Posts by m0th3r

Samsung gets 2-year contract extensions to provide rugged handsets for UK's troubled Emergency Services Network

This is what you get when you try to shoehorn cellular networks into radio network duties

Airwave uses narrow, 25kHz channels in UHF, which has much better propagation than any of the current 4G/LTE bands. It is also specifically designed for low-latency group calls, has built-in mutual authentication and strong encryption, in short, it was designed for what it is used for today. There is NO reason to replace it with anything else, as it can nowadays carry IP traffic (slowly) if required, and the emergency services have never really needed large data capacities. While you may need good quality real-time video sent to a command center, it's very infrequent, and you could use 4G/LTE modems for that specific capability, without having to move your entire comms system across. I've been involved with emergency services communications for 25+ years, and while transition to digital voice was eventually accepted once tech matured, 4G/LTE is completely the wrong solution.

Got $10k to burn? Ultra-rare Piet Mondrian-esque Apple laptop is up for grabs on eBay

Fake?

That thing looks almost 3D-printed, in the way it doens't look polished enough to have been made with a mold...

OVH flames scorched cloud customers with pledge to build data centre fire simulation lab

Re: "server fires and electrical fires need different dousing tech"

An electrical fire is only electrical while there is electricity present in the burning materials. As soon as you turn off electrical supply, it becomes a “standard” fire.

The only rule is you don’t put water on an electrical fire, as you can create electrocution risks, and also cause further shorts elsewhere that start new fires. That’s why we have inert gases for DCs, CO2 extinguishers, etc.

This was all predictable...

I’ve now written two posts about this on Medium. These DCs had wood in the structure, had no suppression other than handheld extinguishers, were built like a giant chimney with no control over ventilation that would allow to close air intake during a fire... the list goes on.

Bottom line is, you get what you pay for. You have to think hard why is it you can get servers for a few quid a month, instead of paying big bucks for metal in a proper DC...

The fire lab is a useless idea, fire behavior has been simulated to death by suppression system vendors and fire departments/labs.

OVH founder says UPS fixed up day before blaze is early suspect as source of data centre destruction

The DC was built like a furnace... was a matter of time

I've made some calcs on the fire deparment's response, which would have been 15-20 minutes to site. A properly contained UPS fire, with fire-resistant compartments, could have been held back for at least 30 minutes, if not 60 or 90 depending on the FR standard you design to.

Thus, the building was going up in flames fast, which seemed odd, until I found a video OVH posted explaining how they went "green", and designed their DCs with passive cooling. This works by letting cold air in via side openings, channeling it through the DC equipment, and exiting hot via a central chimney.

What this means is the entire DC is a giant furnace, where a small fire in the basement gets fed with air, and rapidly takes over the entire structure, with no way to contain it. The DC pre-fire photos show lots of side vents, if they had no way to close them, or were not closed by staff at the time, would explain how quickly the whole thing went.

OVH video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uampeRtWa00 around 1:50 mark.

Super Cali COVID count is somewhat out of focus, server crash and expired cert makes numbers quite atrocious

Mary Poppins?

Was the title of the article meant to be sang to the famous Mary Poppins tune? If so, nicely done! It's stuck in my head now...

We've paused Sigfox roof aerial payments, says WND-UK, but we'll make you whole after COVID

Orbcomm needs more power and bigger antennas... and WND-UK a revenue stream

I have worked with Orbcomm, their devices are power-hungry, the data is expensive, and low capacity, plus high latency. The terrestrial IoT networks are a better solution for most things, unless you need true global coverage (like the blue-water free-floating ocean buoys I worked on...).

What worries me most is that just to cover the "rent" they pay, they need about 200,000 monthly paying devices (at average IoT pricing publicly available), which I find hard to see right now.

OK Windows 10, we get it: You really do not want us to install this unsigned application. But 7 steps borders on ridiculous

That is if you can even get a certificate...

I’m the CTO at a Kenyan ISP, registered with the Communications Authority, holding three relevant licenses, publicly available info. We are also an AFRINIC member, with IPv4 and IPv6 resources assigned to us, publicly available info. Yet it was easier for me to personally get a code signing certificate in Spain, than for our company (which was impossible and gave up), as we were not on “Dun&Bradstreet or other reputable public database” and “your information could not be verified”. Africa’s challenges that go beyond the usual crap are worth and article by themselves...

Mystery Git ransomware appears to blank commits, demands Bitcoin to rescue code

The email / domain used for this is now suspended

/// Why this was not done before, I have no idea ///

Hello,

This is to inform you that the gitsbackup[.]com domain was suspended. It has been placed on the clientHold status and locked to prevent modifications in our system.

Thank you for letting us know about the issue.

------------------------

Regards,

Alex B.

Legal & Abuse Department

Namecheap Team

Quake-hit Italy: Open up Wi-Fi

This in a country with the strictest law on public WiFi usage

In Italy, public WiFi operators need to identify each user with full details, meaning you can't just "get the password from the bartender". Many do, but strictly speaking, they are breaking the law. Anyone with an open WiFi network is basically breaking the law...

Is tech monitoring software still worth talking about?

The big problem is SNMP

What I find is that most monitoring systems base themselves on SNMP. After digging into these systems, I've found SNMP is HORRIBLY complex, and while its original intent may have been good, it is now a pool of dung, where each vendor implements their own interpretation.

Thus, when you approach a monitoring software vendor or team (in case of open-source types) with a request to add a device, or fix issues that make a device's graphs flat, you are met with the IT equivalent of the Maginot Line, since SNMP is such a ton of work to get through. The leader of Observium is even actively and openly aggressive towards "wireless ISPs and their shit", for example.

I've settled on LibreNMS for our WiFi network, and find that in order to fine-tune alerts, you need to learn a whole new template system & language. So far, when a PoE switch goes down, I get an alert for that one, plus 10 extra alerts for the devices plugged into it - aren't systems smart enough to realize that if the switch goes, so will everything plugged into it? I only need an alert for the highest-order failure point.

Writing this as Pushover is receiving 26 alerts for a minor power glitch... I see space for disruption here.

Zappos coughs to HUGE data breach

Too late for security hire?

Amazing that this comes two weeks after Zappos posted this job offer:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eng/2776363301.html

Looks like they badly need one! Also, how does blocking international traffic help? It's a stupid move, any self-respecting script kiddie knows how to get around this by using proxies, while legitimate costumers from outside the US cannot get at the info, nor reset their password. Huge fail.