EU-kommissionären får bra betyg, även av S.

EU-kommissionären får bra betyg, även av S.

Beskyller övriga partier för att dölja sin interna splittring.

Beskyller övriga partier för att dölja sin interna splittring.

jfruh writes "ABC shows are available for free to anybody with antenna on the day and time they're first broadcast. But if you want them at any other time, it's getting harder to see them unless you pay someone. The network had previously made free ad-supported streamed versions of its shows available on its website the day after they aired, but now they're shifting that back to a week. Next-day streaming is still available if you have a cable or Hulu Plus subscription, showing the extent to which "broadcast" networks are dependent on subscriber fees."

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We do see a lot of probes for port 32764/TCP . According to a post to github from 2 days ago, some Linksys devices may be listening on this port enabling full unauthenticated admin access. [1]

At this point, I urge everybody to scan their networks for devices listening on port 32764/TCP. If you use a Linksys router, try to scan its public IP address from outside your network. 

Our data shows almost no scans to the port prior to today, but a large number from 3 source IPs today. The by far largest number of scans come from 80.82.78.9. ShodanHQ has also been actively probing this port for the last couple of days.

https://isc.sans.edu/portascii.html?port=32764&start=2013-12-03&end=2014-01-02

Date	Records	Targets	Sources	TCP/UDP*100
Dec 5th	10	2	3	90
Dec 9th	11	2	5	100
Dec 10th	17	5	6	100
Jan 2nd	15068	3833	3	100

We only have 10 different source IP addresses originating more then 10 port 32764 scans per day over the last 30 days:

+------------+-----------------+----------+
| date       | source          | count(*) |
+------------+-----------------+----------+
| 2014-01-02 | 080.082.078.009 |    18392 |
| 2014-01-01 | 198.020.069.074 |      768 |<-- interesting... 3 days
| 2014-01-02 | 198.020.069.074 |      585 |<--    early hits from ShodanHQ
| 2014-01-02 | 178.079.136.162 |      226 |
| 2013-12-31 | 198.020.069.074 |      102 |<--    
| 2014-01-02 | 072.182.101.054 |       74 |
+------------+-----------------+----------+

 

[1] https://github.com/elvanderb/TCP-32764

-----
Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D.
SANS Technology Institute
Twitter

(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

I described the plan in earlier sync diaries. And then I started writing code.

You know how it goes: things look one way when you’re in the huddle, and quite another way at the line of scrimmage.

Attachment Metadata

(Attachment metadata is unique ID, size in bytes, MIME type, and height and width.)

To recap: the sync code supports multiple attachments per note, whether we ever use that feature or not.

So, unsurprisingly, I decided that there should be a database table for attachment metadata (on both client and server), and each note would have a to-many relationship to its attachments. (The inverse relationship is to-one: an attachment belongs to a single note).

That’s how you’d do it; that’s the right way to do it.

But there’s a cost to this approach. Either:

Notes and attachment metadata are synced separately, which means that a client could have an incomplete object graph (it might have a note minus its attachment metadata).

Or…

Notes and attachment metadata are synced at the same time, but the server code is more complex and includes more database hits than I would like.

Incomplete object graphs are a major pain to deal with and they make for a bad user experience. So I ruled out the first option.

I didn’t like the second option either, for two reasons:

1. It’s very important to make the sync code as simple as possible, so that bugs have nowhere to hide. (Syncing is difficult, so I’ve adopted an extreme committment to simplicity.)

2. It’s very important to make syncing as fast and efficient as possible, so that the app provides the best possible user experience.

So I decided to do what is arguably the wrong thing, but is the right thing in this context.

What I Did

Database people are already gasping for air, because they know what’s coming. Instead of creating a separate table for attachment metadata, I created an attachments column in the notes table and just encoded the attachment metadata there.

On iOS it uses Core Data’s built-in object archiving feature. On the server it’s stored as JSON.

This is wrong, surely; it’s not how to do this. Except, in this case, it is. Incomplete object graphs are wrong; inefficient and slower syncing with more complex server-side code is also wrong.

This is less wrong than the alternatives.

With this change, a note always has its attachment metadata. Fetching notes always includes that data, on both client and server. They’re inseparable. And it means just one database hit to fetch a set of notes.

Some of you are gasping for air anyway. I know.

What I Gave Up

With this configuration it’s more difficult to do a query against attachment metadata. Not impossible, but more difficult, and it would probably involve some filtering in code. That’s not great.

But the app doesn’t make any queries like that, and we don’t have any features on the horizon that need that.

Still, I could have insisted on planning for that contingency. After all, I’m already planning for the possibility of multiple attachments per note. What makes one contingency different from another?

I look at it this way: supporting multiple attachments is a more obvious feature than some unknown feature that requires queries against attachment metadata. I don’t even know what that feature would be. And if it hasn’t come up in the first six months, there’s an excellent chance it would never come up.

Or, put another way: is planning for that remote contingency worth degrading user experience? Is my notion of database-correctness more important than simpler code and fast and efficient syncing?

Nope.

But what if it does come up some day? Well, it’s just software, and I’ll make it work by doing the smartest things I can think of. Like always.

