Posts by logicalextreme

Confessions of a ransomware negotiator: Well, somebody's got to talk to the criminals holding data hostage

Re: A must listen to is the BBC File on 4 Podcast - Held to Ransom

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Oh! A surprise tour of the data centre! You shouldn't have. No, you really shouldn't have

I got reamed (genuinely got a disciplinary) after my first ever weekend on call because I hadn't answered the phone during the wee hours. It was an iPhone and for some reason had a hardware switch on the side that muted it (and happened to be engaged when I was handed the phone). My manager steadfastly refused to believe that a) I'd never so much as touched an iPhone before in my life, b) I'd set the phone volume to maximum as soon as I got it, and c) I had no idea that a volume bar displayed on the screen showing max volume might in fact mean that the phone was going to make no noise.

The unit of measure for fatbergs is not hippopotami, even if the operator of an Australian sewer says so

Re: Pural [sic]

Yeah, I was gonna say — I'd personally pluralise it "hippopotamodes" just as a (in my bored mind, anyway) ribald dig at the sort of person that would genuinely use "octopodes" on a day-to-day basis :)

Hey, AI software developers, you are taking Unicode into account, right ... right?

I've seen (on Usenet, I think) .exe files disguised as .jpg or .txt files through clever use of tricks like these. I only figured out what was going on when I used Python to take a look at the actual filenames, because they fooled both Windows Explorer and cmd. I was pretty impressed!

Make-me-admin holes found in Windows, Linux kernel

Re: The fucking registry. Again.

It wouldn't even be that bad if it was a single cesspit, but it isn't. It's a bunch of cesspits, including different ones for each user profile. But you can still use config files if you want to. Or you can put bits of your config in the registry and bits in actual files. And you can make the paths to your config files dynamic by storing the paths as registry keys. Or you could encode the config file contents and store the actual files as registry keys. Or you could put things in environment variables, which are also kept in the registry, except the registry's copy can be out of sync with the actual environment. Or you could emulate a subset of the registry in a protected space to keep it safe from prying eyes, and then store references to that space in the actual registry. Or you could combine as many or as few of these as you wish.

All of which I've encountered in my relatively short career in IT to date. A single cesspit would at least be one cesspit rather than the recursive infinity of shit that we have now. Unfortunately Microsoft themselves don't stick to using just the registry, so there isn't even a semblance of best practice to try and emulate. Config files seems like the least worst solution to me; the very existence of the registry is an inner platform of the worst possible kind.

For me the particular idiocy of verbing "leverage" has always been the fact that it was nouned from an existing word, "lever" — a word that's already both a noun and a verb — plus a suffix. I like language developing and changing, but I don't like redundancy or inefficiency. It's doubleplusungood.

Microsoft extends security updates for Windows and SQL Server 2012 and 2008

Using IaaS and lift-and-shifting SQL Server to the cloud is crazy expensive, especially if you expect to get any sort of performance out of your disks. While I'm a fairly trad DBA who'd prefer on-prem, the rest of my organisation's stuff is in Azure and so I'm going to be making a push to have our IaaS DB servers replaced with Azure SQL DB. I suspect not having the headache of regularly migrating to new versions of SQL Server alone will make it worth it, not to mention the fact that you get to use new language features early (that would only be implemented in the standard product in the next major release).

You'll never Guess whose data has been nicked as US fashion firm confirms systems breach

Re: Programming Everywhere Sucks

My usual experience with attempting to send a message like that is that the survey/form is also broken, or emails bounce back. Virgin Media have a spectacularly impossible-to-operate set of bork.

Revealed: Perfect timings for creation of exemplary full English breakfast

Re: Lazy day in the office

Mushrooms go in the bin.

I was lost at "20 minutes". I had some great years cooking for hours on end, but I've reached the point where I don't spend more than ten minutes a day preparing food and I wash up twice a week. There's too much other stuff to do!

The same time as each other, if you want them all to be cooked the same.

Where's the boss? Ah right, thorough deep-dive audit. On the boardroom table. Gotcha

Re: Happened to me at my first job

Cleaning a supermarket. Well known brand, five letters, begins with 'T'.

T'Asda?

It might be a euphemism.

