@irj said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

@guyinpv said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

They are old school bosses, they lead by "better to fear me than love me" thing. Black marks, performance meetings, threaten my job when they don't like something, etc.

But, long story short, small town, few tech jobs, low wages.

Sounds like they don't have a choice of many techs either well at least at what they are offering to pay.

Ya. Basically population is around 40k in the city. Best jobs are all government/city/town, and colleges. But even then they'll max out around $60k-$70k for city government IT.

Then all the tech shops are mom-n-pop. If they hire employees at all, they'll be $10-$18/hr.

So I work for an ecommerce/manufacturer company doing their tech stuff, which includes some IT but it's not pure IT. I do some programming, social media, web development, SEO/marketing, and all the office tech chores. Jack of all trades. Still only about a sub-$40k income and I had to beg to even get there after 5 years.

Bottom line, you have to own a business out here to make a good living in tech. And I'm moving into web dev over IT (remote work). Every other tech out here who can't find a job starts a computer repair company. I see their cars all over the place. "Bob's Nerd Shop", "Hire a Geek", "Mobile Nerds PC Repair", "Cool Geeks PC Services". The names get worse every year.
The couple of people who manage to have a physical computer store either hire their own kids, or get part time helpers on commission.

It is what it is. I would have a hard time finding another job, but my boss would also have a hard time finding someone who knows all the things and willing to work for $15/hr. So I'm not sure which of us has the upper hand here.

So apparently another business in our industry, locally, was robbed recently. They blew a hole in the wall and stole all their stuff.
This has my boss on edge, they want to look at security camera options.

Here are some limitations and challenges.

1. Commercial building is leased and we can't run new internal wiring or hook up to existing alarm system.
2. Existing alarm system only has motion detectors indoors, nothing else.
3. The primary feature the boss wants is taking "pictures" when camera detects motion and sending it immediately to their phones.
4. Ideally we want to install a couple outside, and purely wireless and even battery powered would be acceptable..
5. Whether indoor or outdoor, they would need infrared.
6. Some advanced features would be nice, like setting a schedule, having "ignore" areas in the camera's view, conditions for when it sends pictures versus maybe taking a recording, or both, etc.
7. Central recording isn't even required if they can use built-in memory cards, or record to our NAS or whatever.

Obviously there are a million questions and concerns with doing security. We are not trying to build fort knox, I understand the myriad of ways these systems could be disabled or bypassed or whatever.
The number one thing is simply that seeing cameras might deter prying eyes. If not that, then getting photos sent to phone is next requirement. After that, perhaps recording video to built-in memory card (I know that could be stolen or destroyed) so recording to internal NAS is also ok.
Wireless is necessity, as is potentially battery operated unless that's no good.

We just want something fast and easy to get set up quickly just so something exists rather than nothing.

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:

@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:

@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:

Sometimes we sacrifice the "best" and the "ideal" for quick and productive.

But often they are the same thing and we just don't realize. I see things like this often where "best" is avoided because of the assumption that it is costly or hard, when it is often "best" specifically because it is fast, easy and cheap.

Maybe not here, but I see this more often than not.

In my case, not long ago, they didn't buy Office Pro and so nobody but a couple people even had Access on their computers.

Now within the last few months we finally have Office365 so indeed Access is an option. The next problem becomes storing the database files and dealing with mutli-user issues opening the same files and all that stuff.

I used to use Access for some fairly complex IT management, and it definitely wasn't very productive without creating all the right forms to be able to search and filter and create records and do exports and all that.
Nobody here has ever opened Access, let alone will understand how the database works, where files are stored, how multi-user works, how to browse, search, filter, export, prepare reports and print.

But everybody knows how to make some Excel columns fit on one sheet wide and print it.

Right, but that's part of the problem. Access is WAY more complicated than making a proper app.

And making a proper app might be more complicated than Access.

I've often tried to find and test any kind of self-hosted software for managing CRUD DB projects.
I've longed for a simple way to spin up a relational DB, throw a bunch of data in it (that's the easy part), but then have a ready-to-go CRUD app that takes care of the basics of user accounts and roles/permissions, data entry/editing/deleting (forms), tracking changes in order to undo things or audit changes, export records, do searches and filtering, customized exports, and forms.

