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Tech

Increasing the Spam Score for a Particular Rule Using Spam Assassin

This article will show you very briefly how to assign your own scores for Spam Assassin tests or simply influence the default rule set.

I write this article because I know some hosting providers (such as Namecheap) provide Spam Assassin as an ‘out of the box’ anti-spam solution and I know that some of the cpanel menus that support Spam Assassin aren’t as intuitive or helpful as they could be to help guide this process.

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Tech

Why You Shouldn’t Keep Your Contactless Bank Card and Oyster Card in the Same Wallet

If you’re like me and you’ve recently had a new/replacement bank card, you will have probably noticed a slight change in the appearance of your new card.

Oyster Card and Contactless Bank Card with RFID symbol. Source: londonist.com
Oyster Card and Contactless Bank Card with RFID symbol. Source: londonist.com

The new wireless-looking symbol represents contactless payment capabilities based on radio frequency technology. This means that, in theory, you can make low transaction payments (up to £20 as of this article I believe) simply by tapping on an EPOS terminal without entering your PIN, probably saving you about half a minute every time you make such a payment.

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Tech

Profiling JavaScript Execution Times and Calls Using Firebug

If used properly, Firebug can be a very useful tool in helping diagnose performance issues or simply provide an in-depth insight in to a web application or site.

Using the Firebug profiler to get Javascript statistics on a given page is very easy and takes very little time to set-up.

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Tech

Hotmail/Outlook Refuses to Open Mail or Folders – Temporary Workaround

If you have problems loading folders or e-mails in Outlook.com/hotmail you’re not the only one.

In the last couple of weeks I noticed this problem on my personal hotmail account; I would repeatedly click e-mails and folders whilst watching that annoying ‘load bar’ scroll across the top of the page.

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Tech

Got a WPS Enabled Router? Consider Disabling it or Risk DoS

WPS stands for wi-fi protected set-up. It’s supposed to make it easier for non-tech savvy people to authenticate devices on to a wireless network by pressing a physical button on the router or entering a PIN in to a device to make it known to the network.

The problem with WPS is quite a big one. There are many fundamental flaws in the WPS model – I won’t go through these in this article but a simple Google search will expose these many vulnerabilities in WPS – one which I discovered by accident today is a relatively (scarily) easy denial of service on an end-users network.