Posts by sev.monster

Ask a builder to fix a server and out come the vastly inappropriate power tools

Re: Shocking!

Probably shorted the 5v hot terminals and caused a failsafe to trip. Most laptops have such protections built in.

Re: ChopChop

Is it ever?

UK government rings the death knell for SIM farms

Re: high end devices

You mean aside from being arrested?

Re: Ban banning things

About as effective on the butterknife ban preventing people from getting stabbed. Governments seem to exist to push useless legislature, not fix problems.

Re: Ineptitude

Forgot your icon.

Re: high end devices

Wow, I never heard of Opengear. Those things look very cool. It's like a KVM on 'roids. I see immediate utility in any critical high uptime enterprise.

Ukraine cyber spies claim Putin's planes are in peril as sanctions bite

Why was this even posted here? The only thing vaguely technology related is the fact there was a breach. Everything else is war and politics. And clearly the only discourse it's brought up is astroturfing and the responses to such.

Gauss we've all got a fresh option for a gen AI handheld: A Samsung device

Re: Yet another EULA to sign up to?

That's why you buy used. And if your next answer is "well then you're funding someone to buy another Samsung device," your tax dollars are funding the military industrial complex, the destruction of our environment, and countless other atrocities committed by your government. Are you going to stop paying taxes?

The moral grandstanding has to end somewhere else you become neutered and incapable of adapting to your environment.

Re: Yet another EULA to sign up to?

What you should do is bolster the modern Samsung device firmware efforts so that we can port privacy- and freedom-respecting firmware to them. i.e., try to install various open source firmwares that fit your privacy and ethical models, modify them to work if you have the knowledge, report bugs, write guides for users, spread knowledge, engage with like-minded individuals.

If Samsung won't respect your privacy, and you don't respect Samsung's corporate stance, then do something about it.

Yes, you'll be missing out on all the proprietary features, but using those features requires you to sell yourself as you describe. In my opinion, it isn't worth it.

And who may Bixby?

WeBroke WeWork, WePromise WeFix it: How subleasing giant hopes to survive bankruptcy

Re: Purpose

While I like the idea, I don't think what you're alluding to (purpose-built locales to rent/purchase) would work on a large corporate scale, and I bet you on the nonexistence of any business that specialize in it. Those that are in the creative or blue collar hardware businesses usually specialize in the equipment and installation, not the realestate. And realestate owners would surely not want to ruin their spaces for potential clients by shoving a bunch of industry-specific crap in it—or worse yet, have to refit the space for new clients after already putting the work in. The market is just too niche.

Now what does get some traction are maker spaces, where you can usually pay a membership and get access to those kinds of resources without the commitment to an entire rental space or property purchase.

Maybe you could find a small business development incubator that [allows one to have] customized the space to fit a specific role—but I doubt it.

Google ends partnership to build four San Francisco GoogleBurbs

Re: Corporate yoga

Your chakras are unbalanced, just like your books.

iFixit pries open Google Pixel 8 Pro with clamps and picks

Re: Non-starter.

Video recording and frequent phone-swapping are the only reason I can think of where hot-swapping cards would give you a benefit, and the latter can easily be addressed with sync apps. I just can't see the point otherwise. I'd like to see the point, but no one has volunteered. Lots of thumbs down around here but so far not a single soul willing to explain their reasoning.

Re: Non-starter.

Good luck finding any today that are even semi-decent.

I'm curious what your use of it is, as someone that never used nor saw the need for removable internal storage in a smartphone. Most phone storage nowadays is plenty fast and durable enough to last the life of the phone. And SD cards are just an additional cost on top of the phone purchase.

That script I wrote three years ago is now doing what? How many times?

Re: Software RAID

That was my personal setup I was commentating. Of course if it were for work it would be heavily redundant. Easy enough to have two identical servers as hosts, so the pool can be easily failed over for updates and test/prod staging. Or there's always the classic with a clustered filesystem for maximum redundancy and even cross-DC networking.

Re: Software RAID

Software RAID can have the same safeguards, if not better since you can have more control of the system. I run weekly scrubs with emailed results, have automated alert emails set up with zed for any ZFS weirdness, and have SMART monitoring with smartmontools for disk health. I set up custom SNMP alarms on the BMC and anything that sends an email also sends SNMP to the management port, so any drive or array issues start blinken the lights. (I put the hardware RAID controller in IT mode for ZSH/speed increase, so it no longer sends its own SMART alerts.)

The only part I really agree with is the liability. If you're paying for support from a vendor, then there's no reason to not hold them accountable if there is a problem. And no matter how much I would otherwise preach for homegrown solutions, it doesn't work for all businesses.

Re: Software RAID

I still prefer software RAID just because I hate dealing with the hardware. Everything is (or at least was) some proprietary whitelabeled Adaptec® thing that all use the same DOS programs to flash with no better alternative. When the things die (and they will die, usually at inconvenient times) you have to go buy another one and/or replace the whole backplane if it's designed stupid.