And then some kind of feature that lets me build the visual reports and summaries, like a custom dashboard sort of thing.

CRUD app in a box. Is there such a thing? I've been playing with JS frameworks like Vue and Meteor and many others, just as a way to build a template CRUD app I can reused for DB projects.

There are all internal projects, so they should all be accessible through a common interface too. In that sense, each CRUD app should be relatively portable.

@irj said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

@guyinpv said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

@brrabill said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

@guyinpv said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

At a place I work, they want me available on my days off for those "just in case" times. They compensate this availability by paying part of my cell phone bill.

Doesn't seem like a fair trade. Unless you bill is thousands of dollars.

Nothing out of the ordinary about a boss who wants to keep IT on a tight leash. I'm the only one who can fix or research or do anything of technical importance. Naturally they want quick access to me.

@jaredbusch said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

Or jsut say, sorry my phone battery died and I did not notice. Will not happen again.

And move on.

Nah, not these guys. Once I was unavailable for over 4 hours (starting at 3am mind you) when a forum got hacked and defaced. Didn't fix it until noon. On my day off, on a Sunday. But they decided to grill me and black mark me anyway for having "more than 4 hour turnaround time in an emergency". And of course, this 4 hour rule was literally invented AFTER this happened, just specifically so they could black mark me for not having met it.

Hey, if I can put a wingding in my house that rings if needed, and it's only 85 cents a month, I guess I can justify that.

Excuse my french, but are you are fucking kidding me? I am going to go out on a limb and guess they are only paying you like $20 an hour or something... Am I right?

I've ranted about this company before, some around here get tired of it. They are old school bosses, they lead by "better to fear me than love me" thing. Black marks, performance meetings, threaten my job when they don't like something, etc.

But, long story short, small town, few tech jobs, low wages.

I'll be leaving when my own business is built up more. I've talked on here about that too. In fact, my home business income is up to making about half my income of this place already. Still not ready to fully make the switch though.

@jaredbusch said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:

@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:

But everybody knows how to make some Excel columns fit on one sheet wide and print it.

oh gods no they don't.

drag and drop print margin lines like a boss

@brrabill said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

@guyinpv said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

At a place I work, they want me available on my days off for those "just in case" times. They compensate this availability by paying part of my cell phone bill.

Doesn't seem like a fair trade. Unless you bill is thousands of dollars.

Nothing out of the ordinary about a boss who wants to keep IT on a tight leash. I'm the only one who can fix or research or do anything of technical importance. Naturally they want quick access to me.

@jaredbusch said in What is cheapest way to get a house phone?:

Or jsut say, sorry my phone battery died and I did not notice. Will not happen again.

And move on.

Nah, not these guys. Once I was unavailable for over 4 hours (starting at 3am mind you) when a forum got hacked and defaced. Didn't fix it until noon. On my day off, on a Sunday. But they decided to grill me and black mark me anyway for having "more than 4 hour turnaround time in an emergency". And of course, this 4 hour rule was literally invented AFTER this happened, just specifically so they could black mark me for not having met it.

Hey, if I can put a wingding in my house that rings if needed, and it's only 85 cents a month, I guess I can justify that.

@scottalanmiller said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:

@guyinpv said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:

Sometimes we sacrifice the "best" and the "ideal" for quick and productive.

But often they are the same thing and we just don't realize. I see things like this often where "best" is avoided because of the assumption that it is costly or hard, when it is often "best" specifically because it is fast, easy and cheap.

Maybe not here, but I see this more often than not.

In my case, not long ago, they didn't buy Office Pro and so nobody but a couple people even had Access on their computers.

Now within the last few months we finally have Office365 so indeed Access is an option. The next problem becomes storing the database files and dealing with mutli-user issues opening the same files and all that stuff.

I used to use Access for some fairly complex IT management, and it definitely wasn't very productive without creating all the right forms to be able to search and filter and create records and do exports and all that.
Nobody here has ever opened Access, let alone will understand how the database works, where files are stored, how multi-user works, how to browse, search, filter, export, prepare reports and print.

