Who accepts #Bitcoin? (Infographic)

Many people who are new to bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general only see the value of bitcoin as a store of value, or investment opportunity. No doubt this is due to the amazing bull run that bitcoin saw in 2017.

Those who have been in the space a lot longer remember a time when bitcoin was also used as a means of exchange. To tell the truth, it still is, although high network fees have turned people onto other means of exchange in the cryptocurrency space. Coins such as Litecoin, or Bitcoin Cash have faster transactions, and lower fees.

That being said, there are still quite a few organizations that accept payment via bitcoin. Here is a handy infographic that shows who accepts bitcoin!

[Via 16Best]

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Top 10 Most Secret Data Breaches in the Cloud

Cloud systems are considered a safer place than on-premises models, but you still can’t be completely sure of the integrity of your data. Microsoft’s Security and Intelligence report revealed that the number of cyberattacks on clouds increased by 300% in 2017. When companies move their business to the cloud, they are at risk of compromising their sensitive data and losing their customer’s loyalty and business reputation. That’s why so many companies would like to hide the cases of data breaches in the cloud during many years after incidents occurred.

Here is a list of most secret data breaches that evidently shows the importance of protecting clouds against cyber attacks.

1. FedEx

In February this year, Kromtech Security Center disclosed data breach of FedEx, an American delivery company. FedEx stored personal data of their clients on an unsecured Amazon S3 virtual server. There were more than 100,000 scanned documents that included driver licenses, passports, and security IDs of the company’s clients. The unsecured server was previously owned by Bongo International, but FedEx acquired the company in 2014 and rebranded as FedEx Crossborder. After Kromtech’s disclosure, FedEx removed the server from public access ensuring that no data was compromised.

2. Microsoft

Data breach occurred with customers of Business Productivity Online Suite in 2010 wasn’t caused by malicious activity. It was a result of a configuration problem in Microsoft’s data centers. The problem allowed any users of the cloud service download the Offline Address Book with contacts of BPOS clients. Microsoft apologized and reported that they fixed the issue within two hours and asked illegitimate users to remove the files.

3. Salesforce

Salesforce.com, an American cloud computing company, was also appeared to be vulnerable to cyber attacks. In 2007, one of Salesforce employees became a victim of a phishing attack that resulted in disclosing their company credentials. After getting access to Salesforce’s client list, hackers arranged a highly targeted phishing scam by sending emails with fake invoices. In 2014, the company also detected a malware injection attack on its end-users aimed to steal their bank credentials.

4. Deloitte

In 2016, Deloitte, one of the largest accountancy companies, became a victim of hacker’s attack on the firm’s global email server stored in the Microsoft Azure cloud service. The hackers compromised the email base of 244,000 company employees through a privileged account that required only password-based authentication. As a result, attackers got unlimited access to the confidential data of more than 350 VIP clients.

5. LinkedIn

LinkedIn, the largest business-networking website, suffered from one of the greatest data breaches in 2012. The company disclosed that attackers compromised 165 million accounts. Nearly 6.5 million hashed passwords were posted on a Russian forum when LinkedIn forced their users to change passwords. However, there was no further investigation of the breach that also affected more than 100 million users with unsalted passwords by 2016.

6. Zappos

In 2012, Zappos.com, an online retailer belonged to Amazon, revealed details about its massive data breach that affected 24 million of customers. The hackers got unauthorized access to the company’s data center located in Kentucky. The compromised data included personal information, credit card numbers, and encrypted account credentials. One of the website customers even filled a lawsuit for the potential personal and financial harm.

7. Dropbox

In 2012, Dropbox accounts were compromised as a result of a spam attack. After hijacking usernames and passwords from other accounts, attackers used them to sign in to Dropbox accounts. Hackers also used stolen credentials to access an employee Dropbox account with the company’s client’s emails. Dropbox informed their users about the data breach and recommended to select new passwords. However, the consequences of this breach appeared in 2016 when hackers offered video-news site Vocative to buy 68 million Dropbox passwords for $1,100.

