Posts by Marty McFly 1459 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jan 2008
Years ago, in a career far away, I was on the service side of these transactions. That has made me a generous tipper when someone else is making my dinner on a busy Friday night - usually over 20-25%.
However, if they insist on a set gratuity, I will leave it at that. Want to add an automatic 15%, well then that is all you get.
Incorrectly blaming management.
In the States, TIPs are reported at income when they are given via electronic means. That means a percentage is withheld to give to the government. That is a tax issue, not a management issue.
If you really want to make a server happy, leave some cash on the table.
I am particularly fond of telling a server "Do you know the difference between a tip & a gift? You pay taxes on a tip, and this <handing cash> is a gift for you."
Fake login pages can ask for a MFA too. The attacker logs in live, in real time, with the genuine credentials, including the MFA.
The article graciously provides a link to the original report. The company's carefully worded statement says "No evidence currently exists that unauthorized emails were transmitted from the account or that data was successfully exfiltrated."
Notice what it doesn't say. Were any emails received and acted upon during the compromise period? How many account password resets for other infrastructure were received during that time? Was this account the actual end target for this impersonation attack, or was this just a stepping stone going after a different target?
Welcome to modern Business Email Compromise. It isn't about viruses.& spam anymore.
Since the debacle of 2018/2019, the 737-MAX aircraft have spent years with a proctologist checking everything. Uncovering the -7's anti-icing issue is an example (as reported in the article).
I submit the MAX aircraft, as they stand today, are the most thoroughly inspected commercial aircraft platform currently in service.
>Not a Tesla fan. Not a Musk fan. Not an EV fan. But I am open to different thinking.<
If there is an eminent threat of an explosion, there are two schools of thought for survival. 1) Shelter in place. 2) Don't be there.
The Apollo missions used the "Rubber Room" for their primary defense against a pending pad explosion by doing a shelter in place.
The Cyber Truck is well known to be very fast when configured to do so. This could be a viable solution to a pending pad explosion by simply not being there.
All the technology pieces are there for the vehicles to literally self-drive and Get Out Of Dodge in a big hurry. Closed environment, no traffic to worry about. Electric power so no engine to warm up.
A touch of special programming might be needed, but the basics are already in place. It could literally be get in, close door, push button, and the vehicle evacuates the area on its own. Actually a good use of Common Off The Shelf (COTS) technology, rather then building something specialized at standard government contract rates.
Big giant project, trying to preserve as much of the original work as possible. Fixing some sort of old work where the original team had long since retired. They needed expertise on where to drill the hole to do the stuff.
They find the original designer, long in to retirement. They beg him to come back and help them figure out the problem.
The guy shows up with a piece of chalk, and marks an X on the wall and says to make the hole right here. They do and everything works out perfectly.
He submits them a bill for $10,000. The company complains because he spent so little time on-site, it was hardly worth it. They demand an itemized bill, which was promptly delivered:
$1 - one piece of chalk
$9,999 - knowing where to drill the hole
The invoice was promptly paid.
Story telling aside. There is some truth here to remember the next time management has a hankering to clean out the old guard. Frankly it is a relatively new problem to our industry and is only going to get worse. The original pioneers of the 50's-70's are pretty much done. GenX are most of the old guys now. This is NOT a skills assessment against any of the Millennials, but their technical focus is forward in to modern coding and development. Fewer & fewer people know how to work with the basic assembly language and binary coding that used to be table stakes for any qualified programmer.
I wonder if someday we will reach a point where we will forget how fundamental things like chips work and we will just keep churning out Moore of the same with no further innovation.
(Yes, I meant to write that).
I only have one social media presence - LinkedIn. I have been capturing connections for years, never posting or sharing drivel. Got the RIF a while back after 25 years. LinkedIn paid off with a personal connection that has led to gainful employment.
My opinion... Skip LinkedIn if you want. Use a Rolodex instead. But you cannot skip both.
>I know there a plenty of Boeing haters here and this will get downvoted in to oblivion<
Just for the record, Boeing ran London to Sydney in 1989 in a 747. And eastbound Hong Kong to London in 2005 in a 777 crossing the Pacific & Atlantic in the same flight. So ultra long flights in commercial aircraft are not exactly something new.
The London-Sydney city pair never developed as financially viable due to the economics of the time. We'll see if Airbus can pull it off.
>"...do it to get arrested and make it newsworthy
And just like that, an otherwise un-newsworthy data center in Kansas is headline news on The Register. Looks like his mission was accomplished.
