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ShackTV

My father’s neighbor installed ShackTV on my father’s Fire TV Stick. He ordered the service for my father and the neighbor paid with his own credit card $20 for one month. He was also charged $15 for setup/activation fee. My father gave the guy $35 cash. I never heard of paying a setup/activation fee for TV streaming service. This is something that phone and cable companies would do. Usually TV Streaming Services (like Playstation Vue, AT&T TV Now, YouTubeTV, Hulu Live TV, and Sling TV), that you install on Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV, phones and tables, give you a 7 or 30 day free trial and there is no activation fee.

My fathershowed me the app and the User Interface, does not look polished. Mostly some pretty boxes with text in the home screen, then once you start navigating the use interface looks less polished.

I am a software developer and been working with computers, since high school in 1975. Something did not look right. Found several videos about ShackTV on YouTube, all pedaling to different downloads of the apk and different ways of paying.

One video, “DOWNLOAD SHACK TV ON ANDROID & FIRESTICK” from “Solo Man” on youTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbjIVxvhl8&t=1s

The link in the video does not work. I used the link from the video notes. This video also said that you could get the App from Google Play Store. This is a better option, since you do not have to enable Developer mode and disable Install from Unknown Souces. This downloaded SHACKTV-RECORDING.apk from the link in the video. I did a “shashum -a 1” against this file to get a checksum of 4d168c0a2c8357b040589e7050a155270ecb1cce. I then went to the google play store on the web and using the apk downloader extension, I downloaded the apk from Google Play Store. The file name for this apk is com-redapp-shacktv1541394000.apk. I then check the check sum for this apk and it matched. I then went to www.virustotal.com and metadefender.opswat.com and scanned the apk for viruses and it was virus free on both sites. This was a good that the apk from the video notes link and Google Play Store are identical and virus free.

My only concerned is on Google Play store the developer link is https://www.shacksystems.com and the link for ordering ShackTV, https://www.shacktvlive.com, in the video are different looking sites.

The https://www.shacktvlive.com (link from video notes) site looks very unpolished and amateurish, when you click on Buy button it gives you a telephone number to call. RED FLAGS everywhere.

The https://www.shacksystems.com link from Developer link on Google Play Store site is selling web hosting. The logo on this site looks like Shack TV’s logo. I could not find where to order ShackTV. I did find mentioning of ShackTV in the knowledge base page. Is this front for some shaky business activities? Is Tony Soprano running this site?

I found another video “How to buy shack Tv” from “The Reviewer 85” on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrmNMNng9aI on how to buy the TV service from this site using your phone. In this video he is going to the same Developer site from Google Play Store, https://www.shacksystems.com. In the video I can see in the screen recording as he is ordering it says Web Hosting and the voice is saying ShackTV service. This video has RED FLAGS everywhere.

Recently the police in Italy, Netherlands, France, and Bulgaria raided multiple locations and took down the servers for Xstream-codes.com. This IPTV streaming service was serving over 50 million subscribers through many IPTV providers. Now the police have the information for 50 million people the could go after.

Police Shutdown an Illegal IPTV Service With 50 Million Subscribers

Is ShackTV another Xstream-codes.com?

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PostgreSQL and pgAmin3

I got postgreSQL and pgAdmin3 working on my Ubuntu 12.10 server and got pgAdmin3 connecting to it on Windows.

It took some configuring, since by default is set to listen on localhost.

In the /etc/postgresql/9.4/main folder I had to edit the postgresql.conf and change to listen_addresses = ‘192.168.1.20,localhost’

To edit the file I did:
sudo -u postgres nano postgresql.conf

I also had to edit pg_hba.conf file and add the following line, since I was being denied access.
host all all 192.168.1.20/24 md5

To start the server I did the following:
sudo -u postgres service postgresql start

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Got my Ubuntu Linux Computer up and running

I took my old Gigabyte GA EX38-DS4 motherboard, old 8GB DDR2 memory, old Intel Core2 Extreme X9650 3.00 Ghz CPU, my son’s old Cooler Master CM Storm case, my son’s old NVidia GeForce GTX 460 SE, and bought a new Thermaltake Smart 550W Power Supply ($59.99), new ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24X SATA Internal DVD Burner($22.99), and new Western Digital Desktop internal SATA 2TB Hard Drive ($69.99) parts to build my new Ubuntu Linux 14.10 computer to use for development. Total cost $163.68 (152.97 + 10.71 Tax).

