Mini Stick PCs (mind blown)

[GuerrillaUnReal]

I feel walking into this forum like a casual fan of my hometown team walking into a room of fantasy baseball obsessives. But I just found out about these Mini Stick PCs and they are blowing my mind. It's probably a symptom of age but these are the neatest things that have struck me in a long time.

I'm something of a casual technology fiend in that I love technology and surround myself with it but I don't make a living at it or have enough knowledge about it to be anything more than casual. I'm in the midst of furnishing a new house. The most fun for me has been picking out all the new toys. While figuring out how I want to set up my TVs, I found these Mini Stick PCs that are essentially the same computing power as the laptop I'm on now yet around the size of a large memory stick. And the craziest thing to me is they're fully function little computers for only around $130. So now every TV in my house can have it's own completely independent computer for virtually nothing and it just clicks into the HDMI port.





http://www.pcworld.com/article/2911098/computers/mini-pc-invasion-10-radically-tiny-computers-that-fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand.html

Am I being fascinated by the horseless buggy or is this as cool as I think it is?

[Radio Activity]

You can even get them with a screen!

[(Sandman) Logan-5]

ArsTechnica (respected source) has a nice write-up on them here. If you decide to go this route, just make sure the salesman doesn't try to push  1st gen units on you. Look for the USB 3.0 ports (quickest way to tell) as opposed to the 2.0 ports. I'd wait a month or two for the (according to the article) more powerful mobile cpu (core-m) as opposed to the current atom processor.

[Jackstar]

[(Sandman) Logan-5]

   

      

https://www.blackhat.com/us-15/briefings.html#advanced-ic-reverse-engineering-techniques-in-depth-analysis-of-a-modern-smart-card

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/12/29/nsa-not-china-the-global-suicide-bomber/

L'edMAO when I saw this -
The 'BellGab' of Cyber Security:

"The traditional security industry has somehow decided that they are the white knights who are going to save everyone from the horror of insecure powergrids, pipelines, chemical plants, and cookie factories. Suddenly, every consultant is an expert and every product fixes SCADA. And because they don't know what the hell they're talking about -- 'fake it till ya make it' doesn't work -- they're making all of us look stupid.

Attendees will gain a practical level of knowledge sufficient to keep them from appearing foolish should they choose to opine on any of the various real issues stemming from Industrial Control or SCADA systems. Attendees will also feel embarrassed for something they've said, empowered to call out charlatans, and much less worried about cyberhackers unleashing cyberattacks which cybercause cyberpipelines and cybermanufacturing plants to cybergonuts and cybertakeovertheplanet using cybercookiesofdeath." Heh heh heh
                                            --> https://defcon.org/html/defcon-18/dc-18-speakers.html

http://www.spyworld-actu.com/spip.php?article5459

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/05/backdoor_found.html    <--  date of this article. 

Think you CCTV security system is safe ?
http://news.softpedia.com/news/backdoor-in-mvpower-dvr-firmware-sends-cctv-stills-to-an-email-address-in-china-500502.shtml

MV - This one's for you --> http://www.techworm.net/2015/08/lenovo-pcs-and-laptops-seem-to-have-a-bios-level-backdoor.html & http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/16748/hacking/spy-agencies-ban-on-lenovo-pcs-due-to-backdoor-vulnerabilities.html
"All Hail 'Sage' MV"   

scroll down to the answer w/ 8 useful ticks next to it, right under "3 Answers"
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/40257/backdoors-in-hardware-ie-intel-amd-cpu-possible

Now for the coup-Des-gras...     They're fucking doing it.

http://www.techpowerup.com/209925/nsa-hides-spying-backdoors-into-hard-drive-firmware.html

Look under servers for the BIOS based implant.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-941262.html

And here's the reason you should flash your router to DD-WRT or OpenWRT. https://cyberarms.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/numerous-d-link-routers-have-backdoor-in-firmware/ & http://blog.ensolnepal.com/router_backdoor/

Remember peeps, it's not paranoia. It's called hyper-awareness. 

With one simple picture, Jackstar pretty much said it all.

Think maybe this is the real reason John Titor came back for that old IBM ?      

[Jackstar]

http://www.techpowerup.com/209925/nsa-hides-spying-backdoors-into-hard-drive-firmware.html

With one simple picture, Jackstar pretty much said it all.

I'll be honest, I remember reading that story a year ago. I'm not a prophet, I just pay attention.

[starrmtn001]

Think maybe this is the real reason John Titor came back for that old IBM ?      

Did you watch Battlestar Galactica The Mini Series?  The Cylons had hacked their military and civil systems, which disabled their defense weapons for one.  Captain Adama also ordered his tech team to return to analog.  I think IBM was also mentioned.

Great series!  It ran from 2003 - 2007 I believe.

[(Sandman) Logan-5]

I'll be honest, I remember reading that story a year ago. I'm not a prophet, I just pay attention.

     

Did you watch Battlestar Galactica The Mini Series?  The Cylons had hacked their military and civil systems, which disabled their defense weapons for one.  Captain Adama also ordered his tech team to return to analog.  I think IBM was also mentioned.

Great series!  It ran from 2003 - 2007 I believe.

IIRC that was the pilot episode. I saw some of them, but the whole feel of the show was different. I think I was most disappointed with Starbuck. In the original, he was a suave rogue. In the remake, she was too pissed at the world(s) to make a good character IMO. Edward James Olmos kicked ass as Adama though. Of course he was always a good actor.