Choose Your Babysitter Wisely

Time to address the elephant in the room; Technology.  When is it applicable to hand over to your child and when should you misdirect with the toy truck? 

A good half of parenting is observation, both in watching the child and what other parents are doing.  Observation being something that I have always been good at.  Then picking apart someone’s actions from a sociological standpoint has always been something that interests me.  So, I tend to see the why of how someone reacts a lot quicker than most.  I think this is where my initial judge of character comes from. 

One of the biggest trends in parenting that I’ve seen today is when in a restaurant handing off the smartphone to keep the child entertained / quiet.  I’ve seen this happen with children ranging in ages from 2-well into their teens.  Admittedly the latter half of that tend to have their own smartphone.  While I can relate that it is a very easy way out, I’ve got to wonder if it’s more harm than help. 

I’ll set the stage for you.  Two parents and their child walk in to a restaurant.  They get seated and the kid is fidgety and inconsolable, one parent frantically pulls out their phone, unlocks it, opens an app and hands it over.  This is a desperate attempt to keep the kid quiet, it’s got an added side effect of the parents can now speak to each other unhindered by the interests of their child. 

How did we get here?  When did the smartphone become the replacement for the pacifier?  Well, it’s not a new trend.  Parents used to be able to turn on the television and plop their children in front of it for time to themselves.  There is an unfortunate downside; the parents have caved once on this, they will cave again and again.

Throughout a child’s developmental life, they begin everything with mimicry.  You never really appreciate just how much of this happens until you see it happen.  Hearing my son trying to repeat something I said while not consciously censoring my language was an eye-opener.  That’s not to say mimicry is only going to show you what you need to do differently, I also remember my son sitting in a high-chair with a spoon tapping the surface of his tray and then bringing the end of the spoon to his face.  My wife and I thought the behavior was odd until we pieced together that he was mimicking us eating.  But I’ve gotten off topic. 

When you realize the parroting is happening you really need to be more conscious of what you do in front of your child.  How often do you check your phone?  How often is it out in the open?  This is where you really need to lay the groundwork for what is acceptable, and bear in mind that if you want your child to follow the rules, you must adhere to them as well.  Otherwise, you will be fighting an uphill battle against a fundamental learning method; mimicry. 

The other side of this is what else will your child mimic?  Take our family in the restaurant from earlier; did they just open YouTube, or some other video service?  Do you think the child is going to mimic what they see there?  They absolutely will.  Maybe not with as much conviction as they parrot their parents, but it will happen.  Additionally, I must ask, does the child understand at this point what is morally and socially acceptable for them and what isn’t?  Does the child comprehend just how powerful the device is that they hold in their hands? 

This post is going to be at least a two-parter, on one hand to keep the length of the posts consistent, and to try and maintain a consistent train of thought.

Parenting: Git Gud Edition

Parenting is this super weird thing that cannot be likened to anything else.   Sure, there are other situations that are analogous, but nothing is completely the same.  You and, hopefully, your partner are responsible for turning this little uncoordinated, babbling, poop-factory into a productive member of society.  If all is done correctly you do this with as few nurtured mental issues as possible.  How to do this, and what are the best methods are all in the rub, as it were.  There’s countless blogs (oh, the irony), magazines, and other publications about what the current trends are to create the best human possible.  Through the eyes of a new parent this is all very daunting.  At the end of the day it all leaves you with a sense of inadequacy.

I’m sure we can all relate; our parents weren’t perfect.  My upbringing was no different, it took me quite a while to work through any lingering angst I felt for my parents.  Hindsight is always 20/20, and I’ve managed to work out most if not all the why’s.  My parents had to make some tough decisions, I may not have understood them at the time but now I understand.  To top it all off I don’t think my younger self would have fully comprehended the reasoning behind it all.  So here I am, putting together my very own C.S.I. episode about my life, trying to do my best to put all the pieces together, and come out with a better understanding.

I told you that to give you a preface to where all my future ‘Parenting’ posts are coming from.  I could go in to detail about my childhood, but I doubt that will ever make it here.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child my brain went haywire trying to culminate all the what-ifs, how’s and whys.  As we neared the third trimester I really settled down and was able to formulate more of a plan.  I got over the initial sticker shock of what this was going to do to us fiscally and began to think about how we as people operated and how we we’re going to work around being parents.

Like many new parents, I took to the internet to start reading about what to expect and how to handle it.  Spending many nights up past my bedtime scanning through headlines like ‘Top ten Parenting Tips’ and ‘How to raise your first child’.  I was bewildered with the sheer volume of the people putting forth their opinions on how to handle a child.  The problem with so many of these was that they were more focused on their ad revenue and less so on the actual content.  Then, the ‘A-Ha!’ moment happened.  These ad-laden sites were there because of analysis of searches, meaning that lots of people were searching for parenting tips.  Which means that no-one has the answers that I sought.