Judging by the 5-0 Commissioners vote, this was the only play he had to get attention. Lest we forget, the Commissioners represent those who elected them locally. Our far-away opinions of what is good or bad for their community doesn't mean a hill of beans to them. I hope this plays out to be a success for the region.
I have a Mac Mini 2011 'server' that is still in service driving streaming videos to a 1080p plasma TV. Quad-core i7 with 16GB RAM. I don't need any more hardware for this purpose. The browser handles the streaming, and unlike so-called 'Smart TVs' I can use all the ad blockers and privacy protection that I can find.
Only reason it is running Sequoia via OCLP is because the browsers stopped supporting High Sierra. And something was changed on the streaming sites that required the latest browser.
Once again, the industry is self serving. Break something on the web, requiring a browser to be updated. Drop browser support for an older OS. Force the retirement of perfectly functional hardware. I will be good on this hardware with OCLP until the same thing happens with browsers & Sequoia.
>"Why would the usefulness diminish once Apple stops supporting them officially?
Because other complicit companies will graciously allow certificates to expire. If the OS doesn't die, then they will kill the apps instead.
Seriously. Someone needs to look in to this behavior from Microsoft. This is killing usefulness on the Mac OS platform, which will drive hardware replacement. We all know about Win11's unnecessary hardware requirements. Why doesn't this consistent behavior raise some questions with Microsoft? Are they doing this to drive new hardware sales? Am I really the first to think "industry collusion"?
"Apple really commit to their "Evolve or die" ecosystem...."
This is not a new story. Still waiting for my Apple II software to run on a Motorola 68000 Mac.
No, I am totally serious. I was, and still am, a bit butt hurt from learning that all my hard earned investment in the Apple II ecosystem was reset when Macintosh arrived. Yeah, I was too young & dumb to really understand the technical bits. I just knew all my software would not run on the newest thing. I didn't come back to Apple until about a decade ago.
So what is old will be new again. I bought in to the APPLE II FOREVER marketing and still have the Apple //c out in the attic for posterity. Lots of summer jobs to save up the money to buy it.
With that rant out of the way... Don't kill Rosetta.
I agree & disagree.
I agree with Microsoft's (and others) pursuit of alternative & creative solutions to powering data centers. And I agree that modern nuclear is a very strong option.
I disagree with using a plant at Three Mile Island which was built in 1968-1969 based on first generation nuclear power designs of that era. Technology has come a long way since then, and the innovative solution would utilize modern nuclear energy designs and not would not reactivate 60+ year old technology designs.
Dang, I have to be snarky... This is Microsoft. Reactivating a Three Mile Island reactor is like Windows 12 bringing back punch-card based storage, along with an innovative mandatory subscription service for more paper.
There is a very real and legitimate need for digital privacy in Secret Service protective detail operations, regardless of who is in office. Those agents, in performance of their duties, should not be tracked or monitored in any way. Any compromise of that digital privacy presents a potential risk to POTUS and other protectees.
We, the Great Unwashed Masses, should be entitled to pursue the same level of personal digital privacy. It may not be cheap or free, and nor should it be. I should have the option to allow a technology to monetize me by selling my data & information to a data broker, in exchange for free access to that technology. Or, I could opt to pay for the technology and have my digital privacy absolutely ensured.
The problem in this article is not Government employees loading the wrong apps on their phones, or using personal devices. The problem is a technology industry which has evolved a primary go-to-market strategy around penetrating a user's identity and selling that to the highest bidder, and the next highest bidder, and everyone else who is willing to pay the price.
If we accept that a Secret Service agent's digital identity should be private by virtue of their job duties, then the rest of us should at least have the option to attain the same level of digital privacy.
Totally. This whole industry is a giant self-licking ice cream cone.
Our software has defects so that you will buy support. Then we will drop support for the previous version so that you feel compelled to upgrade just to get security patches. Oh, and the new software needs new hardware because there is a magic security chip you need too.
What, you don't believe me?? Let me expire this certificate as a security precaution, for your own safety.
Bork that!
But I just want my sign to do the same thing it has always done!
- After leaving, the only job he could find is Casey's? That speaks volumes there about IT skillz!! Having exposure to Casey's many years ago in Sprit Lake, Iowa... Their kitchen instructions are to use a paper towel to blot the grease off the cooked pizza before serving. Yetch. Not exactly a career upward move.
