Verify the integrity of a flash/SD card on a Mac using F3 and F3X

TL;DR I just want an App for that but I'm cheap and don't want to pay - go here

Command Line Testing your SD card using F3 on Mac OS X

You love the command line and want to test your SD card? 

The software “F3” (either meaning “Fight Flash Fraud” or “Fight Fake Flash” according to its author Michel Machado) is an open-source implementation of the same algorithm h2testw employs to determine the integrity of a memory card (or any volume you mount on your Mac for that matter).

Vigil++ Because eternal moral vigilance is no laughing matter.

It's Vigil for C++ but with the chance of redemption!

Install Me: Bit Bucket

Bob Nystrom has created the excellent Vigil programming language that auto-deletes any deviant code from the code base! Vigil++ is a denomination that offers redemption! Whilst it does deliver implore and swear macros, it does not adhere to the extreme run time vigilance of Vigil by deleting code but rather throws a moral-exception and a frowny face ಠ_ಠ as appropriate admonishment! But whilst you will be chastened, you will also be given the chance of redemption by being able to recover from the moral-exception.

Why Vigil++?

Site testing with Google Skipfish

skipfish

Skipfish is Google's active web application security reconnaissance tool. It prepares an interactive sitemap for the targeted site by carrying out a recursive crawl and dictionary-based probes. The resulting map is then annotated with the output from a number of active (but hopefully non-disruptive) security checks. The final report generated by the tool is meant to serve as a foundation for professional web application security assessments.

https://code.google.com/archive/p/skipfish

Install:

brew install skipfish 

But...

It looks like the Homebrew package manager port of Skipfish is broken. It doesn't properly changes the path of the signatures directory to point to /usr/local/Cellar/skipfish/2.10b/libexec/signatures.

Fix:

skipfish -z /usr/local/Cellar/skipfish/2.10b/libexec/signatures ...other commands

Setup:

touch dictionaries/empty.wlln -s dictionaries/empty.wl skipfish.wlmkdir ../out

Run:

skipfish -z /usr/local/Cellar/skipfish/2.10b/libexec/signatures -o ../out/ http://example.com

Results:

Then view the result in your browser:

firefox ../out/index.html



Just a friendly advice, Don’t be evil!


Be careful where you use this tool, this is an extremely powerful crawler which can eat up any websites’ bandwidth overnight. 

Migrating to Bitbucket and turning my markdown frown upside down with Dillinger WYSIWYG and Cloudup image drop spot.

Check out my fancy markdown https://bitbucket.org/ifknot/liblog

Why move from GitHub to Bitbucket?

Bitbucket, similar to GitHub, is a web based GIT hosting service for your projects. It offers free private repositories with free private wikis on accounts of up to 5 users(!) and you can switch any repo public and back again anytime. So develop in private and publicise when you're ready. 

GitHub’s  free account doesn’t allow for private repos and their lowest paid option (for organizations) only allows up to 10 private repos. Bitbucket, on the other hand, offers unlimited private repos. 

It's easy to import directly from GitHub with the click of a button - well done Bitbucket.

What to move first?

I moved over liblog the logging software that I first blogged about way back in Jan 2014 but wanted to have a nice front piece for when I chose to make it public. This can be easily achieved using markdown in a README.md file pushed to the repo. 

Markdown frown. 

dillinger.io
Markdown is (quite) easy but slow to hand roll but with the excellent online WYSIWYG markdown editor Dillinger "Type some Markdown on the left... see HTML in the right" I found it pleasurable to work with and get some decent looking results.

Gratis image drop.

A free account on Cloudup gives you space to drop pics/vids/music/docs and have nifty short URLS to them for your markdown/blog/web

Fontastic! Meaningful programming ligatures with FiraCode

Fira Code: monospaced font with programming ligatures

Fira Code is an extension of the Fira Mono font containing a set of ligatures for common programming multi-character combinations. It is easy to install in OS X and works with Qt Creator.

I think I like it :)

Qt Creator 4.1.0 released

Qt Creator 4.1.0 Released!

From the Qt Blog via Eike Ziller:

https://blog.qt.io/blog/2016/08/25/qt-creator-4-1-0-released/

 How To Update:

1. Run the Maintenance Tool app (found inside your Qt folder).
2. Follow this (if you need to).
3. ?
4. Profit

What is the Government going to do with your Health Data now? Consenting to your Health Data, Opting in or Opting out?

