ETC Blog, The Tech Resource
Maryland Waves Goodbye to Businesses
Maryland has passed the sales tax on IT services. Of course, they are not thinking that IT is easily moved out of state. Every facet of my business is impacted by this. It is not "only" a 3 percent tax. There are additional compliance costs as well. I am going to...
Make Sure Your Camras Are segmented Away From Your Data Shares
Many cameras require open ports for remote access.and also run outdated operating systems that are ripe for takeover. This article points out this attack leveraged Linux...Linux itself isn't the issue, the lack of security updates AND the fact the cameras required...
Two BSD projects start
PFSense is becoming closed source as announced by Netgate. IXSystems has take TrueNAS to Linux with Scale away from its BSD roots. While OPNSense is a BSD based firewall and often completes with PFSense they are based in Europe and do nto have 24 hour tech support. ...
JerryRigEverything Shows the Main Reasons I do not Recommend the S25 Ultra for Most Users
Earlier I made this post about my initial thoughts on t he s25 series of phones but most pointedly the S25 Ultra. After seeing JerryRigEverything's video about the even greater downgrades given to the S25 if you have a S Series that's the s23 or the S24 I can see no...
My Linux Journey
For the first 10 years of my hosting service I have used Ubuntu Server LTS. Ubuntu has become quite bloated and the amount of time I spent turning off cruft in the background has gotten to be on par with Windows. With RedHat now being totally a paid for product that...
ETC Maryland Enhances Web Hosting Offerings
ETC Maryland would like to announce a further expansion of our hosting products. With our new datacenter partners, new opportunities have presented themselves and we would like to pass these opportunities to the general public. We would like to announce the...
My Thoughts on the S25 Series.
In summary..if you have a Pixel 8 Pro or Samsung S24 Ultra, The S25 series and Pixel 9 are not compelling upgrades. If you have a phone that's more than two years old then upgrading might be a good idea. However, the Pixel 8 Pro and the Samsung S24 series will be a...
ETC Maryland Announces New Hosting Services and Pricing
With our new datacenter partners ETC Maryland can now announce new hosting services for sites that either have high traffic needs or hosting without the limitations of shared hosting. The two new Services are virtual Private Servers. Two types of VPS servers are...
If you want reduced ads and increased security, the game is over for Google Chrome
https://mashable.com/article/google-chrome-killing-ad-blocker-ublock-origin Google I said they're going to in support and they're specifically targeting you block origin. That's mainly because you block origin is excellent at blocking ads including ones embedded in...
Netgate’s panicked response to it’s attempt to be nice leads to chaos..finally a reasonable resolution.
First Netgate announced their move away from PSense free(known as CE). This resulted in outcry but at least they announced their intentions. Recently, Netgate announced the termination of the free homelab PFSense plus license with no option to keep it running. ...
Important Service Priding Announcement
Avast has informed me a significant price increase starting January 1, 2024. As of this date ETC Maryland's managed anti-malware by Avast will increase to $50/machine per year. If you know someone who wants or needs managed anti-malware have them contact me before...
The Latest on the LastPass Breech. it’s Much Worse Than Many Realize
There's tons of stories about the LastPass breech and most of them downlplay things saying your data is encrypted so the vaults getting stolen is not a big deal. Well that's not true at all. I do not know if folks are purposefully downlplaying or they really do not...
Hosting Server Upgrade Announcement
in January 2023 i will be updating web1 is virtualmin 7 along with Ubuntu lts 22.01LTS. The biggest change will be the base PHP will upgrade to PHP 8.1 Previous versions will not be installed. Most clients running WordPress should not have any issues. as the time for...
Current Network for Office Build
Well this is for my clients who are curious what I run at y office for my networking:
Elementor Plugin for WordPress Major Security Alert
If you use the elementor plug-in for WordPress to help design your website, it is a source of remote compromise for your website. The word fence security team found the vulnerability and reported it to elementor. A patch has now been released. Etc. Maryland fully...
Consulting Price Increase Announcement
With the current inflationary trends and increased costs across the board, ETC Maryland is announcing fee increases. Effective April 2nd, the base fee will increase to $150/hr. Current clients on all tiers will also see a $25/hr fee increase. This will be the first...
New Website, Pricing, Services, and Server Upgrade Announcement
ETC Maryland has contracted with Symbiotic Marketing, LLC to create a new website consistent with the official incorporation of Emmanuel Technology Consulting to Emmanuel Technology Consulting, INC. DBA ETC Maryland. YES..the ETC Maryland moniker is official!!! Once...
Major Java Security Vulnerability and ETC Maryland’s Vulnerability Statement
There is a logging library that is used extensively throughout the Technology industry. It has gotten a security rating of 10 which is very very rare...i personally have not heard of one during my nearly 30 years in this industry. You can see the looooong list of...
All ETC Maryland Services Unaffected by AWS Outage
ETC Maryland does not run any services on a third party cloud. The one thing the cloud providers don't tell you is that if you stay with their lower end plans(and most folks do) you are restricted to one zone. WHEN that zone has a problem..you have no redundancy. ...
A Major Life Change and Moving Forward With a New Research Project
My friend Erik Mikula death...for a while really took the wind out of my IT sails. I have the server i ordered right before Erik died....and frankly..it's been a painful reminder of his sudden removal from this world. I finally came to realize Erik would not want me...
ETC Maryland Fully Manged Hosting Restores Client Site Functionality.
This client had an update come through and it caused the live audio stream to go offline from the site. If you knew the address you could get to it manually but very few people want to enter a line of obscure code to hear the content they are looking for. This fully...
Godaddy Compromised. Up to 1.2 Million WordPress Sites Compromised
Godaddy notified the SEC they had their systems breached. If you have a wordpress site on godaddy change your passwords(lal of them..your wordpress admin, ftp, database, and your primary account password). Several other brands that GoDaddy acquired were also part of...
Websites Can be a Huge Source of Spam and a New Service Addition to Fight it
For a while I've noticed an increase in the amount of spam making it into my inbox. Sometimes it even evaded all of the spam filters built in by Gsuite and Offic3365. I began researching and found that my website was an increasing source of spam getting to me. How...
New Pricing Announcement for ETC Maryland Shared Hosting
I had earlier announced that web hosting for ETC Maryland will be increasing. The new price structure is: Micro: $105 per year Standard: $130 per year Enhanced: $175 per year Fully Managed: $500 per year All features remain the same upgraded features as noted on the...
ETC Maryland Notification of Hosting Rate Increase
ETC Maryland is going to be raising rates on Jan 1, 2022. The amount of the rate increase has not been finalized yet. However, there is one benefit that needs to be detailed now. All existing and new accounts that sing up before Dec 31st 2021 at 1159pm will NOT be...