Armed with this I still looked, now I was looking at literature that the hospital had pointed us toward.  Thinking they should know better, right?  Nope, hospital pamphlets were chock full of recommendations that had absolutely no research to back them up.  So, now what was I to do?  I felt like I knew less about being a parent having read all the publications.  Then another moment of clarity hit; There is no one-size-fits-all guide.

Well, now what?  I had a few conversations with other parents, they didn’t have answers either.  It wasn’t until speaking with my Mother-In-Law who gave the best bit of advice I could have ever gotten.  “Instructions come with the package.”  To elaborate on that a little bit, “Instructions come with the package; You’ll figure out what language they’re in.”  And that’s it; the Rosetta Stone for parenting.  It has nothing to do with what some article tells you to do or what some check-out lane magazine says.  There aren’t answers to the questions, and that’s okay.

Moving forward it’s more about taking a more logical approach to what the child needs.  This became more apparent when nurses asked if we would like to test for Down’s Syndrome.  There was a small risk involved with the test which made me adjust the terms of the test.  Since the risk was a terminated pregnancy, I had to ask if there were any outcome of the test that would cause us to willingly terminate the pregnancy.  Since my wife and I are both reasonable human beings that answer was a very quick ‘No’ we opted to not take the test.

2 years down the road my son is mostly polite and thoughtful.  Understands sharing as much as a 2-year-old only child can and has developed into an awesome kid.  All attributed to my wife and I making good decisions in the developmental process.

Public Image

I get asked on the regular why I’m not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media platform.  I usually just respond with some short response that terminates that rabbit hole of an explanation right then and there.  What am I saving these people that ask from?  This, this shit right here;

Reason number 1 why I don’t do social media; Public image.  Yeah, it sounds silly, but I tend to do dumb things.  I really don’t need these things showing up at inopportune times.  I especially don’t want to have to explain to my son why there is a traffic cone on my head in that picture, and that’s on the tame side of things.  I am 2 very different people on the internet, there is my troll gamer self that will set his Steam display name to something like Rectal Bleeding for the lulz, and there is my professional self, answering questions on IT forums and posting reviews etc.  It is incredibly rare that these two operate under the same name, or in the same place.  Here is an exception, since I will probably never reveal my name here.

Reason number 2 why I don’t do social media; I want more fulfilling relationships with people.  I don’t want to know about the amazing meal friend 1 had last week.  When I see them next I want them to tell me about it.  I want to be able to go to a social gathering and I hear from them what they have been up to since I saw them last.  People tend to interject at this point that they keep in touch with family that aren’t local to them through the platform, the counter-point is to ask if their phone can still make phone calls.

Reason number 3 why I don’t do social media; No more stress.  It’s downright silly how much effort people put in to keeping up with everything that is going on in the world.  I don’t think I put enough emphasis on this; It’s downright silly how much effort people put in to keeping up with everything going on in the world. That’ll have to do.  I’ve had to point out to people that the internet will still be there tomorrow, or in a couple hours.  You don’t get anything other than a hollow accomplishment for being up-to-date on your feed.  In my opinion it’s better to concentrate your attention on things that will be more rewarding in the long run.

Reason number 4 why I don’t do social media; Tin foil hats!  Yeah, I’m one of those people that believes that most social media platforms have roots in surveillance.  Could be government, could be corporations, could be that weird guy down the street that doesn’t go out during the day.  Either way, I don’t want to broadcast my life to them in an easy to consume manner.

Number 5; If I am the product, I am going to chose which store I am in.  “If a service is free, you are the product”  Over the majority of the past decade profitability through ad-revenue has gone from supplemental income to a legitimate business model.  As a firm believer in voting with my wallet or controlling where money goes, I tend to not support companies that I just plain don’t like.  This is why I tend to not go to WalMart.  Most social media platforms are free to the user because they get their revenue from advertisements, or someone that wants the data (see reason #4).  So, since I am going to be the product, I am going to chose where I am featured.

Personally I think that social media is responsible for a substantial amount of mental health issues in the world.  The culture is that people must read all their notifications to make sure they are up to date with all their friends and make sure they know everything that’s going on with their Aunt Tina in Kentucky even though all she posts is pictures of her McDonald’s Lunch daily.

Of course, I should address the elephant in the room here; I’m posting on a blog, which is in essence a form of social media.  Yep.  There’s a counter-point to everything I listed above.  Pretty much it all boils down to; While it may look like there is a target to my writing, I am doing this more for myself than anything else.

