Get a Microsoft headset adapter, plug it into the controller you are *not* using and keep plugged in via USB, then turn on that controller as well as the wireless one you normally game on. At that point, you have normal analog audio which can be piped into your stereo, powered speakers, etc.
November 22, 2014
November 9, 2014
Green Shoots Among the EcoReds
I have a new article up on Libertarian Forum on some observations of the evolving community of electric vehicle owners.
July 5, 2014
Using Tor and a VPN service for privacy
In light of recent revelations that the government specifically targets for surveillance people who do searches for Tor, here is how I suggest you use Tor:
1) Get one of the VPN services, install it and verify that traffic is sent out by default over the tunnel.
2) Use this link to obtain Tor. Set it up so that it runs as a SOCKS proxy locally (the default way, but you can also install it without a browser as just a proxy
3) Keep the VPN and Tor services running all the time, with the kill switch feature such that if the VPN link goes down, the Internet shuts down.
4) Configure Firefox in private mode (about:config) permanently. Configure it to use the Tor proxy
5) Disable geolocation in all browsers
6) Leave everything else default.
What this means is that all your traffic goes onto the Internet at the remote proxy location. If you don’t torrent, you can even make that exit point in the USA, which may help you do stuff like banking or services which require that you access them from the USA. Or you can just switch VPN endpoints when you need to. Whenever you want to do something with stronger anonymity, run Firefox or the Tor browser. This will put you on the Tor network. By disabling geolocation, you gain some additional protection against Javascript, which is still on in Firefox (turn that off if you don’t need it, but I use Firefox in this was specifically in cases where I need a full-featured browser, but still run it through Tor. Note that Flash will actually bypass proxies, so it will go out through the VPN connection. As as additional safeguard to your anonymity, pay for the VPN service using bitcoin, and use an email anonymizing service such as Guerrilla Mail.
May 29, 2014
Stick with Truecrypt 7.1a and Wait for more Information
Yesterday, The homepage for the popular full disk encryption solution, Truecrypt, changed to reflect the following:
WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues
This page exists only to help migrate existing data encrypted by TrueCrypt.
The development of TrueCrypt was ended in 5/2014 after Microsoft terminated support of Windows XP. Windows 8/7/Vista and later offer integrated support for encrypted disks and virtual disk images. Such integrated support is also available on other platforms (click here for more information). You should migrate any data encrypted by TrueCrypt to encrypted disks or virtual disk images supported on your platform.
The page goes on to describe how to configure Bitlocker encryption and remove Truecrypt.
The message is very odd, as there were no indications of the project ending. Truecrypt does very specific things. It is not the sort of software which requires expansive numbers of new features. It works well with Windows 7, which is a huge part of the market. I have not attempted to use it on Windows 8, but Microsoft’s own page on it indicates that it works fine. My reasons for distrusting the new message, despite the fact that the issuer of that message has access to the correct keys to sign the TC release are:
- There are no details of the security issues with Truecrypt.
Assuming this message is actually from the same people who have been developing Truecrypt, they should have no problem at all clearly describing the nature of the vulnerabilities. They have more ability to do this, once those vulnerabilities are known, than anyone else. The lack of detail makes me suspicious. - The endorsement of Bitlocker flies in the face of the history of the project.
The developers of Truecrypt have shown a consistent (and justified) pattern of paranoia. The sudden endorsement of a closed source security solution is a completely different (and worse) attitude towards security. Among the most suspicious aspects of this is the fact that TC has explicitly avoided dependence on the TPM module due to a lack of trust, yet the “solution” suggested by the homepage currently explicitly endorses using that functionality in moving to Bitlocker. - The new release appears to not actually correct bugs or improve functionality.
7.2 appears to do nothing more than issue warnings and disable encryption. The users of Truecrypt tend to be a savvy lot. They have the skills to decrypt data should that become necessary. Issuing a version with the encryption function disabled is nonsensical.
May 17, 2014
A Chat on Cybersecurity
I was recently interviewed by Manuel Lora for Liberty.me on the topic of cybersecurity. You can listen to it here.
