Posts by andyL71

Hackers? Leap day? Nope, just plain old internet hysteria took down stock-trading-for-noobs app RobinHood

Re: Why do they need their own DNS ?

They may have hosted their own zone, on their own DNS. That isn't uncommon. It looks like their name servers are now on AWS.

RIP FTP? File Transfer Protocol switched off by default in Chrome 80

Bye

Beware the trainee with time on his hands and an Acorn manual on his desk

Re: No one has mentioned Elite?

Lenslok on the Spectrum version of Elite. My God, it was an exercise in frustration for me to get that game loaded. Lenslok didn't work properly on the family's big TV, so I used to have to drag through my B&W portable just to get past the copy protection then switch over to the big screen. It was worth it though, I had waited a long time for Elite on the Speccy having looked on enviously at the posher kids with their BBCs. To my eternal shame, I played it for about a month before the Christmas when I was actually given it - my folks were never very successful at hiding the presents.

Re: Ah the good old days

>So it used to be fun on a Saturday to go into the local WH Smiths branch, program something that flashed "hello" or similar whilst beeping.

In a similar fashion, I used to go into John Menzies computer department in the 80s and, through a combination of Print LOAD "" and a particular PEEK or POKE that made the screen borders flash yellow and blue like the loading routine, would dupe a gaggle of other kids into standing for 10 minutes waiting in front of the screen for the latest and greatest release to finish loading.

I was fortunate enough to have a modem on my Spectrum with a subscription to Prestel, both of which [modem and subscription] I won in a Blue Peter competition. This was round about the time that Robert Schifreen hacked Prince Philip's Prestel account.

Scotiabank slammed for 'muppet-grade security' after internal source code and credentials spill onto open internet

Because, Agile.

Sysadmin trained his offshore replacements, sat back, watched ex-employer's world burn

We got the heads up when we found our IT manager, who had previously never given a fudge, "taking notes" in the server room. As soon as he was away, we removed the labels from 8 racks of servers. This made it very difficult for him to put together any kind of documentation to go to outsource bidders, without involving us in the process. Which put us in the position of exposing the weaknesses in the tenders, and surfacing the real costs.

IT manager got punted a few months later.

10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10

Say to Thorin "carry me"

I saw my first computer in 1981 at primary school, when they were brought round for the kids to look at as part of a national programme. I was captivated and spent the next 2 years drooling over computer magazines, code listings etc. Every small town in the UK seemed to have its own computer shop and every time my folks took us on a day trip I would find myself with my nose pressed against a window, speculating on the relative merits of Dragon 32, Vic 20, and Spectrum.

Spectrum won out, and I loved it. Perhaps not the highest level of quality - 6 passed through my hands in the early months of 1983 (including 2 in one day). It absolutely led to my career in IT, and Speccy No. 6 sits in a cupboard behind me as I write this.

I won a modem for it in a Blue Peter competition, along with a year's subscription to Prestel, which I used for a space MMO and my dad used for Bank of Scotland Home Banking. This was around the time of the Duke of Edinburgh hacking scandal.

From the code listings in magazines like Computer and Video Games and a bit of graph paper I figured out how to create and move 8 bit sprites. I sometimes wonder if programming a sprite of a helicopter to buzz over the screen and fire a missile at a sprite of a tank might be the best thing I have ever achieved in IT.

First-day-on-the-job dev: I accidentally nuked production database, was instantly fired

Re: "and thought it was ok to include the production password?"

Nobody bothers with DBAs or people who not what they are doing anymore. It's called DevOPs

#Censusfail Australia: Not an attack, data safe, no heads to roll

Census submission is household based. Nowhere near 24m.

Re: 260 forms per second?!?

Census submission is usually household based. Nowhere near 24m.

Lost containers tell no tales. Time to worry

I've been doing the Ops part of DevOps for 16 years now. I've yet to meet a Dev who could fully describe everything that happens to get content into a browser (I'm talking down the level of knowing local host name resolution order). So my experience of DevOps has been all about no boundaries working rather than Devs suddenly doing Ops.

Volvo V60 Polestar: Speak softly, carry a big stick, dress like a Smurf

Why would anyone buy one of these rather than a 335D touring with X Drive?