441 karma · joined January 16, 2019
Yeah, right. A few months back in 2021 I was asked how to "make an app on the phone". Not FOR a phone, ON a phone, the complete development only using a phone. WTF?
And no, it wasn't a 12 year old kid, it was a 21 year old guy with a Bachelor of science degree.
Yes, the font you use to communicate with others matters. It's like the tone of your voice and your body language in a personal conversation.
Fun fact: no paywall for EU users
Because it's interesting and "because we can". It's a challenge without any other motivation besides curiosity.
But lets say some ransomware outfit discovers farmers as their niche, because the security barrier is relatively low and it's a time sensitive business. Your crops are ready to harvest, but your equipment is not starting until you pay the ransom? What can you do then? Waiting and letting the crops rot is not an option, renting hardware from others can be difficult/expensive/impossible, so the most would pay the ransom. I haven't heard of attacks targeting farmers/farm equipment in particular, but it could be a real problem in the future.
It's not unlimited, but 20TB is more than enough for the most use cases.
It won't make anything more secure, but it can buy you some time and waste the attackers resources.
This is also exactly why I always check all the paperwork for "personal usage" of the devices and services provided by the company (email and stuff). If there is nothing about it, I send my mom a random cat picture from my work email (always outside of office hours, in other cases it could be a contract violation). Why? Because if it's not forbidden, you are implicitly allowed to and after at least one private message was sent by the account, it's legally like a private account.
If your employer snoops in the account, it's a massive privacy violation (Datenschutzgesetz and DSGVO/GDPR) and a strong case in employment law. Never needed it, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
I try to get on my BMX as often as possible after work. Either I'm completely concentrated on riding or there will be pain. After 30-60 minutes everything work related is gone.
Also, if you are not on-call, disable work related stuff on your phone (slack, work email, etc.).
One more thing which I consider helpful is using the last 5-15 minutes in the office to write down ideas or problems related to work which I can pick up the next day.
From what I've heard it's way easier to get a gun permit in Switzerland than here in Germany and the Swiss are allowed to have guns you can't even dream of here (I'm talking about stuff like the semi auto H&K MP5, AR-15/AK derivates, etc.).
It's not so uncommon to have a assault rifle from the military or other guns at home in Switzerland and their numbers are way lower than in the US [0]. It's not about having guns, it's about proper training and not giving weapons to psychologically unstable people.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
But maybe the next project will be outside of the medical field.
AI (in Samuel L. Jackson's voice): "Legacy code motherf****r"
This could be awesome.
> VW will need to pay the bulk of the penalty, €502 million, despite being granted a 45 percent reduction for having cooperated with the investigators.
WTF? 45% reduction for cooperation? Which cooperation? They even tried to bullshit their way out during the investigation.
> BMW is fined the remaining €373 million.
Seems ok. Or not? Didn't they mention a third company?
> Daimler got total immunity as it was the first participant in the cartel to denounce its existence.
1. Get into a illegal cartel 2. Make a lot of profit by breaking the law 3. Snitch, make your competitors pay millions and keep your illegally acquired money
It's a joke and it will not get better anytime soon. BMW, Daimler and VW have too much influence on the german politics to be penalized in a substantial way. Too many jobs are dependent on them, not only directly in their offices, service stations and factories, but also the whole supplier market.
Bundesnetzagentur (the regulatory agency for telecommunication, electricity, gas, etc.) has very strict rules which are enforced and the fines can be very expensive, so nobody tries to find a loophole in the system.
How strict are they? Oh boy, they can be worse then your worst nightmare. About 10-15 years ago, a few friends noticed stuff going missing from the shed (it was beer, so it was very serious). They ordered and installed a cheap wireless camera from china and started recording. A few days later they got a letter from Bundesnetzagentur stating they use a restricted frequency and have to stop immediately or they will be fined X000€ (don't remember the exact amount, but it was four figures so a lot of money for students. Also, pretty high for a first offense). Yes, it was the camera which was using some weird frequency band. But how did the Bundesnetzagentur found them? They were wardriving around the city and checking for unusual signals. Literally a few guys in a van filled with RF equipment driving through the city and looking for suspicious stuff [0].
They probably were driving their laps and checking security, since we have a few high profile institutions here, but got a few drunken university guys with a cheap webcam from the internet.
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesnetzagentur#/media/Datei...
Yeah, the Austrians are saying that, but here in Germany we say the same about them.
In both cases they have a legal requirement to answer in a few weeks (it's regulated in the GDPR itself).
A different option is to complain directly to your countries data protection office, this puts more pressure on the company, but it's mostly slower.
The European Union and the European Commission have a lot of resources about this topic:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
The whole situation we are in right now is a arms race between the ad industry and users. Ads are going more and more sophisticated and intrusive (fingerprinting, tracking, autoplay for video/sound, etc.) which causes the ad blockers to get more complex and block the new techniques from the ad makers. This leads to even more shitty tech in ads and so on.
I really don't mind to have some (non intrusive) ad banners on a website if they just show me some stuff I could buy. But no, they can't play nice and try to change my position from potential customer to a product which they can sell and this is not ok.
The only defense right now are ad blockers and GDPR complaints. You see some sketchy tracking stuff? Send the website owner a GDPR complaint. Bind their workforce to respond to the complaints more and more (they are obligated to answer, even if your claim is BS) and after countless hours and $$$ they maybe get the idea. I've done it with a few websites and the ad load and amount of trackers decreased. Was it legal? Yes. Was it nice? Nope. Will I do it again? Oh yeah, I will do it until these people start to be good citizens on the network and stop fucking around with my data.
I wouldn't use it outside of German speaking regions and that's why I still have a ${lastname}${firstname}@gmail.com address.
As Covid-19 hit last year, it was really a great place for having remote meetings. Just set it up in the garden, get a coffee and have a nice day enjoying the sun (and the envy of other people in the call).
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-s...
Most banks have a paragraph in their contracts/ToS forbidding sharing the account with third parties, but they are rarely enforcing it. Still, they could close the account due to contract/ToS violation.