Posts by Rainer

Company CEO flooded file share with smut, called for help after he deleted it

Re: CEO rubs me the wrong way

At least it wasn't ladyboys.

Back in the late 90s, I had an internship at a retail company and thus inherited the mail-server and the proxy-server.

A script produced a statistic of the top-users by bandwith.

It's the 90s, so almost nothing was encrypted and thus you could actually see every URL they browsed.

There was one guy in a nearby office who seemed to browse shemale porn and pics of very young girls. I told him he should do that at home.

One time, an external consultant seemed to have stayed in the office for the whole night browsing porn.

It was a 256kbit line....

Broadcom 'bulldozes' VMware cloud partners as March deadline looms

Re: Why am I ashamed of my tribe ?

Yeah. There's some stuff only VMWare does (maybe mainframes, too - but which shop without previous experience and hardware and software will move there in 2026?).

Just like there's some stuff only Oracle does really well.

Beancounters are going to have to figure out where their pain-threshold is ;-)

Fortunately our boss has, over the years, always invested in alternatives so that in principle, we don't really depend on VMware to host VMs locally - which, given the current antics, more and more businesses are starting to give a more serious look again.

Atlassian's move to cloud-only means customers face integration issues and more

I would have thought "unique circumstances" means air-gapped confluence instances inside TLA networks.

Like the one Ed Snowden mirrored from GCHQ.

Do they have budget constraints?

We have a plugin that fetches the phone-directory from AD (which is also on-prem).

We have maybe 100-ish users (or 120, I don't know) - but still pay for DataCenter.

But what exactly are the alternatives?

So, I guess there is no direct replacement where people can just export to Word or PDF?

Half the "replacements" are cloud-only anyway.

Confluence is quite good. I sort of like it.

The plan for Linux after Torvalds has a kernel of truth: There isn’t one

He has four kids or so?

Can't he train one of his kids?

Surely, one of these would be a capable successor, right?

DNS security is important but DNSSEC may be a failed experiment

Re: Another barrier to adoption

When the TLS certificate doesn't validate because it's expired or none of the Subject Alternate Names match, the Browser throws a (somewhat) decipherable error.

When DNSSEC validation fails, the name doesn't resolve at all.

It sometimes creates issues when people make errors renewing their keys or moving DNS-servers, fix them - but resolvers around the world still have the old, wrong information cached.

Users then complain that "Google can resolve it, Cloudflare can resolve it".

RISC OS Open plots great escape from 32-bit purgatory

RISC OS was such a nice to use OS.

China bans compulsory facial recognition and its use in private spaces like hotel rooms

Re: Duh, wut?

CCP brass have mistresses, too and they check into hotels with them...

Would be a bad day if someone (your well-known TLA) tapped the cams on such a HVT and subsequently blackmailed them.

Even the official surveillance material is apparently available for sale on "2ndary" markets.

DOGE helps Veterans Affairs end IT contract run by service-disabled entrepreneurs

Collateral damage is expected

That's the sad part about reducing government spend: it will always and inevitably also hit projects that seem "worth it".

It will be interesting to see what comes out of it when they try to tackle the elephant in the spending-room: the Pentagon.

Because that's where the real savings could be made.

Here's the ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see

I‘m not entirely convinced

Other, natural factors could be at play, too, overlaying the effects seen in the chart.

However, I can’t help the feeling that burning all the carbon stored over hundreds of millions of years in two centuries is not going to help.

FYI: I drive an EV, my apartment is heated by solar and a geothermal heat pump.

We will add solar cells at some point in the future.

But I‘m not sure if we’re just very slightly dragging out the inevitable.

Does DOGE have what it takes to actually tackle billions in US govt IT spending?

Re: Going after federal government tech spending ...

Trump has said that himself: "Some of that money is well spent".

They'll go through the other departments and tally all the bloat and waste and then the slashing will start.

It's like Tesla or Twitter. Both are still standing.

You have to admit that the examples they found are ridiculous to say the least.

There's always going to be waste - but efforts should be made, should have been made, to minimize it.