8. Apple iCloud

When in 2014, the nude photos of Kate Upton and Jennifer Lawrence spread over the Internet, celebrities thought that their phones were hacked. However, the source of data appeared to be the iCloud servers that backed up users images. The company conducted an investigation and revealed that the cloud servers were not compromised. Apple recommended its customers to use more secure passwords. Lately, a Chinese web monitoring group discovered that hackers arranged a man-in-the-middle attack to steal user credentials, messages, and photos.

9. Sony PlayStation Network

Sony data breach was one of the largest in the history as of 2008. Arranging a successful SQL injection attack on the company’s website, hackers gained unauthorized access to the subscriber’s personal information. Another attack on PlayStation Network and Qriocity services was arranged in 2011, but the company informed their subscribers about it only in a week after it abruptly cut access to its services. The company had a 77 million global subscriber database that included information about account credentials, home addresses, birth dates, and credit card data.

10. Yahoo

In 2017, Yahoo was revealed of becoming a victim of a massive cyber attack that compromised nearly three billion accounts with data about user’s names, telephone numbers, emails, and dates of birth. The breach occurred in 2013 and was allegedly arranged by an “unauthorized third party.” Another security incident with Yahoo was in 2014 when a “state-sponsored actor” stolen credentials of more than 500 million accounts. However, most of the passwords were encrypted and hashed with irreversible mathematical algorithms.

Conclusion

Cloud technologies can benefit businesses with optimized performance and costs, but the cloud security is now the biggest challenges in IT industry. While cloud providers constantly release security patches, cloud systems are still susceptible to attacks on web applications, account hijacking, and malware injection. Therefore, cloud users and cloud service providers should also think about taking security measures for the cloud. Only a shared responsibility for security in the cloud can help us take the full advantage of cloud opportunities.

By: Marcell Gogan

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How to turn off Focused Inbox in Outlook

My company uses Office365, and I absolutely love it. I've managed in-house Exchange servers in my previous jobs, and having done that and having used Office365, I don't know if I could ever go back.

That being said, the other day I noticed that Office365 pushed out an update for my Outlook client that enabled what they call the Focused Inbox. If you are unfamiliar with that, here is a description from their support site:

Focused Inbox separates your inbox into two tabs—Focused and Other. Your most important emails are on the Focused tab while the rest remain easily accessible—but out of the way—on the Other tab.

My problem with this is that Outlook is the one determining what is important for me, and what isn't. I noticed that I wasn't seeing all of my emails, and that was kind of a pain in the butt for me. I decided to turn this feature off. The way Outlook was set before, you know pretty much since email was invented, works very well for me thank you very much!

To turn it off just do the following:

• Click on the View tab in Outlook
• Click on the button that says Show Focused Inbox

That's it. Now your inbox will be back in "old school" mode. You know, the mode that doesn't suck!

If users are complaining that they can't see all of their email, you might consider turning this off for them. Just a suggestion.

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Office365: Your machine isn't set up for Information Rights Management (IRM)

The other day one of the executives at my day job sent out his monthly internal report via email. We have a rights protected message feature enabled when anyone puts a certain keyword in the subject line. Since these internal reports are confidential, the executive used the keyword.

Ever since setting this up, I haven't had any issues opening these files until the other day. I recently got a new laptop, so maybe that's the issue, but for some reason on this particular day when I went to open his email message I was greeted with the following error:

Your machine isn't set up for Information Rights Management (IRM). To set up IRM, sign in to Office, open and existing IRM protected message or document, or contact your help desk.

WTF man?!

Well, I was able to fix it, but I first had to close out of all Office365 applications (Skype, Outlook, etc) then open up Word, sign out of my Office365 account in the upper right hand corner, close out of Word, then open it up again and sign back into my Office365 account.

After that, opening the confidential email and document worked fine!

Did this help you out? If so, let us know in the comments!

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Science with my son: Mentos and Soda Experiment

A few weekends ago my son and I decided to do the good ol' Mentos and Soda experiment for his weekly YouTube show, "The Adventures of Brizzle Fo' Shizzle"! It was a lot of fun, and we obviously made a huge mess out in the yard. If you've never dropped Mentos into a jug of cola, you are seriously missing out on life! Pro tip: It works best with diet cola according to "Myth Busters".

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Corrupt OpenVAS PDF's in Ubuntu?

Yesterday I wrote about how I recently setup an OpenVAS/Greenbone server on Ubuntu, and how the guide I referenced for the install missed a few steps. Well, I found another one!

