* Posts by HellDeskJockey

102 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2016

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Amazon turns Victorian industrialist with $2bn building project to house workers near new headquarters

HellDeskJockey

It's OK

Because he's a Liberal. It has to be true, I read it in the Washington Post.

Trump's overhaul of Section 230 stalls, Biden may just throw the web legal shield on the bonfire anyway

HellDeskJockey

Indeed, and you are welcome to believe or not as you see fit. My concern is when platforms decide what is true or false and censor posts based on that. We should both be free to speak on these matters and many others.

God gave me a mind, and I believe in using it. Don't care for censorship and slanted news in either direction.

HellDeskJockey

I suspect that section 230 is safe for now. On the other hand there is a lot of censorship going on. I have a small blog and in my weekly announcements mentioned that we are going to be adding Parler to the social media streams. Merely mentioning Parler on Facebook got an immediate "This fact is disputed warning. Are you sure you want to post it." from Facebook. After verifying that yes I am going to post on Parler clicked yes I'm sure to post it. What makes this even more interesting is that Blog covers the Bible not politics. I generally discourage any political commentary on the blog.

Lay down your souls to the gods of rock 'n' roll: Conspiracy theorists' 5G 'vaccine' chip schematic is actually for a guitar pedal

HellDeskJockey
Joke

I wondered why the side effects had "A strong desire to listen to heavy metal." listed.

The curse of knowing a bit about IT: 'Could you just...?' and 'No I haven't changed anything'

HellDeskJockey

Re: Being The IT Guy

Reminds me of my married days. The wife would load every piece of software/adware known to man on her PC and in a few months would complain about how it was so slow. I would get on her computer kill all of it and amaze her with the speed. That's why to this day I don't share systems. I would rather have a less powerful system that I control.

Networking too. When I was setting up the XP network it was click here with the mouse and load a floppy and the network will be set up as if by magic. Several days and a lot of %$#@&( later the network worked. Same thing with the new router load the CD and as if by magic it will set up. Several hours later more &^%$#) the network was working again. The new DSL bridge said the same thing about the CD. Stop right there, I checked the manual and it had a back up manual install procedure. That's for me says I. A few minutes of command line jiggery pokery everything worked.

Subway email weirdness: Suspicion grows over apparent Trickbot trojan delivery campaign

HellDeskJockey
Black Helicopters

It's gotten so bad that if I am not expecting an attachment it's suspicious. Even from people I know and do business with. As one or two of them have been compromised. These days paranoia is a good thing when it comes to emails.

LibreOffice 7.1 beta boasts impressive range of features let down by a lack of polish and poor mobile efforts

HellDeskJockey

Re: Failings in Mobile

Because I work on specialized machinery business travel will be a Windows laptop for the foreseeable future. Daily driver at the house runs Linux and has multiple monitors.

But for personal trips I'm looking to just carry my phone also an adaptor for keyboard and mouse. It's not the system to do major work on. But for the stuff I do on the road it will work. I will most likely use Google docs as it is already installed and I detest adding apps.

It's also a lot lighter than the Osborne I and Silver Reed printer I started with. Ironically the screen is about the same size.

PC makers warn of battle for air freight capacity, will have to fight for cargo space with... the COVID-19 vaccine

HellDeskJockey

The time factor

If you are loading up the ship today for shipment. You should expect your package mid to late Jamuary.

After years of dealing with sea shipments the way I have always explained it to customers is that we use old Viking Longships. When they are not doing movies they are moving your packages.

Amazon's ad-hoc Ring, Echo mesh network can mooch off your neighbors' Wi-Fi if needed – and it's opt-out

HellDeskJockey

Re: Illegal

It might make for an interesting suit. But in the USA most ISPs have such a large limit it would be difficult to prove any harm. Someone who using 4G with a small data cap like myself might have a suit but they people using cable internet most likely would not care. People like me are not going to opt in to networks for data slurping.

The revolution will not be televised because my television has been radicalised

HellDeskJockey

You control your watching

I just keep my TV off for the most part. I have not watched news for almost a year now I get it online. I'm also very careful to use sources who live in the real world. If there is one sided BS flying out of TV or radio news the Off button will be used. I'm busy enough, I don't have time to waste on propaganda.

UK regulator Ofcom to ban carriers from selling locked handsets to make dumping clingy networks even easier

HellDeskJockey

Careful what you wish for

I don't buy locked handsets. Amazon has plenty of unlocked handsets and they work for me. Pay for it and be done with it.

