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

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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.