One good deed leads to a storm in an Exchange Server

Re: Lucas

Yes, but Lucas didn't have forty years' experience. He may have only had two months'. And depending on his personality going in, how good the company was at disseminating information, and how his good his manager was, he may not have considered it to be iffy at the time. You certainly get a feel for what is and isn't iffy after a while, but it takes experience, which it doesn't sound like he had.

And even if he was initially the sort to ask his manager about everything, there comes a point where a manager has to say "you need to stop asking me so much and walk for yourself, just be honest with me and I'll support you". When it comes to asking his (same-level) colleagues, some people get very irascible very quickly when asked question and that can scare people into not asking the question that would have prevented a situation like this.

This always-on culture we're in is awful. How do we stop it? Oh, sorry, hold on – just had another notification

Re: Not office hours? No contact

It's allowed at my place on the proviso that you allow it to be remotely wiped by the company, but given the regulatory minefield and physical security rules we have to negotiate in the day-to-day I'm pretty surprised that it's even an option.

I also don't actively hide my number from colleagues, but I don't say anything about not working OOH unless I'm asked why I didn't reply to an email/message etc. — and haven't needed to at this job. I feel like stating it upfront normalises the idea a bit less; I'd rather feign astonishment at the idea that somebody interrupt their private life to do anything on top of their contracted work :D

Re: Not office hours? No contact

Aye, I hate training people but I've spent a hell of a lot of time getting people to stand up for themselves. Young people especially, in their first job or first office job, don't tend to have much of a reference point other than school, so they're under the impression that they have to do everything that's asked of them, which naturally leads to either intentional or unintentional abuse by the people delegating (I also advise people to pull a couple of sickies a year if they haven't been off sick, as I don't often get ill and have experienced incredulity from workplaces when I've genuinely been too ill to work after a long time on the job).

But I've experienced it with some people in their thirties and even their forties too — they've just been putting up with shit for years. It can be a lot harder to give them the confidence to push back when they've got a family as they're obviously extra-terrified of the threat of sacking, even if it doesn't exist. And usually people that have been used to working that way for so long don't even have the confidence in themselves to believe that they could walk into any other job they liked if they did lose their job.

I've heard stuff along the lines of "work to live, don't live to work" for my entire working life so I know it's not some dazzling new concept.

Re: This is unnecessary

Yep — as pretty much an anarchist at heart, I don't believe we should need laws at all. We should all be able to trust people to do the right thing. Unfortunately, some people need "the right thing" to be explained to them (not necessarily a criticism), and even a moment's experience in the real world tells you that you can't trust people to do the right thing. Laws and regulation are one of the ways we have to guarantee people a semblance of protection, same way I suspect most people have locks on their outer doors.

Re: Not office hours? No contact

Yep, completely agree — it's a "luxury" that I think a lot of us have in IT that you wouldn't necessarily find elsewhere in an office and especially not outside of one. I find that it's extra-infuriating when people with that "luxury" don't take advantage of it, as it shouldn't be a luxury for anybody, so subscribing yourself to a life-dominating concept of what work should be is just helping to maintain the status quo.

I'm hoping that the net effect of Covid will be positive in this space, however — it's exposed how easy it is for a lot of people to work from home to everybody, whether they can or not. I know a fair few people who've always worked insecure jobs who, after Covid, aren't prepared to go back to that world except on fairer terms. Even before that I've usually encouraged them to either get into something more secure, or make sure they've got a support network ready to catch them if it backfires and then put their foot down to try and change their insecure workplace. Although the people that I know, while sometimes desperately poor, aren't usually desperately vulnerable. I'd hope that Brexit cutting off some of the flow of labour would be able to help starve the supply of workers somewhat to make these companies rethink their practices (may as well get something out of it) — other than that the best we can do is vote with our wallets; I've managed a couple of years clean from Amazon with no problems whatsoever and I'd be perfectly happy if they sold or abandoned their retail operations and just focused on their cloud biz. I'm also prepared to help my mates out financially wherever possible so they can afford to be a bit more daring with how they approach their work life.

Now that I've put that all down I've realised how much I enjoy helping people improve their work lives, so maybe I'll go find a job doing that for when I finally get completely sick of computers!