But an outright ban on locking handsets would have problems too. Many people prefer to buy the shiny flagship phones and then pay for them over several years. Locking the handsets helps with that. Otherwise you buy a handset from company A then switch to company B. Afterwards you "forget" your handset bill with company A. Yes it's wrong and will have bad effects on your credit. But if your credit is already trashed it's not much of a threat.

You have to watch out for that law of unintended consequences.

Another Chromium browser for Linux? Microsoft Edge arrives in preview form, no love for Arm yet

HellDeskJockey

I tried it in Windows I wasn't too impressed. I bit the bullet and installed Brave from CLI. Works better for the most part but it locks up logging in my cell account page. Oh well I can live with Firefox for that and a few other things.

Sorry for the late reply getting the house ready for winter.

HellDeskJockey

Running Debian on my home machine and while there are a lot of browsers for Linux most of them are not that good. Firefox is may daily driver on Linux most of the others I've tried are seriously lacking in one or another feature. If I want to run a low resource browser I will just run Lynx.

Let’s check in with that 30,000-job $10bn Trump-Foxconn Wisconsin plant. Wow, way worse than we'd imagined

HellDeskJockey
FAIL

It is ever thus with corporations

Motorola did the same thing to Illinois about 20 years back with the cellphone plant at Harvard IL. Today it's an empty building. If a company has to have tax incentives to come it's not worth it. Sadly our elected officials of all stripes line up to hand out money to corporations. See the recent Amazon HQ2 mess. If a corporation is holding a bidding war then it means that the economics don't make sense.

LibreOffice rains on OpenOffice's 20th anniversary parade, tells rival project to 'do the right thing' and die

HellDeskJockey

I use both but have found Open Office more stable. In office software there tends to a lot of look we added this new feature that will be useful for a whole 10 users. If it has basic word processing, spellcheck, and does basic multipage spreadsheets that meets my needs.

Ok perhaps I'm a bit cranky cause I had to redo my phone after update yesterday. Also another set of phone upgrades this morning over 100 meg.

Here's US Homeland Security collaring a suspected arsonist after asking Google for the IP addresses of folks who made a specific search

HellDeskJockey

Re: Anyone who expects Google not to track at this point

Too late I'm already associating with the "wrong" people. But if you don't want to be tracked then don't use software or devices that track you. A lot of the old mafia guys in the US did not even have a landline phone in their house to thwart wiretaps. Also I'm always in favor of opt out options. I may or may not allow companies to track me depending on the circumstances. As long as I make the choice that is acceptable.

HellDeskJockey
Facepalm

Anyone who expects Google not to track at this point

Is somewhat out of touch with reality. Google tracks you KNOW this. However that tracking can be both good and bad. If his phone showed he was at another location that would have eliminated him as a suspect. I use Google auto for the safety features and yes it does track me. But all that tracking does is provide evidence of my location. That could be bad if I'm near the scene of a crime, but good if I am not.

In short you wear gloves and Tyvek suits to not leave fingerprints or DNA. Today you need to consider your electronic fingerprints as well. Better yet try to stay on the right side of the law.

Want to set up a successful bug bounty? Make sure you write it for the flaw finders and not the lawyers

HellDeskJockey

Don't fool yourselves, paper ballots are definitely not secure. Vote fraud existed long before electronic voting came on the scene.

Big Tech to face its Ma Bell moment? US House Dems demand break-up of 'monopolists' Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google

HellDeskJockey

Re: “the decline of trustworthy sources of news"

That is why some of us yanks listen to the BBC. Actually I usually get my news via Internet these days. Unless you are looking for the Democrat point of view most US news sources are generally useless.

I love my electricity company's app – but the FBI says the nuclear industry bribed politicians $60m to kill it

HellDeskJockey

That's where remote lighting controls come in handy.

Federal judge temporarily neutralizes President Trump's blockade against visas for foreign techies, other workers

HellDeskJockey

Re: Hypocrite Much?

Stem education is hard. Most people aren't going to put themselves through that for nothing. There needs to be a reward at the end. If there is real money to be made then folks are going to take the courses. Otherwise why bother.

Russian hacker, described as 'brilliant' by judge, gets seven years in a US clink for raiding LinkedIn, Dropbox

HellDeskJockey

Sorry but there needs to be a consequence. My work email was one of the compromised addresses. I have to spend every day deleting phishing emails, and be very aggressive about hacking. This annoys me and costs my employer.