Meanwhile ZFS can run on any system—you can yoink the array out of a FreeBSD server and plonk it in a freshly built Linux and it will mount like nothing changed. You can disable features you don't need or don't have resources for. You can scale as small or as large as you want. Sure you need better CPU and memory to support things like dedupe (if you really need it), you should be investing in flash-based ARC, and the same for a mirrored special vdev (small block writes and metadata), but at the end of the day you will have a much more flexible system that can be built and rebuilt using off the shelf components instead of some flaky controller that will eventually go EOL.

Cloudflare exiles baseboard management controller from its server motherboards

Wow, almost as if Dell's iDRAC (in older gens) and other such removable & replaceable BMC solutions were actually a good idea! Sadly it wasn't making money, not having to replace entire server boards when iDRAC had issues, so they started embedding it. Or so I assume.

Lorenz ransomware crew bungles blackmail blueprint by leaking two years of contacts

Re: Executive Decision within Lorenz

I would not be surprised if Lorenz themselves were incompetent enough to have written this PHP. All the modern ransomware gangs that bother with it seem to be at least decent with social engineering, while merely Bogarting other groups' ransomware code. I don't believe they are anywhere as competent as many may think.

Polishing off a printer with a flourish revealed not to be best practice

Re: Stories from Grandad

You think he maced his racing pace at the spacious space bar Spacebar for a trace of space pint? I hear they're might a few drops faint of a Mynt pint, and fright on the space spice that's oh so nice.

Not so clean now, Izzy?

Python Package Index had one person on-call to hold back weekend malware rush

Re: Difference between PyPi and NPM?

And it got so bad that some maintainers rebelled, the LibreSSL project was started, multiple major projects switched over to it, and eventually those changes made it back to mainline OpenSSL.

Funny how that whole thing played out.

Logitech, iFixit to offer parts to stop folks binning their computer mouse

Re: 3D printable parts

I don't own one, but I know at least 3 places I could go right now to use one (public library in city center, university library's media center, friend of a friend). Maybe it's more common in the US. I am not in a particularly modern area either, with lots of my state covered in farmland.

Re: 3D printable parts

Many public libraries have 3d printers now—two universities near me have printers for students and staff use for next to nothing as far as cost goes (subsidized by tuition fees I assume), with dedicated staff to help with them as part of their respective media centers. It's far more common and possible to make use of 3d printing than you make it out to be.

Or, hell, if price is less of a concern, just order it online from any of the 3d printing companies. Their fit and finish may be even better than what you can get locally, and most of them will offer professional support for newbies.

I was always a huge fan of the MX Master. Large, form-fitting, weighty, smooth, excellent features, all for a killer price. I've since moved to the Razer Basilisk v3 for its amazing sensor and similar features to the Master, at the cost of ergonomics unfortunately! DeathAdder for the backpack for its dongle and Bluetooth compatibility, but same concerns about ergonomics.

I think the Master may still be my favorite traditional mouse of all time—if only the sensor were better...

And of course it goes without saying Razer's garbageware goes right in the bin designated for it. Logitech's offerings may not be excellent themselves last time I used them some years ago, but anything is better than Synapse.

Minnesota governor OKs broad right-to-repair tech law

People wonder why many farmers stick with old, less efficient tools: because they work, and they can be repaired when they break. Even local equipment slingers may stick with older equipment in their fleet because of that very fact.

New shiny with lots of power but stupidly complex and expensive to purchase and maintain, or older workhorses with simple parts, features, and operation? It's sad that we even have to make this distinction.

Hopefully the growing popularity and success of right to repair bills across the world will continue to put pressure on the corpos, and things might eventually get better.

As a funny anecdote, I was reading the 500 page service manual for an old TeleVideo 970, a VT100 compatible terminal, to figure out how the keyboard worked and if I could refit it for modern use (answer: not without a custom PCB or maybe firmware for the existing chipset), and not only did it contain detailed schematics for every part, but it had replacement part numbers for quite literally every single part in the entire unit. You can check out the documentation here.

Imagine if you had the same for a John Deere, farmers would be spoiled and Deere would still be making money (though probably significantly less than their repair cabal) off of spare part sales.

Russia-pushed UN Cybercrime Treaty may rewrite global law. It's ... not great

Re: "It's ... not great"

...Is it not great for them because they will have competition? Yes, because we need more NSA, Mossad, et al. like spy agencies that are internationally validated and permitted to break into networks and devices in the name of [inter]national security. Goody goody, those existing bundles of human right breaches that we call security branches of government have been on their high horses for too long! Let's even the playing field!!!

Intel says Friday's mystery 'security update' microcode isn't really a security update

Wonder which silicon boffin slipped in some fun exploit before they got the boot?

Mine's the one with the tinfoil and the boot mark. On the back.

Working from home could kill career advancement, says IBM CEO

Re: Eh...?

Companies, and the people that work for them, handle WFH differently, Companies that adopt and build up collaboration platforms like Teams and encourage regular chatting/video calls are far more likely to succeed in the endeavour, by my anecdote. Just as so, some employees don't get on with online tools and need to interact directly with warm bodies for their mental health and work ethic.

