Posts by DuncanLarge

Human-rights warriors crack on with legal challenge to UK's lax surveillance laws

Re: Pragmatism

Do you put all the correct stuff you should into each of your bins?

DO PASSERS BY PUT THE CORRECT STUFF IN YOUR BIN WHEN THEY DECENTLY DECIDE NOT TO CHUCK IT ON THE GROUND?

RIPA abuse...

This is why

This is why we wont let them convince us to break our encryption.

Encrypt everything!

10 PRINT Memorial in New Hampshire marks the birthplace of BASIC

Today

1. Get a raspberry Pi.

2. Download the latest RISC OS 5 onto an SD card.

3. Boot and if not already familiar, get to grips with RISC OS 5. (You need a 3 button mouse and think "right click is now middle click").

4. Open a new command window (or for quick and dirty stuff press F12).

5. Type BASIC (must be caps) and press enter.

6. Turn on caps lock and start writing BBC basic on your modern Arm chip.

7. Read up on how to access the GPIO pins in BBC BASIC, enjoy one of the lowest latency ways to address the pins.

8. Add a GUI to your basic programs all using in-built tools in RISC OS where your BASIC program looks and runs like any other program should you want it to.

Long live BASIC!

Sad SACK: Linux PCs, servers, gadgets may be crashed by 'Ping of Death' network packets

Re: So, not great, not terrible

Plan 9.

RISC OS 5 with BBC BASIC

I have refuges!

Re: A few things

I saw someone mentioned /etc/sysctl.conf

That sounds like the best place to preserve this parameter at boot. You'd want the parameter set as early as possible during boot so my cron idea would be a last resort as youd have to hope someone dont crash your machine while you are starting up cron.

You can also create an init script and link to it in /etc/rcS.d

Re: A few things

> /proc is an internal pseudo file system, not a directory on the disk so modifications to /proc and its kids won't hang around when the system is rebooted.

Thats the only downside but simply edit your boot scripts or add a cron job that runs at boot to echo 0 to the file every boot.

Blighty's online pr0n gatekeepers are begging for a regulatory beating, says digital rights org

Re: Think of the children, what else can hurt them ?

Well facebook is.

Large Redmond Collider: CERN reveals plan to shift from Microsoft to open-source code after tenfold license fee hike

Re: The Open University provides 0365 and doesn't accept open document format

"They use the editing and annotating facilities within MS Word to note down the marking decisions and make comments and feedback directly"

OMG and I was beginning to think that the paperless office was turning out to be a myth,

TBH I dont like that feature. My submitted coursework would be submitted read only, otherwise I could fully use the facilities to suggest damage/alteration to my submitted work when I dont get the mark I want. Thats why we printed it off, it was a requirement for preventing abuse. Even when submitting source code on floppy it had to also be printed off and signed by me as being verbatim.

The lecturer should have no way to change my work. If we dont like each other, I'd be very concerned.

Bear in mind I'm talking about coursework submissions, not the little bits and tests in between. If it contributes to my final mark, nobody should be able to edit it, even me after submission. Its just common sense.

"Or just middling stupid & won't try 'cos it's not .docx"

True but in their defense I would appreciate they are noticing such details and not blindly doing stuff they are unfamiliar with. In todays climate you need that "suspicion" as part of your line of defense against attacks.

However once told that odt is a standard and good format I'm sure there will be some who keep forgetting and those that suddenly think that opening that odt file is what caused their laptop to run slow so they ask for one of the new flashy models the noticed we are just starting to give out.

Re: Document formats

"the redaction tool offers a "Redacted Export" option, which creates a PDF in which the document becomes a bitmap with no selectable text"

That is just neat! Saves me from having to print and then scan to PDF to get a non-editable bitmap.

Re: Document formats

" I have to open everything in MS Word and fix the formatting errors before it goes off to publisher"

I used to have to do that too, when I was saving to DOC format.

If your publisher is still using Office 97, change publisher. No publisher that uses office will have a problem opening an ODT, its literally impossible as Office supports the ODF format. If your publisher cant double click on an ODT file and have it open in Office then they are using something older than Office 2003. Even WordPad, yes WordPad on windows 10 fully supports ODF!

I'd seriously question trusting a publisher that runs software that is approaching its 20th anniversary.

Everybody of note uses ODF. NATO, the UN, the british government, the EU government, all have standardised on ODF. Apple, Google, IBM have all stated they use ODF. Its a world standard and there simply is not excuse for not being able to use it.

