Michael Graves

On The Verge Of Misleading About Devialet

March 13, 2016
Michael Graves
Audio

us-phantom This morning I read an article by Dan Siefert on The Verge about Devialet licensing the technology in their Phantom Bluetooth speaker. Rarely have I seen such a collection of errors make it to view by such a relatively mainstream media outlet.

For example:

“Sannié says that a system using SAM can reproduce lower frequencies without changing its hardware at all, and it can even enable noise-cancellation without the need for a subwoofer.”

There is no relationship at all established between “noise cancellation” and the requirement for a sub-woofer. Perhaps this was taken out of some larger context where that relationship was defined. Taken on it own this statement is bewildering. It implies something that, at least without clarification, has no basis in fact. Noise cancellation and sub-woofers are usually unrelated topics.

My First Raspberry Pi Project: Using Hifi Berry DAC to Emulate A Squeezebox

March 13, 2016
Michael Graves
Audio

RPI-HB-DACRCA-300px Some time ago I received a Raspberry Pi B+ as a gift. It had been on my amazon wish list, and for good reason. It looked like one practical approach to emulating the venerable Logitech Squeezebox, which to this day serves as the basis for music playback hereabouts.

Since we were not expanding our music playback scheme there was at first little motivation to got ahead with this effort. That is, until the analog outputs of our existing fleet of Squeezeboxes started to fail. Eventually the analog outputs become unusable, the result of failing electrolytic capacitors. Three of our five SB3s now suffer this malady.

So, not long ago I set to the task of emulating a Squeezebox using a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, a HiFiBerry DAC and a 4 GB micro-SD memory card. To this core I added a suitable case, a power-over-Ethernet splitter and piCorePlayer. All in, this rig cost under $100.

Opinion: The FTC Loves Robocalls

March 8, 2016
Michael Graves
Opinion

Recently NPR's Marketplace featured an interview with Edith Ramirez, Chairwoman of the FTC. The interview can only be described as softball. Host Kai Ryssdal didn't press her on any of the real issues facing the organization. He most specifically didn't…

Your VoIP Phone Could Be Used To Spy On You!

February 18, 2016
Michael Graves
security, VoIP

snom 320 400px This somewhat frightful claim has been reverberating around the inter-web the past few days. I do agree that YOUR IP phone(s) might be a candidate target for such an exploit. I’m not worried simply because my IP phones don’t suffer the particular vulnerability in question. More on that in a bit.

This claim stems from Paul Moore, a security consultant, hacking a snom 320 IP phone. He found that with the default admin credentials in place he could penetrate the phone, achieving broad control of the device. Then he used that control to do various nefarious things.

For example, he could place calls. Further, he could setup routing to send all calls via a premium service that paid him for every minute of connect time. Thereafter he’d just leave the phone on a long running call without the user ever becoming aware that it was busy. Cha-ching!

Q1-2016 Broadband Update: Bye Bye Global Capacity, Hello Tachus!

February 11, 2016
Michael Graves
Broadband, DSL

According to Bob Dylan, “The times they are a-changing.” I certainly hope so. I’ve made some changes to our broadband service hereabouts, and I’m hopeful about a new alternative. The details of these two things are worth sharing.

I’ve long held that someone in a technology business, who works from a home office full time, should have redundant forms of internet access. If you’re going to have redundant access they should use different modes of connection. That way a single errant truck or backhoe doesn’t take out both of your services.

This belief was strengthened by our own experience in events like Hurricane Ike in 2008. We lost Comcast service for several weeks, falling back to our stodgy old DSL circuit. The DSL meant that we had IP phones running the morning after the storm, when even cellular service was down, amazed and confounded our neighbors.

Our first broadband service to this location was a DSL circuit. The name on the bill changed numerous times. What started out as Sprint Ion devolved into Earthlink, then Covad, Megapath, and most recently Global Capacity. The data rate was slow, but reliability was high.

Now Over HTTPS Courtesy of Lightningbase & Let’s Encrypt

February 9, 2016
Michael Graves
Computing

It wasn’t that long ago that I reminded you of how much I admire Lightningbase. Here’s just one more reason why these guys rock. Lightningbase has recently made it very easy to deploy SSL for WordPress sites by integrating Let’s Encrypt.

Lightningbase founder Chris Piepho announced the effort in a blog post. Since I’ve wanted to use SSL for a while, but not had the time to work through the details, I took the new offer as a sign that I should go ahead with the implementation.

I must say that I was floored by how easy this was! The entire process of getting this domain running on SSL took me less than 15 minutes.