at category 5 tv we trust our files to
solid-state drives by kingston
technology
whether for your server laptop or
desktop computer
you'll experience improved performance
and reliability with kingston
ssds get ready it's time for the tech
welcome to the show everybody it's
episode 2 of season 14
i'm robbie ferguson and i'm jeff weston
it's great to have you here
and uh i hope you've had a wonderful
week in spite of
everything but here we are and looking
forward to a great show ahead
tonight we're going to be learning how
to create our very own
proxy server okay um so i don't want to
talk too much about it off the top of
the show but i know that it's you know
sometimes hard to find a good
free proxy service so we're going to
create our own
and i'm going to show you how to place
it anywhere pretty much in the world
using aws cloud services so it is
pretty exciting and one of the things
with that too
as we learn a little bit about how
amazon web services ec2
and cloud services and the ability to
deploy debian servers
in the cloud infrastructure as we learn
how to do that
and how that works just know that one of
the things that we're going to be doing
is
migrating some of our data into that
infrastructure as well so i say that
because
some of our live stream viewers have
experienced trouble with buffering and
things like that
and it's because we have a little single
board computer
of all things that is that we're
streaming to and then it rebroadcasts to
anyone who's watching on roku or
other hls players and things like that
it has nimble streamer running on the
single board computer really it's
amazing wow
however what i did monitor through my
testing is that
it runs up a pretty high cpu when people
are watching right so
that i believe may be what causes some
buffering issues with our stream
um so there's a lot of stuff that goes
on behind the scenes here to try to
get it to you get the show to you uh in
a very accessible and easy to access
format and and so that you're not
experiencing things like the spinning
wheel
and those kinds of things but uh so as
we're watching tonight
uh and learning how to deploy these
debian servers in the cloud
know that that's something that we're
going to be doing behind the scenes here
as well and migrating those services
over
to uh to one of those instances in order
to
try to improve our performance here at
the studio so
loads of exciting stuff going on behind
us how you been
i've been good we're gonna be talking to
you a little bit later tonight about
uh some of your exploits with soldering
yes yeah you want to tell us a little
bit just a
quick tease as to what we're gonna be
discussing uh
my son wanted to get into soldering for
his
birthday uh so we went down that road
starting last month uh we've been
playing around a little bit and it's got
me thinking
how can i make my own stuff at home
when i don't have a big production area
to make my own
pcb yeah so yeah that's where we talked
about that so if you're interested in
diy electronics we're gonna be
talking about that and uh wow we've got
some exciting things that we're
gearing up for as well next week's show
is already
ready to go and we're excited to be
introducing 3d printing to our viewers
as well
so that's something that we're going to
be learning over the course of the
coming weeks here at category 5 tv
we've got a lot going on yeah
please make sure you subscribe to us on
youtube
and click the bell so that you get the
notification every time we post a new
video anytime we're live
and also if you want to get involved in
the community i think that's a really
cool way
to be part of category 5 tv
some people still say to me well what's
discord and it's
wow you aren't part of our discord
server because if you join
our discord which you'll find if you go
to category5.tv click on
interact you'll see join the discord
server
it's a free browser-based or app-based
service that
you can put on your device and or access
through your browser on anything
and you can basically chat with the
community but it's really neat
in that it's more than just a chat room
it's also
got different rooms allocated for
different
things so things that we're talking
about or for example we've got behind
the scenes
so behind the scenes is just chock full
of backstage
photos that you wouldn't see otherwise
and and there's so much there yes on our
discord server so really you got to go
there
know that it's a like it's a chat
platform but it it has a
so much more than just the chat
interaction
that's right and it's not just active
during the show
it's it's on all the time and i mean if
you have tech stuff
middle of the week you're like oh i
don't know how to resolve this issue you
could pop in there and
the community is awesome about giving
advice and that's pretty spot-on too
yeah that's true
all right so we do have to take a really
quick break and then we're jumping right
into it after this short breakaway we're
going to be looking at
how to set up an aws ec2 instance
that's that sounds like technobabble to
me it does
real fast yeah how about this we're
gonna we're gonna create our own
free proxy service that's easier to say
i'm in control i've got access
we have the control stick around we'll
be right back
[Music]
whether you're hoping to give yourself a
little extra privacy while you surf the
internet
or you want to access services that
perhaps aren't available
typically in your area or maybe it's a
case of
actually having had your ip address
blocked
by a service provider it may not be a
malicious thing
i've had my ip address blocked by
youtube before
because i upload so many videos and
download
the closed captions for those so that
has led to me
exceeding my usage in the youtube api
so then my ip address gets blocked so
it doesn't have to be a malicious thing
i don't want to give that impression
but there are very legitimate reasons
to need to get around those types of
things and the nerds go to
is a proxy the problem is proxies
can be very expensive to use and the
free ones
while readily available are very often
either not very reliable they're up one
day they're down the next and you lose
access to your services and
everything else or even worse
they're dangerous you don't know what
those proxies are tracking
logging and even like intercepting
as you're going through you're sending
all of your internet traffic
through that service provider
so there's one person who i really trust
to proxy all of my data
and that's me i'm not the same person
that you would say that you trust
the person that you trust is you so i'm
going to show you how
i might set up a free proxy service
of my own and you can replicate that and
create your own as well
we're going to do this in the cloud we
are going to be using a third-party
service provider
and that's amazon so you say oh well
amazon what about
you know are we able to trust our data
to them well what we're using is their
cloud services it's called
amazon web services so it's
all of their it's their cloud
infrastructure that they have
for customers to basically rent access
to their servers and their
their space and and the the virtual
servers and everything else that whole
infrastructure is available to you
but the deployment itself is
yours i'm going to show you how this is
done we're going to jump on to aws
and in particular ec2 so of course
you if you're not familiar with aws just
go to aws.amazon.com sign in with your
amazon account
and then do a quick search for ec2
and that will take you into basically
their virtualization platform think of
ec2 as
just that so the first thing i note when
i'm here
in ec2 is my region and this is
important because this is where my proxy
server is going to reside
should i set it there why is that
important well think about this
let's say i'm using a video streaming
restricts canadian access to their video
streaming service so
by placing my proxy server down in north
california
now all of a sudden they are basically
by ip address going to think that i'm
connecting from
california so i'm able to work around
that
similarly you may want to change your
region based on
what it is you're trying to achieve you
can even put a server in africa
or asia look at that you can put one
right in hong kong
you can put one in canada a uh in europe
you've got
all over the place and then we've got
middle east and south america right now
so