I described the plan in earlier sync diaries. And then I started writing code.

You know how it goes: things look one way when you’re in the huddle, and quite another way at the line of scrimmage.

Attachment Metadata

(Attachment metadata is unique ID, size in bytes, MIME type, and height and width.)

To recap: the sync code supports multiple attachments per note, whether we ever use that feature or not.

So, unsurprisingly, I decided that there should be a database table for attachment metadata (on both client and server), and each note would have a to-many relationship to its attachments. (The inverse relationship is to-one: an attachment belongs to a single note).

That’s how you’d do it; that’s the right way to do it.

But there’s a cost to this approach. Either:

Notes and attachment metadata are synced separately, which means that a client could have an incomplete object graph (it might have a note minus its attachment metadata).

Or…

Notes and attachment metadata are synced at the same time, but the server code is more complex and includes more database hits than I would like.

Incomplete object graphs are a major pain to deal with and they make for a bad user experience. So I ruled out the first option.

I didn’t like the second option either, for two reasons:

1. It’s very important to make the sync code as simple as possible, so that bugs have nowhere to hide. (Syncing is difficult, so I’ve adopted an extreme committment to simplicity.)

2. It’s very important to make syncing as fast and efficient as possible, so that the app provides the best possible user experience.

So I decided to do what is arguably the wrong thing, but is the right thing in this context.

What I Did

Database people are already gasping for air, because they know what’s coming. Instead of creating a separate table for attachment metadata, I created an attachments column in the notes table and just encoded the attachment metadata there.

On iOS it uses Core Data’s built-in object archiving feature. On the server it’s stored as JSON.

This is wrong, surely; it’s not how to do this. Except, in this case, it is. Incomplete object graphs are wrong; inefficient and slower syncing with more complex server-side code is also wrong.

This is less wrong than the alternatives.

With this change, a note always has its attachment metadata. Fetching notes always includes that data, on both client and server. They’re inseparable. And it means just one database hit to fetch a set of notes.

Some of you are gasping for air anyway. I know.

What I Gave Up

With this configuration it’s more difficult to do a query against attachment metadata. Not impossible, but more difficult, and it would probably involve some filtering in code. That’s not great.

But the app doesn’t make any queries like that, and we don’t have any features on the horizon that need that.

Still, I could have insisted on planning for that contingency. After all, I’m already planning for the possibility of multiple attachments per note. What makes one contingency different from another?

I look at it this way: supporting multiple attachments is a more obvious feature than some unknown feature that requires queries against attachment metadata. I don’t even know what that feature would be. And if it hasn’t come up in the first six months, there’s an excellent chance it would never come up.

Or, put another way: is planning for that remote contingency worth degrading user experience? Is my notion of database-correctness more important than simpler code and fast and efficient syncing?

Nope.

But what if it does come up some day? Well, it’s just software, and I’ll make it work by doing the smartest things I can think of. Like always.

Rands on The Builder’s High:

Is there a Facebook update that compares to building a thing? No, but I’d argue that 82 Facebook updates, 312 tweets, and all those delicious Instagram updates are giving you the same chemical impression that you’ve accomplished something of value. Whether it’s all the consumption or the sense of feeling busy, these micro-highs will never equal the high when you’ve actually built.

Rands on The Builder’s High:

Is there a Facebook update that compares to building a thing? No, but I’d argue that 82 Facebook updates, 312 tweets, and all those delicious Instagram updates are giving you the same chemical impression that you’ve accomplished something of value. Whether it’s all the consumption or the sense of feeling busy, these micro-highs will never equal the high when you’ve actually built.

Världens 300 rikaste blev under 2013 ännu rikare och kunde se sin sammanlagda förmögenhet växa med 3 368 miljarder kronor till totalt 23 783 miljarder, enligt Bloombergs miljardärindex.

First time accepted submitter Kimomaru writes "ARS Technica asks, 'How does a non-technical manager add value to a team of self-motivated software developers?' IT Managers have come some way in the past decade (for some). Often derided as being, at best, unnecessary and, at worst, a complete waste of budgetary resources, managers in technology today can add significant value by shielding developers and systems engineers from political nonsense and red tape. From the article; ';Don't underestimate the amount of interaction your manager does with other departments. They handle budgets, training plans, HR paperwork. They protect the developers from getting sucked into meetings with other departments and provide a unified front for your group.'" Has that been your experience?

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Wayne Rash has covered IT as a reporter and editor for over 35 years. NPR, Fox Business News, and NBC all call on him as a technology expert. A few weeks ago he had an article on eWeek titled How Target's Credit Card Security Breach Could Have Been Avoided. In this video, Wayne tells how you (or your business) can avoid being targeted by miscreants out to steal credit card data. It turns out that the security measures he advocates for businesses are common in other parts of the world but haven't hit the United States quite yet. But don't despair. There are things you can do right now, as an individual, to limit your potential losses from card number thefts. Still, the long-term fixes to the security vulnerability that bit Target need to be made by merchants and card issuers, some of whom are already transitioning to cards and card readers that use EMV chips, and some of whom aren't quite there yet -- but might speed up their efforts after seeing what happened to Target.

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