With H-1B workers not exactly rushing to America this year, Uncle Sam plans to spend millions home-growing IT staff

HellDeskJockey
Unhappy

Re: Been there...seen that

The other problem is to convince the employers to pay a reasonable wage. These days it's always "Times are bad we can't afford any raises." Thing is it happens every year.

Big US election coming up, security is vital and, oh look... a federal agency just got completely pwned for real

HellDeskJockey

Re: FYI

Correct there is no national Election Authority in the US. Also who is the agency? There are a lot of Federal agencies performing many functions. Some of which are more critical than others. It could be anything from the Defense Department to the National Endowment for the Arts.

Adidas now stands for All Day I'm Disconnecting All Servers as owners of 'smart' Libra scales furious over bricked kit

HellDeskJockey

Re: If it relies on the cloud

Agreed while I am connected to the cloud and enjoy the features. I can also unplug the net and still control things. Also I use a company that has been doing this for decades and has protocol information available. Even so it's always a risk, you just have to plan for and manage it.

HellDeskJockey

If it relies on the cloud

It's not reliable. You have to be able to control it locally. Also if you want reliable kit buy from companies that have been in business at least 5 years or that follow standards such as ZWave or others. Lot's of companies come up with a home control product and think it will be amazing. Only to find out that people are not interested in buying it. It then get's dumped. Leaving owners out of luck.

Woman dies after hospital is unable to treat her during crippling ransomware infection, cops launch probe

HellDeskJockey

Re: Why?

That is the problem. The physical equipment lasts a lot longer than the OS. I still have to be familiar with W95 on some systems also Windows NT and Windows 2k. You just don't connect any of it to the internet.

As an example the helldesk today is supporting a computer problem on a 1982 CNC machine. Sadly there is no easy way to upgrade the computer.

As for warnings we routinely warn against everything. Otherwise you get sued for failure to warn. "You didn't tell me pouring gasoline (petrol for our British friends) on a fire is dangerous."

Net neutrality lives... in Europe, anyway: Top court supports open internet rules, snubs telcos and ISPs

HellDeskJockey
Joke

> Not everyone is you.

According to my girlfriend that is a very good thing.

HellDeskJockey

I think we agree more than we disagree. I would agree on minimal free service but it has to be a reasonable level. These days even a couple of cell phone pictures or ads can be several MB of data. Things just need to be realistic is all. As for browsers I do prefer Brave but it's not always easily available on every OS I use. While I could make it work, that takes time I don't have at the moment.

HellDeskJockey

These days 500MB is not enough. Emails and a week of Web Access will eat that up. My current home plan (4G) has 20GB and even that takes some watching to stay within my plan. Especially staying away from sites that insist on playing live video every time you visit.

When classes are online, how do you get out of school? Florida teen cuffed, charged after crashing cyber-lessons

HellDeskJockey
Joke

Whatever happend to

A M80 (Large firecracker) flushed down the toilet. Kids these days....

Google wants to listen in to whatever you get up to in hotel rooms

HellDeskJockey
Joke

Re: Stasi

Depending on how they try to make money, it could give a whole new meaning to the term Gmail.

That's ride on time: Lyft, Uber to continue taxi app service in Cali after appeals court hits pause on AB5 brouhaha

HellDeskJockey
Alert

I see they are getting out the big gun

Given how many people are going without automobiles these days. If they did shut down service I suspect an emergency stay would be up the next afternoon.

Ever wonder how a pentest turns into felony charges? Coalfire duo explain Iowa courthouse arrest debacle

HellDeskJockey

Federal law requires a grand jury but this is the state of Iowa. Each state has it's own rules on that.

They should be able to get things expunged. But they need a lawyer for that.

National Crime Agency says Brit teen accused of Twitter hack has not been arrested

HellDeskJockey

Re: Nice to see the American Justice system has its priorities straight

A fraud netting about $117,000 is not minor. More than than that they attacked a major US company. That's why the FBI is involved. It's too large and too public to be ignored.

Battle for 6GHz heats up in America: Broadcasters sue FCC to kill effort to open spectrum for private Wi-Fi

HellDeskJockey
WTF?

I feel positively ancient

Most of my equipment runs on 2.4 GHz No real problems so far. A few bits of newer kit on 5GHz. To be honest this 6GHz stuff sounds like an excuse to sell me a new router.

