Password Protected Garage Door Remotes

As a paranoid person and a recent homeowner, I started to wonder how safe I actually am in my house. Consider this likely scenario that nobody seems to be concerned with:

I park my car outside for one night and don’t take out my portable garage door remote, the one with a single open/close button. Or, even worse, the remote code is programmed into one of those garage opener buttons built into the car. A car burglar comes along, breaks the window, and trashes my car. Wow, an added bonus – a free entrance into the house!

Needless to say, this is bad already. How many of you lock the door between the house and the garage? What if you forget to do that as well? Is there a spare house key laying around in the garage? You may say “but I’ll hear the garage door open” but does it actually make you feel better? You will be present with an intruder in your house, which will scare the living shit out of you non-governator types.

So here’s my question to you, Internet, is there a garage door remote I can buy that has a programmable keypad, so that a password is needed for the button to work? In fact, it would be almost the same as the one that mounts next to the garage door. And can it not cost $100?

Twitter Security

This part is not about computer security, as you may have thought at first, although I did recently discuss it in the Clickjacking article. I also know that I’m not the first one to bring this issue up but I think it’s worth discussing some more. Consider this scenario:

You’re a cheerful, outgoing snowboarding enthusiast with 3000 twitter (plurk, facebook, or another social network but twitter is the most relevant example) followers. Or maybe you have 3 followers. There’s a 99.9% chance that your profile and updates are public (if you have 3000 followers with a private profile, you must be some sort of a chump. And yes, I did just make the stats up, want fight about it?).

So, on Friday night, you send the following tweet: “Gone snowboarding for the whole weekend. But not before getting piss trashed Friday night at the casino. Wooooo”.

Since anybody can watch your tweets absolutely anonymously and it’s extremely easy to dig up an address knowing very little about a person, what you just said was “If you are a burglar looking for the next opportunity, just drop everything and come on by Friday night. I will be far-far away but my house (located at 123 Main St) will be available for your robbing pleasures. You only have 2 days before anyone is home, so feel free to crash on the couch and eat my food. Don’t forget to feed the cat. Kthx.”

Is this a likely scenario? Not really, unless twitter raises the tweet length to more than 140 characters, but otherwise you see where I’m going with this. Don’t be stupid – avoid advertising exact details of your whereabouts, vacation plans, etc. There are plenty of uses for Twitter without giving up most of your privacy. Ask yourself: would you post a note with your whereabouts on your door every time you leave the house for a while?

How Do Trains And Buses Know Where They Are?

If you live in a relatively large city, you have seen relatively accurate bus and train arrival predictions and, in some cases, almost exact locations of each vehicle. For example, here in San Francisco we have MUNI stations with live maps of trains’ whereabouts and bus stops with bus predictions on small electronic displays.

What is the technology behind it? It cannot be just GPS, because trains go underground where there is no reception. If it’s a combination of externally mounted sensors, are they also placed outside, once the train gets out into the street? Or is it some sort of a 2-way GPS (a conventional GPS device is just a receiver) underground that switches to sensors above ground? I don’t know but I want to.

Train/Bus Drivers And Bathrooms

While I’m on the public transportation subject, here’s what I want to know: if you are a train/bus/trolleybus driver, what do you do if you NEED to go somewhere when you are half way down your route? All of us had such moments at least once, and sometimes you just HAVE TO drop the bomb, sink some submarines, drop the kids off at the pool, release the chocolate hostage, plant some potatoes, give birth to a VB programmer, down the proctoscope, bake some brownies, you know what I mean (if you don’t, you’re a senile muppet, what are you doing on the Internet?).

They can’t just leave the train in the middle of the street, can they? Have you ever seen one run out in the middle of the street? I’m really curious here.

All Of Dilbert

Is there a Dilbert collection somewhere that has every Dilbert comic in an easily browseable manner, ideally with ratings I can sort by? 100 Dilberts per page would be ideal. Ah, looks like the new Dilbert.com finally made it a reality: all Dilbert comics sorted by votes, 49 per page.

Where Can I Buy A Circus Tent?

Who sells them? The ones where elephants and clowns could fit. It could also double as a portable office.

Who Gets To Eat The Most Delicious Burger In Burger Commercials?

And where do I sign up? I’m serious.

● ● ●

Yeah, so that’s pretty much what’s on my mind right now. What’s on yours?

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I'm happy to report that Beer Planet's PR went up yet again on this update, from 3 to 4 and my buddy Thaya's PR went up from 2 to 3. He's been blogging a lot more about WordPress, and I think he'll surpass me very soon, thanks to his ingenious plugins.

Is it time to check your site's PR? You can use the Google Toolbar, Firefox plugins, like Search Status, or a range of websites that provide this number, like this one.