it's a pretty big list of where they
have this infrastructure set up for
amazon web services the ec2 service
so pick the one that is where you want
your proxy server to be
i'm going to set mine i'm just going to
leave it as north california which is
u.s
west one and that is where
my proxy server is going to reside
that's going to allow me to connect
as if i was actually sitting in
all right so i'm going to click on
launch instance
and then launch instance again because
it does a drop down and this gives me
a list of operating systems that i can
deploy
on my ec2 instance so i'm using some
terms here you may not be familiar with
aws is amazon web services that's
basically amazon's
full gamut of services that they offer
for cloud users ec2 is their
virtualization platform for virtual
machines
when i said instance i'm talking about a
virtual machine
so that is literally a virtual machine
so i'm going to deploy one of these
operating systems to an instance of ec2
which is
a virtual machine so what do i want it
to be
so and i was saying hey comment below if
i use a term that you're not familiar
with
i'm going to do a quick search i've
already done it before because i deploy
a ton of servers
in the cloud i'm going to click on
debian just type in debian into the
search here
so then i'm going to go to aws
marketplace results there are also
ones that i've created and ones in the
community
you would think oh well i want to use
community ones well no you don't because
those ones are going to cost you money
and you say well but community is free
it's open source and yes
however it's not a part of the aws
marketplace and so you're going to have
to pay for the usage
to have that virtual machine that
instance running
in the cloud so instead we're going to
use one of the official ones from the
aws marketplace let's see what results
we get they're sorted pretty well
debian comes up the first result is
debian 10 buster
a free tier compatible or free tier
eligible
version of debian that we're going to be
deploying so select that
free tier eligible so we can ignore the
pricing because we are going to use a
free tier hit continue
and this is where we select that so well
if we want the free tier we've got to go
with a t2 micro
so i'm going to select that but what
does it give us it gives us one cpu
one gigabyte of memory um
and then we've got storage to deal with
we don't need a lot of storage because
we're just setting up a basic proxy
and that's about it so i'm going to
deploy just as
that so t2 micro is the one that's free
tier
eligible don't select one of the bigger
ones because you're going to be paying
for it
right away i'm going to review and
launch we're going to come back to
do settings like our security groups and
things like that i'm just going to leave
everything
by default for now and we're going to
launch that so
first of all i need to create a new key
pair so this is
the ssh key that i'm going to use in
order to ssh into
this server so i'm going to call this
one proxy
server and then download my key pair
make sure you save that somewhere safe
i'm going to
throw that onto my server and drop that
and now launch instance means power
on your virtual machine so i'm going to
push that
and there we go so it's basically
creating it is creating a virtual
machine
uh an ec2 instance in the cloud for us
in uh in northern california so there we
go
so i'm going to view instances down here
and now i can see i now have one
instance running a t2 micro
and it is just no name so i'm going to
click on edit and i'm going to call this
my proxy server
server try that there we go okay so it's
already up and running
so if i click on that i can see the ip
address of that server it is i've called
it proxy server but right now
remember it's just debian 10. there's
nothing else installed on it
so i need to copy that ip address
and then i'm going to jump into my
command
prompt because i downloaded the key to
my server i'm personally going to
ssh to my in-house server
all right so now i'm there so now the
command that i'm going to use
is ssh and then dash
i for the key that i'm going to be using
so the incoming file that i'm going to
be using for the key
and that one is called proxy server.pem
is what i downloaded
then i'm going to go admin because
that's the default login for the debian
ami
or amazon machine image admin at
and then the ip address that i've
already copied to my clipboard and if i
hit enter
it's going to ask me to accept that key
and i say yes and
i am denied
permissions on that file ended up being
note that
766 so everyone has access to those
files so that's interesting
ssh itself is protecting me from
somebody being able to compromise my key
so chmod 700
proxy server pam let's try that and now
try again
so what i've done is oh and now i'm
connected it just worked
700 means i the owner of that key
i'm allowed to do anything with it
read write execute zero zero means
nobody in the group nobody that is not a
part of the group
is allowed to access that at all so it's
basically a dumb file that they can't
even open
but i can alright so now that i'm
connected i'm going to go sudo sue
because that's what the command is to
become
root so now i am root so app update
whoop
app update is going to grab my
repositories you see this is a
an actual debian computer if you will
in the cloud it's that easy i'm already
upgrade i'm already running a debian
computer in the cloud
so in that amount of time and i'm blah
blah blah at the same time
um we've got a cloud-based debian server
did you did you realize it was that easy
and it's free
okay so we can do other things with this
too we could set up a lamp stack we
could use it for mysql mariadb
anything you can come up with it's a
debian server
so we're going to be using this as our
proxy so now what i'm going to do
is i'm going to install a tool called
tinyproxy nice and simple to install
apt install tiny proxy
really simple to configure say yes
here we go
and it's done now that we've installed
tiny proxy we just need to edit
the config file so slash etc
tiny tiny proxy change dir into that
and then i'm using nano tinyproxy.com
and edit that so control w in nano
allows me to search
oh but before i do search note that the
port by default is using
888 we're going to need to know that
information because that
is what we're going to connect to for
our proxy do a quick search for allow
alt w allows you to search again wow the
word allow is probably not the best
search query maybe search for 127.0.0.1
and just below that one i'm going to
allow and then i need to add
my ip address so that i can connect to
this proxy server because right now it's
closed down
only localhost can access it that's
important to note
that this is while this is a public free
proxy server i'm the only one who's
going to be allowed to access it that's
going to be allowed to
proxy my content my connection through
it so it is private in that regard
i need to know my ip address so i'm
going to jump over to
current ip.xyz and copy that
ip address to my clipboard and then jump
back there and paste it into my config
control o enter control x control o is
to write out
save the file now systemctl
restart tiny proxy
almost done the final thing that we need
to do is we just need to tell aws
the ec2 security that
we're going to set up a policy that says
hey only i am allowed to connect to that
so nobody else can connect to it
whatsoever
so that's what we're going to do right
now so i'm going to jump back here and
you see this server up on the screen
well if i click on security i can then
click on the security group that it is
assigned automatically so just click
and now it has left me over to ec2
security groups and the correct security
group
you'll notice that it's already set up
one for ssh because
it's by default enabled i can set that
to only allow me as well which is
important so
let's do that just to be in good
security practices so
ssh i'm going to change it from
custom000
i'm going to close x that and then
change it to my ip
then i'm going to add a new rule you saw
how i got here right i know i'm moving
really really fast
i've just clicked on edit inbound rules
over here
okay so add a new rule custom tcp is the
default
port number do you remember 888 and only
allow my ip
i can call it something if i want proxy
and then save my rules
there we go so now you see ssh and
custom tcp
one called proxy on port 888.