But everybody knows how to make some Excel columns fit on one sheet wide and print it.

At a place I work, they want me available on my days off for those "just in case" times. They compensate this availability by paying part of my cell phone bill.

My main forms of contact are going to just be my phone, wife's phone, and Slack if I'm at my home computer.
In this case, everybody at the office magically forgot Slack existed. And my phone died just seconds before I plugged in to charger so I didn't even realize it was off most of the day.

In any case, with only two phones and computer chat, it's still possible they might not be able to reach me for a length of time. If wife is out, my phone is off or in another room or something. I want to add one more form of contact and I figure a house phone is a good option.

With VOIP options today, I think this could be a pretty cheap enterprise.

So what is the cheapest path to getting a house phone just so there is something else that can go "ring" if they need me?

I'm guessing your answer will be something along the lines of voip.ms and a cheap $30 voip phone or something?

If the voip phone thing turns out to be pretty cool, I may eventually expand it to become a house line for my home business itself, so I want to keep the option open for things like toll free number, most extensions around the house, voicemail, fax, stuff like that.

@stacksofplates said in Looking for some neat Server Build Projects:

Which is exactly what a database application would do.

But you're still missing the middle man. Who cares if I have a DB application? I do, I have Access and I have MySQL but that means nothing, I still have to convert the data to a format even acceptable by those, and useful for our own business logic.

If I don't do these macros and scripts in Excel, that's fine, but now I just have to do the same thing somewhere else for no real benefit.

And even if I used Access, nobody else knows how to use DB apps. I would have to set up forms and front end views for others to look and edit, which actually creates more workload for me.

Sometimes we sacrifice the "best" and the "ideal" for quick and productive.

Well I went ahead and bought two Echo Dots. They are much smaller than they seem in the pictures, tiny little boxes.

If I do anything interesting with them, I'll share the skills I create!

I actually had one today, to see if Alexa will find a song if I sing it to her, lol

I'm sure there is some open source Alexa-like project out there somewhere. Voice controlled AI we can run on our own in-home servers and train ourselves, all data kept safe under our pillows. And if there is not such a thing, there should be.

Say what you like, we all have preferences. I really like MS Office. LO and OO feel like Win95 apps to me.

And pivot tables and macros are not only DB things. They are quite handy for many purposes, here are a couple of my own use cases.

1. Data is not uniform and standardized. We get data as outputs from web apps, product vendors, financial reports, and don't have a say in how other people's data is stored.

2. I need a way for non-techy people to basically import->print report. I can use Excel's many data connection tools to import any of these data sources and format them as best as possible.

3. Macros can perform more advanced data manipulation tasks like converting values, calculating and combining fields, renaming columns and moving them around, create summaries, and setting up a printable template.

As a nerd, I can work with whatever data I need. I have MySQL installed on my desktop and I often create custom tables for stuff and my own data collecting, but I can't expect others to do the same. Their tools have to be point and click easy, and I don't have time to create custom web apps and desktop apps and databases for it when Excel and some VBA do it just fine.

Since we're in ecommerce, we definitely get all kinds of archaic looking documents from old versions of MS. I even have one data source where they literally do CSV for the column headings and immediately do TSV for the following values, Excel can't even parse that, it uses two different separators in the same file!
The only way out of that is custom code to parse it properly. VBA is pretty strong at it.

@tim_g said in HP Possible pulling a Lenovo with Stealthy spyware?:

No choice was given in the first place.

Tomato Tomahto

I can easily say people had a choice to not have auto-updates on. It's just as much "missing a checkbox" when Chrome got installed. I had choices in both cases, I "missed an option" in both cases. I could have prevented it in both cases if I paid more attention or changed a setting.

This is splitting hairs. HP did not hack into computers and install things without permission. It was a freaking Windows update.

@momurda said in HP Possible pulling a Lenovo with Stealthy spyware?:

@guyinpv They have been expanding this to include large 3rd party vendors. Adobe Flash is now updated through Windows Update for example.