Suspected armed robber’s privacy was not infringed by cops’ specific cellphone tower data slurp, US judge rules

HellDeskJockey

It's location data no more no less

Yes and no. All the phone data shows is which tower you are using at that moment. If you are doing questionable activities and have your phone that is not wise. However say your phone indicates you were in another town during a crime that would have quite a different result. Your defense counsel will bring that up as reasonable doubt.

Soft press keys for locked-down devs: Three new models of old school 60-key Happy Hacking 'board out next month

HellDeskJockey
Coffee/keyboard

For the benefit of the younger crowd he is talking about the HP2645 Display Station not the printer,.

OP I was using a TI Silent 700 back then.

After huffing and puffing for years, US senators unveil law to blow the encryption house down with police backdoors

HellDeskJockey
Facepalm

Re: Yay! Its groundhog day!

I might add in allowing a "master key or keys" to encryption is going to be setting up a great target for every crook and intelligence agency out there.

If Fairphone can support a 5-year-old handset, the other vendors could too. Right?

HellDeskJockey

I just received my new Moto G Power. The reason I did not spend more for a flagship is that I am not spending roughly $700+ USD for a phone that will no longer be upgraded in two years. If you want me to spend a lot of money you are going to have to be sure my investment will last.

I would be more than happy to consider a Linux phone but it has to work with Android Auto. I use it enough that it is an essential safety application.

If you miss the happier times of the 2000s, just look up today's SCADA gear which still has Stuxnet-style holes

HellDeskJockey

Re: Not a big deal, as industrial security is almost non-existent anyway.

The big deal as you say is connecting to the internet. I can understand not using passwords and encryption if you have your own ISOLATED network not connected to anything else. If they are close enough to plug in then you have many other problems. The problem comes when the boss wants to connect so he can check on the factory, or the chief engineer want's to be able to reprogram from home without have to get dressed and come in when the off shift calls. Once you hit that point you are trusting every other user on the internet to respect your system. Simply put, that is not going to happen. You need the VPN, strong passwords and encryption. If the software is designed with good security built in then you have defense in depth.

We beg, implore and beseech thee. Stop reusing the same damn password everywhere

HellDeskJockey
Facepalm

Re: A few years back....

Just do what I do and avoid stores at all costs. Walmart grocery and amazon are your friends. It's so unpleasant to shop these days.

The latest idiocy, when you come into a store. Please lower your mask so the camera can ID you. Farewell reason I knew thee well.

Travel advice for the week ahead is just: STOP

HellDeskJockey
Joke

Re: Really?

Hummm,

And here I thought causal Friday was now clothing optional Friday.

At least someone's making out like a bandit: Scammers have pocketed $13m in Coronavirus fraud from the US this year

HellDeskJockey

I'm actually surprised it is so little. But it is early in the game.

Signal sends smoke, er, signal: If Congress cripples anonymous speech with EARN IT Act, we'll shut US ops

HellDeskJockey
Big Brother

Re: EARN IT

Actually there is a pretty huge fight brewing on this. Our Attorney General issued a warning this weekend State and local governments cannot harass citizens for attending Church at Easter as long as the church is practicing social distancing safety. Several local and state government agencies were trying to ban drive in Easter Services. For those who don't know a drive in service is where people stay in their cars 6 ft (2 m) apart much like an old time drive through movie theater. This was lost on these officials who decided that there must be NO gatherings. Though it is perfectly ok to go to the grocery store, liquor store, pot dispensary etc. They were also trying to go after Gun Stores also but again they were shut down.

'Social distancing champ' Linus Torvalds releases Linux 5.6, tells devs to put health before next release

HellDeskJockey
Black Helicopters

On this side of the pond

The coronavirus is sometimes referred to as the "Boomer Remover" FWIW I'm a boomer.

Icon because I'm working in the bunker now.

Fresh virus misery for Illinois: Public health agency taken down by... web ransomware. Great timing, scumbags

HellDeskJockey

Re: There is no circle of hell

Oh yes there is. They could listen to our elected Illinois officials corona-virus self congratulatory news conference yesterday. Five minutes of that and I'm ready to take my chances on getting sick.

Latest bendy phone effort from coke empire spinoff Escobar Inc is a tinfoil-plated Samsung Galaxy Fold 'scam'

HellDeskJockey

Re: The folding phone is only a stopgap...

To snort a line of coke.

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