so how do we test this okay so our
current ip address is 99.233
and so i'm going to connect to the proxy
this is
not a tutorial on how to use a proxy
this is not a
tutorial on what to use it for
necessarily this is
this i'm making assumptions here that
you can either google it yourself
because it's going to be different based
on your use case whether you want to
just proxy your browser or proxy a
particular application or your entire
network
that's going to be up to your individual
use case this is
strictly a tutorial on how to build this
ec2 instance really really quickly for
free
that has a proxy ready for us to use in
california or wherever
and uh that's that's it so in my
particular case right now
so this moment is not necessarily what
you want to do next
this is just how i am going to test the
proxy i happen to be on windows 10 here
so i'm going to simply type in proxy
and go into proxy settings again this is
probably not how you want to do it
i just want to test so i'm going to turn
on proxy
i can see that there's an old proxy
settings there so make sure you're
mindful of that
if there are old proxy settings you need
to change it go to
instances on ec2 click on your instance
id
and grab that ip address and then paste
that in
as the address for your proxy server
port 8888
and save so now i'm connected to the
proxy instantly
not connected to now windows is saying
i'm going to route all your traffic
through the proxy i should correct
myself there
so if i go back to currentip.xyz
99.233 is my current ip i'm going to hit
f5 to refresh
and if all went well 3.101.108.211. well
what is that
that's my server so i am actually now
where am i let's find out maxmind.com
let's do a search for the ip address
that i'm currently on
where am i san jose california
that's where max mine determines me to
be
so that's all there is to it folks we
have
created configured deployed a free proxy
service that we
own and operate we're the only ones who
has that who have that
uh ssh key so if you want to connect in
make changes use it
as a multi-purpose server you can do
that but just keep an eye on your
your billing stuff just make sure that
you haven't exceeded thresholds and
if you're just using it as a proxy it's
very unlikely you're gonna do that
it's just something that you're piping
data through so check that out it's
aws.amazon.com to get yourself started
if you have questions post them to our
community head on over to
our discord you'll find the link at
category 5
tv on the interact menu in the meantime
if you enjoyed this if you've used it or
found it useful give me a big thumbs up
please subscribe and we'll see you right
after the break
welcome back this is category 5
technology tv
and i want to talk about what i'm doing
at home
or rather what i'm planning to do
sitting around watching netflix
i don't have time to sit around and
watch netflix i wish i did but
uh no my family always hogs netflix and
i i'm like i'll just go on the computer
which is great because it's forced me to
start there's netflix on the computer
now jeff
you're distracting me uh no but it's
great because it's forced me to start
looking at some of the things we do
around the house and go
how can i make this my own and so
you know i mentioned at the top of the
show that our son has
gotten into soldering and he's done very
well at it and remind us how old is he
just turning 12. just turned 12. all
right um but uh yeah he's done
very well with it and uh he's soldered
two calculators so far
um and one of them he's taken to school
which his teacher was completely blown
away by
yeah i'm thinking 12 years old and he's
already making a calculator yeah yeah he
made a calculator we got a diy kit from
amazon and he built it and it maybe two
hours
of work it was really phenomenal unreal
and his soldering job is
really really clean excellent like looks
pro
but anyway he's been asking how to do
other stuff and as we're soldering he's
like well what's this
and what's this and how's that work and
i'm going i want to be able to teach him
these things
i want to be able to explain to him how
a circuit board actually works not just
soldering it but understanding the
components and the routing and all that
kind of stuff
and i mean i know you can buy um
just plain boards that are just
rows of of of little connection points
but i want to be able to make our own
board yeah and so he's asked
specifically if we can find a diy kit
for
a useless box you know that's the box
where you push the button yeah and the
little thing comes out and pops it
yeah give it a try
what'd you do are you serious
oh my gosh that is hilarious
hello it's like having a kitten in there
it's like my cat
hey hey now so i've been looking for one
haven't found one but i found a bunch of
people like oh you can make one using an
arduino you can make one using this
and i was like if i'm gonna do a diy
box useless box i want to build it from
the ground
up so i've been researching how to make
my own pcbs at home
okay it's actually not that difficult
and i was blown away that all i need is
a laser printer to set my routing
like where the paths go so you're going
to actually etch it
i'm going to actually etch it at home oh
man
that's way beyond me jeff it's really
that involves chemicals
it does but but a really simple process
so i've found
i've done a bunch of research into it
and so i found a a
really simple easy way to make my own
pcb
and that's what we're going to be doing
so my project for the next probably a
couple of months
because i have to learn how this stuff
works is to
design a circuit board um which i've
never done before
make the circuit board and then my son's
going to solder it together and we're
going to make our own
useless box that i'm hoping to also 3d
print the box as well oh that's cool
yeah you're just diving right in i when
i do something i don't go small
and you know my approach is a little bit
different because i am very much
into like i like to learn something
first
and then increase my investment in
that process and and you're like talking
about jumping right to pcb
creation so i would back up so you know
if this is you thinking hey maybe i'd
like to be able to make my own circuits
and things like that
my starting point is a breadboard yes
and the breadboard allows you to lay out
your circuit that you've designed or
that you've
downloaded like a circuit blueprint um
from the internet or however
however you've got that lets you lay it
out on a
on a basically a mock pcb
that will function like a pcb but then
you can just take it all apart and
put the parts away right and it's cheap
very cheap and it just gets you started
and then the next step for me is what's
called a prototyping board so you get
pcb boards that
have all the holes that's right and
they've got solder
um like points but there's no
interconnection between them so you
actually run wires or you
run a little bit of solder between two
different joints for example
and you do it that way so that's my
second step yes then i would look at
maybe going the route of actually
etching your own
pcbs because then you're getting into
like the chemical processes
the and i'm i haven't researched it but
um it's a much more intricate process so
i like to start
a little bit simpler my first pcb i
built on a breadboard
very very basic but i designed it right
okay
and all it is is it takes a five volt
signal
and when it has five volts the