After getting reports to generate correctly, one thing I noticed was that exporting to PDF didn't work. I mean, I could download a file with a PDF extension, but when I opened it with my PDF reader, I got an error message saying it was corrupt!

What the hell man?

Well, searching around I did find this OpenVAS Wiki post talking about how to fix this, but it only gives examples of how to fix it in CentOS. Where's the Ubuntu love guys?

Well, to fix it in Ubuntu you just need to install the texlive-latex-extra package. You can do that by running:

• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-extra -y

After that is finished, you can download and open PDF reports just fine!

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OpenVAS/Greenbone Empty Reports in Ubuntu

The other day I stood up an OpenVAS server so I could run internal vulnerability testing in my environment. If you haven't heard of OpenVAS, here is a description from their page:

OpenVAS is a framework of several services and tools offering a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution. The framework is part of Greenbone Networks' commercial vulnerability management solution from which developments are contributed to the Open Source community since 2009.

Well, I followed this tutorial on how to install OpenVAS in Ubuntu. However, after I was done and I ran some scans I noted that all of my reports were empty! Any of the reports I clicked on said the following:

0 results 

Empty reports can happen for the following reasons: 

The target hosts where regarded dead.
The filter does not match any result.
A very small or non-verbose scan configuration was applied

What the shit man? I knew the scans were working because my IDS was going batshit! Why no reports?

Well, it turns out the tutorial I followed missed a few steps. After installing OpenVAS, you need to run the following to update it's databases:

• sudo openvas-nvt-sync
• sudo openvas-scapdata-sync
• sudo openvas-certdata-sync

Then you need to restart the scanner and manager:

• service openvas-scanner restart
• service openvas-manager restart

Now the critical part, and why my reports weren't showing up, you have to rebuild the OpenVAS database so the manager can access the NVT data:

• sudo openvasmd --rebuild --progress

After doing that, I re-scanned my hosts and I now had the detailed reports I was looking for!

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Free Utility To Analyze Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) in Windows

For some reason over the last month or so, my company has been experiencing a random string of Blue Screens of Death (BSODs). It turned out to be caused by a certain Microsoft update for Windows 10, but during the troubleshooting process my desktop tech mentioned a tool that I had never heard of before. It's called BlueScreenView!

From their page:

BlueScreenView scans all your minidump files created during 'blue screen of death' crashes, and displays the information about all crashes in one table. For each crash, BlueScreenView displays the minidump filename, the date/time of the crash, the basic crash information displayed in the blue screen (Bug Check Code and 4 parameters), and the details of the driver or module that possibly caused the crash (filename, product name, file description, and file version).  

For each crash displayed in the upper pane, you can view the details of the device drivers loaded during the crash in the lower pane. BlueScreenView also mark the drivers that their addresses found in the crash stack, so you can easily locate the suspected drivers that possibly caused the crash.

BlueScreenView is created by NirSoft, whose software I've written about in the past. I never knew about this particular tool until my desktop tech mentioned it though.

Here are some screenshots:

Pretty cool right? Hopefully this tool can help you figure out what's causing BSOD's in your environment!

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Infographic - 67 Insane Facts About #Bitcoin

Since December 2017's epic high of $20,000 per bitcoin, the cryptocurrency has been in and out of the toilet as far as pricing goes. If you watch the news, this may very well be the only fact you know about bitcoin.

Many of us have faith that it will reach and exceed those highs again. It's inevitable really. In the meantime though, here is a very insightful infographic that you can share with those nocoiners, and FUD spreaders!

Enjoy!

[Via Bitcoin Play]

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What is Redis? | Why and When to use Redis?

The other day my development team's Solutions Architect came to me and asked me to deploy Ubuntu based Redis servers in our QA environment so that the developers could test using Redis for session state instead of logging to a Microsoft SQL database. This was their solution to poor performance issues in our applications. Apparently the session state transactions were causing a bottleneck in Microsoft SQL.

Anyway, I had never heard of Redis so I found this video on YouTube that explains what Redis is and why you might want to use Redis:



Also shown in the video, here is a description of what Redis is from their website:

Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache and message broker. It supports data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes with radius queries. Redis has built-in replication, Lua scripting, LRU eviction, transactions and different levels of on-disk persistence, and provides high availability via Redis Sentinel and automatic partitioning with Redis Cluster. 