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Producer Frank Marshall revealed plans to begin shooting a fourth Jason Bourne movie next Summer, for release in 2010. Universal announced the project back in February, with director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon set to return. Marshall also confirmed that they will probably be creating an original story for the fourth film.

read more

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That's a 3 mbit per second upload = 375 KB/s. Wow, Comcast, just wow. I know there are many people having complaints about service but after being a customer for 8 years, I really am happy with everything. Blows the puny DSL away.

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• Beer Planet Hosting Moved Away From Dreamhost (Thank God, Finally!)

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cd YOUR_BLOG_ROOT/wp-content/plugins;
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec svn up {} \;

What this command does is finds the top level directories in your WordPress plugins directory, then applies the "svn update" command to each, one by one.

The result is something like

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Fetching external item into 'akismet'
A    akismet/readme.txt
Updated external to revision 50666.
 
Updated to revision 8094.
At revision 8094.
U    share-this/sharethis.php
Updated to revision 50666.
D    wp-postratings/postratings-admin-js.php
D    wp-postratings/postratings-usage.php
D    wp-postratings/postratings-js.php
A    wp-postratings/postratings-js-packed.js
U    wp-postratings/wp-postratings.php
A    wp-postratings/postratings-admin-js.js
U    wp-postratings/postratings-css.css
U    wp-postratings/postratings-options.php
A    wp-postratings/postratings-templates.php
U    wp-postratings/postratings-stats.php
U    wp-postratings/readme.html
A    wp-postratings/postratings-js.js
U    wp-postratings/wp-postratings.pot
U    wp-postratings/wp-postratings-widget.php
U    wp-postratings/postratings-uninstall.php
U    wp-postratings/postratings-admin-ajax.php
U    wp-postratings/wp-postratings.mo
U    wp-postratings/readme.txt
U    wp-postratings/postratings-manager.php
A    wp-postratings/postratings-admin-js-packed.js
Updated to revision 50666.
At revision 8094.
...

With such mass updating, of course, an incompatibility in one of the updates can break the whole blog. In my case, it happened to be the latest version of wp-sticky. I identified it by disabling wp-super-cache first, then disabling each updated plugin one by one. Once identified, I did the following:

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cd wp-sticky
svn log | head

That showed me the latest commits by the author as well as the SVN revision numbers. I then used this information to revert one revision back by doing:

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svn up -r 50489

The following command showed a diff of what exactly changed in that revision and broke everything:

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svn diff -r50489:50490

Once everything was stable, I emailed the plugin author to tell him about the bug (heya, Lester). Be careful not to run 'svn up' on this directory again until the bug is fixed as it'll persistently update to the latest version.

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Last year, Sun already made an announcement of JavaFX, a Java-based mobile platform but didn't provide any concrete timelines, so I was excited to hear the more on the subject. With Apple iPhone's advent last year and Google entering the same space later on this year with Android, Sun's addition to the game definitely won't hurt consumers. After all, competition usually leads to better products.

So when is the phone coming, Jonathan? My guess is you're going to try as hard as possible to compete with Google's second half of 2008 timeline but are you going to manage to beat it? And will it blow us away? I guess time will show.

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1

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5

and Beer Planet is on 2.5. There were no problems with the upgrade itself or any of the plugins. Great work on the new clean interface and multi-file upload, WordPress!

Info here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_2.5 (short) and http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-brecker/ (more detailed)

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read more | digg story

Are you dead yet?

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• What does it do? Nobody put it better than the eAccelerator team itself: "eAccelerator is a free open-source PHP accelerator, optimizer, and dynamic content cache. It increases the performance of PHP scripts by caching them in their compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated. It also optimizes scripts to speed up their execution. eAccelerator typically reduces server load and increases the speed of your PHP code by 1-10 times."
• Does it work? Hell yes. beerpla.net loads on average twice as fast as before. The results are consistent, so I'm very impressed.
• Ease of installation. Extremely easy. Compilation from source tarball, adding a few lines into php.ini, and apache restart is all it takes. Full instructions here.
• Feedback from companies who have installed eAccelerator is here. It's hosted by eAccelerator themselves but seems to be legit.

/End of short note

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Edit: Ah, I was too hasty to get exited. Apparently the power boost only works on the first 5-10 MB of the transfer, after which it cuts back down to the regular speed. I am quite sure it'll still make the site faster as most pages and files are less than 5 MB.

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End of public announcement.

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Taken from http://www.thesimpledollar.com.