relay is closed so it has a relay right
okay when it does not have five volts
the relay
opens so it disconnects so
the reason that i created that it's a
purpose-built application so i built it
on a breadboard
and feeding at five volts is coming from
any guesses any guesses spc nope
it's another three letter acronym usb
usb usb pulling a five volt signal off
of a micro tick
router okay and so then in the micro
tick i programmed code that said
that basically to dumb it down if the
internet goes down
kill the power on the usb oh and so then
opens up the relay and what is the relay
control but the power to my modem
so my modem if the internet goes down
will automatically turn
the power of itself off because of my
relay
right and wait five seconds and then
power back on so it's essentially a
virtual version of
did you turn it off and on again because
what do you do when you're in an
internet goes down you pull the plug
from the momentum you wait five seconds
and you plug it back in and
you know eight times out of ten it's
going to come back up and be working
right so that was the circuit i built so
i built that on a prototyping board once
i had it working and i just soldered it
together and it's a very very simple
circuit
very cool and it worked great i like
very cool so tools what have you got so
far where are you at
uh well like i said i've just been doing
the research this past week oh so
i'm um i'm at the buying stage
uh so we've got all the soldering stuff
i'm going to be buying the board buying
the chemicals
i've already downloaded the um software
designing the pcb wow um
and i've got a component kit that's on
the way with all the
resistors and capacitors right yeah all
that kind of stuff that's a neat thing
too is that these
these days i mean you can't really walk
into a radio shack like we used to be
able to there no
there are still stores like here in
barrie we have one called seaal
which is a brilliant store that's kind
of like that old radio shack where you
go in and
it's like i just need one capacitor yeah
and it's like
here you go you know it's like drawers
and drawers of capacitors and resistors
and everything else diodes and whatever
but just to get a kit for 20 bucks that
has
all the kind of like the common stuff
and it's a kit that comes with a
breadboard
and it comes with a breadboard and that
was one of the things is is i wanna like
yes i'm gonna be designing it but part
of the planning process is just like you
said using the breadboard to figure out
how the circuitry is gonna go
and that's gonna be a great learning
experience for luke because they'll be
like hey this is
how does this work and let's try this
and let's do that and then
you know we'll be able to try on there
without actually making our own pieces
that's really neat you mentioned also
arduino and arduino is kind of
like it's a controller so yeah you know
whereas
a raspberry pi or other single board
computer is a true
real computer with an operating system
and everything an arduino is like you
just program it to do
a very specific task it's a solid state
and
it will respond to and i think this is
why it would work really well an arduino
uh for a useless box is because it's
like
it's either on or off that's right and
if it's on do this
and then it will turn off that's right
so very very basic programming
digital write four
comma hi hi semicolon and then we're
gonna delay for one second which is one
thousand milliseconds
and then we're going to copy that line
now
what do you think high means versus low
which is what i'm going to put here
just a guess on or off yes
so that's what my circuit now looks like
and i'm going to simply plug this in
to usb power so i'm not plugging it into
the computer i want to
actually power this device and see if it
runs my program
and if it does we should see this light
flash there we go
that is neat every one second so we
actually created the circuit
fairly quickly uh and created the
program to now tell this light
what to do and we told it just very
simply
turn on and off again but if you're
making your own circuit you've got to
like do
ics you've got to program it yourself
yup you've got to figure out how
wow i want to see this project as a work
in progress
okay and then see how uh how it comes
together yeah sounds good
we mentioned the community here on our
show and uh our discord server in
particular
i've tapped into our community jeff to
and share my ideas for circuits and yep
things like that and there are some
folks in our community who are just
like way up here as far as their
capabilities and understanding of those
types of things
so it's been really helpful for me as i
learned so
oh i even i fully plan to use the
community utilize work me through bugs
yeah and if you're one of those folks in
the community right now just hey
raise your hand and say yeah i
understand how all that works i'd love
to help
and uh and that's something that i think
that i think that'll make a really neat
feature for the show as well as you
learn
yeah for sure keep us posted on that
jeff definitely i'd really be interested
to know how things go
yeah i'll be posting things behind the
scenes a useless box any other
do you have any ideas yet i get excited
when i
invent like when i think of something
have you had any of those
moments where i'm like i really wish i
had something that would do this but it
doesn't exist
this is where 3d printing is interesting
to me because i'm creating things that
don't exist yet i i haven't really
thought
that far as to what exists and doesn't
exist
um
no i haven't really thought that far
come up with some ideas
yeah and share those there's a ton of
things for sure
yeah like i've always wanted to do um
us um a housewide sound system
that links up to um you know
our our amazon device and stuff like
that but i would like to have sensors
where
when i walk from one room to another the
motion sensor kicks in and it will shut
off the one room speakers
and add it to where i've just gone
that's way more advanced but that's
probably
the only thing i can think of where i'm
like i want to do this but see you talk
about that and then i think okay well
you could use a passive infrared sensor
yep which is used in motion sensors
you could use a laser sensor but
pir is very very cheap yes yeah and it's
just a little sensor that it's like
okay there was motion do something yeah
so you could create something
again with a relay that controls just
whether the speaker has
a completed circuit or not yeah so if it
was just a
bunch of speakers connected through an
amplifier you could have relays set up
with pir sensors that you'd be able to
control by motion
yeah good and if there's no motion for
10 minutes turn off the speaker
automatically or something like that
yeah
exactly so like these kinds of ideas
like there's so much stuff that you can
do
when you start to understand and then
there's the whole flip side of it where
something breaks and you can fix it yes
that's a good feeling
and that's done we've done that already
yeah nice so
you know you get those little battery
testers uh like to check the charge
yeah so we had one of those and it's
funny when my son was building his
calculator
we weren't sure if the batteries were
working and we weren't getting anything
i'm like this is odd that we're not
getting usually even if it's dead it
pops into the red
but there was nothing so we opened it up