- This clown had access over the years to various credentials. Basic security practice is to force a password change everywhere when a privileged user is terminated. The school district owns a bit of the blame here. Yeah, it would suck and take time, but security policy doesn't exist without good reason.
-Heck the clown could have simply posted the credentials list somewhere anonymously and plenty of threat actors (along with aspiring script kiddies from the aforementioned school district) would have done the dirty work.
- Teachers were 'locked out' for a whole two hours preventing them from teaching?!? Whiskey, tango, foxtrot! All those years of education to earn a teaching certificate and they cannot produce an ad-hoc lesson plan without a computer? Totally lame and speaks volumes about our modern education system. Any teacher worth their degree should have a half-dozen lessons ready to go for those odd days where something goes wrong.
Microsoft likes to beat people over the head with their EULA, can it be used against them legally?
If users were sold a perpetual license, that software should be able to continue working indefinitely on the originally supported OS platforms. Expiring a certificate is akin to a termination date, thus making the license functionally a subscription. If the EULA doesn't read like a subscription license, then it seems a class action suit is in order.
Late 90's... Buddy of mine was doing IT for a bank. One of the VP's insisted on a laptop upgrade because it was out of drive space. So a laptop was provisioned, and IT was tasked to dutifully copy everything over.
Everything became rather obvious when the files were Susie001.jpg, Susie002.jpg, Susie003.jpg...you get the idea.
My IT buddy told his boss and within 30-minutes was called to HR in a moment of fear & panic. However, since he already knew about the issue, they utilized him to prevent more people from being involved.
An older and rather matronly HR lady had him print out a list of file names. She would then randomly choose a file name, highlight it, and said "Show me that one". It was rather awkward!
They gave the VP an easy-out and asked if he had let his kids use his laptop, but he said 'no'. Then a check of his shared network drive showed he kept backups at the office. That went too far and he was escorted out.
Stories like these from 30 years ago are why we have pages of HR policies and all sorts of monitoring tools on our endpoints & networks. It really was the Wild West back then.
Valid point on the Starlink ground stations. It is completely reasonable that any sort of regional disaster (like Cascadia) would take out the ground stations as well.
However, Starlink does have satellite-to-satellite communications available specifically for areas where no ground stations are present. That is how they are able to get around geo-political boundaries in unfriendly parts of the world where they are not permitted to deploy ground stations. I am assuming the same technology will apply when the same satellites are orbiting over the continental US, and a geographic region suddenly went off-line.
Absolutely agree.
There is a lot of tech to allow my cell phone to work via WiFi (no local cell service). Starlink bridge, my firewall, my switches, my access points, cabling, power supplies, and on & on. Any failure with one of those could introduce a partial or complete fault that denies me comms.
In a worst case failure of my tech, I can go out to the DEMARC on the side of the house, open the panel, and plug in a proven & working dumb phone to the customer access jack and bypass everything.
Conversely, if there is a grid out failure (think Cascadia full-rip 9.0 for my area), I can power the Starlink via a generator and still have comms (I have a primary & two spare generators + around 200 gallons stored fuel). Even if the on-house Starlink is dead, I can use the Starlink Mini with a 12v battery (yes, that can be finicky, I already have it working reliably). In a TEOTWAWKI situation, there is a really good chance I will have comms.
About the only other alternative is a Ham radio, which comes with a different set of issues. If the antenna went down in an earthquake, then Ham radio may be range limited by handheld transceiver capabilities. I am not saying one or the other is better. Just there is no perfect solution that is a 100% guaranteed. Multiple options using different technologies will quickly get close to the 100% though.
To the original point of this article... POTS service via copper wires exemplifies the KISS principle and should not be hastily discarded when other comms options are limited.
AT&T said it will take “a thoughtful, phased approach to upgrade customers,” and claimed “no customer will be left without access to phone or 911 service.”
The cost-saving opportunity is not customers (errr..."Subscribers") who live in high-density urban environments. The cost-saving opportunity is rural customers who have a low number of service drops per mile of wire.
The problem is those rural customers are exactly the locations where the Telco is the "Carrier of Last Resort". As unbelievable as it may sound, there are plenty of rural areas where there is no cell phone coverage and there is only a single wire-based service provider with no alternative.
I wish I could say I trust the Telco's to not be self-serving. They have a reputation for saying one thing and doing another. This is why some regulation is needed before they just cut-off the low revenue / high expense rural customers.
