Anker PowerConf C200: a case study in webcam security theatre
The Anker PowerConf C200 webcam looks like a good security choice at first, with triple-layered defences against hackers invading your privacy. However, this doesn't bear out in reality.
bearblog
Writings by Alexander Harkness (bearbin)
Latest posts
Fix for Error E1 on Tuya Zigbee TRV Smart Radiator Valves
Tuya Smart TRVs unfortunately suffer from a design flaw where they will produce an apparently unresolvable error after being stored. Luckily this is an easy fix!
Living in a Building Site: The Over-Development of London’s Housing Estates
London's housing crisis necessitates inventive solutions to build new social housing. But have they gone too far at Antony and Roderick Houses?
To Escape the Heat, Just Apply Suncream?
Heatwave precautions are a meme. Is it really more important to wear your suncream when outside on a hot day than a cool day? Of course not, but the advice to do so is copied across the media and society nonetheless. Maybe we can do better.
Running With The Foxes
A short post sharing my feelings about the city.
YouTube Comment Spam and the Linking Non-Link
As somebody who quite often scrolls down to the comments section on YouTube (for my sins), I'm often faced with the innovative tactics that spammers use to get their comments through Google's automated filtering and detection systems.
A Thought - Maybe More Money is not More Better
Nobody understands the economy. But more money is more better, right? Well, maybe. But an economy cannot be based on the creation of money alone.
Bottle Deposits are Bad Policy
Bottle Deposits are a popular environmentalist policy worldwide. However, they are a bad policy that imposes outweight costs on society while barely helping the environment.
What are you really doing when you fill in an hCaptcha
It's not clear exactly why hCaptcha gives the challenges that it does, but it's certainly more interesting than you might think to take a closer look and try and work out how it all ticks.
New Things of 2021
It's getting to be the end of 2021 - so it's a good time to look through some of the things I bought over the year, and reflect on how they've turned out. Some of them have been rubbish of course, but there are a number of things that have turned out to be very useful, or to have brought me joy in some other way, and made them into a list in the hope somebody else will find it helpful.
My IDE Broke
Last week my IDE broke. I tried to fix it and failed, and then I realised I was a failure as a software developer.
You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?
There are defences against badvertising on the internet, and you should use them. But there are defences against bad advertising in real life too, and you should use them too. Put badvertising in its place: nowhere!
Searching for Nothing, Finding a Surprise
Search engines are a fact of daily life for most of the population nowadays. Google (sub your preferred provider) is an extension of the brain, imagined as giving you access to the sum of the world's information at the click of a button. But a search engine isn't just a Ctrl-F for the internet with a nice interface and ads; rather it's a tremendously complicated system with lots of features and…
Drinking From the (Musical) Firehose on YouTube
YouTube provides a great experience for music discovery, but sometimes it's nice to break out of your filter bubble and be the first ever person to listen to a brand new song.
No, California Is Not Going to Take Your Generator Away
It's time to read the docs and learn what the law really says, before getting in a huff about your generator losing its puff.
Defective by Design: Reflected Attacks on Email Privacy using DMARC
Email privacy is dead, confirmed for the umpteenth time. In this post I present the SOILED-PRIVACY attacks (Systemic Online Information Leakage using Email+DMARC against Privacy). These are two reflected attacks against email infrastructure allowing an attacker to access private knowledge about a target user, transparent to mail forwarding, mailing lists, and web services.
Wayland is Almost There
I finally break down and install wayland on my desktop at home, using sway to replace i3. Things go OK, mostly.