August 21, 2013
OpenVPN Not Passing Traffic on Windows 8 Professional using UDP
Windows 8 Pro (which is the version I have. I cannot comment on other versions) appears to have an issue with a normal OpenVPN tunnel. When using UDP, my VPN does not pass traffic. It does pass that traffic when I use TCP. Additionally, a Cisco SSL VPN (also UDP based) I use does not work. After browsing about a bit, I found that the UDP encapsulation settings have an effect on this. The registry setting which needs to be changed is:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PolicyAgent]
“AssumeUDPEncapsulationContextOnSendRule”=dword:00000002
After rebooting, both of my VPNs worked, fixing an issue which nearly made me abandon Windows 8.
January 24, 2013
Windows 7 VPN Routing to StrongSwan
One thing which always bugged me about my VPN setup is that whenever I used IPSec on Windows 7, I had to specify the route into my home network using a command prompt in Windows (with elevated permissions) where I had to use the “route add” command (you can view the link to see my example.) I finally have a way around this, by using the tip here. Just follow these directions, but instead of a script, specify the route command, with the flags “add 192.168.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.8.8.1” from the example in my VPN setup post. Check the box “run with highest permissions” and save it. Now, every time you connect to your VPN, the task will automatically set your route. Obviously, you could make this a script with any number of commands or multiple routes, so adjust things accordingly.
September 9, 2012
Dissonant Voices in the Chorus of Agreement
Recently, I have been listening to new voices and perspectives from blacks regarding many of the endemic problems which affect black Americans. There are conservative groups on Facebook and around the Internet which cater to blacks.There are various pan African groups and individuals. One of the most interesting of these rarely heard voices is the Internet talk show, Your World, My Views, hosted by psychologist and former comedian Tommy Sotomayor. I have found this show to be absolutely fascinating. It is rare that we hear disagreement among blacks without the immediate shouting down of those who differ as “sellouts” or some other inflammatory name. But this is one such rare show.
Hearing the observations of others on the disintegration of black families and culture is wonderful. It is important for many voices to be heard. When an engineering team looks at solving a problem, having a variety of perspectives is crucial in developing truly innovative, effective solutions, and the repair of black America is a truly massive engineering prospect. As I have mentioned before, the great enemies of blacks in America, especially men, are the government policies of welfare and the war on drugs. This has essentially killed much of what black manhood has meant.
We need more of this honest dialog, and even vehement disagreement, in order to actually solve the problems which plague us.
Note that the site may contain some NSFW content.
January 10, 2012
Thank you Asus!
I bought an Asus U56E from Fry’s, which has an Intel i5-2410M CPU. The laptop has been very good, having excellent battery life and good performance. I replaced the internal optical drive with a drive caddy so that I could replace the internal drive with an SSD, but have an additional spinning drive in order to have a larger amount of space. My SSD has built-in encryption, however the spinning drive does not. I use Truecrypt. I wanted the i5 because I was under the mistaken impression that they all supported AES-NI. I later discovered that Intel has issued a microcode update for this CPU which enables the feature, but the BIOS manufacturer needed to enable it in the system BIOS. Asus has now enabled this feature in version 213 of the BIOS. Truecrypt’s benchmark performance has increased 5x since the update.
December 4, 2011
Curious Key Corruption
I used the easy-rsa script to generate some new server certs recently, and found that my strongswan install on OpenWRT could not load the RSA key. This despite the fact that the same key works fine in OpenVPN on the same server. The interesting thing is that when I use the build-key-pkcs12 script instead of the build-key-server script, and then use openssl on the router to extract the cert and key, the key works. it is also a different size. The key kept coming up as 1704 bytes when using the server script, but 1669 bytes with the pkcs12 script. Since the pkcs12 script works, I suggest using it always. It generates the key and crt files any way, even though the extracted key file was a different size than the generated one with the same set of files. There must be a bug somewhere.
Slightly less Random Ramblings 