Posts by Marty McFly 1288 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jan 2008
Highly motivated self-starters are the exact type of people that excel at remote work. Go figure they would also excel at entrepreneurship.
The study is meaningless. These people were destined to branch out and leave anyway. WFH gave them a taste and mandatory WFO just put them over the edge.
Cheers & best wishes to success!
"I would like a large coffee, please."
"We don't have small, medium, and large sizes. We use [some stupid names I cannot remember]."
Figure it out already. I am here because I am low on caffeine, and likely irritable. I don't need some inked up, over pierced, college graduate talking down to me about their preferred vernacular for coffee cup sizes.
I haven't been to a Starbucks in years. I will always go to the smaller local mom & pop vendor instead.
I shared an office with an attractive and endowed red head who was dating the PFY from the IT team. He created a script with seemingly random errors and put it on her computer, with instructions to not reboot and to precisely write down all the messages. After about 50 errors that morning, the final message before lunch professed his undying love for said damsel with a distressed computer.
Shortly thereafter her ample assets were bestowed elsewhere and he had more time available to write code.
>"Would you like to fly in a plane where the flight avionics was written by a company owned by an equity consortium keen on a fast return?"
Where did you read that Boeing is selling off their flight avionics?
I read Jeppesen, ForeFlight, OzRunways, and AerData have been sold off. Sure, all of these companies are aviation related, but I don't see where any of them are involved with the on-board avionics & flight controls.
I completely admit what follows is a gender stererotype and is not always true in all cases....
Men will pay twice as much for something they need today. Women will pay half as much for something on sale today that they don't need.
No surprise JCPenny's primary target market bombed when they stopped the biggest sale of the year.
Good debate over GPS accuracy vs. wheel rotations.
However, I am taking a dim view to the individual's 'evidence' using historical mileage records of his commutes. It would have been very easy to use a GPS device to validate the miles accumulated in the Tesla. That would provide hard evidence of incorrect odometer readings. No, it would not be precisely accurate, but it would certainly be good enough to support the allegations of the false 117% increase in traveled miles.
Fixed mounted GoPro, the Tesla's odometer & standalone GPS showing, then post the video to YouTube. Do fresh updates every day to prove it is not some AI generated misinformation. A trivial task to do. Then watch copy-cat Tesla owners do the same thing. That would get A LOT more attention than a lawsuit.
Unless, of course, there is questionable data in the individual's historical mileage records and the difference is not as big as initially presented....hence my dim view.
Okay, we are all tech's here on this fine comment thread. Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc release regular patches for free to their products. Every one of us gets PAID by our employer to promptly & wisely test and deploy those patches. Big Tech doesn't compensate our employer one thin dime for our individual labor to deploy those patches.
Why would it be any different with Boeing???
>"...of how good Apple's hardware and software is, when they don't deliberately cripple it."
That's a great point. I've got an i7 Mac Mini circa 2011 that serves as a media player for a TV. Yeah, a little hacking with OpenCore and it just keeps going. I wouldn't even need to do that if it wasn't for the 3rd party forced upgrades: webpage requires newer browser, newer browser requires newer OS.
Yeah, fanboi icon.
Buddy of mine had the same story in the late 1990's. Vice President of a bank, needing a laptop upgrade due to running out of storage. My buddy reported it and then found himself in front of HR. They explained because my buddy already knew, they were not going to involve anyone else in IT.
That led to a 1:1 with a very matronly older lady in HR. She asked for a printed directory of the files. She would highlight one filename, and say "Show me". It was very awkward as my buddy had to suppress his internal monologue of "Ooooh, that is a good one", and "I didn't know women could do that!"
They were willing to let the VP slide under the premise that 'maybe' his teenage son had somehow copied stuff on the laptop. But they found a backup copy in his personal network share on the company servers. And that was that.
This is all straight out of Trump's book, The Art of the Deal.
Demand something completely impractical. Get everyone all stirred up. Then settle for what he wants in the first place. Everyone thinks they dodged the bullet.
Of course the Department of Education is not going away. But with this looming threat, they may make some changes to be more financially responsible. And that was really Trump's goal all along.
Hate Trump all you want. It is just how he gets stuff done. Now that you know this is his methodology, you will see it in everything he does. Watch for a new & completely unreasonable announcement next week.
For the dozen humans who have visited the moon, it cost us $12.5 billion dollars each (inflation adjusted). That is an expensive ticket!
With that amount of my (taxpayer) money being spent, I want to maximize the value. Only the best. Other than their ability to function as an astronaut on the moon, I don't care anything else about them.
>"To avoid the 'secure' communications of the state agencies was probably the point considering the state has been used as a weapon..."
(Okay kids, let's drop the politics for just a moment)
That leads to an interesting possibility. We all know the government keeps pushing for backdoors in to encrypted communication channels. And we all know that it is not possible to have true security when a backdoor exists.
What if... The administration has been briefed that the secure state agency communications contain a backdoor? The government keeps pushing for backdoors in the private sector, could it be because they already have them (and are using them) in the government sector? Therefore, it would then be reasonable for the administration to conclude that using Signal would be MORE secure than state agency communications.