turns out the
actual connection had broken apart oh
now i have no clue yeah
and my son's like oh i can fix that and
he fixed it we put it back together and
then we and it works and it's like oh
yeah that's a dead battery
yeah i can relate to that too i use a
pillow speaker for podcasts
okay and uh because it's you know
connected by a wire to my phone it gets
pulled
yep and it got pulled right out so it's
such a simple thing but i totally what
did i do
didn't buy another one no no no i took
it apart
and i re-soldered it and reinforced it
so it wouldn't happen again oh beautiful
made it better than it was he's he's
turned his mind towards things like
e-waste yes and he's like if somebody's
going to get rid of their
tv or computer monitor chances are
it's still working dad it's just
something inside broke
he's like i can fix it i'm like yeah you
think about that and so his wheels are
turning last and he's like
could i do these things and then sell
them
12 years old that's a career
in a number of
uh like it's really valuable to have
those capabilities
so i'm gonna train him up for the next
uh well he's 12. so in
eight six years i'm retiring
i had a monitor come in i don't know
maybe a 23 inch or
24 inch wide screen beautiful monitor
came in
as e-waste and so i'm like
i'll take a look and so my daughter and
i looked at it
and there was a single capacitor
that was burnt out so i went online and
i bought one of those capacitors they
sell them in packs of
three and it was twelve dollars so for
12
we got a pack of three we replaced one
of those capacitors and that monitor is
now sitting on my daughter's desk
oh my gosh that's amazing it's wonderful
and he's absolutely right but not only
can you fix stuff jeff
let's say something comes into e-waste
or you you know you find something at
the side of the road that someone's just
discarded because they can't they don't
know how to fix it
um and maybe if fixing it is more
expensive than buying a new one in a lot
of cases too
um you can even if you can't fix it
you can do what's called desoldering
that's right so you can remove
all the good components from that and
put them in a drawer organizer yes
so that you can then have your own radio
shack at home where you've got the
drawers of all these different parts
and then when something breaks you don't
have to spend 12
online to buy them i wish i hadn't known
he was gonna get into this
because in the summer i had about four
computers
a couple projectors we took them all the
e-waste
so it's like oh i could have dismantled
that oh sure yeah got them
oh well the parts out we live and learn
yeah exactly
very cool well keep us posted on that
definitely and hey comment below tell us
about some of the exploits that you've
had
uh with regards to to these kinds of
topics and and if they're if it's
something that interests you that you've
never gotten into
hey comment below as well we'd love to
hear from you and we'd love to have you
as a part of that process as jeff is
learning
as i'm also learning and getting more
and more into those types of
like component repairs and and circuit
boards and everything else
it's a lot of fun yeah it's a great
hobby and a wonderful career if you
really want to do it as well so it's
true good for your son i'd like to hear
how he
enjoys it so when he's um i guess
13 plus so next year you can bring him
into the studio
and he can show us how he's how he's
making out
sounds good very cool make it happen
we've gotta head over to the newsroom
becca's there with our top news stories
for the week
here she is here's what's coming up in
the category 5 dot tv news room
hackers are using a severe windows bug
to compromise
unpatched servers three javascript
packages have been removed from the npm
portal for containing malicious code
nokia has been tasked with building a
new 4g
cellular network on the moon a new 80
watt wireless charging tech from
xiaomi is blowing our minds and the
raspberry pi
compute module 4 has been released we'll
let you know the specs and how this
changes things for industrial iot
stick around the full details and this
week's crypto corner
are coming up this is the category 5 dot
tv newsroom
covering the week's top tech stories
with a slight linux
bias
from the newsroom i'm becca ferguson
unpatched servers one of the most
critical windows vulnerabilities
disclosed this year is under active
attack
by hackers who are trying to backdoor
servers that store credentials for every
user
and administrative account on a network
researchers gave the vulnerability the
name xerologon because attacks work by
sending a string of zeros
in a series of messages that use the net
logon protocol
which windows servers rely on for a
variety of tasks
including allowing end users to log in
to a network
xero logon as the vulnerability has been
dubbed
gained widespread attention last month
when the firm that discovered it said it
could give attackers
instant access to active directories
which admins use to create
delete and manage network accounts
active directories and the domain
controllers they run on are among the
most coveted prizes
in hacking because once hijacked they
allow attackers to execute code and
munition
on all connected machines microsoft
patched the security flaw
in august on friday kevin beaumont
working in his capacity as an
independent researcher
said in a blog post that he had detected
attacks on the honeypot he uses to keep
abreast of attack
attacks that hackers are using in the
wild when his lure server was unpatched
the attackers were able to use a
powershell script
to successfully change an admin password
and backdoor the server
beaumont said that the attack appeared
to be entirely scripted with all
commands being completed within seconds
with that the attackers installed a back
door allowing remote
administrative access to devices inside
his mock network
the attackers also enabled remote
desktop as a result they would continue
to have remote access even if the admin
later patches the server
people with no authentic authentication
can use the exploit to gain domain
administrative credentials as long as
the attackers have the ability to
establish tcp connections
with a vulnerable domain controller in
some cases attackers may use a separate
vulnerability to gain a foothold inside
a network
and then exploit zero logon to take over
the domain controller
i think a good example of a way for
these types of scripts to get into
networks
are out of date computers on the network
and also social engineering scams we
hear a lot about
like you probably receive these emails
that try to trick you into
following through with a process of
entering a credential or something like
the the risk that we run and the sad
case that i see as
in i.t is that sometimes people think
well
i don't need to update that computer
because it's in the back room nobody
really uses it
yeah or oh well we need this one to
still have windows xp
because we have problems with one of our
printers if we don't
we're still seeing a lot of windows 7
systems
and that is a tragedy if you have a
windows 7 or windows
xp system on your network just turn it
off
get rid of it yeah see the the thing is
is with those systems so microsoft has
what we call eol or end of life uh
has has ended the life of these
operating systems
so they've said you've got to upgrade to
windows 10. well i don't want to upgrade
to windows 10 i like my windows 7.