NHS Survival has a great article covering the Government's desire for views on the proposed Data Security In Health policy do you want to consent and have an opt-out?

https://consultations.dh.gov.uk/information/ndg-review-of-data-security-consent-and-opt-outs/consultation/subpage.2016-06-22.4165482086

It's a lengthy but important document here are the proposed standards in a nutshell:

Proposed Data Security Standards

1.  All staff ensure that personal confidential data is handled, stored and transmitted securely, whether in electronic or paper form. Personal confidential data is only shared for lawful and appropriate purposes.
2.  All staff understand their responsibilities under the National Data Guardian’s Data Security Standards including their obligation to handle information responsibly and their personal accountability for deliberate or avoidable breaches.
3.  All staff complete appropriate annual data security training and pass a mandatory test, provided through the revised Information Governance Toolkit.
4.  Personal confidential data is only accessible to staff who need it for their current role and access is removed as soon as it is no longer required. All access to personal confidential data on IT systems can be attributed to individuals.
5.  Processes are reviewed at least annually to identify and improve processes which have caused breaches or near misses, or which force staff to use workarounds which compromise data security.
6.  Cyber-attacks against services are identified and resisted and CareCERT security advice is responded to. Action is taken immediately following a data breach or a near miss, with a report made to senior management within 12 hours of detection.
7.   A continuity plan is in place to respond to threats to data security, including significant data breaches or near misses, and it is tested once a year as a minimum, with a report to senior management.
8.   No unsupported operating systems, software or internet browsers are used within the IT estate.
9.   A strategy is in place for protecting IT systems from cyber threats which is based on a proven cyber security framework such as Cyber Essentials. This is reviewed at least annually.
10.  Suppliers are held accountable via contracts for protecting the personal confidential data they process and meeting the National Data Guardian’s Data Security Standard.

So I spent a bit of time on the document, here are my answers:

Publishing My Master's Thesis to Figshare and Arxvix and citing on Google Scholar

• I followed the advice at the Green Tea & Velociraptors Blog to publish my thesis:
  
  Increasing Capacity In Telemedicine Using Flow-Based Programming.pdf
  
• I followed the advice at Thomas Vanhoutte's Blog to register and cite on Google Scholar:
  
  https://scholar.google.be/citations?hl=en&user=PSvQWUUAAAAJ

PINE64 - A Raspberry Pi Killer?

A POWERFUL 64-BIT EXPANDABLE SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER – STARTING AT JUST $15. OVER 36,000 BACKERS AND $1.7M+ RAISED ON KICKSTARTER!

Just received my Pine64+ 2GB a few days after confirmation. Unlike some of the redditors on www.reddit.com/r/pine64/ I am happy with it and no problems so far...

This is how I got started:

You have not concluded your merge (MERGE_HEAD exists) - ARRRGH! FFS Git! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

photo credit: Walking dead via photopin (license)

You have not concluded your merge (MERGE_HEAD exists)

TL;DR Git - Basic Merge Conflicts

Rant:

FFS Linus! Why did you have to make Git so complicated? 

As others have pointed out. You need a bunch of arcane, inconsistent, constantly changing commands to do the most routine of tasks and the behaviour is counter-intuitive - why make vim the default editor?! Why make me learn all this stuff just to get things done?! *sigh* 

No fucks given Linus:

The readme file of the source code elaborates further:

4 Interesting Comments

Getting my daily dose of tech-trash-talk from the Vulture came across this interesting article:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/07/from_iwarp_to_knights_landing_james_reinders_leaves_intel/

About Intel's guru of parallelism taking early retirement, but it was the 4 comments that I liked as short insightful thoughts on the current state of concurrency despite long term work over decades:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/06/07/from_iwarp_to_knights_landing_james_reinders_leaves_intel/

As someone who dabbles in the field and with an MSc based on CSP by Sir Tony it is a shame that we are not much further on.

R-Fiddle is jolly good!

R Fiddle is a web site where you try commands in R online

Similar to jsfiddle in that you can try things without hassle.

Spotlight Schmotlight - Stopping runaway CPU usage by mds & mdworker nonesense!

photo credit: It's Murder, Watson! via photopin (license)

Have you tried switching it off and on again?

Disable Spotlight

The primary method is using launchctl, this will require the administrative password: