unexpected – Page 7 – SECURITY RESEARCH AND DATA PRIVACY

January 31, 2018January 31, 2018

Where’s my money, Man

I’ve set this year’s PS4 budget at $1000 considering I still have a nice library of older games and a PS4 Plus subscription for free games. Life is a bit of a Blind Play through right now as there are a lot more unknowns going on than usual. By summer I need to be money OP on my US operations taking off the pressure from sunny Brighton.

How do streamers manage their operational budget?

Investing this much on gaming a year isn’t a trivial matter and has a significant impact on friends, family, work and what not.

Software	Hardware	Cost
	PlayStation 4 Pro 1TB Console	$400.00
	Headset	$60.00
	PS4 Plus	$60.00
Overkill’s The Walking Dead		$60.00
FarCry 5		$60.00
Last of Us 2		$60.00
Death Stranding		$60.00
Days Gone		$60.00
Detroit – Become Human		$60.00
Indie titles x 5		$100.00

Total		$980.00

The second life should be able to co-exist with the physical world and in my case, the strategy is to work them in parallel with minimal crossover. So in practice, my gaming community would never be mentioned to non-gamers.

Keeping the worlds apart is pretty challenging as “people…usually women” are pretty quick to voice their unwanted opinions on gaming and why I do it.

Zero hours gameplay still in progress

January 19, 2018January 19, 2018

Burying the survivors

A flight leaves Heathrow at 13:00 on route to Paris, on the way it experiences fatal engine failure and crashes in the Channel. The flight carries 120 passengers 20 in first class.

How many survivors will be buried on the French side and how many in the English side?

Question the question

It’s interesting to observe how people communicate differently on personal matters depending on the device and method. There are so many factors that impact the sender’s mental state and tone of the message (personal or work device, signed or unsigned, the speed of transport (instant or slow), public or perceived private.

Formal and personal – hard copy letter. Shows the sender put in some thought and invested some resources (print, paper, envelope, postage and time costs) before sending and serves as hardcore historical evidence.

Formal and less personal –

email unsigned from a personal mobile device

email unsigned from work or business device

Email digitally signed on mobile device

Email from workstation

Email from laptop

Email from browsers

Many end-users actually see this as cold and heartless as “no one” emails about personal stuff anymore.

Informal and very personal

Instant messaging

iMessage

VOIP phone calls

The method of choice for a vast amount of people. The user tends to speak from the heart whether angry, sad or happy. Data is sent with no regard of security levels and assumptive privacy.

Consequences can be catastrophic or a euphoric high.

I Love you by email = Low euphoria
I Love you by Instant messaging = High euphoria
I Love you by letter = High euphoria

Choose your method wisely

January 18, 2018May 18, 2018

Trophy grinding

My first gym session of the year felt great last night and is the perfect antidote to my PS4 Withdrawal. Grinding my way every night through FallOut4 will have to wait for now.

One pretty bad side effect is my tendency to trigger real-world arguments to feed my Amygdala. There is nothing better than a “good” argument to say the things you normally keep to yourself. Of course, for me, arguments have an even worst side effect of sparking MG symptoms of sleepiness and chronic fatigue.

Leaving my PS4 in another country is pretty much the only way I could whine myself off my trophy hunting addiction.

So, the extra 20+ hours I week I’ll gain from no gameplay will be spent on watching Twitch, research study, Movies and exercise. Most of all I need to work on my Cryptocurrency portfolio. After the last quarters rise in Coin values, the average business person is acutely aware of the potential and looking for stables ways to make a big buck.

I came across a new breed of company a few weeks ago. Hash Power Service provider meets Network marketing is an interesting blend that makes it easy for anyone to buy-in but it seems these hybrid business models for Cryptocurrency try to paint too much of a pretty picture for the consumer. In the meantime, the Meltdown vulnerability makes it clear that hardware Wallets are probably the way to go in the long-term.

30 mins cardio yesterday…no meds

November 13, 2017November 13, 2017

Upgrade it, Patch it, Break it

The classic dilemma for patch management is when to do it and what will it break. Especially, when dealing with Operating systems you run the risk of the application you’ve been using for decades suddenly not working (not supported).

This issue is bad enough when doing the upgrade for yourself but when you do it on behalf of a client you run the risk of being the root cause of the problem.

The latest MacOs upgrade is not compatible the Outlook for Mac 2013 (version 15.3), which was released October 2014….WTF. So now you have to spend time and money on an upgrade.

The best practice is to run a compatibility test on all applications especially business-critical ones. But why haven’t two of the biggest software vendors in the world built that into the OS upgrade process to at least notify the user?

Money talks louder, so shut up and buy the Office365 upgrade

Meanwhile, I try to keep my head straight and get totally distracted by just looking out the window. Austria is a great place to avoid mass marketing but dammit this has just pushed me back into my one-track mind.

What was the approval process for a company to register and pay for this domain and then actively market it?

So much for Global Thinking

November 6, 2017

The Arrival

Well, the winter season has finally arrived albeit slight warm for this time of year. The clocks have changed so the early nightfall is enough to send me into bunker mode.

So far though, I’m well balanced about it all. Got my boots from Florida ready and have decided to spend the Christmas in London.

Metal Gear Solid V has been sitting on my PS4 for 25 days with me only getting the chance to play the intro and the start of a training mission. The game is epic but it now time to delete the 2015 title to make room for Star Wars Battlefront 2.

Haven’t worked out for 20 days….not good