Re: Not office hours? No contact

Yeah, I've heard many a thing about US work culture — availability, hours, appearance, etc. that's put me off moving there (among other things like the fact I've got a cat and they had a Trump). I generally expect stuff to move towards sanity so glad it's changing.

We've got a similar thing at my place regarding logging hours (actually via timesheet software, with project codes to allow for billing clients appropriately and even accounting for holidays, bank holidays, mandatory company-wide meetings and so on). Unfortunately I get the sense it's not quite supported by the rest of the culture there as you're not encouraged (I think) to log hours that aren't due pay and I know managers work overtime for the hell of it, which doesn't help too much in the long run. There's also the classic fear of having a large backlog, which I'm attempting to change by raising items for everything as I think of them and explaining why it's better for stuff to be out in the open rather than in people's heads. Overall down to a mix of different people's ideas about what "work" should be, and the small size of the company giving you more exposure to the people who've got their lives invested in it, which is a good thing as long as they don't expect you to commit every waking hour! Your place sounds like they've nailed it.

Re: Not office hours? No contact

It really is that easy for a lot of people — don't add your work accounts to your phone. Don't do it because you feel you have to prove something, don't do it because the person that sits next to you does it, and encourage others not to do so as well. If you have a work mobile then maybe there's an out-of-hours element to your job, but it should be clearly stated in your contract.

If nothing else, doing free bits of work on a regular basis is dishonest to your employer. How are they ever going to know (or care) that they're under-resourced if people keep picking up the slack, or indeed the Slack?

Five words everyone wants to hear: Microsoft has 'visually refreshed' Office

Re: Still using Office 2003 thanks

Oh actually, they did add a "remove duplicates" command at some point after 2003 which definitely beat having to carry a macro around with you or mess around with functions. Unfortunately it's somewhere in the Ribbon interface.

Re: Still using Office 2003 thanks

I seem to recall they also crippled VBA in 2007, but I realise now that that was a good thing.

Re: Still using Office 2003 thanks

It also doesn't have that preposterous row and column limit increase in Excel that pretty much told anyone who'd been holding off to start using it as a database. 2003 was indeed the last of the sensible Office releases.

UK arm of international charity the Salvation Army hit by ransomware attack

Re: I'm surprised

Downvotes were put there by the devil to test us.

I'm surprised

You'd have thought somebody there would've been banging the drum about security

Leaked print spooler exploit lets Windows users remotely execute code as system on your domain controller

Re: Again?

Innit. What is it with Windows and printers? Win 10's had more than its fair share of printer issues, too.

If MS suddenly come out with some "revolutionary" paper-free workplace "solution" nail-gunned onto the side of Office 351 I may begin to suspect that this stuff has been not entirely accidental.

Microsoft releases Windows 11 Insider Preview, attempts to defend labyrinth of hardware requirements

Re: a sense of what now?

Innit. On the (now thankfully very rare) occasions that I have to show somebody how to do something in Excel and remember that it now comes with animations turned on by default, my reaction is always "you use this application every day and just put up with this?!". It's alarming how few people even bother asking if something can go faster.

Court kills FTC, US states' antitrust complaints against trillion-dollar Facebook

Re: Desired outcome?

Don't give them ideas

Good news: Google no longer requires publishers to use the AMP format. Bad news: What replaces it might be worse

Re: AMP is not a problem, nor is its replacement

Do you mean Google's cached version, or the publisher's AMP version? What happens if you need to access the cached version, do you have to disable the extension?

Bug at payments processor WorldPay swipes £2k+ per ride ticket from Brighton Pier revellers

Re: I May Be Cheap...

My experience with Worldpay and other payment providers, the fact that the charges took place two months later and the fact that one datum consistently ended up masquerading as another datum absolutely screams to me that there was a processing issue with that day's payments and somebody cobbled together a CSV file (incorrectly) using Excel (I'm aware that's a homonym for "incorrectly") in order to put the missing payments through.

Maybe I will start checking my bank statements more often.

Anyone still using cash? British £50 banknote honouring Alan Turing arrives

Re: Here in Euro territory

What is the name of this utopia that you live in? Machines in the UK do inform you that they've run out of a denomination, these days usually on the idle screen, so we've got that at least.