"In many cases, drivers would decline tipless and cash orders.
Right symptom, wrong conclusion.
I worked for many years in pizza restaurants, all the way up to the GM level. My lead in to tech, way back in the mid 90's, was doing point-of-sale for pizza restaurants. That tech company exclusively hired burned out pizza restaurant managers for their tech installers because we knew the business.
Delivery drivers are smart, and savvy. They know exactly who their regular customers are, and which ones will tip well.
Drivers have a lot of seat-time to think through strategies. I've seen drivers mysteriously get caught at red lights so that they miss the next delivery in the cycle....because the customer 2-3 down the list is a known good tipper.
"Tipless" pre-paid credit card orders and "cash orders" does NOT mean the driver will not receive a CASH tip!
Delivery drivers absolutely love cash. They will go back to the store and report they did not receive a tip and got stiffed by the customer, but they have got an extra $5 or $10 in their pocket. No tip splitting with in-store staff, no tax reporting on income.
Tip your delivery driver well, in cash. Be nice to them when you are ordering out on a Friday night and they are busting their butt for you. And I guarantee they will prioritize your order every week.
>…normal useful stuff?
I have a bunch of Mac Mini's, most are running TV displays. Sure, they cost more than a Roku or Apple TV or the Smart TV with their built-in spyware. But I can apply my own privacy and advertising controls to what I watch. That value is worth it to me. And I submit that most people don't know they are selling their privacy so cheaply. If you want an eye opener, monitor the traffic from your "Smart" TV and ask yourself why it is so talkative to unknown outside servers.
Oldest is a 2011 i7 former Mac OS Server. It gets the job done, but will probably be next to be replaced when the M5 Mini debuts. And to be completely transparent, if possible I will to purchase a Made in USA Mac Mini too.
Yeah, okay, fanboi icon. The thing is I did not intentionally start down this path. It just kind of happened with the 2011 Mini and slowly grew from there. Mac's are now my default go-to, Linux second on my network, and Windows in last place.
A firearm, legally, is just the receiver. Triggers, barrels, hand grips, hammers, firing pins, and everything else is just stuff.
Using Glock as an example, could someone 3D print the polymer receiver and then buy the commodity items to complete the weapon? Sure, I'll bet there are plans out there already to 3D print a Glock receiver.
Now go lookup how Glocks are made and the specialized polymer used in their frames, and compare. No way would I drop the hammer on a 3D printed Glock look-a-like!
Might as well ask me to hold a live hand grenade with the pin pulled! It might go 'bang' a few times, but that 3D printed plastic will never be as strong as the real thing. It will eventually perform an 'unplanned rapid disassembly' in front of my face.
This is a law looking for a problem to solve.
This is the second place worst outcome - over licensing & under using. That is embarrassing, and has a lot of finger pointing...but everyone gets to keep their jobs.
The worst outcome is being in the news for over using & under licensing. That could be construed as personally criminal, cost huge fines, and be career limiting.
Big companies & public sector will ALWAYS over license. Everyone from the CEO on down does NOT want to be in the news for stealing software - whether it was intentional or accidental. They would rather pay more company money than accept any personal risk of criminal charges.
"For too long, outdated rules and regulations have forced providers to maintain aging copper infrastructure and to keep consumers on broken, antiquated networks,"
Here is the problem... The state requires 'like for like' replacement. So it was easy a couple decades ago to string fiber along the telephone poles and in to my area.
However, from the CO box a couple miles away to my home, the copper is all underground. Therefore any fiber replacement also needs to be in the ground.
'Back in the day' they came through with a trencher, tossed the copper in, and pushed the dirt back to cover. In our modern times that requires all sorts of permitting for 'earth disturbance' permits and environmental studies. The only alternative is the expensive directional boring machines.
That investment will simply not be made in rural America. There just isn't enough density of customers to warrant the expense Same thing for cellular - have to drive miles to get the first bar of coverage.
Or, our wonderful government could back off the permitting and regulations....let us dig a ditch and toss some direct bury fiber in it.
Closing big deals like those are a multi-year effort. Public Sector is a b*tch to deal with. I'll bet it took the better part of his 13-year stint to build up those relationships.
The company will lose in the long run. No top-tier sales reps will go near ServiceNow with their resume. ServiceNow will only get bottom sales reps that have trouble meeting quotas at other tech companies.
Tech companies compete for sales reps the same way they compete for customers. And good sales reps have no company loyalty. They perform and they expect to be compensated per their contract. Commissions pay for loyalty. Word will get around.