Insights on Security

As anyone in the IT world can tell you, security is by far the biggest concern in any organization.  With the prevalence of Crypto-Locker RansomWare variants, on top of the already innumerable amount of malicious software in the wild, it’s enough to keep anyone up at night.  In less than a decade IT had to shift its mindset from the traditional “I’ve got anti-virus, and it updates daily” to a more aggressive stance, parsing logs and network activity, and behavioral tracking.  The problem has become that traditional Anti-Virus isn’t enough anymore.

I remember fondly being the go-to for what Anti-Virus / Anti-Malware / General Internet Condom to use that is the “best” where I would take in to account performance weight against effectiveness, and choosing the software package that hits the best ratio of performance to functionality to Price.

Now, since the internet is so ubiquitous and there are developers everywhere that view it as their sole purpose to exploit vulnerabilities in computer systems.  Regardless if their intention is to promote security or something more nefarious, it is nearly impossible to stay ahead of the game, even in my small environment.

Anatomy of an attack

To better understand how to best secure your environment you first need to understand how an attack happens.  Knowing the fundamentals of an attack lay the groundwork that will put you in the best position possible.

  1. Reconnaissance
    • Just as we’re doing here, an attacker is going to gather all the possible information about their target that they can.
    • A determined attacker will utilize any means necessary to gather information on the target, including going through waste.
    • Other methods include network scanning, determining open ports and services on your network and what the responses are on those ports
    • An attacker may also do some online research about the target, looking for job postings, or even mirror the target’s web-site to get information about the structure of the network.
  2. Assessment
    • With reconnaissance done, it’s time to assess the information.
    • Comparing responses from the network scan against published vulnerabilities and determining what the most effective mode of entry is going to be.
    • Determine the direction of the attack, go to the target, or coerce the target to come to the attacker.
  3. Exploit
    • The attacker has gathered what the attack surface is, determined the vulnerability, and how it is going to be used.
    • During the exploit different payloads may yield different results, and the prime directive is to gain “persistence” or permanent access.  It is possible that to avoid detection after access is gained an attack may lay dormant for some time.
    • Once access is gained an attack will typically “pivot” to some other local resource that is more valuable (think Database, File Server, User Data)
Mitigation

Prevention is an idea of the past, so get that out of your mind.  Mitigation is attainable.   Knowing how an attack plays out makes it easier to take the steps necessary to secure your environment.  The saving grace of most attacks is that they are done with Free or Open Source tools, meaning you can perform all the steps of an attack yourself.  Particularly important are the Reconnaissance and Assessment steps (you can also exploit as well and then re-perform Reconnaissance and Assessment from within the network if you’ve gained access.)

Once you’ve gathered appropriate data, you now have something to work with.  This will give you a view on where your vulnerabilities are and how to mitigate them, be it through software patching or updating firewall settings etc.

So, you’ve secured your network, you’re good now right?  Nope.  All securing your network does is mitigate attacks originating outside the network and attempting to gain access.  There’s still attacks that get the target to come to the attacker.  These attacks are the hard one to protect against because they can come from almost anywhere, and all they usually require is user interaction.

Some methods to mitigate reverse attacks.
  • Instate application white-listing
    • Rather than pick what applications to block pick which applications are able to run
  • block executable content wherever possible (temp directories, user profiles, etc.)
  • Train the human element to be mindful
    • Far and away this is the toughest hurdle.  Users will always be the weakest link in IT Security.
    • Training should include:
      • Email best practices
      • Removable media (USB keys, CDs, DVDs etc..) should not be trusted
      • Authorized vs Unauthorized personnel
      • What information is pertinent to the conversation and what isn’t

While security is an ever evolving topology an IT professional should be pragmatic and vigilant in efforts to not become the victim.

Nvidia GeForce NOW

In a lot of aspects of technology, lines between professional and consumer get a little blurry.  In businesses a technology has emerged called VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) that allowed companies to leverage the compute power available in a server and deliver it to a thin / zero client.  Minimizing costs of PCs deployed to each individual worker and maintaining compliance and security in a centralized environment.  This requires building out a fairly robust environment for these thin clients to work in.  As anyone in IT will tell you, it’s far easier to build out servers than it is to spec out a desktop for each user.

Recently the GPU manufacturer Nvidia started a closed demo of a product called GeForce NOW, where they are doing a gaming-centric VDI deployment.  The premise of the service is simple.  Pay a monthly cost and you have a top-of-the-line gaming PC in the cloud.  You download and install the MAC or PC client (~55mb download / ~300mb install)  and you have access to (currently) a subset of your Steam Library or Battle.Net games.  After browsing the forums it is worth reminding that you must own the game on one of these platforms before you can play it on GeForce NOW.

A few weeks ago I signed up for the beta and earlier this week I received the welcome email.  Got logged in to Nvidia, redeemed my code, and voila I had download links for either the PC or Mac.  It is worth noting that this was initially conceived as a method to play PC games on a Mac easily.  Install went smooth like you’d expect.