Or are you saying that when saving in ODF Word is inserting formatting errors due to it being incompatible enough with ODF? Well thats Words fault, perhaps you should look for a publisher who can handle modern document formats.

Er isnt that just LDAP with DNS, samba and kerberos?

Thats what Active Directory is.

Re: The Open University provides 0365 and doesn't accept open document format

"Sure, but they would also have to make sure the document was saved back in the right format, since it tends to default to docx etc."

Can I just ask, what business does the lecturer have in opening an editable copy of a students work?

Even if they did that, why are they simply closing WITHOUT saving, as surely it isnt right for them to modify it anyway?

When I was at UNI I had to print it out and submit it by the deadline.

Re: The Open University provides 0365 and doesn't accept open document format

"If all formats were accepted, then we would get all sort of obscure data files which we would have to translate and translate back."

Sorry, how many formats do you think are commonly used these days?

- HTML : anything more modern than IE 6 can read that (I could go further back but it scares me).

- PDF : Its a pdf. Its as openable as a packet of Jaffa Cakes.

- ODF : Got MS office? If its 10 years old upgrade already.

- DOC : Its a DOC, even ancient MS office can open this, heck you could go back to DOS versions.

- DOCX : If you can open this you can open ODF too.

- RTF : Now who is being silly? But if you can open DOC, DOCX, and ODF in MS office or LIbre Office you can open this too.

- TXT : If you cant read one of these files I think you are not using a computer.

I'm interested in what esoteric formats you expect to get because I havnt seen any recently.

Do many of your users use Amiga OS? I swear they can export to at least 3 of the above formats.

Re: The Open University provides 0365 and doesn't accept open document format

I studied in DMU and had the same issue back in 2004 or so.

I was learning OO programming with Java and was the only student who carried around a laptop running GNU/Linux and old Toshiba Satellite 4000 CDT with a barely usable battery. I used blackbox as my WM to save on RAM. I found it really infuriating to have to convert my documents to word format and then open them in word to check for errors. I of course correctly blamed the proprietary word format for this.

I remember demonstrating one of my Java programs to my lecturer on that laptop. He was very confused why it didnt look like windows and when I apologised for the laptop booting a little slow due to anacron doing a little housekeeping I had to explain what housekeeping was. Even though it was old, with a battery that lasted barely an hour and a half and anacron got in the way a little my laptop still was booted and ready before anyone elses.

Plus I could play Koules on it :)

Re: Not a few?

"Windows NT"

OHHHH CRAP!

Re: Document formats

"Libreoffice will open a pdf for editing."

So does word, unfortunately.

However if you save the content of the PDF as a scanned image of the text, it cant ;)

Re: Document formats

"Only yesterday I received an invoice in a .docx, such a thing should not be changeable, it should have been a PDF"

I was once really dismayed to be asked to send my CV in docx format and not the read only PDF I sent.

When I went to the interview I saw my CV had been modified by the agency, removing and changing my formatting (there was no formatting left).

I showed the interviewers my original printed copy and they were very shocked to see what the agency did as well. They actually thought I had written the CV in notepad!!

"Libre Office is compatible enough with MS Office"

To be honest Office is totally compatible with Libre Office as Office opens and saves in the ODF format just fine! In fact when starting it up for the first time it asks you what format you prefer!

Write in ODF, send to office user, no issues.

:)

Unless that user is stupidly out of date.

Re: Its the updates

What are you talking about? You click a button. One button, once. When the message pops up. You just click a button.

You know I can open my front door by putting a key into it and turning a handle, thats more complicated and I can still do it.

"I've never found Linux all that usable!"

Honestly, how?

You log in, like on Mac and windows. You install updates when prompted or turn on auto install like on Mac and windows. You browse files in a file manager like in Mac and windows. Plug in a USB stick just taken out of the packaging and drag and drop files to and from it, just like in Mac and windows. And just like in Mac and windows you are supposed to unmount hat stick before removing but just like in windows you probably will just risk pulling it anyway.

Everything you need to do to a file on the Linux desktop can be done with right clicks or left clicks like on windows, in fact the right clicks can be customised if wanted.

Browse the web? Who isnt using/has used Chrome or Firefox. Well both are on the Linux desktop.

Upload files to any cloud service that uses HTML5 in these browsers? Drag and drop.

Access emails? Easy, but if you really need to use Office 365, you can do so in your browser.