Ya, but does Flash get installed automatically if it's not already on the machine? Does Updates simply decide everybody needs Flash and install it?

Either the HP software was replacing something already there, or they literally were install as if it was an important system driver for HP hardware.

@scottalanmiller said in Is the Echo trustworthy?:

@guyinpv said in Is the Echo trustworthy?:

It's less about trusting that Amazon isn't recording random things. It's more about distrusting what they will do with this massive pile of data. Either now or in the far future.

Then the question isn't about Echo at all. The question is purely do you trust Amazon, which is a rather different question. You led with questioning the Echo and the device category. But that's not the issue. The issue is vendors. So only vendors, not devices or device types, should have been the topic.

If you want to know if Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, et al. are trustable or not, that's a different discussion. What device is used to get that data isn't relevant.

My focus has changed with thread responses and other reading I've been doing today. The Echo is just a device. I question only whether it can be hacked, man in the middle, smart neighbor getting on my wifi, data properly encrypted.

Then I questioned what it records and when. I learned about the pre-record time, what is sent to Amazon, what is stored, and that I can delete histories and recordings if I want.

Then I questioned what is Amazon doing with it. We all know they will use it to train their AI, and learn more about my activity. But is the data shared, linked to me, used to advertise to me, or potential can be hacked, stolen, or taken by authorities?

There is already a case where a murder happened and police tried to subpoena Echo recording history, Amazon did refused to give up the recordings. I don't know if the legal stuff is still going on, but at least they aren't turning over personal data on a whim. Even for something like a murder investigation.

Then I questioned long term repercussions of these profiles. Will topics people discuss and think about today become crimes in the future? If people can say Trump said naughty words 35 years ago in a private conversation recorded without his knowledge in a trailer with his homies and thus he must be unfit for presidency, then what can decades of profile data with smart AI say about our futures? We'll know in 20 or 30 years I guess.

At the end of the day, anybody can be hacked for personal data. And the government probably already knows everything about me. But do we attempt to keep fighting our data-fat overlords and their convenience devices? Or just give in and live in the matrix and pump all our personal lives into their databases?

@scottalanmiller said in HP Possible pulling a Lenovo with Stealthy spyware?:

@guyinpv said in HP Possible pulling a Lenovo with Stealthy spyware?:

What? People chose to have an HP, they chose to have Windows Updates turned on and automatically load software. Windows updates also gets system tools and drivers, so HP came through it as a driver or something. Obviously Chrome can't get installed through Windows updates, but the HP thing apparently was "that kind" of tool where it can be included as if it were a really important driver or system tool. I don't know how that works.

All this means is that either HP socially engineered Microsoft and/or MS is in on it. MS is the one in the dangerous position here. They either have to throw HP under the bus, or admit that they intentionally deployed spyware through their updates!

This is the most interesting part for me.

Unless I got the story wrong, this came through Windows Updates. And I thought MS only updated MS software, or system drivers through updates. How would HP "spyware" get into Win Updates?

@scottalanmiller said in HP Possible pulling a Lenovo with Stealthy spyware?:

@guyinpv said in HP Possible pulling a Lenovo with Stealthy spyware?:

Frankly, I feel like we still know nothing about it. Why was it installed, what does it do, what data is it sending to HP and why?

This is wrong. We know three key things...

1. It was installed without permission.
2. It was run without permission.
3. It is stealing data without permission.

Those are the things we know. I've seen nothing that gives any reason to question any of those. And we know this not only from the news, but first hand accounts, even here in ML.

1. It was installed without permission.
   In the same way Windows Updates installs anything else "without permission". The user gives Win Updates the go ahead to auto install whatever comes through it.

2. It was run without permission.
   The same way any system service or driver or bug fix is auto run after Win Updates.

3. It is stealing data without permission.
   HP system health service of some sort. It's what it does. Perhaps it replaced a previous telemetry tool by HP, or this is a new thing HP forced on people, in which case, we didn't agree to it, that's the problem.