If you are being provided those collaboration tools and are not using them, that's your fault. But if there are no tools or no one else is interacting, then that's just bad company culture/management. Find the source of the problem and things might be able to change for the better, whether that's you learning how to better interact with your team, or pointed emails to HR/management about how the rest of your team is keeping radio silence.

Re: Isn't that the Peter Principle?

I for one want to be a code monkey, not manage other code monkeys. But you're telling me I have to do that to get paid what I'm worth, while also reducing the "what I'm worth" part of the equation by shunting me into a job I will not excel at?

This is why upper management is such a clusterfsck, either people that don't want to be there and have no idea what they're doing from a management perspective, or people that want to be there (because they're making fat stacks) but have no idea what they're doing from both a management AND a boots-on-the-ground perspective.

Re: wondering if fellow travellers are working together

"Engagement" as in, to steal another regemite's phrasing above, engaging with the backside of management.

No abductions and shotgun weddings for me, thanks.

Mine's the one without the "Just Married" scrawled on the back.

The answer isn't simply "no", it's more like "could not be proven in a court of law" when people got sued over it.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

And the phone to buzz them was across the room.

Not sure if these exist on the market, but why not the same system in a rack? Environment controlled racks do exist, having one adjust oxygen level/pressure/mixture sounds doable. And you don't have to worry about human safety, as even if the system is not turned off and the closet is opened, the presumably small BTU system won't be able to affect the rest of the room.

Re: death trap

Anyone that smokes in a side office connected to the DC, presumably with the shared air circulation system pumping under the raised floor, deserves to have a tank of halon shotgun blasted into their face.

Hopefully they quit [smoking] and don't come back.

Re: Can Confirm.

Not even the blokes with functioning arms?

With ICMP magic, you can snoop on vulnerable HiSilicon, Qualcomm-powered Wi-Fi

Re: A caution

Call them what they are: Not work, folks.

So is this ultimately silicon, firmware, or software? It sounds like firmware but the article doesn't make it very clear.

How the Internet Archive faces potential destruction at the hands of Big Four publishers

Re: i.e. you can study for a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology

I work in higher ed, and at least at our university I see plenty of students with doctorates from multiple disciplines. My understanding was always that doctorates can be awarded for excelling in specific research fields (PhD) as well as particularly demanding practice-based and professional fields. Our nursing program, for example, offers, a Doctorate for Nursing Practice (DNP). There is little original research and it is mostly based about becoming a damn good nurse. Many go on to become APRNs.

Also, in my original post, I did say "class you need to take to get your doctorate". You could be taking a highly specialized course or path of research with few active students/researchers, or you could be padding your prerequirements in a general course. If we'll be pedantic for a moment, if a five year old decides they want to become a doctor, then their compulsory learning could be considered classes they need to take for their doctorate :)

Re: And they claim they have lost millions in revenue

"But IA does not want to pay authors or publishers to realize this grand scheme and they argue it can be excused from paying the customary fees because what they're doing is in the public interest."

This part here really chuffs my chuds. How can you take the standpoint that it isn't in the public interest? This tells me how morally bankrupt the publishers are.

Because there is an alternative to purchasing that textbook for that class you need to take to get your doctorate? Right, it's called "not getting your doctorate."

Re: The IA have themselves to blame

And if someone were to argue that bypassing the IA's CDL to copy it into an epub or similar makes IA somehow liable, what about someone lending from a physical library and scanning every book they check out? Should the physical library be responsible for that theft?

Inane argument.

Re: I don't feel too sorry for the publishers

Exactly, the argument is that you have already paid for the IP, so all you should be required to do is pay for the cost of the physical book and its shipping/other additives. Instead, enjoy paying $400 for that textbook again, chump.

Rambus takes charge of Arm’s CryptoCell, CryptoIsland IP

will mean more choices for customers

More choices for your customers, maybe. More choices for you to pull new customers from, more likely.

Also, I can't be the only one that immediately thought of NFTs when they clicked this article... The word "cryptography" has been irreversibly tainted. I wonder how cryptographers feel.

AT&T blames marketing bods for exposing 9M accounts

I'm sure my data is out there somewheres, but I am actually thankful for the massive millions if not billions if not trillions of records that miscreants have to trawl through. My measly data is hopefully lost in obscurity. According to HIBP I also haven't been in any of their breaches [that have email addresses associated], which is nice.

Fancy a freshened up SLAX or ChromeOS replacement Peppermint OS?

Re: BRING BACK PARIS!

You can still force it by setting

#comment_icon_textfield

to

paris_hilton

Don't tell anyone.

Texas mulls law forcing ISPs to block access to abortion websites

Re: Which is why we need encrypted DNS

I had no idea this existed. Thank you for the insight. Unfortunately it looks like ECH is not supported yet in nginx or BIND9, so...

Cop warrant orders Ring to cough up footage from inside this guy's home

What an absolute shocker

Next you'll tell me that pigs fly.

Oh dear.

Uncle Sam backs right-to-repair battle against Big Ag's John Deere

Re: It's Not Just Farm Equipment

They also usually say something like, "Warning, do not insert fingies into spinny bits."