The stuff you listed like certain CAD and photo editing software are specific cases where somebody needs (wants) a bit of software they are used to. This is not a usability issue at all as many of those people would suffer similar issues when switching to using a Mac. At the end of the day its not an argument about the usability of an OS or its desktop but an argument of the specific software supporting your desktop.

Would you think I could say the Xbox One is borked and not usable because I cant play mario kart or Zelda on it?

Oblivious 'influencers' work on 3.6-roentgen tans in Chernobyl after realising TV show based on real nuclear TITSUP

Load of science fantasy

I started watching Chernobyl, then had to stop as it was so funny it was sad.

Ok the acting was fine and the fantastical story seemed ok and was on par with the NIght King being able to raise hoards of dead people using magic in GOT which was effing creepy.

But I had to stop watching as I found it hard to keep a straight face whenever someone on screen tried to science when talking about the lava and nuclear death. As entertainment it was fine but as a supporter of nuclear energy I tend to get a bit annoyed when people are shown scifi fantasy bunk knowing that they will think its real and that nuclear reactors are horrible dangerous bombs even though thats totally impossible.

Fake science plagues real people all the time on kickstarter, who get cheated out of their money for a self filling water bottle, that turned out to be a re-invention of a dehumidifier, that was never delivered and never worked. Or the water seeker, another re-invention of the dehumidifier that simply would fail to work due to the annoying thing called science, specifically the laws of thermodynamics.

We really need more honest programmes to go alongside the entertaining ones to help offset the lack of general knowledge of real science as its real science that will save us all, not some scifi fantasy that is only good for entertainment but will be seen by many as "real".

I wonder how many people thought that the movie "2012" was based on real science and that the Mayans predicted it. I remember once being told that in the early 2000's all the other planets would line up on the opposite side of the sun to us and Earth would be subject to earthqakes and storms and death due to the increased gravity. The planets did line up, that was true and accurate, but what happened? I think the tides may have been a little stronger, just a little.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsdLDFtbdrA

Not very bright: Apple geniuses spend two weeks, $10,000 of repairs on a MacBook Pro fault caused by one dumb bug

Re: Not Just MacOS

That shows that its software responding to the controls. The display manager/greeter you were using to log in does not respond to the controls or control brightness. Likely part of the window manager.

I miss the days that the brightness controls were handled by the bios.

Yeah I call BS on you being sure of that.

You assume that the techs are doing the right thing, assume that they know what they are doing.

The techs that swap parts in almost all other cases of issues. Regardless of the actual cause. Its well known that to save money you dont train your techs to diagnose and repair, you just get them to swap.

The techs that were caught up selling customers to new really expensive models as their old model was "unfix-able" and it only really needed a CABLE TO BE RESEATED.

And when they do try a repair, these are the techs that look at solder and still wonder what it is after they had their so called "training".

Re: Some people...

The faults with Apple.

Its quite clear that the product has a bug that simple testing would have showed up. In fact just enabling the external monitors for login would have helped show the bug is with the built in screen back-light as it suddenly starts working after login. But seeing as Apple couldn't even use common sense to enable an external output at login diagnosis was much more difficult.

I suppose external monitors are not enabled before login as it would be something like HDMI or DisplayPort over thunderbolt. Thunderbolt is a massive security hole so likely is disabled after boot and before first login. So apple, was it a neat idea to get rid of a dedicated output only monitor port? Mini HDMI isnt pretty big and mini DisplayPort is tiny!

Re: Their brains are too highly tuned.

Yes exactly what I try and do. Unfortunately you get some users who really have no idea what they were doing at the time.

Supporting such users over the phone, listening to them gasping and exclaiming as things happen that they are triggering but have no idea they are doing it. That reminds me of windows 8.

Why Apple why

Apple

Why does an external monitor NOT WORK when the machine has booted to the login prompt?

- Everyone expects this to work on all other makes of laptops, our users only open the laptop to press the power button.

Why do the brightness controls not work at the login prompt?

- Maybe users login in might like to combat the strength of the sun or not blind themselves at night?

Why, if the controls are intentionally designed not to work at the login prompt, do you not set a default login prompt brightness?

- Need I add more to this bit of common sense?

Who tested the login process? On a real machine?

How did your UAT tests go? I would have failed it the moment the external monitor wasn't working.

Apple? Apple? ... Silence

Well guess thats another win for my Dell ;)

Re: BS

Er, you mis-read it.