You might be wondering how to install Redis in Ubuntu. I'm glad you asked, because Redis is available in the Ubuntu repositories, so installation is as simple as running:

• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install redis-server

Do you use Redis in your environment? If so, what are you using it for? Let us know in the comments!

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How To Resize a Storage Repository (SR) in XenServer

The other weekend I got a disk space alert from my backup server in my Arizona data center. This happens occasionally. Since this is a VM, I usually just increase the virtual disk, then extend the drive in Windows. No big deal. Well this time, I couldn't extend the virtual drive without first increasing the size of my storage repository (SR).

Well, increasing the size of a storage repository in XenServer isn't as easy as in VMWare, but it's still not that difficult. You just have to SSH into your XenServers to do it, and it only takes 11 steps really:

• On your SAN, extend the volume/LUN
• SSH into your master node
• Run xe sr-list name-label=<your SR name you want to resize>. Note the uuid of the SR.
• Run pvscan | grep <the uuid you noted in the previous step>. Note the device name (eg: PV /dev/sdj )
• Run echo 1 > /sys/block/device/device/rescan (e.g. echo 1 > /sys/block/sdj/device/rescan)
• Run pvresize <device name> (eg: pvresize /dev/sdj )
• Run xe sr-scan <the uuid you noted in step 3>
• Verify that the XE host sees the larger physical disk by running: pvscan | grep <the uuid you noted in step 3>
• SSH into each slave nodes
• Run pvresize <device name> (eg: pvresize /dev/sdj )
• Run xe sr-scan <the uuid you noted in step3>

That's it, now when you look in XenCenter, you should see that your SR has been resized accordingly.

[H/T cdillard]

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Modern free alternative to Cliffs Notes

When I was in high school and junior high (Yes, I went to junior high and not a middle school) like just about every kid, I had to read lots of classic novels for language arts class. Well, let's be honest, I was assigned the task of reading the book, but I never did.

No, like quite a lot of kids at the time we would get our hands on Cliffs Notes, usually from the book store in the mall, and do all of our related assignments based off of the summaries from Cliffs Notes. Most of the time, it had all the answers we needed, without having to waste our time reading boring books. Is that cheating? Maybe, but I certainly didn't care.

Well the other day my daughter was given a reading assignment for a book called Hush, but the trouble was that her teacher wouldn't let her bring the book home. Because of this, she was falling behind in class. Well, in doing a little research, I found what is basically a free alternative to Cliffs Notes to help her with her assignment!

It's a site called Schmoop! Via their about page:

Since 2009, Shmoop has been a digital publishing company with a point of view. Our teaching method revolves around the basic idea that learning is often too hard—so we carry gallons of academic WD-40 to squirt on the tracks whenever we can. And as an added bonus, we're funny. At least we like to think so. 

We own 100% of our content and present both a consistent voice and a distinctive product offering. Our free Learning Guides, Online Courses, College Readiness Prep, and Test Prep balance a teen-friendly, approachable style with academically rigorous materials to help students understand why they should care. 

We also give students an honest look into life after high school. Our Careers page is written by real, studly Oil Rig Drillers, Delta Force Captains, and Marine Biologists, while our College 101 section tells students what college might actually look, feel, and smell like. Thousands of schools around the world use Shmoop as part of their curriculum, and the company has also been honored by the Interwebs: twice by the Webby Awards and twice by Scholastic Administrator Magazine ("Best in Tech"). 

By way of further Shmoopy introduction, check out our "What Is Shmoop" video (part of our fast-growing Shmoopsterpiece Theater video project) or read about us in the press!

Anyway, not only did I find summaries for my daughter's book Hush, I also searched their site and found summaries for some of the books I was supposed to read as a kid too! Books like The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Some might get on my case for not making my daughter read the book. I would have if the teacher let her bring it home, but since the teacher wouldn't, but still wanted the assignment done, I felt like this was acceptable. Besides, I'd rather encourage her to read things she's actually interested in anyway.

What do you think of this site? Would it have helped you our in high school, or junior high? Let us know in the comments!