i understand that and i respect that
however
here's the problem hackers
now are able to exploit these operating
and as they do that as they find
exploits
there's a couple of things that happen
one they
either give away or sell those exploits
or two they're just they're released
to the public through whether it's
through the dark web or even on github
as as security research and so now
these hackers if you will we're going to
call them that but realistically
in a lot of cases they're what we call
script kitties
and these are um
not even like hackers yes but they don't
have to have a lot of knowledge because
the the exploit is publicly
that's right known and understood so if
there are exploits that are available
for an operating system
what do we expect to happen we expect
the operating system vendor microsoft in
this case
to patch that exploit to fix it
and that's the case with windows 10.
sadly though
those that are eol it's not the case
with an eol operating system sometimes
we hear oh well i don't need support
well microsoft has ended support that's
what we've heard yeah they've ended
support for windows 7. they've ended
support for windows xp
oh but i i've never had to call support
i can
handle it that's not what they're
talking about at all what they're saying
they will not fix the patches
it does the the exploits doesn't matter
how severe they are
it doesn't matter how easy they are to
exploit so you have a windows 7 machine
on your network well
you are giving entry to
one of these hackers who don't even have
to be very good at hacking
because the exploits are publicly known
yep sometimes they're part of tools
sometimes they can just download a free
tool and they can say i want to
with one check exploit windows 7
and so they get into a windows 7 box or
they've tricked one of your employees
even if they're just somebody in the
back working in the warehouse
they've tricked somebody into opening a
file that now gives them access to the
windows 7 machine the windows xp
machine or the machine in the back room
doesn't matter
and here we're learning that microsoft
servers
now have an exploit that as long as
a malicious party can gain access to any
computer on the network
they can now get domain administrator
access to the entire network
now scary now
your windows 10 machines are no longer
safe that's right because you've given
them entry to your network as if
they're a domain administrator
oh see that's just bad news right there
well it's bad news why is ransomware a
thing
because what do they do they now okay
i've gained access to this network
i'm going to sell on the dark web access
to this network
you see this with um with townships
and yeah with cities that
was it the original script kitty who did
it no what
he just they just want they want to get
in
install their software and get out and
then sell access
that's right because that's quick money
so why do people do it for money
and that's how they do it so um yeah you
gotta
kind of keep things up to date so you
know it's just a quick thought
to ponder hey if you've got any obsolete
machines on your network you've got to
get them off
and get your staff trained on cyber
security practices
understand what phishing scams are
because you know oh well
somebody clicked on a link and now their
computer computers infected but their
computer is
on your network but i was gonna get
half of that prince's money
that's a whole other worms right there
jeff
but i mean i when it comes to these kind
of things to look at your system and say
oh
i don't want to spend seven eight
hundred bucks for a new computer i
wouldn't worry about updating this one
you'll end up spending more in the long
run uh or in in the short term
um no in the long run if you don't
have your system patched because once
they get access to everything
you could be down and out but and i
think
when they have access to everything i
think it's just important to realize
that one entry point becomes access to
everything so spend a couple hundred
bucks get the new computer
save yourself i don't know what it takes
i mean it's different it's different for
every case right yeah i had one person
today who called and said i have a
single windows 7 computer
i don't want to upgrade it because it
just works oh
so here's here's an explanation and here
becca has shared with us a story
that simply tells us that all they need
is access to that one computer
and now they've got access to all
computers of your computers and not
in just like a samba way not in a way
that's like friendly and hopefully they
don't find
any ways into the back doors on those
computers no
they have administrator credentials on
your
network so they can do anything
that's right anything they want when i
think about my house
i think i've got you're done i think i
have seven
devices not including phones and tablets
and stuff like that that are connected
to the network
i don't want them to have access to that
yeah i just can't stress enough though
i mean i think in the terms of
businesses more so the home user but
once they're in they're in you can't
that you're done because you can't now
shut down that windows machine that
windows 7 machine no they're already
into everything
so what do you do replace everything
have every single computer wiped
because you don't know what tools
they've installed that's expensive
yeah so don't fall into that
anyways that's a bad exploit that's
really serious folks i hope
we've stressed that enough that you
understand that this is a bad one
so make sure your network administrators
are up and up and they understand these
things
and that you are protected and safe
against these kinds of threats all right
we're going to head back to becca
three javascript packages have been
removed from the npm portal for
containing malicious code
according to advisories from the mpm
security team
the three javascript libraries open
shells on the computers of developers
who imported the packages
into their projects the shells allow
threat actors to connect remotely to the
infected computer
and execute malicious operations the npm
security team said that the shells don't
depend on a particular operating system
and could be used to compromise windows
linux freebsd
openbsd and other systems
all three packages were uploaded to the
npm
portal in 2018 and each had hundreds of
downloads since then
the package's names are plutovs dash
slack dash client
nodetest199 and nodetest1010
the npm security team said
any computer that is that has this
package installed or running should be
considered fully compromised
all secrets and keys stored on that
computer should be rotated immediately
from a different computer they warn
the package should be removed but as
full control of the computer may have
been given to an outside entity
there is no guarantee that removing the
package will remove all malicious
software
resulting from installing it mpm
security staff regularly scans its
collection of javascript libraries
considered the largest package
repository for any programming language
while i can't even get good cell
coverage coverage at my cottage
nokia is working with nasa to bring 4g
to the moon nasa's artemis mission aims
to establish a long-term
human presence on the moon as a stepping
stone toward mars colonization
and to get things started nasa is
extending 370 million dollars to 14
companies
to provide the technology for the
program
from robotics to power generation and
even cryogenics
but it makes sense that these teams will
need to be able to communicate with the
mother planet
the new network will be designed
specifically for lunar conditions
able to withstand the extreme
temperature shifts and radiation
the tech will also utilize small cell
tech which as the name suggests
is significantly smaller than the tall
cell towers they're used to seeing
here on earth they also use a lot less
power
the plan is for a lunar lander to carry
the 4g communication system to the lunar
surface
in 2022 nokia's bell labs has been
granted 14.1 million dollars
for their part a new 80 watt wireless
charging tech from
compute module 4 has been released
we'll let you know the specs and how
this changes things for industrial iot
becca has these stories coming up plus
robert is here with the crypto corner
don't go anywhere
welcome back to the world of cryptos and
welcome back to the crypto corner
last week we spoke about banks in a few
years time you will not recognize them
anymore
and i also mentioned to you not so long
ago
the chinese digital currency that will
replace the riemann bee
and that they already implemented it and
they are running
some trials in shenzhen now this week