The issue was fixed EACH TIME they swapped out the logic board but the issue happened again shortly after.

So they then changed other things including the whole machine. Each time they got it working it would "fail" again.

So no its not BS. Its a bug.

Hate your IT job? Sick of computers? Good news: An electronics-frying Sun superflare may hit 'in next 100 years'

Re: Yeah let's frrrryyyyyyy

" going round to your friend's to show them that cake you baked"

How are you going to bake that cake?

If you have an electric oven, how are you going to power it?

If you have a gas oven, how is the gas getting pumped to you?

You need to build a new wood burning stove before baking the cake. How do you do that? How to you run the machines to mine and process the metal? How do you make a stove in an age that no longer uses steam?

So build steam engines. From scratch we re-invent the industrial revolution. Horses and their power become premium items as there are not enough to go around for a few years at least. Owners of the really big horses become instantly rich in a barely functioning economy demanding they breed their huge powerful horses to try and increase availability.

Yeah we could carry on like our great grandfathers before us assuming we survive the complete turmoil following the destruction of our electricity grid.

What we need are spare parts for wind turbines and solar panels etc. Parts that are not assembled, not capable of having a powerful enough electric field induced.

Money laundering and crypto-coin legislation could hurt open-source ecosystem – activists

Exactly

Thats exactly part of the argument the EFF made. The privacy coins help bring the benefits of physical currency to digital currency.

I also remember years ago in the 90's reading about a plan to monitor the handling of banknotes using RFID chips. They also planned the same thing with books, hoping to help the book publishers stamp out secondhand bookshops.

Both those plans seem to have died luckily.

Ahh, old timers

Enjoy living in the past. Rose coloured specs are on special offer.

I hardly ever say something like that as I'm quite the retro head. I love broadcast radio, CD audio and its standards, record to minidisc and minidv tapes. I'm an optical media obsessive.

But here, I see something totally different. I see the future of human economy. A future where wealth is more universal.

Game of Thrones showed us the "Breaking of the Wheel" of inheriting power over others through bloodlines. I think that blockchain technology, certainly in the form of digital currency, is the breaking of the wheel of holding power over people through wealth. At least the start of it.

Now all we need are replicators or 3D printers that can print with more than polymers and we have the start of the new world economy. Unfortunately some of that will be too much scifi for anything within my lifetime...

Barbie Girl was wrong? Life is plastic, it's not fantastic: We each ingest '121,000 pieces' of microplastics a year

Re: What fraction of a gram ? @Duncan

(or do you want to CUT DOWN TREES)

YEEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

'Evolution of the PC ecosystem'? Microsoft's 'modern' OS reminds us of the Windows RT days

Also its a icing on the cake way to say that they are going to upload your data to the cloud, work on it there, then send it back to you.

I'd not like to have a machine like that in our PCI compliance scope.

Re: That's what Plinston said

You also are asked to reboot when you update libc but you can just restart the services most of the time.

Germany mulls giving end-to-end chat app encryption das boot: Law requiring decrypted plain-text is in the works

Re: Industrial espionage

"Passwords to SCADA systems"

There are SCADA systems that actually use password?

Where I work we had a new SCADA system installed. Being the IT guys we demanded certain password requirements. The SCADA guys were like "what? you want passwords?". We really had to put our foot down hard to get them to implement it securely.

It was on its own physical subnet protected by a firewall (both ways). Each machine had only a few whitelisted ports (non default ports) and remote access was only possible from our own machines on certain wall ports.

They didnt like supporting it remotely, kept complaining about having to look up the passwords and using a VPN to connect...

Re: Honey, we're out of

"Seems they would be wasting resources even monitoring my inane chats with the missus."

It amuses me just how blinkered people really are about their "inane" conversations. Ever heard of phishing?

While they are wasting resources watching you ask for cheese, others are eavesdropping on your convo after breaking into their system looking for the passcode you send to your other half when they get a prompt on the phone for the banking app when she logs in to check the balance after the card machine declined the card.

They will be watching when you sent the sort code and account number to your mate who wants to pay you back for that meal he promised to chip in on.

They will be watching when google sends you the reminder about the booking you have made for a trip for two to spain for a week. They will also be watching your house when you leave to catch the plane, hammer at the ready they go up to your empty house to find an amazon smart lock. They look through what they know about you, find the details for your amazon account, reset the password, approve themselves for entry and simply walk in.

Yep, nobody is interested in the little details of your little messages sent back and fourth with your family and friends.