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Free Open Source Fork of Citrix XenServer?

The other day I wrote about where you can download older versions of Citrix XenServer since they removed a lot of features from their free version in 7.3, and then removed access to older version to force people to upgrade... Dick move right?

Well, apparently I'm not the only person pissed off by this. A whole group of developers decided to launch a new project called XCP-ng or Xen Cloud Platform Next Generation! Their goal? To provide a community driven version of Citrix's  XenServer that, unlike the original open source Xen Project, will look and feel the same as Citrix's version, along with the ease of use.... At least that's what it looks like to me.

Check out their video:



Their project page actually lists the following as their goal:

The main goal is to be able to enjoy Xenserver power (XAPI/features) with a real community backed solution (not “one company dependent”). So it should be:

• 99.99% compatible with XenServer (as possible): ie being able to transfer VMs from XS to XCP-ng and vice-versa
• 99.99% compatible with Open Source management solutions (like Xen Orchestra)
• A well-documented build process, such that the product can be built by anyone from source.
• Builds that are completely independent of any Citrix/XenServer binary (RPM) repositories.

Their initial prototype is anticipated in Q1 of 2018, which is almost over. Will they make it? Only time will tell I suppose. If they do make it, and it works well, this could prove to be the perfect alternative to Citrix's forced upgrade tactics thus far.

What do you think about this? Let us know in the comments!

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#Bitcoin is "Crashing" Again... Why We're Not Worried

People seem to be worried again that bitcoin has started dropping.  But we are not worried, and neither should you be.  Alessio Rastani explains why.

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Why does Google Chrome think I'm in India?

I've noticed a weird issue in Google Chrome lately, and that is whenever I type a search term in the address bar, the results come from google.co.in. If you didn't know, that is the URL for Google in India... I however most certainly don't live in India...

Well, after searching around I found out that quite a few others have noticed the same thing. The best solution I can find to make it stop is to do the following in Chrome:

• Go to Settings > Manage Search Engines
• Scroll down to the Add a new search engine box
• Enter Google NCR for the name
• Enter Google NCR_ for the keyword type
• In the URL use https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&pws=0&gl=us&gws_rd=cr
• Set that as your default search provider

If you are wondering, NCR stands for No Country Redirect. This will make sure your search terms always use good old Google.com and not any other country's search!

Did this help you out? Let us know in the comments!

[H/T TheSEMPost]

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VMs Missing in XenCenter When One or More XenServers Are Unavailable

The other night was one of those nights from hell that inevitably come up once in a while. This occasion was in one of my day job's lower tier environments where we run everything in a XenServer cluster. Well, this particular night was a power maintenance night for our data center, and two of our XenServer only had single power supplies.

Well, if you guessed that the two with single power supplies shut down, you guessed right. There were some other issues as well, that lead to this next problem, but I won't bore you with the details. You're probably here because of what happened after I finally got the other nodes back online.

What happened once I got some of my other equipment back online, and with only three out of five XenServers still running, I couldn't see any of the VMs that were originally running on the two offline nodes. Those VMs were just gone!

It turns out, they weren't gone, the cluster just thought they were still running on the two other nodes. When that happens, you have to tell the cluster to forcefully shut them down. To do that, SSH into your master node and run the following to get a list of UUID's of all the hosts in the cluster:

• xe host-list params=uuid,name-label,host-metrics-live

Note the long UUID string of the host or hosts that are offline. Then run this command to tell the cluster that any VMs running on the offline nodes are powered off:

• xe vm-reset-powerstate resident-on=<UUID OF OFFLINE XENSERVER> --force --multiple

Obviously replace the item in red above with the UUID of your offline XenServer, and run that command for any other offline servers as well.

Now the VMs should show up as powered off in XenCenter. You should now be able to power them on and have them run on one of the live nodes. 

Please note, when powering on one of these VMs you may get an error that says:

 the vdi is not available

I wrote about how to fix that error yesterday. To read that article, please click here: (How to fix "The VDI is not available" error in Xenserver)

Did this help you out? Did you do something different? Let us know in the comments!

