TeraScape Networks

ACCESS DENIED! Tips for Android users in China

TeraScape — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 01:22:14 +0000

Did you go out and accidentally get one of those “special deal” phones from Unicom, Telecom or Mobile that seem to have EVERYTHING blocked? If you don’t care too much about rooting your phone, there’s a lot of tips at XDA Developers. However, if you’re scared to death about bricking your phone, then there are a few alternatives that you can use to get your phone “mostly” international-friendly.

First of all, you’ll want apps that update automatically. You can easily download APK files and install apps on your phone. However, they generally don’t update automatically. To get around this, here’s the first tip:

Your first stop should definitely be at the Amazon App Store. While you can’t get everything on your blocked Google Play store, there’s still a LARGE selection of apps you can get that can be updated automatically. The linked site is their main site. But you’re better off going there via your mobile phone. That way, it’s a more automated process.

Now… communications: We’ve been using IMO IM for quite sometime. This is your MSN/Skype, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, Steam and several others. In this program, Facebook chat is NOT blocked. Generally, Facebook Chat isn’t blocked anyways, so you could also opt for Facebook Messenger, but if you want to have all your services running at once, IMO is the one you’ll want.

For more on Social apps, try Scope, formerly listed under Scope Beta. Available via Amazon, this, like IMO also lets you retrieve & answer messages on facebook without the use of a VPN. Depending on your network, you may also be able to check into Foursquare as well, as you may have noticed, many “check-in” apps may be blocked by certain carriers.

Last but not least (for now anyways), a good blacklist app comes from AntTek, especially on Samsung Galaxy phones. We tried a few that didn’t seem to really want to block anything. This one worked fantastically! While it may not be available on the Amazon store, if you get an APK for it, there’s very little need to actually update it, as it pretty much works out of the box. On that note, our copies from Google Play haven’t even asked for an update in the last couple months.

A note about this article, and why we wrote it… one of the phones we ran into in the past was a Samsung Galaxy S3, bought by a client via a China Unicom special package deal. While CU was determined to claim that Google Play and any “check-in” apps were not blocked, we found that Play, even downloaded separately along with other relative APK’s, refused to connect, even with a vpn. Check-in apps refused to even install, telling us that certain features of android were simply “removed” from the software package. Several calls to CU and Samsung became circular with each telling us to contact the other. There you go. If you have one of these phones, hopefully the above tips will help you until your contract is finished.

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Memorial Day

TeraScape — Sun, 26 May 2013 16:27:40 +0000

I posted these status updates about my family on Facebook, all the way back to my Great Grandfather who fought the Kaiser in WWI on Facebook. It’s not exactly Godaddy’s Marine tributes (which you should see!), but in honor of Memorial Day, I thought I’d share here as well.

Walter Johnston, one of the founders of the American Legion, Post 135, Warren PA. My great grandfather. I snapped that pic from the meeting room, when I showed my son, Cameron, his great great grandfather. I’d say I would love to see him as a 5th generation post member, but that would mean he has to serve during wartime, and no one wants that of their children. I hope my son is proud of his American heritage from my side of the international family we have. I know I am.

William F. Johnston, unfortunately I don’t have a picture on this computer, was Walter Johnston’s son. While Walter Johnston, according to rumors lied about his age to get into the fight against the Kaiser (he was 16 or 17?), William was already of age to fight the Nazis. And that he did. He fought in France and Germany. He fought in Normandy, and fortunately made it through alive.

Many in Warren might be surprised to know that Pelligrino’s factory was his old Meadow Brook dairy. For a brief stint in a college summer, I worked for Pelligrino’s, and Tony said just how appreciative he was of my grandfather’s sale of the old place to jumpstart Pelligrino Peppers. The younger Pelligrinos didn’t remember him, but Tony certainly did.

In the old days of the American Legion, William Johnston was an active member. After the war, he went as far even playing Santa Claus for a Christmas or so. Dorothy Salisbury and he always played host to Christmas Eve when I was growing up. Sue Salisbury Salapek may remember some of the early years with Grandpa and Dottie, especially when Muffy suddenly became a part of the family. That old dog, originally meant for Chris was named Lucky originally. I don’t know how Muffin inevitably ended up to be his name, but thank God it wasn’t named after the Alf TV show.

Christmas time Brandy Alexanders were part of the definition of the holiday season in William Johnston’s family.

My father, David Jones, and I have a rather similar military history. We both served during wartime. But neither of us were ever sent overseas. That’s certainly not taking anything from the fact that he served. The fact that my grandfather, my great grandfather and my father all survived wars while serving, is the reason I’m here. I’ll never argue against that. It’s also the reason my son is here. My father served in the Navy during Vietnam, as part of the crew that kept our aircraft carriers running and serving. He didn’t go out into the jungles with a rifle. He didn’t leave the US. Neither did I. There are all sorts of jobs that need to be done, and if his planes took off after they left Norfolk, then it’s a job well done. Thanks, Dad, for your service!

I was aboard the USS South Carolina for a brief stint in ’93. My boat was in tip top shape when it left. We were part of the USS Eisenhower battle group. Jason Sawyer’s ship, I say as if my old military buddy will ever see this. We had some grand old fun in Norfolk, with Wally from NC, and Nora from Compton (my favoritest old girlfriend) and a few others!

The Persian Gulf War was pretty much finished. It had been since CNN & Wolf Blitzer made themselves famous for the coverage back in ’90. There were a few old friends who still got sent over to the Gulf on whatever USS Something that got the orders, includng Nora’s ship, unfortunately.