Just like nobody is interested in the contents of your house when you leave the door open and get distracted by one of them when they fake a heart attack. Surely nobody would be interested in the boring contents of your private residence?

Why do you have keys to your car? Honestly nobody would be interested in the old rust bucket. Yet you still lock it? Cant you just keep it unlocked, remove the immobiliser and install a push to start button?

I still lock up my bike :O

I shred post I get that has my name on it. I also shred old documents after a few years :O :O

Yep, you've got nothing to hide.

"They say they only want it for "terrorism""

1984, George Orwell. In the story words have their definitions changed and bent frequently.

Todays definition of terrorism may be different from next years. In a decade my post here may be in breach of terrorism laws. OMG, THEY ARE COMING FOR ME!

Re: So encrypted posts to USENET it is ...

"The thing about encryption is that it's just maths, and end-to-end encryption is pretty easy to throw together using existing published components."

Yep, every child with a raspberry pi has access to compiled encryption libraries that work with almost any language that is in use today plus the very source code for those libraries not to mention OpenPGP and GNUPG.

If you follow the general best practices (i.e dont roll your own crypto) you can add end to end encryption to anything. Oh did I forget to mention OpenSSH? I can encrypt ANY port sending ANY kind of data between ANY machines.

It's all in the hands of kids with raspberry pi's given to them at school. Germany, how are you going to get the cat back in the bag? It had kittens, loads of them, since the 90's!

The irony

I had a good hearty laugh when I read this

"hand over end-to-end encrypted conversations in plain text on demand"

HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAAHAHAHAHHA

HAHAAHHAHAH

HA HA

Its like telling someone to get in a car and fly to paris, without using a plane.

For anyone not getting it: End to end encryotion can only be end to end if the "provider" is unable to access the plain text. Its the very definition of end to end encryption. So in effect they are seeking to ban end to end encryption entirely. As soon as someone in the middle of the connection (the provider) has access, you no longer have end to end encryption.

How are they going to handle people using PGP/GNUPG to encrypt emails? Public key crypto like that HAS no provider. Its entirely controlled by the user, with its own management difficulties due to that. Eventually they will just have to ban end to end encryption in all forms, anyone detected as using it will be targets for the swat teams.

I say they should go further. Ban non self driving cars (do it now, why wait for everyone to have one?) as anyone using a car that is under human control can then be assumed to be a terrorist who will run people down.

Ban knives too. Now. Anyone caught with one will be automatically assumed to be some kind of stabber. Makes sense, if nobidy has a knife legally then only the crims will! How will normal non-crims cut up food? Well thats their problem just like its their problem on how to securely sent bank acount details with no end to end encryption.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

HAHAH

HAHAHA

Really its way too late. Nobody will give up their human controlled cars to be safer when walking, nobody will give up their knives to be safer when telling yobs to pick up the litter and nobody will give up end to end encryption.

Good luck germany, if you pull this off you will be a little island on the internet. The "encryption" nudist colony of the world.

Let's check in with our friends in England and, oh good, bloke fined after hiding face from police mug-recog cam

Re: The police "fined" him.

Ah. So thats what a citation is.

I was always confused about why the US police were handing out links to verified sources.

Re: Actually not

"very nearly conquering Britain"

You mean when we wiped the floor with their Luftwaffe?

When we steadfastly stood against they only weapon they had left, bombs falling due to gravity?

When we perfected a new technology to decode their transmissions, and then hid that from them while we fed them false information to miss lead them?

When we invented a technology that let us see their planes and their positions, whilst they had no idea?

When we all hunkered down and dug for victory, spurned on by a leader, the likes of which we never had before?

When they were playing with flying rockets that randomly dropped on our people, we were developing super heavy bombs that would slice through the ground and turn a bunker into a crater. Oh, we also made a bouncing bomb that bounced on the water and took out some of their dams crippling their production (at least for a while).

Yep. They really came close to conquering us. The only way they were able to affect us was by bombing us and trying to starve us, till we invented a computer and the yanks turned up. Oh we had a tough time of it for sure. But who won?

Their rockets? Yep we took them too.

Re: Only in Nany State Britain...

They are constantly trying this one also:

Encryption hides <insert crime here> : Backdoor all the encryption, or ban it outright. Then only the crims will be using it and although you dont know what they are saying you can find them using all the cameras and drones.

Lightning speed – how fast is that again? Virgin plugs in another 102k to superfast broadband

Uploads

Does this lightening upgrade fix the disparity with upload vs download speeds?