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How to fix "The VDI is not available" error in XenServer

I had an epic shit storm of an issue the other night with one of my XenServer clusters at my day job. I won't get into too many boring details, but long story short is that two out of my five XenServers were offline, and I had to tell my cluster for forcefully shut down a few of the VMs that the cluster thought were still running on the offline hosts.

That was the easy part. Powering up the VMs was not easy. When I tried to power the VMs back on to run on one of the live nodes, I got the following error:

the vdi is not available

Man! What kind of shit is that?!

Well, to fix it is actually not that hard. Just kind of a pain. What you need to do is detach the virtual disk from the VM in XenCenter. Then grab the UUID of the LUN where the virtual disk is located.You can do that by clicking on the LUN in XenCenter and just look at the properties.

Once you have that number, SSH into the master XenServer node and run the following command:

• xe vdi-list sr-uuid=<UUID of The LUN Holding The Virtual Disk>

This will list all of the virtual disks saved on that LUN. 

Now find the UUID of the virtual disk of the VM that you need to power back on. I circled one in red above as a reference. Now you want to tell the cluster to forget this VDI (Don't worry, trust me on this). You can do that by running:

• xe vdi-forget uuid=<UUID of the VDI>

If you look in XenCenter on the Storage tab of the LUN, that virtual disk will disappear from the LUN. Now click the Rescan button and it will show back up again. Boom!

Now here is the tricky part. You must now make a generic VM with the same specs as the old VM, but leave it powered off. Make sure to delete any disks that you created with it as well. Then attach the VM from the original VM, and power the new VM shell back up. Boom! Your virtual server is alive again! Now you can delete the old VM.

I'm sure there is an easier way to fix this, but I have yet to find an easier solution to this problem than this. If you know a better way, let me know in the comments!

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Where can you download older versions of XenServer?

Ever since Citrix announced the good features they were pulling from the free edition of XenServer starting in version 7.3, many users of the free XenServer were extremely pissed! For those of you who don't know what got pulled from the free version, here is the list:

• Dynamic Memory Control
• Xen Storage Motion
• Active Directory Integration
• Role Based Access Control
• High Availability
• GPU Pass-Through
• Site Recovery Manager (Disaster Recovery)
• XenCenter Rolling Pool Upgrade Wizard
• Maximum Pool Size Restricted To 3 Hosts (existing larger pools will continue to work, but no new host joins will be permitted)

Pretty much, everything you've grown to love right? Well, if you don't think that takes the cake, they went ahead and restricted access to older version of Xen Server so you can't download and keep using the old versions!

Well, screw that shit man! At the time of this writing I've found three download locations for version 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2. You can download them below:

• XenServer 7.2 Alternative Download
• XenServer 7.1 Alternative Download
• XenServer 7.0 Alternative Download

Hurry up and grab them before these links no longer work. If they stop working, let me know in the comments and I'll see if I can create other download links since I've already downloaded them just in case.

Seriously though, removing the good features from your free offering is to quote user Sam McLeod from the comments below the announcement:

This is a typical, big enterprise, Microsoft style backstab and absolutely aimed at the heart not just of XenServer but many of the key people and organisations that push for and help drive innovation.

I couldn't agree more! Which is why I will continue to use XenServer 7.2 until they either restore their free features, or until I find a better free hypervisor solution.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

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How to get more Facebook page likes for free

You wouldn't be able to tell by looking at the Bauer-Power Facebook page that I actually have quite a big following. That's because the Bauer-Power the Tech Blog gets most of its traffic from Google, so I'm not terribly concerned with 'Likes' on Facebook, although I would love for you to follow Bauer-Power if you find this post useful!

I do, on the other hand, have a political Facebook page that I manage called Mainwashed that has a fairly decent following. In the early days of the page, I paid for Facebook advertising to get more followers, but I haven't done that in a few years since Facebook has squashed our reach with their newer algorithms. That being said, I did find a way to get more followers for free, and relatively fast!

This is a feature that I noticed the other day called the Invite. If you have a somewhat popular post with lots of likes and reactions on it, you can click on the link that shows who liked or reacted to your post, you will see a list of folks who either like your page already or ones that don't. For that latter group you will see a button to Invite them to like your page!

When you invite them, they will receive an invite from the page itself, not your personal account. It's pretty slick!