What you need to know about Microsoft Windows 11: It will run Android apps

I prefer Win10 to 7 and XP for a variety of reasons but the Ribbon interface can still go to hell, go directly to hell and forget about even looking at that £200.

The only way I've found to live with its existence is to have carefully cultivated a career in which I never need to open an office application. I begrudgingly accept it in pbrush.exe because it seems like an appropriate place for it.

Hungover Brits declare full English breakfast the solution to all their ills

Re: German beer purity laws

This is an exchange I would pay money to have seen

Re: German beer purity laws

Set and setting, essentially. That said, I don't believe those effects hold up when it comes to crucial safety matters like coordination for drink-driving — the actual alcohol wins out there. Somebody in a placebo state of inebriation will snap to and avoid a hazard; somebody who's truly inebriated simply won't.

Re: Nothing better than the Texan cure of...

I've never met a UKite who doesn't know what biscuits and gravy are. They won't have tried them — I haven't — but everybody's heard of them.

Which flavour Chupa Chups?

Re: Food of the Gods

Get some pizza down yer

[orson-welles-clap.gif]

Re: Monopoly

I was talking about the UK specifically — cannabis wasn't widely available here until the last couple of centuries. It's illegal in most places because of the UN, which follows the US, but you can trace all modern suppression of it back to a combination of moral panic and threats to industry — because hemp is an excellent alternative to many things.

The UK is the largest producer and exporter of legal cannabis in Europe, to boot. We're appallingly behind the times on this and I feel like we'll be very late to the party on this one, given that one of the most vocal proponents of drug law reform is a member of the ruling party. All I can recommend is that you keep doing what you're doing — bringing it up! Check out Drug Science, The Loop (assuming the government don't destroy them), LEAP, and the Correlation European Harm Reduction Network if you haven't already. The walls will fall one day, and we can help push.

Re: Monopoly

I see dispute resolution as one of those things that's just incumbent upon teachers and parents during the day-to-day — kids fight, teachers sort it out and show them how people do things. Pretty much every subject you can study involves the concept of understanding that people see things differently. That said, I had a pretty good secondary education till the shit hit the fan.

I agree on PE and nutritional education though, despite the fact that I despised PE to the point that I worked out a deal with the teacher that I'd go to detention every Saturday if I could go to the library and read during his class. I can't speak for what most schools do though…people seem to be vaguely okay these days? Da yoof have the highest proportion of non-drinkers and non-smokers, I believe, so something must be going in the right direction.

Re: Monopoly

Aye, though I'd expect vaping will still have to take place outside as a precaution. I've always preferred edibles, not least because it's usually some sort of monstrously delicious chocolate brownie-cake-affair

Re: Monopoly

Some sort of safe and legal pep pill (or perhaps a little something to sprinkle on your dinner, or perhaps more research into stimulant plants) that could help you enjoy a night out and without any nasty mental or physical health effects wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, I think.

So MDMA, then? Not something you'd want sprinkled on your dinner though :D

WRT why alcohol and tobacco are legal when other stuff isn't — it is partially entrenched historical use, but the UN's Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961 and the UK's Misuse of Drugs Act in 1971 are the main culprits for us in the UK. There are a huge number of factors that went into the current situation, but you can broadly categorise them into money and moral grandstanding. It's usually money, though.

Re: Food of the Gods

It's on the list.

Re: Don't get old!

Aspirin was my painkiller of choice too back in the day! Seemed to work for the morning after where paracetamol and NSAIDs didn't.

Worth mentioning for anyone reading however that it should not be taken immediately before or after alcohol (or with, pedants), especially if there's a lot of alcohol involved or it's being done on the regs. Stick to paracetamol or ibuprofen if they work as they're arguably safer than aspirin overall.

Re: Monopoly

Sure, you can't sit there and smoke it in the pub but cannabis is widely consumed; you can go round someone's house or go to the park or up a hill or pretty much anywhere you like. Hell, inconsiderate bastards smoke it on the bus enough.