there has been some development and i
would like to talk about that because it
will have a direct impact on your life
and my life
so let's dive into this here
the international monetary fund the head
of that international organization
is a lady called cristalina jojeva and
she delivered a speech
in regards to the new bretton woods
moment now what is a bretton woods
britain was
system is monetary management
established
the rules of commercial financial
relations between
countries like u.s canada western europe
australia and japan
and so it's the system was first
example of a fully negotiated order
intended to govern monetary relations
between independent states so that was
bretton woods
and she's speaking about the change of
that system into something
more modern now interesting enough
on monday there was a meeting with a few
central bankers talking about so-called
cross-border payments
but if you think about it look what type
of people they were
present so you've got the head of the
saudi central bank
you have got the head of all the central
banks
the head of the imf the head of the u.s
central bank and the head
of the malaysian central bank missing is
europe which is interesting but there
will be a reason i guess
so they met together to talk about gross
water payments
now i don't believe that that's a real
story the real story
uh was also published by a gentleman
called raul paul
which i totally concur with so his
thoughts is exactly how i'm thinking
and what he's talking about is exactly
this meeting that happened on monday
that will replace the old bretton woods
uh relationship
between countries so what will happen
it looks like that the central banks
will
collude and come up with a system
a central bank system between all of
them so there will not be not a u.s
dollar
central bank system there will be one
for each
for all organizations and then from
there it will be
diversified and what can you do with
such a system that's the interesting
part and
i love that is so it will change
the circumvent the banking and finance
fiscal system because you're directly
interacting with people
yeah so it's not like at the moment
where the central bank in the u.s or
canada doesn't matter
comes up with some policy and then it
goes it trickles down
um the chain and you as the individual
you probably see the least amount of
money and
probably at the highest interest rate
that you can think of other people
will benefit much stronger with digital
money
plus cryptocurrencies or programmable
you're able to do much more because now
the central bank can directly influence
the behavior of people and how do they
do that yes they can say well
if you're a restaurant owner you can you
get the money directly
into your pocket from us yeah so no more
banks involved we'll do it directly
it's possible it's central bank money
they can change interest rates so
in one uh instance or one industry they
can have high interest
rate than another um what will happen
with taxes
yeah what will happen with the irs
because they can deal with these things
directly
through programmable money it will take
time
to get it to that ultimate extent but it
will happen
as you as you can see so direct payments
will be possible
they're also talking here about um
yeah behavioral economics uh so
not through some economists that are
telling
the government what to do and what not
to do because that has failed in the
past
everybody's saying so what they're going
to do is like a facebook
type of idea or tick tock idea or
youtube idea
where you're interested in people
befriending you
or where people are you're interested in
getting more likes
and so you change your behavior in
regards to
getting more likes and the same thing
will happen with the money
so and that will be all regulated
through central bank
without anybody from the outside world
having a chance to
have a significant influence so how that
will look like at the end
nobody knows of course but that these
people are meeting together to discuss
cross-order payments is something that i
find uh highly interesting
and uh that is of course fantastic news
for uh bitcoin
because bitcoin is outside of that
system there's nobody
that can regulate uh bitcoin it's
decentralized um
it's immutable well you know all the
features of of uh bitcoin
so um bitcoin is a fantastic alternative
all the other cryptocurrencies the major
ones are definitely a good alternative
let's see what libra will bring up but
there's will be some good alternatives
um to the central uh centrally
driven money through central banks
so i hope you found that interesting and
i hope you liked it and i hope i get a
lack from you
and i wish you a fantastic week so thank
you very much for watching
bye bye thank you robert just a reminder
we're not providing financial advice
but only sharing what's happening in the
cryptocurrency market
always remember that the cryptocurrency
markets are ever-changing and
always volatile so you should only spend
what you can afford to lose
now back to becca in the newsroom thank
you robbie
xiaomi has announced a new charging
check that can fully charge a depleted
smartphone in less than 20 minutes
but it does it without any wires fast
charging has become a key feature of
many smartphones in recent years and for
convenience sake
wireless charging can be really great
but of course wireless charging
typically charges a phone with between
10 to 15 watts of power some
phones like the oneplus 8 pro have
wireless charging up to 40 watts
but xiaomi's new charging tech promises
a whopping
80 watts of wireless juice
what does that mean in practical terms
well according to the announcement
unveiling the 80 watt me wireless
charging technology
a smartphone with zero percent charge of
a four thousand milliamp hours battery
will charge ten percent in just one
minute fifty percent
in eight minutes and be fully charged
after 19 minutes
finally a charger that will charge my
phone
from zero to a hundred percent right in
like my lunch break see that's nice
that's a game changer can you imagine
i think about my kids and how we have
like phones everywhere
obviously i mean this is to take like
the latest and greatest tech but
um it's always a case of oh i forgot to
put my phone on the charger or it
doesn't last long enough for the entire
day and now that
you know with the pandemic of course my
kids are being homeschooled now
kind of by force and everybody's on
their devices the whole time so we've
got zoom meetings happening on phones
and it runs it depletes the battery yes
but what i like is that it's wireless
it's not just wired that's amazing yeah
it's
wireless that's huge like the idea that
i could take my phone
not have to worry about chargers and
just go just set it down set it down 20
minutes later i'm good to go
that i love the other thing that i love
about it
the the concept is that um
i think about as you just did if i could
set it down on a table
what if you could set it down on a
restaurant table yes because a lot of
restaurants have gone the route and i'm
using restaurants as the example but a
lot of places have gone the route of
embedding usb yes so that you can plug
in your usb
cable to charge your phone but then all
of a sudden people got
wise to the fact that oh those usb ports
could be malicious
because usb also carries data or that's
right
who knows if it's too many volts and
that you know maybe it's
got a short or something like that and
could fry my phone
so then all of a sudden we're afraid to
plug into the usb port because hey
it could be something bad that's right
wireless charging you set it down it
charges and you pick it up and you're
done
yeah but you can set it down for like
three minutes and it's given you enough
of a charge to get through most of the
afternoon
which is incredible awesome i i think
just as a i mean you look around now and
you've got all these charge stations for
electric vehicles it would be great to
start seeing little
pop-ups in public places with this kind
of stuff where you can literally put
your phone down for five minutes
and have enough to have a phone call to
get help or whatever
and it's all wirelessly i just pictured
like a stretch of road
and embed the receiver in the car and it
recharges the
autonomous car as it drives over this
thing whoa we're getting into the tech
now folks
[Laughter]
still i like it i'm excited about it the
crazy thing is just
in conclusion is that while what i just
said
is very sci-fi like when we were growing
up that was like
the future it's totally doable it's
possible now yep
that's ridiculous the raspberry pi
foundation has launched a compute module
with the specs of a raspberry pi 4.