Another topic the previous administration failed to act on and which was a low-hanging fruit for Elon and Donald to harvest.

Now, they both have brought out the wrecking ball.

White House asks millions of govt workers if they would be so kind as to fork right off

Well, the government did grow under Biden

But I doubt it got more efficient.

Cue the handful of fast-chargers that got built after spending 4 billion USD.

And I actually believe Trump isn't to far off when he assumes that some of those who work remotely have other (online-) jobs they do in parallel.

Growth is the easiest way to facilitate promotions.

After all, you can't be a supervisor without people to supervise.

Apple Intelligence turned on by default in upcoming macOS Sequoia 15.3, iOS 18.3

Isn't it in the US only, anyway?

Even then, I only have an iPhone XR.

I will see when I update (maybe next year or so).

The XR still works surprisingly well, given it's a 2018 phone (bought in early 2019).

Though it's showing its age at times.

Even Netflix struggles to identify and understand the cost of its AWS estate

Re: I would have imagined...

They run their own, private CDN. Google Netflix Open Connect.

Re: bend over netflix

Not everything. The content delivery boxes - a.k.a. Netflix Open Connect Appliances - are still bare metal FreeBSD boxes that they build, own, run and maintain.

Elon Musk tops US political donor list with $270M+ for Team Trump

That may be true. But then, people who bet against Elon usually paid dearly.

Just ask the DNC.

Re: Rent seekers

Though, the Harris campaign seems to have spent over a billion (and coming up 20m short) - only to achieve nothing.

The money Elon spent has already been more than compensated by the gain in stocks of his ventures.

Even if you subtract the X "situation" - but X was always more a means to an end.

He is aiming for an unmanned Mars-mission in 2026 and for that, he needs free reign with the launches.

Which he will likely get, now that the President-to-be (who owes him biggly) has selected a former SpaceX astronaut for NASA head.

Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers

Have you seen those?

They are quite peculiar.

I'm not an expert but looking at those pics, I don't see how one could assume he was talented.

Denying his admission to the University of Vienna, twice, was the likely right move. Even though it resulted in WW2....

I don't think his pictures are really "art". They are pictures.

Elon Musk’s Starlink won't block Elon Musk’s X in Brazil, as required by court order

Re: Tantrum boy

There's no waiting lists anymore because people have no money. In the US, people don't save up for a car, they finance. With high interest rates, that's not funny.

Tesla's inventory is in flux due to exports waiting for ships - but I agree it has been building up. But at least the entry-level cars are very affordable and very good value for money.

As for the prices of used cars coming down - do you belong to the class of people who thought a car is an appreciating asset?

People complained that there was no 2nd hand market for EVs and that the used ones were overpriced. Now that there is a market, people complain that prices are coming down.

Just see what a two year old EQS is still worth...

EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream

> Why don't we start by replacing the awful cargo ships that pollute as much as 100,000 cars

While you're at it, why not start by penalizing cruise ships, which basically do the same (though they're required to run on low-sulphur MFO now, AFAIK).

That would penalize pensioners - another influential voter-block...

SpaceX set to surpass Gemini 11's altitude record with Polaris Dawn mission

Re: Bad choice of comparison

The problem with escape systems is that to be actually usable, they drastically reduce the amount of cargo you can take with you.

And then, their usability and practicability are still questionable. AFAIK, you can't eject yourself from a starting or landing spacecraft (or any other very fast flying object - regardless of what Tom Cruise's opening scene in TG2 claims).

California upgrade company aims militarized 'Tactical' Cybertruck at police forces

Re: Bwahaha. Please do!

The Cybertruck will not "short out" wading through a comparatively deep stream. It does need some time to pressurize the battery, though and it has been demonstrated that it is "mostly" ok after doing so.

The main problem of the CT is its weight.

But off-road fitness has AFAIK never been a consideration for getaway vehicles. Else criminals would use Ariel Atoms and beach-buggies.

The main desirable feature of a Cybertruck as a police car is its physical presence, it's brutalistic physicalilty.