When people discover a problem with their credit score, they often act rashly, doing things that seem as though they would improve your credit, but actually damage a credit score. Before we get into the ten mistakes to avoid, let’s first look at what makes up one’s credit score, as defined by Fair Isaac:

Although the exact formulas for calculating credit scores are closely guarded secrets, Fair Isaac has disclosed the following components and the approximate weighted contribution of each:

35%,- punctuality of payment in the past (only includes payments later than 30 days past due)
30% – the amount of debt, expressed as the ratio of current revolving debt (credit card balances, etc.) to total available revolving credit (credit limits)
15% – length of credit history
10% – types of credit used (installment, revolving, consumer finance)
10% – recent search for credit and/or amount of credit obtained recently

Mistake #1: Cancelling old credit cards. 15% of your credit score comes from the length of your credit history. Thus, cancelling your oldest credit card can often be a mistake. Also, if you have balances on other cards, cancelling an old credit card can also worsen your debt ratio, which makes up 30% of your score. If you don’t have other sources of credit that are older than seven years, you should not cancel your oldest credit card.

Mistake #2: Staying current on “most” of your cards. 35% of your score focuses on punctuality of payment, with only payments that are more than thirty days late affecting your score. If you’re going to be late on any cards, make up that payment before it’s thirty days late. Don’t keep up with all but one or two of your cards and let those go later and later; instead, juggle the cards a bit if you have to, but make sure you are not too late on any one card.

Mistake #3: Having too many open lines of credit. 10% of your score comes from the types of credit used. If you have a lot of sources of revolving credit (i.e., credit cards), you can be seen as a credit risk because you have the potential of racking up a lot of debt very quickly. Don’t open store credit cards just to get a discount, and if you have any recent store cards, cancel them once they’re paid off.

Mistake #4: Maxing out your cards. 30% of your score comes from the ratio of your credit card debt and your credit limits. Thus, if all of your cards are maxed out, your credit score is suffering even if you’re keeping up with the payments. Instead of charging and buying more and more, focus on paying down the cards with extra payments.

Mistake #5: Avoiding loans and debts. In the eyes of your credit report, no debt is effectively bad debt. If you’re a credit card teetotaler, you should still consider getting one and making an occasional purchase with it. I have a friend who has one credit card which is associated with his gas station chain of choice. He uses it just for gas purchases, racks up discounts on it, pays it off in full each month, and it helps him maintain a solid credit score in case he needs a loan.

Mistake #6: Requesting a credit limit reduction. Some people believe that they have too much credit and that they’re better off with a credit limit reduction. In fact, the only significant effect a limit reduction has on your credit score is a negative effect on your debt ratio. Only get a limit reduction if it has a huge psychological value for you; otherwise, it will hurt your credit score.

Mistake #7: Utilizing the first credit counseling service you hear about. Quite often, the ones that advertise the most are the ones that do the shoddiest job. Use the FTC’s advice and find a reputable credit counseling service in your area. Call several of them from the yellow pages and ask the questions from the FTC page to find ones that seem legitimate, then check with the Better Business Bureau before moving forward. Remember, your credit score will affect many of your financial moves for years, so don’t skimp out on your research if you’re thinking of using a counseling service.

Mistake #8: Declaring bankruptcy. Many people go forward with bankruptcy because they believe it’s the only way out. Instead of taking such a drastic measure, seek counseling first with one of the more legitimate sources mentioned above. Bankruptcy can really decimate your credit score for a very long time. Quite often, there are better solutions, such as negotiating with creditors and so forth.

Mistake #9: Practicing credit card arbitrage. This game can seriously damage your credit score if you’re not an expert. Shy away unless you’re financially stable and know exactly what you’re doing; if you make a mis-step, your credit score could easily be demolished.

Mistake #10: Never checking your credit report. Most people who behave well with their credit just assume that their credit is fine, but sometimes incorrect things can show up on your report. Visit annualcreditreport.com to get the free report that the United States government guarantees you from the three major agencies. Don’t go to freecreditreport.com; it’s a rip-off.

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So after looking into it some more, I discovered that the problem is not the servers used (they are actually dual core 2+Ghz Opterons), and not the amount of RAM (4GB), or server load (usually 1-3, which for a dual core system shouldn't be bad at all). It is actually the nfs (network filesystem). All of Dreamhost files are sitting on nfs, which is mounted on the hosting servers. The problem with nfs, especially noticeable with a large amount of files, is that it's much slower than local disk access and is limited by network speed and congestion. Dreamhost is also looking into possible tweaks to nfs performance.

For comparison, I've installed Gallery2 (notorious for its size and slow speed) on Dreamhost and Bluehost. It's blazing fast on Bluehost, but is a couple of times slower on Dreamhost. I'm assuming that Bluehost is using a local filesystem because I don't see any other reason why it would be so much faster. So with that, I have disabled the Random Photo plugin for Lazyest-gallery which went through 2500+ files each time to figure out a random one to show (efficient approach, isn't it?). Until that is fixed, it's staying off this site.

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