Author: shonwipadmin

Interesting reads 20 Sept 2018

  • https://www.techradar.com/reviews/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-extreme
  • http://jackterwilliger.com/biological-neural-networks-part-i-spiking-neurons/
  • https://medium.com/tensorflow/the-trinity-of-errors-in-financial-models-an-introductory-analysis-using-tensorflow-probability-9fdefb4d283d
  • https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/nss-labs-files-antitrust-suit-against-symantec-crowdstrike-eset-amtso/d/d-id/1332851

Catching up on my reads.

Obike debacle never ends

As a disgruntled user of oBike, I am trying to get back my $49 deposit which I was then told it was used to purchase additional oBikes instead of being an deposit.

I came across the liquidators page (www.obikedepositholders.com) to process refunds and found it rather suspicious. Is it really coming from oBike’s liquidators?

Hosted off Google forms, I would have to provide:

  1. NRIC (I didn’t provide a NRIC/Identification Number when signing up. Why would you need this, FTI Con-sulting?)
  2. Upload Credit Card Statement / PayPal Statement / Proof of Cryptocurrency Transaction (What! Dont you even have this information?)
  3. Upload Telephone Bill (This is getting ridiculous)
  4. Upload Student Certification (if applicable) (I could skip this one but why does FTI Con-sulting need this information?)
  5. Postal Address (I didn’t provide Postal Address, why don’t you just send confirmation to the email address in your records?)

 

I could have built this page and gullible people would just send their personal particulars in hopes of collecting their deposits (quite frankly, it’s next to nil) If Singapore wants to enforce law and order, the authorities should extradite the founder (currently in China, and rumoured to have used the deposits to enter the cryptocurrency market) and make him pick up every road-clogging oBike as a CWO (Corrective Work Order). Alas, the chance of that happening would be one in a million.

Now, back to FTI Con-sulting. How is FTI Con-sulting managing my personal data? What processes they have in place to address the risk of loss and misuse? Likely zero.

Should I forgo my deposit? Perhaps.

Steps to convert a Parallels (OSX) VM to VMware (Linux)

I had couple VMs in Parallel lying around on the old storage. Some of these still have a valid Microsoft Windows and Office licences which would mean throwing away good money if I’ve just dumped them.

I managed to figure out how to move these VMs to VMware Workstation on Linux. Here are the requirements and the steps.

Things to note after the conversion
1. The extraction will transmigrate the underlying OS innards to VMware’s. This will trigger reactivation for Microsoft Windows and also Office. Interestingly all I need was to click the reactivation notices (1 for Windows and 1 for Office) and all was done!

Requirements
1. Able to boot into the Parallels VM (It should be running Windows)
2. Make sure the host storage space is at double the size of the Parallels VM you want to convert.
3. Download VMware Converter from VMware (The current version is 6.2)

Steps
1. Boot into your Parallels VM
2. Make a shared folder to the host operating system from Parallels. You will save the new VMware image here.
3. Install VMware Converter
4. Then run VMware Converter as an administrator 

5. This screen will be shown. Select Convert Machine

6. Next select “This local machine”. The source type should say “Powered on” since this Parallels instance is powered on.

7. The screen below will pop up. The options look alright. Make sure there is a location where you can save the converted virtual machine to, at the last selection.

Note if C:\ drive is selected, it means the virtual machine will be saved back to the same Parallels instance – this is not what we want.

Click Next.

VMware Converter will chug along, depending on the speed of medium which the virtual machine will be saved to. It took less than 60 mins with a SSD.

Start up the newly created VMware instance on VMware Workstation. Done!