Screwing sales reps on commissions guarantees the top performers will go to the competition...and have no compunction about stealing ServiceNow's lunch tomorrow. Their professional contacts in the industry is not a list the company gets to keep.
Non-compete? When it comes to sales that isn't worth the paper it is written on. Non-compete is only really useful when dealing with intellectual property - code, patents, etc. They cannot block a tech sales person from working in their chosen career field. (Which explains why tech sales people rarely know much about their products - the company will not share deep tech details with them.)
Don't bother putting a 'Bluebird' clause in their contract either to limit pay out for big deals. That is the quick way to end a revenue stream.
Commission sales is coin operated, and they are not idiots. Hate it all you want, but that is how the game works.
"Oh, yes, they appear quite often,"
After 25 years in the cyber security business this just screams false positives. Possibilities...
Back in the 33.6k dial up days, DOS & Windows 3.1... I helped a buddy deal with an annoying roommate.
Roommate liked to get on-line and troll the Internet. This was pre-web days when many sites were wide open to Telnet & FTP with u:anonymous p:<your email address>. Roommate would stay up all hours of the night, so we installed a 'line noise generator' which would kill the phone connection - essentially crossed the ring & tip wires, and the modem shrugged and gave up.
For a while we spoofed the roommate by pointing a blue LED keyring light at his monitor and claimed it generated line noise. He believed it.
Not to be deterred by random disconnections, the roommate took up VGA graphics first player shooter games. Again staying up all night. Roommate had work-study all day on the weekend and was absent for a predicted period of time. Remember how POTS has four wires, just in case you want to add a second phone line? The yellow & black wires coming in to the internal modem on the desktop PC "somehow" got wired in to the reset switch. Elsewhere in the dorm room a momentary contact switch was connected to the yellow & black.wires. And presto, a remote reboot switch!
He never did figure out why his machine would randomly crap out after midnight.
Cheers to innocent days with under challenged creative minds!
“industries that house the most sensitive data are ironically the furthest behind in basic OS patching”
This does not surprise me at all. An older OS, properly locked down and in a secure network environment, beats a new & unknown OS every day of the week. The old OS may not be perfect. Knowing its flaws, and mitigating them, is better than a new OS full of unknown issues.
CoPilot is a great example. Is it secure enough to be trusted in a security sensitive business? What data leaks might it have to the AI mothership? M$ft is forcing it, and we are supposed to be able to disable it, but is it really fully disabled? These are all valid questions, and the answer is often "Just stay with what we have because we know where the problems are".
In short, I am not the least bit surprised that organizations with sensitive data are the furthest behind in basic OS patching. After all, the first adopters are just the last beta testers.
It is their security requirements. They should have provided a proper meeting space, isolated from their infrastructure with only basic Internet access. Get the local ISP to put a separate consumer grade network router in. No wired or wireless access to their internal secure network. Soundproof the room as they see fit. Then who gives a crap what the vendor brings in?
It is nonsensical some of this extreme security that is put on display. It is like they want to impress vendors with how elaborate they can be. Especially when 9 times out of 10, the content of the presentation has no need to be made within the customer's security perimeter.
The DOS-based point-of-sale company I worked for 30 years ago (long since defunct) had an undocumented feature - "Remove & Renumber Tickets". Login is as full admin (credentials were conveniently stored in clear text), tag the tickets, then ALT-F10 five times in a row. Poof, tickets gone. Never documented, only shared verbally with the senior installers.
Dare I remind anyone this is back in the day before debit cards were commonplace and cash was the standard currency. Yes, this was a customer requested 'feature' and was more widely used than suspected. The mom & pop business owners wanted to keep employees honest with POS, but still wanted to fiddle some numbers themselves. Corporate chain customers were none the wiser.
Those were different times, with cavalier coding and little oversight. Reverse engineering old code with AI may tell many stories which will be interesting to learn. In 2026, such a 'feature' would likely make the news, and not in a good way. Cheers!
>"I also remember copying a program by hand out of a computer mag"
Danger! ALWAYS wait until the NEXT month's issue. There was often a publication error that left out some part of the code! Rule learned the hard way, wait one month and check the 'Corrections' column before spending hours typing in code.
Kids these days don't know how easy they have it...download, click install, a few OK buttons, and the program is running. Doubtful today's kids could muster the motivation to manually key in code just to play a game.
Cheers to memories.