Lenovo claims Dell has run off the VxRails and can't sell hyperconverged VMware

Interesting

There's also this:

https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1d4g28g/repurposing_vxrail_clusters/

Did IBM make a $6.4B blunder by buying HashiCorp?

Vault on the other hand - it only got a lot of features after HC found some VC money and hired developers.

The license-structure on Vault is equally insane and intricate - but there is no alternative right now.

IBM pauses advertising on X after ads show up next to antisemitic content

Nobody complained for years

When the Iranian Ayatollah spewed his usual antisemitic nonsense and was not banned (in contrast to Donald Trump).

But as soon as Elon takes over, everybody falls over themselves to find stuff they can personally attribute to him.

Wordpress sells 100-year domain, hosting plan for $38K

Re: Do you remember?

That was probably when they were hosted on an IMAP server with little quota.

Do you remember?

When Joyent sold "lifetime" hosting accounts that ended up lasting six years (basically, until the servers they ran on started to give in)..

https://www.google.ch/search?q=joyent+lifetime+account

Re: Wordpress or ???

The problem with Starlink is that it was always intended only for civilian use. It's in the AUP.

AFU just thought nobody would care.

FBI: Who was going around hijacking Barracuda email boxes? China, probably

likely true

I looked into this when our appliances were....visited (I am not responsible for them - I would have shut them off a long time ago, and a couple of weeks earlier, Barracuda had suffered some sort of breach for their hosted-service, which it kind-of swept under the rug....

Anyway - I took two of the IPs from the IOC-list and did some digging. At least one pointed to an ISP in Hongkong, boasting great connectivity to China - and prominently accepted various forms of crypto-payment.

I did a reverse-dns search and saw that the IP hosted a lot of domains that looked like they had been acquired from some sort of Chinese domain marketplace.

I mean, the line between "professional hackers for profit" and APT-style, government-sponsored groups is likely very thin anyway, but this one somehow had this "uncanny valley" feeling you get when something is top easy, too simple.

Microsoft DNS boo-boo breaks Hotmail for users around the globe

If you manage DNS or mail, you regularly come across a lot of people who, while they have the power to change configs and DNS records, should normally not be let near either systems.

Because they have no f'ing clue about what they're clicking there.

Similarly for SSL certificates.

Why securing East-West network traffic is so important – and how it can be done

Re: bad example

The problem was not the cooling units themselves - it was that the 3rd-party doing the remote maintenance on them got breached and while they were only supposed to access the cooling units at Target, they didn't have actual restrictions - likely because those who setup the VPN didn't want to bother with figuring out which 3rd party needed access to which part of the network.

Germany to cut Huawei from networks 'irrespective of costs'

Re: Lapdogs

It‘s just another State in the Union now.

Maybe if they lick hard and good enough, they’ll get a star on the flag?

AWS: IPv4 addresses cost too much, so you’re going to pay

Re: IPv6-mostly?

I guess most will just put it behind a CD/Proxy like Cloudflare.

Yup. Requirement fulfilled.

Cisco: Don't use 'blind spot' – and do use 'feed two birds with one scone'

Re: You will trigger vegans with a reference to cream!

For a pork roast, you have to soak the fat side in water for a couple of hours. Then the fat will get all crispy.

Microsoft stumps loyal fans by making OneDrive handle Outlook attachments

Host your own

You'll learn a lot about email along the way ;-)

I have all my work-emails on the server back to 2007-ish. They are mostly in the root-folder.

Lately, they've been emailing users about having too many emails in a folder for the archiving solution to work properly.

Russian developers blocked from contributing to FOSS tools

Ridiculous

Does everything has to be politicized these days?

Additionally, it's a slippery slope. What's next? Internment camps, because you don't trust 'em to not do any sabotage-acts?

Remember, folks: this war cannot go on forever. At some point, you will have to make peace again. Politicians make war, but only the people can make peace.

Indian tax authorities raid offices of Chinese smartphone maker Vivo

2kg isn’t that much

I mean, it’s like 110k CHF here.

