Hello everyone! I hope you’re staying healthy. I’m guessing you’re either working from home, or will be soon. Thankfully technology is here to help you navigate this uncomfortable situation. Some of us are creatures of habit, and not going into the office simply doesn’t feel right. Here are some tips to stay productive as well as recommend technology that will make your job easier.
While we are all dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 virus, and in the face of conflicting information we receive on a daily basis, the most important steps we can all take is to remain calm, and limit interactions with others (I’m looking at you, San Francisco).
The measures we take right now have a direct effect on the number of deaths later. There’s no sugar-coating this. Limiting contact and interactions with people for a brief time now will have a dramatic effect on how long we limit social contact. The scene coming out of San Francisco is not only disheartening, but also alarming. A city that was placed under a shelter-in-place order saw many of its citizens out for jogs, walks, coffee — it is irresponsible to brush off such orders, and has the effect of increasing the negative impact of this pandemic, both to personal life and financial resources.
If you’ve listened to the news in the last few years, you’ve likely heard the term botnets, though you may not fully be aware of what they are. In essence, they’re a kind of malware that infects as many machines as possible, but unlike Cryptolocker, or adware, it then does it’s best to hide. It doesn’t want you, your antivirus, or your IT to find it.
One of the ways they hide is by staying small. They download an innocuous looking application that doesn’t appear to do…anything. It just runs in the background, sits there, and occasionally reaches out to an internet server (which is something any application that can update itself does). Essentially, they’re holding open the door. Depending on the botnet variant, they can remain dormant for hours to months, but eventually they check in with their Command and Control server, and that’s when the real activity happens.
Rejoice! We have a new addition to the Relucio/Swan household: a robot vacuum! I’ve been obsessively vacuuming our new home every other day because of the floor. Our kitchen/bath tiles are a lighter color, which is showing dirt like crazy. Right off the bat, I think, “this will save me time!” Except … it doesn’t. Instead, I watch the vacuum suck in both ways things can suck. It sucks the dust on the floor and, stupidly, it runs into things and then sucks the same parts of rooms over and over. I giggle, but Kyle thinks our vacuum is dumb.