I know, it is a bit on the tinfoil hat side of things, see icon. But it is not that far-fetched either.
Sewer drain was plugged. Lines marked, digging ordered. The lines were in the exact right spot, but the excavator operator failed to adhere to them. Nicked a 42K volt main line, took out several neighborhoods.
'Bummer, but better not waste time. As soon as the power company shows up they will order us out of the hole.'
So in they went. Six foot deep hole, standing in a puddle of water. Fixing the sewer line on one end of the hole, while electric blue sparks flashed on the other end. They got it fixed just as the power company showed up.
Lineman, shaking his head... "That power could jump right over to them. Idiots. I guess it is their lives to risk"
Exactly. I have a couple legacy endpoints that do non-critical specific tasks just fine with Firefox on Win7 today. They are not used for general browsing, random email links, or are exposed to any such risks.
I seems like more & more there is quiet collaboration within the tech industry to force extra spins on the upgrade-replace-renew wheel. Expire a cert, break Firefox, which cannot be updated on that OS, on hardware that cannot run a newer OS, thus spend money to replace kit that is otherwise still serviceable for the task it performs.
You should toss a PiHole on your network. My Roku was generating over 50% of the DNS traffic coming from my network. At all hours of the day, regardless of whether it was in use or not. What is that little thing doing???
The Roku is now in the unused tech bin. I don't trust it.
The fix is already in place, and no one saw it coming.
Hardware license subscriptions. Pay the same price as today, but now it comes with a Terms & Conditions agreement and a defined end-of-service date. They will even include a pre-paid box to ship back the device for complimentary E-cycling. Or you can just toss it in the bin. Either way, you knew upfront that it would only be licensed until a certain date, and then it will stop working.
Just now figuring that out? It feels that way because it IS that way.
A failure to innovate results in an evolutionary product line, rather than a revolutionary product line. Therefore the only way to entice the 'upgrade' becomes a push mechanism rather than a pull mechanism. Users, admins, companies, have no compelling reason to roll out the latest stuff. Therefore they must be pushed in to it by deprecating hardware and compatibility.
Ultimately it comes down to a painful choice for companies: Risk no support & no security patches, versus spending money for unwanted 'upgrades'. No one will get fired if they are successfully attacked when running the latest software releases. But an attack after a decision to stay with old infrastructure will lead them straight to the firing line. Thus the 'upgrades' are willingly paid for.
That is big tech's ultimate marketing strategy.
Nope. They go right around my PiHole.
My opinion... DNS over HTTPS is overblown. This is something browsers are 'selling' to keep your evil ISP from spying on you....but letting the browser company spy on you instead. You can setup the PiHole to use DNS over HTTPS if you are worried about your ISP spying.
I have a lot of lists in my PiHole, and it is sometimes too aggressive. I will have a secondary browser (usually Chrome) set to use DNS over HTTPS. If I reach an incompatible website, then I will use that browser for the task rather than my primary browser.
I learned that streaming media sites will NOT work if the PiHole is blocking anything. Even when I have paid the streaming site for their ad-free service, it still breaks. So they get a dedicated browser for just that purpose, and all the interesting stuff they really want to spy on happens via a different secured browser.
Yesterday the Reg reported on Google's changes to eliminate ad-blockers in the browser. Today the Reg is reporting advertising in Microsoft Office. Maybe tomorrow Intel will roll out a secure on-chip advertising enclave...
We have seen the future, and it is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO7p1p5_yg4
<<Taking Trump & Musk out of this post>>
Most of us have worked for companies & organizations which have gone through re-orgs & changes. This is often a difficult decision for managers to make when they get told something like "Pick 10% to cut, and you can take one of those slots if you want". Yeah, a real S-sandwich, but that is why management gets paid the big bucks, right?
The quickest way to land on that manager's short list is to waste time doing something stupid in a very public way. Putting videos on a bunch of computers would qualify, and provide plenty of proof that the employee has excess time on their hands.
Sure, they will go down in a blaze of glory, and will be the secret heroes for many. But they will still be going down.
I have been running Pi-Hole for years.
When I first deployed, I was shocked at how much traffic was being generated by so-called "Smart" devices - TV's, Blu-ray players, Roku, Apple TV, etc. Literally 60% of my DNS lookups were from these devices. At all hours of the day, not just when they were in use.
Just who are they talking to? What is really in that EULA? The security guy in me got creeped out and I disconnected the devices.
Mac Mini's now run the show. Not perfect and more expensive than using the built-in garbage. Definitely a better UI than a hand-held remote control. All the TVs are on HDMI1, which is all they are permitted to do.
I have e-wasted many computers over the years, but none contained a hard drive. Those are all pulled, set on a bench, and destroyed from 100 yards away. A well placed .308 will go right through, but a .22lr will just dent it drive.
Totally legit. Physical destruction of the storage media is just as acceptable as making multiple passes, writing ones & zeros to meet DoD 5220.22-M.