The rest of us, we minded our boats, and kept them ready. Jason was an airman. I went for Damage Control. Best to keep the boat afloat rather than actually have to learn to swim. I never was good at that.

Jason (Tom) Sawyer, Wally, Nora, Ferguson, anyone in Norfolk, too, and anyone in that really messed up road trip to DC… cheers and Memorial Day is for you too! In our case, we’re still alive. My family did well in wartime. Hope yours did too.

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Have you heard about CISPA?

TeraScape — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:05:10 +0000

Learn more about this dangerous piece of legislation going through the American system at EFF.org. It’s already passed in the House of Representatives, but it’s not too late to contact your senator.

Here’s a clip:

CISPA stands for The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a network and Internet security bill written by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) (H.R. 624). The bill purports to allow companies and the federal government to share information to prevent or defend against network and other Internet attacks. However, the bill grants broad new powers, allowing companies to identify and obtain “threat information” by looking at your private information. It is written so broadly that it allows companies to hand over large swaths of personal information to the government with no judicial oversight—effectively creating a “cybersecurity” loophole in all existing privacy laws.

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Senate vote on bill requiring warrants for e-mail searches

TeraScape — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:12 +0000

Watch the report here.

Senate vote on bill requiring warrants for e-mail searches

Justice Department officials resisting legislation

Support builds for revising email privacy protections

Law enforcement officials will try to make their case for leaving in place a 25-year-old email privacy law critics call woefully outdated as the Senate continues to weigh adding new protections to safeguard digital communications.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is debating a proposed revision of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which once kept digital correspondence reasonably confidential, but has, according to critics, been left in the dust by the Internet Age. When first enacted in 1986, few people kept old emails that can now be stored cheaply and indefinitely. Yet the law still requires only an administrative subpoena for law enforcement to access emails older than six months. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wants the law revised to require a court-issued warrant, and also has other changes in mind.

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DNS Settings in China

TeraScape — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 09:37:08 +0000

Internet service from overseas in China has gotten iffy recently. OpenDNS & Google DNS may now be unavailable. If you use these services, and are having problems, for now, undo the settings, and you should be able to access sites normally in China.

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Jeff Sullivan’s Amazing Astrophotography

TeraScape — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:34:34 +0000

HD it & full-screen it. It’s something to behold. Something some of us in large cities miss too, are that many stars in the sky.

http://youtu.be/6YOxo7uI8ns

Thanks Jeff Sullivan for the great work, and thanks Phil Plait for sharing!

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Warp Drive Plausible? Maybe more than you think!

TeraScape — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 23:25:15 +0000

When do we reckon we’ll be able to make it to Gliese 581 to actually see this possible exoplanet up close & determine if it’s habitable? What about flying off to Kepler 22B to see if we can’t plant a few trees? Apparently sooner than we think! Nasa is closer than we think to producing the “warp drive”, the famed propulsion system used by the fleet of the fictitious United Federation of Planets.

From Wired.com

NASA scientists now think that the famous warp drive concept is a realistic possibility, and that in the far future humans could regularly travel faster than the speed of light.

A warp drive would work by “warping” spacetime around any spaceship, which physicist Miguel Alcubierreshowed was theoretically possible in 1994, albeit well beyond the current technical capabilities of humanity. However, any such Alcubierre drive was assumed to require more energy — equivalent to the mass-energy of the whole planet of Jupiter – than could ever possibly be supplied, rendering it impossible to build.

But now scientists believe that those requirements might not be so vast, making warp travel a tangible possibility. Harold White, from NASA’s Johnson Space Centre, revealed the news on Sept. 14 at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a gathering to discuss the possibilities and challenges of interstellar space travel. Space.com reports that White and his team have calculated that the amount of energy required to create an Alcubierre drive may be smaller than first thought.

Read more at Wired.com. Would you be aboard the space football?

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Server Alerts @ Twitter

TeraScape — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 20:17:14 +0000

Due to the amount of requests & queries regarding our server status during the last outage, we set up a twitter account that we’ll update if anything were to go on out of the ordinary. Follow @TSNServers to see the status of our system and to be alerted when everything is back to normal.

You can also follow @Terascape for our news and information regarding our company, our partners & other tips & tricks to make your online life easier and more secure.

Here are the latest from @TSNServers.

Tweets: no public messages…

And the latest from @Terascape.

Tweets: no public messages…

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HACKED! Mat Honan discusses how he lost EVERYTHING

TeraScape — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 20:09:39 +0000

What happens if you’re lax about security, passwords & your devices? Mat Honan can tell you.

If you’re a regular reader of Wired, or just a curious tech enthusiast, you’ve certainly already heard about the hacking attack suffered by Mat Honan, Gadget Lab’s senior writer. Honan himself documented how hackers assumed control of his digital life in an exhaustive report on Monday, but now we have him on video, describing what happened in greater nuance and detail.

Weekend Downtime

TeraScape — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 20:01:22 +0000

This weekend saw the failure of one of our main hard-drives. While not a complete loss, i.e. we didn’t have to resort to backups to get things running again, it affected some httpd functions as well as mysql. Because of this, we had to take the server offline, clone the HD in order to protect the most recent versions of sites & the server data, and reinstall the data onto a separate hard drive.

We’re now back up & running after a few hours downtime. This should be the last downtime until we make the final data center move, now pushed back a week or two so we can monitor our servers.

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