I had an old IDE DVD Burner and Seagate IDE 160GB Hard Drive, but I wanted more modern SATA drives. My old Antec 1000W Power Supply (that I dropped about 2.5 months ago) got it working by opening up and when I put the cover back on it stop working. Something is shorting it, but I did not want to take the risk of being shocked.

This system runs great.

I installed Oracle Java 8 JDK u25, Apache Ant, Apache Tomcat, Jetbrains IntelliJ IDEA 14 Ultimate so far.

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Setting up 1.6.2 minecraft/craftbukkit server to run out of your minecraft\saves\ folder

By having your world in the save folder it allows you to get to access the world using Singleplayer or Multiplayer (via Minecraft Server).

IMPORTANT NOTE
You do not want to access your world as Singleplayer if the Multiplayer server is running and accessing that world.

For the purpose of this article my Minecraft world under saves is called myworld and the username is me. The location of myworld in the save folder is in

  • Windows 7
    C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\myworld
  • Mac OS X
    /Users/me/Library/Application Support/minecraft/saves/myworld
  • Linux
    /home/me/.minecraft/saves/myworld

In Minecraft the world folders for the Nether is in DIM-1 and The End is in DIM1 as sub-folder under myworld. For example in Windows 7 the path is C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\myworld\DIM-1 and C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\myworld\DIM1 respectively.

Before starting zip backup of your world folder before setting up Minecraft server.

You can put the minecraft_server.1.6.2.jar file in saves folder, but this will limit you to run only one server for one world at a time and it will litter the save folder with support files, such a server.properties, ops.txt, etc. What I recommend is to create a Minecraft folder for Minecraft servers and the Minecraft.exe (launcher) under C:\Games.

Setting up the Vanilla Minecraft server to use the world in your saves folder is very simple.

  1. Create a folder for myworld in C:\Games\Minecraft folder.
  2. In C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld I copied the minecraft_server.1.6.2.jar and BukkitGUI.exe
  3. You can use the BukkitGUI to launch the vanilla Minecraft Server.
  4. I started the Minecraft server to create all the support files in C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld folder. This will also create a sub-folder named world by default.
  5. Stop the server and quit BukkitGUI.
  6. Delete the world folder that was just created in C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld folder.
  7. Create a symbolic link named myworld linking to C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\myworld folder. To create the symbolic link open a command prompt and type the following:
    cd \Games\Minecraft\myworld
    mklink /d myworld C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\myworld
  8. Modify server.properties and change level-name=world to level-name=myworld
  9. You are now ready to start MineCraft server using mywold save. Remember if the server is running always access it using Mulitplayer not Singleplayer.
Setting up the CraftBukkit Minecraft server to use the world in your saves folder requires creating two additional Symbolic links.
  1. Follow the steps 1 through 9 in settin up the vanilla Minecraft server above. Once you have it running, then stop the server and proceed to step 2 below.
  2. Copy craftbukkit-1.6.2-R0.1.jar to C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld folder.
  3. Configure BukkitGUI to launch craftbukkit.
  4. Start the CraftBukkit server. When you start the server it will move the Nether DIM-1 world into a new folder will it will create using the world name suffixed with _nether (i.e. C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld_nether) and move the The End DIM1 world into a new folder that it will create using the world name suffixed with _the_end (i.e. C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld_the_end) . (NOTE if you forgot to shutdown the Minecraft/Bukkit server it will copied it).
  5. Shutdown the server and quit BukkitGUI.
  6. Copy C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld_nether\DIM-1 to C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\myworld\DIM-1
  7. Copy C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld_the_end\DIM1 to C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\myworld\DIM1
  8. Delete C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld_nether\DIM-1
  9. Create DIM-1 Symbolic link in C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld_nether folder
    mklink /d DIM-1 C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\myworld\DIM
  10. Create DIM1 Symbolic link in C:\Games\Minecraft\myworld_the_end folder
    mklink /d DIM1 C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\saves\myworld\DIM1
  11. You are now ready to start CraftBukkit server using mywold save.