* Posts by Mattknz1

22 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Mar 2017

Dump these small-biz routers, says Cisco, because we won't patch their flawed VPN

Mattknz1

These things were rubbish.

I inherited 4 of them at a previous job, they were used as VPN gateways between small sites. Best thing ever was a CVE around 2018 that warranted replacing them . They were trash tier, interface going non-responsive and forever having to reboot them.

I'd argue they sold them for for about 3 years longer than they should have.

SpaceX staff condemn Musk's behavior in open letter

Mattknz1

Re: Dear Employees,

Paypal was a product of Confinity in 1999, a year before the merger.

Mattknz1

Re: Dear Employees,

He didn't found Paypal either....

AMD claims high-end Big Navi Radeon GPUs leave Nvidia's ray-tracing cards in the dust

Mattknz1

Amazingly it's a good thing?

AMD recommends a 650w PSU to go along with their 6900xt whereas Nvidia recommend a 750w PSU for their RTX 3090

Some obscure you-tuber demonstrated two RTX 3090's in SLI and did manage to brown-out a 1000w PSU.

What's inside a tech freelancer's backpack? That's right, EVERYTHING

Mattknz1

DIY Adaptor

After traveling between the US and AU/NZ I discovered, when urgency requires that simply twisting the flat pins allowed a non-earthed plug to adapt itself quite nicely....

Rocket Lab ends year by cutting ribbon on first launchpad in the US

Mattknz1

They deserve the success...

...based on their rocket naming convention alone. First 10 launches:

1. It's a Test

2. Still Testing

3. It's Business Time

4. This One's For Pickering (assuming the rocket scientist, not the aussie politician)

5. Two Thumbs Up

6. That's a Funny Looking Cactus

7. Make it Rain

8. Look Ma, No Hands

9. As the Crow Flies

10. Running Out Of Fingers

I sincerely hope it continues!

There's Huawei too many vulns in Chinese giant's firmware: Bug hunters slam pisspoor code

Mattknz1

Sloppy, not Malicous.

A previous employer decided to add low end Huawei kit to his catalogue. A week later I had a L3 switch sent back that would drop connectivity on trunked ports after a being up for around a day. To their credit a firmware patch was ready the day after talking to their support, but how they shipped firmware that bad in the first place is beyond me.

I highly doubt anything malicious is going on at all and any 'backdoors' are unintentional.

What a pain in the Azzz-ure: Microsoft Azure, SharePoint, etc knocked offline by DNS blunder

Mattknz1
Mushroom

Woohooo!

"Team building" day with the BBQ and the Xbox it is.

Aussie engineer accuses 'serial farter' supervisor of bullying, seeks $1.8m redress

Mattknz1

Recirculated air.

A previous colleague used to take great delight in contaminating the server room immediately before the junior (myself for a period) was due to change a great multitude of backup tapes.

A rather confined space with a great deal of very cold, smelly and recirculated air.

After outrage over Chrome ad-block block plan, Google backs away from crippling web advert, content filters

Mattknz1

Firewalled into Oblivion.

Blocked advertising categories along with Google DNS at work and at home. Haven't seen an ad in 5+ years.

Would be hard to go back to a domestic router again.

Trying to log into Office 365 right now? It's a coin flip, says Microsoft: Service goes TITSUP as Azure portal wobbles

Mattknz1

SSDD

Fortunately xboxlive was unaffected, so we were about as productive today as any other.

Which scientist should be on the new £50 note? El Reg weighs in – and you should vote, too

Mattknz1

Notey McNoteface

Gets my vote

Dead retailer's 'customer data' turns up on seized kit, unencrypted and very much for sale

Mattknz1

secure disposal.

At the request of a customer I employed secure disposal services of a prominent company here in NZ, paying quite a pretty price. Shipped off a mid-size SAN and promptly received a call asking if they could 'recycle' and not dispose of said device.

I received a 'certificate of disposal' however i'm moderately sure they double charged this device into the hands of a 3rd party.

Baddies just need one email account with clout to unleash phishing hell

Mattknz1
Pint

Re: In my experience...

From my experience most phishing attacks happen afer 7pm on a Friday, when everyone is out drinking and not paying proper attention to what links they're tapping on their phones :-)

Airbus CIO: We dumped Microsoft Office not over cost but because Google G Suite looks sweet

Mattknz1

CAD CAM

AutoCAD can datalink and reference Excel spreadsheets. A rather handy feature, last I was working on it this was not possible with anything other than Office, may have changed since?

New battery boffinry could 'triple range' of electric vehicles

Mattknz1

We've forgotten where we came from.

I fly radio control planes, I started out with Sanyo SCR600 cells, that lasted maybe 4minutes, and now in the same airframe I have managed to stay aloft 42mins using lipo batteries, with 4x the capacity, 1.5x the voltage and 2/3 the weight.

The early lipo cells could barely pump out 10A, anyone remember 2s3p batteries? And now I can draw nearly 50amps from a pack the same physical size, and charge it in half the time.

Battery performance has greatly improved, we are just looking at the wrong measure of improvement.

Facebook confesses: Facebook is bad for you

Mattknz1

facepage.

Quite the opposite. I'm a miserable old git already and don't even have a Facebook, but seeing the misery it causes others brings joy to my black heart.

BYOD might be a hipster honeypot but it's rarely worth the extra hassle

Mattknz1

Re: Never saw the Attraction

The closest my work supplied phone has made it to my house is the glove box of my car, and the only time my personal phone number has ever been given to an employer was on a job application.

Giving staff a 'free' work phone is nothing more than a cheap bribe to make you available out of hours.

One of my colleagues has never unplugged his phone from the charger as soon as he found out our employer could ping his location. They may as well given him a desk phone.

2017: The FBI alerts parents to dangers of Internet of Sh*t toys

Mattknz1

Lets get Social

Considering most parents don't filter what they knowingly post about their kids on line, are they really going to give their fantastic new purchase a 2nd thought?

I pity the poor bastards, who in 10-15 years have their entire life scrapbooked online.

Got a Windows Phone 8 mobe? It's now officially obsolete. Here's why...

Mattknz1

Re: Could've been something...

Choosing a mobile phone is like choosing a wife. You don't marry the one you love, you marry the one you tolerate the most.

She might not be the prettiest or the smartest in the head, but she's not going to tell me "sorry I can't do that while i'm locked"

Mattknz1

Could've been something...

Shame!

I bought a Lumia 800 back when they first released, tired of iPhone and Android and wanting something different. I remember it was the first to have a proper turn by turn satnav (nokia maps), google drive followed pretty closely. I have to say i loved the simplicity of it. Clean, fast and just worked well as a communication device.

Since then i've swapped between iPhone, Android and Windows a few times, I'm tired of iphone, it feels like a kids bikes with too many tassels, bells and whistles bolted on as an after thought. Not to mention the speaker and bluetooth is rubbish, and thumbprint scanner is useless in my line of work.

As for the android, I'm tired of google nagging me to review and share photos of every building I enter. The news feed is nice, and there's a million pointless apps for it, but every update I find my privacy settings are all set to wide open. No i don't want the photos of my kids on the McDonalds playground posted in this review. Fk off.

I like my windows 10 phone. It actually works well as a phone, doesn't nag me, doesn't burn up the battery when it's supposedly idle, generally does what it's told and the UI is consistent and simple.

Or maybe i'm just getting old.

Microsoft nicks one more Apple idea: An ad-supported OS

Mattknz1

Re: See MS *does* love Linux

Idiocracy wasn't a comedy - it was a prophesy.