the raspberry pi foundation launched a
new product monday the comp
the compute module 4. it's hard to
believe it's been so long but the
raspberry
pi 4 was released in june 2019
the compute module 4 brings the pi 4 to
the industrial iot space
featuring the same processor packed in a
compute module
just begging to be integrated into
powerful iot appliances
if you're unfamiliar with compute
modules you can think of them as
single board computers without all the
ports and gpio pins
they allow the computer components the
brains of a raspberry pi to be
integrated into robotics
smart devices maker tech clusters or
anything you can come up with that
requires a tiny
low-powered linux computer at its heart
since the compute module 4 shares its
spec with the raspberry pi 4
developers can do all their prototyping
on the pi 4 sbc
but then order a bunch of compute module
4s to integrate into their commercial
product
just like the raspberry pi 4 the compute
module 4 features a 64-bit arm based
processor
with video core vi graphics this is
going to represent
a huge upgrade for previous compute
module customers
and with 4k video output output at up to
60 frames per second
plus the ability to decode h.265 video
the compute module for the compute
module 4
could be a game changer for multimedia
driven devices such as smart tvs or
set-top boxes
the compute module 4 is available with
your choice of 1 2
4 or 8 gigabytes ram and 8 16
or 32 gigabytes on board emmc
flash storage wi-fi and bluetooth
are also optional the price ranges from
just 25
to 90 usd now imagine that jeff
the raspberry pi compute module 4
yeah in one of your sbc projects or
something like that powering it like the
brains
this is a pretty exciting as soon as
becca said h.265
decoding so that's like video that is
very cpu intensive
yeah that's awesome like it says a lot
that's more power than my plex server
yes which like who knows where that's
going to take things
i like the idea of cluster computing
and that's where you take several
connect them together through networking
basically install software
beowulf or something like that that
clusters them to make them be able to
perform
tasks together in such a way that it
basically makes a super computer
right out of several computers so you
think about these raspberry pi
cl uh cluster or the modules
and and put like 10 of those together
in a a cluster and you'd have like this
cluster that'd be nice computer with
that much power
when you can have eight gigs of ram on
each
board times that by 10. a lot can do a
lot
it's changing things folks the world is
changing that's for sure
what would you do with all that power
and silence he's waiting for you to
answer i
i'm thinking i'm like what would i do
with that how many people
just went bitcoin mining
sorry guys it's you know what's sad my
first thought was
could i automate like some of the
utilities that i have in the kitchen to
make food for me
that was my first thought with a with a
compute module four
yeah takes more than that but i know it
could be the brains of such an operation
clearly i'm hungry though
your thoughts comment below we'd love to
hear what what you would do with a
compute module for
thanks for watching the category 5 dot
don't forget to like and subscribe for
all your tech news with a slight linux
and if you appreciate what we do become
a patron at patreon.com
category 5. from the category 5 dot tv
news room i'm becca ferguson
well that is well pretty much all the
time that we have this week jeff
last week we went through and
and i did the whole process with fiverr
hired some folks to
can we do our remix yeah here's a funny
story okay
literally tell me when to laugh you'll
know
lip he already did he already laughed
litter-ray squirrel was one of our guys
yes yeah
one of our remixers and literary
squirrel
said i kept wondering
this is as he was watching the feature
afterwards
i kept wondering why you were
mispronouncing my name
oh litter a squirrel so i checked my
profile
and found that i misspelled it oh no
and never noticed and it was that way
for three years are you serious
he says my name my band name is
literary squirrel oh my god he left off
in our
that's funny so i tell you this story
see it's funny
see i told you it was funny it was like
i tell you this story because then i
said to myself well
i see words and i and i
i think for the most part i pronounce
them fairly meticulously so when i see
literary even though that's not a word i
set it the way it reads
right so i thought i'd probably be a
pretty good proofreader
so i said what the heck i'll give it a
go so i put up an ad that said i will
proofread
your text 500 words or less for five
bucks
okay and i was like ah nobody will ever
go for it
it's fun anyways i thought i'd give it a
try and the next morning i had an email
from a a person in spain
who was um is
an insurance broker okay and has a
customer who is english speaking
natively and wanted to make sure that he
was saying the right things in response
to an email
so he removed all the confidential stuff
yep and sent me his response and said
can you just go over this for me and i
did
and i went through and i corrected some
things and he had some words that
didn't really make sense in translation
and so i fixed it and i corrected the
grammar and the context and a little bit
of spelling
and he was like he loved it five bucks
really
took me 10 minutes and it was just
something i did with a cup of coffee
first thing in the morning
yeah and he gave me a 5 out of 5 review
that's awesome like that's fiverr from
the flip perspective so i'm like this
is pretty neat so then i start talking
to my kids and i'm like we should find
out if like you guys could do stuff on
there and
you know do my daughter's an artist and
she could do drawings for people
start making money it's kind of a neat
idea a neat platform
i don't know what the rules are about
like minimum age and things like that
but we can look into those kinds of
but that's my story for this week is
that hey i went on the flip side too
and i sold my own service i gave
literary squirrel
a free a freebie um but uh
now i'm i'm i'm available for sale i i
i feel like it would be fun to just
give you the five bucks and i'll send
you a 500 word document
all lorem ipsum and just tell me if it
makes sense i'll do my best
have you correct that yeah
all right well that's that's it jeff
that's all the time
okay but it's been a lot of fun i've
enjoyed being here with you again this
week next week we are getting into 3d
printing so
we're going to be assembling an ender
3v2 so we're going to actually put it
together
and then we're going to have a chat
about you know what the process has been
like for me
as a noob in the 3d printing realm so
what kind of challenges have i
encountered
and can you possibly encounter as you
get started
in 3d printing plus i'll show you not
only my first print
but my first designs in print
you don't want to miss out next week
have a great week everybody we'll see
you
[Applause]
bye