Doing this manually is kind of a daunting task though, and that's where this post will be handy for you! I found a Google Chrome plugin that will take care of this process for you for free! It can Invite up to 490 people per day too (Facebook's limitation, not theirs).

It's called Facebook Like Inviter! From the Chrome Web Store:

Invite everyone who liked your post to like your Facebook page in just one click! | FREE, NO ADS, NO registration. 

Do you want to invite everyone who liked your post to like also your fan/business FACEBOOK page? Use this extension to save a lot of your time! 

Here is a screenshot of it working it's magic on one of my Mainwashed posts:

Be sure to not try to go over the 490 invite limit in a day. I did that when I first tried this, and Facebook blocked for a full week! LOL!

Anyway, using this tool seems to be working quite well, and I'm starting to see the number of my followers grow again!

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Which Is More Successful? Google or Apple?

In this episode of the Infragraphics Show, they try to figure out who is more successful between Google and Apple? They look at which one has the most potential to be the first trillion dollar company, and look at how both Google (Alphabet) and Apple got started.

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How to explain #Bitcoin to your grandparents (Infographic)

Interestingly, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a really foreign concept to many older folks. Millennials seem to just get it, probably because it was a technology created early in their lifetime so it just makes sense.

Anyway, if you are a bitcoin enthusiast, and have been having a difficult time explaining it to your parents or grandparents, check on this infographic:

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Easy to setup free open source backup server

The other day I was looking for a new backup solution. I wanted one that I could use for my day job potentially, and also perhaps as a side business for local businesses around me. You see, I found that through VPS Dime, I can get a 2TB Linux VPS server for as low as $28 per month! If I setup a cloud based backup server on it, I could charge small businesses a lower monthly fee than Mozy charges, and still make a profit! I digress...

Anyway, one open source backup solution I found was really easy to setup, so I thought I'd share it with you. It's called UrBackup!

Here are features from their page:

• Full and incremental image and file backups: Whole partitions can be saved as well as single directories
• Clients for Windows, Linux and Max OS X
• Fast calculation of file tree differences leads to very fast incremental file backups - only new changed files will be retransmitted
• Only used and changed hard disk sectors are transmitted during an incremental image backup
• Image and file backups while the system is running
• Conistent backups of used files on Windows and Linux. For example Outlook .pst files
• Same files on different computers are saved only once. Less server storage space is needed for your backups (file level deduplication)
• Clients can change their settings like backup frequency or number of backups and can take a look at logfiles of their backups
• Next to no configuration. Install, select the directories you want to backup and watch it backup
• Client warns if there was no backup for some time
• Webinterface that shows the status of the clients, current activities and statistics. It allows the administrator to change backup settings and override the settings for the clients. Existing file backups can be browsed, files from these backups can be extracted or restore processes started
• Reports about backups can be send to users or administrators
• Secure and efficient backups to your own server via Internet if the client is currently not in your local network
• File metadata such as last modified time is backed up
• Easy to use file and image restore (via restore CD/USB stick)
• Easy to configure and use file backup access

They also list the following as one of UrBackup's limitations:

Image backups only work with NTFS formated volumes and with the Windows client. The drives must be MBR or GPT partitioned, the partition must be a primary one. Dynamic volumes are not supported. Mirrored dynamic volumes work, but are not officially supported. Backup to VHD files only works for volumes with a size of less than 2TB.

This really isn't it's only limitation though. One glaring limitation, which caused me to decide not to use this tool, is that it doesn't provide for encrypted backups at rest. Now, one could probably store the backups using full disk encryption and be fine with it, but I need something that stores backups at rest with or without full disk encryption.

It does offer the ability to encrypt backups in transit if you only allow clients to backup using Internet mode, which does help out quite a bit.

I installed this on an Ubuntu test server in about five minutes. To install in Ubuntu, all you have to do is run the following from the terminal:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:uroni/urbackup
• sudo apt update
• sudo apt install urbackup-server

Other versions for various operating systems can be found here (UrBackup Download).

So, to reiterrate, I opted not to use this solution for the fact that it doesn't offer encryption of the backup data at rest. If they do implement this feature, I'm certain to take another look at it. If this isn't a requirement for you though, then I highly recommend it!

Do you know of a better open source backup solution? What do you use? Let us know in the comments!

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