I take anything I can get my hands on and I've only felt "excluded from life" due to my own selfish behaviour getting out of hand. In fact I feel I can participate more in life since stopping drinking because of how severely impairing alcohol is, both during and after consumption — I'm not generally in the mood anymore to sit around with a bunch of people getting gradually less coordinated while we all repeat what we've just said for hours. Often a drug puts people on a certain wavelength, so it can be uncomfortable to try and e.g. socialise with a group of drinkers if you're on something else, but that's not really exclusion from life — just hang around people who accept your tastes. There's plenty of choice if you know where to look and you're unlikely to suffer any legal repercussions from consumption unless you do something stupid, or are unfortunate enough to be the wrong colour.

You shouldn't feel marginalised — the current system is a crock of shite, but that means you just don't have to participate in it. Lobby for reform by all means — this country (and the world) needs to address drug consumption properly, including alcohol — but remember that the alcohol industry is supplying for a demand, for all its guilt in helping to propagate that demand. It's doing its utmost to keep the problem alive, but it itself isn't the problem.

Re: A crisp sandwich

I hate dry-roasted peanuts. They're all coarse, and rough, and irritating. And they get everywhere.

I may be blessed, but when I used to cane at least half a bottle of whisky a night I soon found that I just didn't have hangovers. I only realised much later that I definitely didn't feel "normal" during the day back then, but I was certainly very functional and felt that I was fine. About twice a year I'd get a full-day hangover though.

WRT this Muddy Puddle, which I've never tried and now really want to, have you had the pleasure of trying Mezzo Mix?

Re: Monopoly

One hit of something can definitely be addiction (or technically the second); depending on the person, their genetics, where they are in life, the drug, the form of the drug and the route of administration (think chewing coca leaves vs. smoking crack) — but not physical dependence, which is a different kettle of soldiers. Addiction's a psychosocial phenomenon.

Re: Monopoly

The availability of alcohol and the fact that it's so woven into culture and politics is a social, political and economic issue that leads to people's lives being a misery. Drinking will be a factor in that food insecurity in a proportion of cases, though it'd be hard to put numbers on it and I'd be wary of it being seized on as a scapegoat when basic social security should exist and doesn't. I agree that some sort of dispute resolution classes in schools is a bit of an odd idea — generally just asking "how many people that haven't drunk alcohol have you seen fighting?" is sufficient to make people check their consumption a bit :)

I don't think OP was suggesting a conspiracy — the behaviour of the alcohol industry is pretty overt when you look at it — but it is there because the industry wants you to drink alcohol, and they do not want other substances to get in on that money. I believe some of the savvier elements of the industry are making moves to be in a good position to diversify so that they can capture the market of any newly-regulated substance and make sure their margins are protected (some tobacco companies have done this with the recent glut of alternative nicotine and/or smoking products, and you can bet your bottom ass they'll be in on cannabis if anybody lets them).

It's true that alcohol pretty much makes itself, though — but that's a big reason why alcohol is so dominant; it's been making itself everywhere on the planet for time immemorial. Once it started to have taxes levied on it alternatives barely stood a chance (though there's a lot to blame the US and UN for on that front).

And I call alcohol yeast piss too! Int nature brilliant?

Re: Monopoly

Further info for downvoters (or anyone interested) — originally from the Lancet paper by Nutt and friends, so you probably know the gist already, but worth a look: https://marlin-prod.literatumonline.com/cms/attachment/df9c8f42-25a2-4cdf-968e-c27b6d23b666/gr4.jpg

I don't believe anybody suggested banning alcohol (we all know how well that goes), but given that the industry's sheer lobbying power and monopoly on getting twisted (using the "woven into culture" as a nice catalyst where it suits) trounces that of the tobacco industry, advertising and lobbying should certainly be outlawed on public health grounds — and minimum unit pricing and possibly larger warning labels should be introduced.

You can say that an "advantage" of alcohol is that it's legal, but I'd argue that that's one of the main reasons that it's such a dominant public health menace.

To directly address points in the original comment though — people will accept one drug (for sale) in the pub because that's what pubs are for. There's always someone doing coke in the toilets, but you'd have a hard time getting cannabis legalisation to mesh nicely with the smoking laws unless you restricted to alternative routes of administration. I'd suggest hanging out at house parties and free parties instead — cheaper, safer (usually), more choice (including the music) and a lot less getting pints thrown on you/sick on your shoes/punched. Though if you like the pub, you can drink whatever you like and take anything that isn't smoked while you're there if you're sneaky — if it needs smoking, that's what "round the corner" is for!