I have 50GiB of data I wish to archive to Amazon S3. Doing the sums it looks like I will be waiting a while for that to finish at the measly 6Mb/s Virgin currently give me with my "upto 100Mb/s" package.

That 50GiB is really just the icing on the cake as I must also capture many of my HD miniDV tapes, to which I still record home videos to. Each tape is holding about 10GiB of video per hour.

Then there are all the photos I have taken over many years, many more of which are on film and are going to be digitised. This is on top of the new film photos I'm taking plus the RAW images from my DSLR.

I'm backing this all up to HDD and certain files also to BD-R. Amazon S3 is the last stage in this backup process. But my current upload speed from virgin is pitiful to say the least.

Oh and the router is a 6 year old superhub 2 and is crap.

The Year Of Linux On The Desktop – at last! Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 brings the Linux kernel into Windows

Re: Why would anyone use it?

As a home user, its linux or nothing. Well ok, I have windows 10 to run a couple of windows games a couple of times a year.

At work, lets see if I can get away installing Linux over the top of win 10 on my company issued, tracked, monitored for compliance laptop.

Trust me. WSL is a godsend when you are in those shackles.

I used to use cygwin. Did it for years. However I never liked its package management and windows never seemed to understand that it had to play nice with the superior environment that cygwin was. Plus as cygwin is a third party product, WSL has the benefit that its released and supported by Microsoft. This means that I'm allowed to justify my need to run WSL on a machine that has to meet several IT security standards such as PCI. Cygwin would have needed me to put a case to the board, yet with WSL I just have to say its a Microsoft supported optional component and bingo its approved.

Re: properly installed and setup

"The only Windows system that works perfectly is one that is shut down."

True. I once had a windows machine that WOULDNT shut down.

Re: But why?

"Just why in holy fuck's name would I possibly want to do that?"

The same reason I do.

Work in IT, must use a laptop which runs windows. Cant be bothered to run the linux VM I installed to keep my sanity all the time as the laptop tends to get a bit hot running a VM all day.

WSL fixes windows. I can now put up with this barebones OS thanks to it actually having useful programs on it in WSL. Heck I can SSH to any of our linux servers while all the other IT guys are stuck trying to locate the installer for putty :)

They were trying to transfer a file to one of the servers. I did it in only a few seconds by using scp while they fiddled about with Filezilla.

Thanks to having WSL, I no longer feel like I'm disabled when I use this windows 10 thing.

Firefox armagg-add-on: Lapsed security cert kills all browser extensions, from website password managers to ad blockers

Re: Easy work-around for many

Just dont forget to reset it back to true when the issue is fixed! Otherwise you will be unprotected by the certificate signing checks.

Re: For the record ...

You obviously didnt read the comments above, where somebody lost work due to a container addon failing.

Also anyone with uBlockOrigin or noscript lost a lot of their security. People assume that its just annoying adverts that these addons block, what they forget is they block scripts too. The internet is not a safe place. It runs code on your machine, sometimes in your GPU. Sometimes that code is delivered to you hidden in that add banner that ublockorigin WAS blocking yesterday.

I'm sure many antivirus products also have addons to detect and prevent fishing attacks etc that were also conveniently turned off.

Running through the internet with firefox over this weekend felt like running nude through a field in the dark knowing that there are bramble bushes dotted about.

Re: "But seriously, how do you not catch an intermediate cert expiration date?"

"Having someone check the database regularly"

Sorry. Its a database, not a spreadsheet. Why would anyone need to check it? Write a stored procedure that gets executed every week to check for expiry and email or report to the concerned persons.

This is the computer age after all. You only need a human to check its still working every now and then and fix it when its not, Even then that human can be alerted to the fact it aint working by a totally free monitoring solution like Zabbix. Heck you just need Zabbix to ping the database server, check the database service is running, what the hell, have it even run the SP and email you the results!

Thats a moot point.

If you work in IT you know how you can get a computer to remind you when to renew a cert.

Our system constantly emails us till the certs are renewed and anyone can do it using a calendar reminder.

It really aint that hard. Its like putting dinner in the oven and just sitting in the next room till you smell smoke. Then the fireman points out the countdown timer on your smart watch, not including the one on the oven itself. Oh and the Alexa in the corner can set countdown timers too!

Its plain common sense. There is simply no reasonable excuse other than sorry we f*cked up and forgot to set a reminder.