I initially tried to run this at work, I knew it wouldn’t work as intended cause my IT staff maintains some pretty aggressive firewall policies.  I expected it to not connect but to my surprise it connected and the process worked, albeit slowly (I will need to fix that later).  Immediately upon attempting to run a game, a network benchmark told me that latency would be a problem.  I disregarded the warning and was on my way.  The application presented a Windows 8/8.1/Server 2012 Kiosk environment that was pretty well locked down running the application that I requested.  For all intents and purposes I had a gaming PC.  At this point I was only testing connectivity, and how the interface works, I would have to wait to take it home to get a better feel for how things worked at full tilt.

Messing around I figured out that through a ‘Manage Steam’ option I was able to log in to Steam proper and could see my entire library, and even install unsupported games.  This is the game changer.

Once I got my laptop home and finished up with lingering work I was anxious to get this up and running and see how it worked in it’s ideal environment.  Over a fiber connection there is plenty of bandwidth for GeForce NOW to work as intended.  Let’s give it a shot;

Diablo III

First is the game that makes my laptop cranky.  GeForce NOW let me in pretty quickly, and I was up and running in minutes.  Since this is purely for science I wanted to see how it handled a GPU intensive workload.  I loaded up the Demon Hunter with a Shotgun build and set off to do some rifts.  After a couple GR75s it was clear that this was not enough to test.  Switching over to the Witch Doctor, the build I am using here is fast build so there is a lot that gets rendered.  No issues, I didn’t even notice any input lag.  Okay, let’s see something more demanding if I can manage.  Time for the Necromancer, moves almost as fast as the Witch Doctor and has pets.  Results were exactly what I wanted them to be.  So at this point I mark the test as a success!  Now on to the next game.

Fallout 4

I’ll not get into this one very far since I only did some preliminary testing.  First mention, settings were set to Ultra pretty much immediately.  ‘Install’ went as smooth as could be expected, for first time run I had to wait less than a minute and was presented with the Launcher.  A quick browse through Options to find everything set to maximum settings, time to click play and see how it works.  Quickly I get reminded that I had disabled Steam Cloud for Fallout because of some save-game manipulation that I was doing previously so we get to start over.  Reluctantly I took default settings for character and we were off to the races.  I didn’t go too far, I wanted to see combat and speech and make sure that it all matched up.  Sure enough everything was playable, and rendered at 60+ frames per second. 

Crysis 2: Ultimate Edition

No gaming benchmark would be complete without something on the Crytek engine, be it Far Cry, Crysis or any of their other titles.  I’ve got to say that this is no small feat.  This is an un-supported game (You’ve got to go through ‘Manage Steam’ and install the game there and run it from Steam). The Geforce NOW/ Windows interface gives you a warning saying; “This game is currently no supported by GeForce NOW. You may be able to install and play it. However, you may have to reinstall the game each time that you play, and your saved games will only sync if Steam Cloud is enabled.” You do have to install the game each time, but don’t be too discouraged, Steam reported a max download speed of 114 MB/s so it’s pretty quick.  Not being a supported game you’ll have to set options yourself, tick all the boxes and you’re good to go.  Started a new game and quality spoke for itself.  I ran through about 30 minutes of game-play with no hiccups, drops in quality, or any noticeable input lag.

Wolfenstein: New Order

I really liked this game when it came out, but I couldn’t really play it cause neither my aging PC or my laptop were capable of playing on high graphics.  This is one of the supported games and it worked very well.  Once again settings at max, running at 60+ Frames per second, without the pesky sound of fans dampening the experience.  I played this for about an hour or two, I lost track, and there were no issues whatsoever.  Everything just plain worked.

Pros
  • The whole experience is really clean, simple, and easy.
  • Games just run
  • Unsupported games have a very high speed connection to install from Steam
Cons

I struggled to find something really wrong with the service, so I had to nit-pick on things that wouldn’t normally be an issue.

  • Initial load time is a little slow without any transparency about what is going on in the background (as IT I know that it’s provisioning the virtual machine and securing the resources)
  • Battle.net games have a weird color shift which makes them a seem a little off some time spent in game it gets less noticeable.
  • The one real issue I’ve found is the Number pad doesn’t really work right.
Conclusion

I am usually against services with a subscription model unless there’s a proven development track or I am actually renting a service. In this case so long as it’s priced in the $10 – $20 per month bracket I am completely on-board, since I would be renting server space.  Over the weekend I am going to play with Steam Workshop subscriptions to see if I can mod games, and see how that impacts game-play and experience.  I’ll include a link to sign up for the service below, as needless to say I really like the service.

Nvidia GeForce NOW Beta Sign Up