It is a security measure, as it involves authentication through the series of knocks. It's a weak security measure on its own, so you obviously wouldn't want to rely on port knocking by itself, but it does have utility in preventing an attacker from discovering the service through a simple port scan.
I don't quite understand why you're saying it adds nothing at all.
If the port knocking was obscuring an unauthenticated root shell then you would have a good point, but this is a defence in depth measure that adds to the security. It helps because it's one more hurdle for an attacker to bypass.
> Unfortunately the QR code might be an improvement over Windows 8 and 8.1 if the QR code contains more detailed information.
The QR code shown in the example screenshot is just a link to http://windows.com/stopcode - hopefully they'll improve it to at least include the bug check code.
Most of the commentary here so far is really quite tangential to the actual research done. Everyone commenting on this article should make sure they've read the study first, with particular attention to the 'Limitations' section on page 11: http://m.jmq.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/02/25/1077699016...
One other feature of the study that limits its wider applicability is that it is entirely US-centric. It would be interesting to read follow-up work on samples taken from other cultures and countries.
It does appear to be some encoding issue relating to the Unicode "→" (U+2192). Encoded with UTF-8, this is represented by the three bytes 0xE2 0x86 0x92. In the TeX EC encoding, these correspond to "âĘŠ".
After the initial period of adaptation, I found it actually increased productivity. Perhaps it was just preventing already-established bad habits that arise from having the internet constantly available.
On the topic of work environment: in one job I worked at, we had the Internet machines completely separated from the work machines. If you needed to check something you had to physically walk over to the Internet desk. Great for focussing on the task at hand without distraction, and considering carefully what information you need.
Unsurprising that they've ceased to accept Bitcoin. The only significant use cases thus far have been ransomware and buying recreational drugs. And early adopters cashing out of the pyramid scheme.
Only in the amount of effort one is willing to expend in doing so, and learning any necessary skills. It's only a happy accident that so many (relatively inexpensive) routers are easily flashable with custom firmware, not an entitlement.
If you're buying a device to replace the stock firmware with something customised to your liking, then you're already in the hacker mindset, so having to tinker that little bit harder surely shouldn't be much of a burden.
There's no known API to read the UID out (there is one to use it, or the GID, or any other AES key: http://iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/IOCryptoAcceleratorFamily...), no published side-channel attacks, and the destructive/invasive techniques that would involve decapping the chip and using an electron microscope are not solid enough to use for this, such that there would a huge risk of destroying evidence.
I don't quite understand why you're saying it adds nothing at all.