate in members-only polls that I will be using to help guide the future of the show.

https://www.patreon.com/NonstopSysop

Last episode, we discussed Apple ID supporting hardware security keys.  We spent a few minutes discussing Mastodon.  We finished up with conversation around the current season of layoffs we are seeing in the tech industry.  If you missed that content, I invite you to go back and have a listen to our first episode, playfully entitled…Episode One.  Please keep in mind that last week’s episode was our first and we have a lot of room to grow in both quality and content.

I did receive some feedback from one listener around last week’s material.  Evidently the topics hit the mark and were interesting.  There was mention of a high pitched sound in the audio.  I have updated some of my recording steps and I am using some new software for the recording in this episode, but please do let me know if the quality is not what you are expecting.  This listener suggested that the audience look into another option for hardware security keys, Nitrokey.  https://www.nitrokey.com/   These keys appear to be very similar to the Yubikeys mentioned in our previous episode and are similarly priced, but are manufactured in Germany.  This might please some of

Geek, Husband, Father of 6

Two special needs children (blind, nonverbal, etc)

• Adopted from China
• Our two adopted children are not biologically related as many people suspect

20+ years in IT

• IT Operations - NetOps performance monitoring
• Security Operations - Host based intrusion, perimeter security, etc
• Big Data
• Technical sales and leadership roles in two large software companies on the West coast

I mentioned my son was a streamer...Check out JustVelocityy

SysOp - The system operator of a Bulletin Board System

• First BBS (CBBS) software created by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess in 1978 as a way to stay connected with their computer club during a brutal winter
• BBS’s were computer systems set up as servers which allowed others to connect over dial-in modems to exchange messages, chat, share files, and interact in other ways. These humble systems were often simple desktop computers sitting in someone’s home
• BBS’s tended to be very personal as users typically dialed into local numbers in their vicinity as to not incur long distance charges
• The SysOp was the admin, owner, and facilitator of the BBS and would often communicate directly with users.

Regular Show Format

• Intro
• Sponsors/Patrons
• Share comments, letters, follow-up materials, etc from previous episode
• Tip of the week (Security, apps, hacks, etc)
• 2 -3 news stories, articles, interesting nuggets from the web
• Closing comments

Regular Show Schedule

I will release a new episode and upload weekly on Sunday evening so listeners can begin the work week with access to the latest episode.

• Available with IOS 16.3
• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213154
• Yubico - hardware security key manufacturer - https://yubico.com
• Multi-factor auth   Authentication using two or more factors to achieve authentication. Factors are (i) something you know (e.g., password/personal identification number); (ii) something you have (e.g., cryptographic identification device, token); and (iii) something you are (e.g., biometric). Source(s): NIST SP 1800-12b under multifactor authentication
• What is NIST?
• Mastodon

What is Mastodon? I did have a link to recent blog post I made, but I took that blog down after the recording of the podcast.  Here is where you can learn more about Mastodon.

• November 2022 Meta laid off 11,000 people, about 13% of its workforce
• Google, IBM, and SAP, and others have made significant layoffs already this year
• Many of these layoffs are being blamed on slowdowns in customer demand, recession worries, and issues related to the COVID pandemic