@scottalanmiller said in HP Possible pulling a Lenovo with Stealthy spyware?:

@guyinpv said in HP Possible pulling a Lenovo with Stealthy spyware?:

Don't give a crap what the programs DO, it's about them being installed not by me and I didn't ask for them.

You don't care that one you chose to install, and one you had no choice? You don't care that one ran only when you chose, and one ran without permission? You doestn' collect your data, the other steals it? You don't care about those things?

What? People chose to have an HP, they chose to have Windows Updates turned on and automatically load software. Windows updates also gets system tools and drivers, so HP came through it as a driver or something. Obviously Chrome can't get installed through Windows updates, but the HP thing apparently was "that kind" of tool where it can be included as if it were a really important driver or system tool. I don't know how that works.

Fact is people gave as much permission to get this HP tool installed as I gave to get Chrome installed. It just came with other things and didn't ask me.

@scottalanmiller said in Is the Echo trustworthy?:

@guyinpv said in Is the Echo trustworthy?:

Like everything in life I guess. No immediate reason to fear it, until there is. And by then it will be too late. Murphy's law, Moore's law. It's not a problem now, until it is.

The question to ask now is, is the trade-off worth it? Or more specifically, what do you do with it that is truly useful? Not just asking for weather or math answers. But does it do something truly unique and important in your life? Productivity? Business use? Or just basic hands-free conveniences?
I'm interested in asking for general facts, weather, math, cooking conversions, spellings, Spotify music playing, bank balance, intercom, messaging to phones, alarms, custom skills. I'm sure more interesting things would also reveal themselves.

That's why I mention the phones. If you are going to avoid the Echo, you must also avoid phones. If you aren't going to worry about phones, you can group the Echo with them and you are good.

It's a fine thing to be concerned about. Just don't make one a special case when they are identical.

They aren't identical, one is Amazon, one is Google.

I think there is already a collective perception that Google is the data monster, profiling everything and serving ads. But I don't think people have the same perception about Amazon.
I might even say public perception of Amazon is much more safe.
There are people who actively try to avoid Google services due to their blatant open collecting of all data. But I don't know anybody who tries to stay away from Amazon services.

Google has been exposed to data hoarding. Amazon not so much.

And yes I do trust when I turn off voice control on my phone, it's not still listening and recording anyway. I presume also if I click the mute button on the Echo, the mics do indeed turn off. But that's as far as my trust goes.

It's less about trusting that Amazon isn't recording random things. It's more about distrusting what they will do with this massive pile of data. Either now or in the far future.

@scottalanmiller said in HP Possible pulling a Lenovo with Stealthy spyware?:

I can make software that includes Chrome as part of it. I can deploy that without asking you if you agree to deploy my software. You make the decision, not me. You can remove if you want. It's all open and above board. It's not malware.

If I install software without your permission, and RUN that software without your permission, and STEAL your data without your permission... that's malware.

Installing with, running with, collecting data with permissions versus all the same without permissions. Don't you see how they are opposites?

No, I see them as the same. Programs that were automatically installed without explicit permission. Don't give a crap what the programs DO, it's about them being installed not by me and I didn't ask for them.

It's no more malware than Spiceworks is malware, or Speccy is malware. It collects system health data and what not. Did you not look at the what the HP DaaS program is, or the the HP Management tool before it? It's for central management and system care.

My bigger concern is why did HP (or MS?) decide to install this on computers that were not in the DaaS program. Since they are not in the DaaS program, the data is just going to HP themselves I guess, which does smell of stealing data.

Could it be that these computers were already using the previous HP Management tool and so HP just upgraded it to this newer thing? Could it be HP was already collecting system health data and they just weren't aware of it before?

For all anyone knows, the computers were already pumping this data out, not it just got exposed when upgrading to the DaaS service.

Frankly, I feel like we still know nothing about it. Why was it installed, what does it do, what data is it sending to HP and why? Did it replace a previous program that was doing the same? Was it an accident? Or do you truly believe HP just wanted to stick random malicious malware on peoples computers to steal data? Is THAT proved yet?
We know nothing, so as far as I see it, a random HP system health service/app was auto installed and nobody knows why.