The report fails to mention if it was two kilo-bars or multiple smaller bars?

Also, as with everything from China: did they check that these are in fact solid gold bars or rather gold-plated tungsten bars?

Intel CEO Gelsinger spells out five-year renewal plan inspired by iconic leaders

Re: "discrete graphics class performance with the efficiency of integrated graphics"

Apple M1 Pro and M1 Pro Max enter the chat....

IPv6 is built to be better, but that's not the route to success

Almost everybody in my organization hopes or hoped that they could retire before touching IPV6.

In larger enterprise-networks, NAT becomes a serious problem. And of course, people having barely a grasp of IPV4 after a decade in IT would now need to start over.

In any larger organization, you'll also need some soft of IPAM or even better an integrated DDI solution (most have skipped that because for V4, you can somehow muddle through).

Barclays snubs public cloud giants and hardware rivals for HPE GreenLake private cloud

What is GreenLake anyway?

OpenStack? VCloud?

Reg reader returns Samsung TV after finding giant ads splattered everywhere

Don't currently own a TV

If I ever have to buy one, I'm seriously contemplating buying a hospitality TV.

Or just one of those huge 40"+ 4k gaming displays and hooking it up to AppleTV.

Biden warns 'real shooting war' will be sparked by severe cyber attack

Re: The White House declares and outs itself ..... in a crazy directive

Trump could at least wrangle with reporters and hold his ground.

This guy...I cannot believe the media thought it was a good idea to have him elected.

Though, I suspect they thought that Kamala being sworn in mid-term wasn't too bad either.

I still have a bet with a co-worker that he won't make it to mid-term. Those drugs he gets to prop him up will stop working sooner or later or the side-effects will show.

Scam-baiting YouTube channel Tech Support Scams taken offline by tech support scam

Re: YouTube tech support?!

To be fair, if you've got 3.6m subs, you might have some sort of go-to guy at google that manages your account (among others).

Ex Netflix IT ops boss pocketed $500k+ in bribes before awarding millions in tech contracts

They could make a Netflix movie out of this.

On second thought, I doubt they will.

RHEL, RHEL, RHEL, fancy that: Rocky Linux would-be CentOS replacement hits RC1 milestone

What's the point?

I mean, CentOS stream will be freely available (probably) and at least with stream, you don't need to wait for the security-updates.

I think a lot of people didn't realize just how far CentOS had been lagging behind RHEL recently. Especially in the early 8.0 days, with months without an update.

There's no such thing as a free lunch - people seem to forget that all too often.

While you can get almost all Linux Open Source software on Debian and Ubuntu, most of the enterprise-software that makes RHEL actually an Enterprise OS is either simply not available there or unsupported.

It all boils down to what you want to do with the installation. The typical Wordpress blog does not really need to run on a 1000 $ / license / year server.

But a service that a couple of hundred or thousand hosts rely on (like IPA or Satellite Server or 389 directory server) is something different.

Billionaire's Pagani Pa-gone-i after teen son takes hypercar out for a drive, trashes it

Re: Ask any actuary

Still a thing here in Switzerland.

An insurance agent once told me, I pay only a third or less of what a young man from Albania or Kosovo (or really any Balkan country + Turkey) would pay (for my car).

(German, mid-30s then).

Though a lot of insurances have just chosen to not insure a certain demographic anymore.

VMware reveals critical hypervisor bugs found at Chinese white hat hacking comp. One lets guests run code on hosts

There's a quote from Theo de Raadt...

It's almost timeless, because he wrote it over 13 years ago:

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119318909016582

Apple Arm Macs ship, don't expect all open-source apps to work without emulation – here's what you need to know

Ran NetBSD arm32 on my RISC PC 600.

Was fun downloading 20-ish floppy disks at uni (and re-downloading a couple of them because the drives in the old Apollo workstations were flaky as hell).

Didn't really know what to do with it, though, at the time.

Congrats, Meg Whitman, another multi-billion-dollar write-off for the CV: Her web vid upstart Quibi implodes

Apple TV app only approved the day before

and then the thing shut down...