Cheaper too. And when done in quantity it can be an IT team building exercise....though the BOFH may debate whether it should be held off-site or not.
I'll take pause to not outright convict the accused. There was a window of time where this was perfectly acceptable.
Roll back to the days before dumpster divers and previously used drives on eBay. Often old computers simply went in "the bin" as the concept of "e-waste" wasn't created yet. But also at a time current enough where the "everything must be under warranty" equipment policy was in place.
There was a lot of good serviceable kit that got replaced before its time, and no one cared where the old stuff went. It was actually pretty common to re-purpose old kit in to non-critical systems. Yes, sometimes that was home systems. Often it was on-site test systems. Think of the next big software or OS upgrade. What better way to test in non-prod than by using the previous prod systems? Especially in a budget tight IT environment where funding for non-prod testing is non-existent.
It is entirely possible, if not probable, that someone said to junk the old system. No one understood the security risks in doing so. Computers were mysterious widgets to a lot of people. From their perspective, taking the hard drive out of an old computer was no different than a janitor taking the electric motor out of the old vacuum cleaner they just replaced.
Certainly in the context of our modern data security & privacy arena this is a heinous act worthy of termination & criminal action. But there was a time a few decades back where it was just normal good practice for IT techs to reclaim & repurpose old kit that still had some service life left.
I will note the article doesn't make a single comment about Elon Musk. Yet most of the comments posted here seem to focus on the individual.
I am curious how in the heck my little hand-held cell phone has enough transmit power to send a signal 342 miles to an orbiting Starlink satellite. Sure it is line-of-sight, but that seems like an awfully long distance for a signal coming from a pocket device with an omni-directional antenna.
What we need is a secondary emergency passcode that wipes the phone.
Put some guardrails around it - FaceID is shut off, warnings around data since last backup will be lost, force the use of a passcode to unlock, etc. Make it inconvenient so that the feature is only activated when a user knows they are going in to a high risk situation.
"Give me your passcode or go to jail!!!"
"Sure, but this is a burner phone and there is nothing on it."
Gives emergency passcode.
"See, I told you so."
Or what? You won't get your phone back?
Let's all be good security practitioners here. Would you want your phone back after an unknown 3rd party had full permissions to access it? Who knows what they could have installed. Seems to me you could never fully trust the device again.
According to Microsoft, "You are more likely to experience this issue if you are using a USB 1.0 audio driver based DAC in your audio setup."
Notice how Microsoft doesn't take ownership of the problem they caused. This is all "YOUR" problem because "YOU" are using particular driver.
It would have been so easy to write something like "Systems using a USB 1.0 audio based DAC for their audio setup...." No, instead Microsoft decided to personalize the problem and directly call out the individual users as being the problem. "YOU" decided to run this USB DAC. "YOU" are using a 1.0 audio driver. This is all in "YOUR" audio setup.
Really speaks to their mindset about how they hold their users in such high regard.
"If the product is FREE, then YOU are the PRODUCT!!"
My extended family loves Life360. I took one look at the EULA and all the permissions it wanted, and gave it an immediate "Nope!" I did, however, install it on one old phone which is no longer cellular activated and sits on my desk. I can monitor extended family that way. Any data submitted from the phone will show it never moving.
The WPPSS story is so much more complex than that. I submit demand did not materialize at that time due to the energy conservation movement. A half century later and increased demand has consumed the surplus resulting from that conservation. Essentially they were half a century ahead of their time.
Side story... I used to work at an office building built in the late 1960's when power in the Pacific Northwest would be "too cheap to meter". There was a giant chiller outside the building that cooled the air to 58 degrees. If the occupant of an office (pre-dates cubicle design) wanted warmer air, a 220v heater over their office re-warmed it. Single pane glass everywhere. The building was abandoned in 1987, and was reclaimed by my employer a decade later...who realized too late they could not afford the power bill. They were forced to sell the company two years later, never having made another dime.
Courtesy of a handy AI search... "In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety (NHTSA) mandated that all new vehicles under 10,000 pounds must be equipped with rearview cameras starting May 1, 2018."
I agree, an answer in search of a problem....which the government excels at creating. Note, not a "law" put in place by our elected officials. A "federal regulation" created by unelected bureaucrats.
>"you can do most things with an RPi400"
That is only a partially correct. Let me help...
"...you can do most things that you need to do with an RPi400"
The problem is, with all the embedded bloatware to track & monetize the user after they sale, it is necessary to upgrade the hardware because "you cannot do most things they force you to do with an RPi400"
>I, as the user, should be the sole entity that determines when a product is obsolete, not the manufacturer.
You are in charge. No problem. The problem is simple....
Your favorite shiny browser drops support for an older OS. No problem, everything still works. Then they roll out support for a new security related feature/function. Call it a new encryption schema. But you are stuck, you cannot upgrade the browser.
It would work fine, they just stopped testing it on older operating systems and THEN added a hard block to prevent it from running even if you hacked around it.
Pretty soon your favorite websites start requiring support for the new security thingy. And bam, your hardware is now useless for those websites.
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