icecap12

As someone who just got done putting a bullet in some long-used instances, I both appreciated and needed this laugh. Thanks!

I use a tool called TheGodFather

These guys always have the best write-ups. I aspire to write postmortems like they do. In fact, maybe my next context for a ChatGPT query will be “you are a member of of CloudFlare’s public relations team…”

All joking aside, it occurred to me that the vast majority of internet and even tech users know very little about DNS. For the longest time, I was in the same boat. After having been in a role where it was necessary to understand the record types and deploy DNS configs, I’m quite thankful I learned. Just remember…it’s always DNS.

edit: typo

> And so, the question: why are there so few of them? Here is just a smattering of the official actions that don’t exist[...]

This part of the article half triggered me and half made me laugh. I was recently on a GitHub webinar to listen to the pitch for CoPilot, but of course they also talked about Actions and GHAS. Anyway, during the overview of Actions, the presenters made a comment about how Actions was "backed by the community." It felt to me like a glaring admission that the product isn't mature. But in true Microsoft fashion, they charge you like it is.

First significant vuln for KeePass in awhile. Still a better threat model than cloud.

The situation you've described has never happened. Out of all the options, it is considered the safest. People forget that the dollar is backed by the ultimate currency - military force.

There are multiple places. For sure other banks. JPM and other “too-big-to-fail” banks received billions of dollars in deposit inflows over the last few days[0].

But for me personally, I’ve been moving cash to US Treasury bonds, and based on recent bond prices, so have others. Short term treasuries were nearing a 5.1% yield as of early last week, and now are below 5% due to demand.

Last fall, I moved cash to HYSA accounts for a higher yield, because my bank was still paying 0.05% interest, presumably because they were loaded with low-yield treasuries and mortgage-backed securities.

In general, a bank is not a great place to park tons of money, at least that’s what I’ve learned. I’m tired of getting screwed by them. What the media calls “faith in the banking system” I call getting bent over. Of course there are valid uses for banks, especially in business. But I’m done parking large amounts of cash there.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/jpmorgan-other-big-...

Over the last 10 years we've had to replace our furnace twice, and happen to have both gas and a heat pump (a hybrid system). Each time, we had a different contractor do the installation...but both guys told us that they like to run gas below like 30 degrees. The second guy said he runs gas exclusively - no heat pump installed in his home. I asked what the primary differences were in terms of efficiency, and both claimed that temperature at the register is significantly hotter, producing more heat with less effort and therefore more efficiency.

I haven't done any scientific testing; the only data I have to measure the difference is my energy bill (which of course is subject to rate changes). But I have indeed observed that with gas, our bill is lower during the very cold months, and I'm able to see this because I have years of data on what we spend each month on energy.

Not everyone is using Azure and a full M365 implementation though.

I know the guys at the AISAC - great resource for the cyber folks working in the Aviation industry.

In fact, Canon is going after third party lens manufacturers that are blatantly violating its patent [0].

One of the problems Canon has faced recently is a flooding of the market with super cheap lenses (we're talking 50-200 dollars for total junk). The people that are buying them are justifiably upset when the photos are crap because they incorrectly think its a camera problem. Hey, a lens is a lens, right?

Anyhow, there's wide speculation that Canon will license to the quality quality third-party makers at some point [1][2].

[0] https://petapixel.com/2022/09/06/canon-confirms-its-going-af... [1] https://www.canonrumors.com/forum/threads/sigma-to-make-a-ma... [2] https://www.canonrumors.com/forum/threads/the-state-of-third...

What's scary is that I recognize one of the games being played by the users in the picture - Silpheed.

You’re absolutely right, I’m done preordering games. I didn’t do it much anyway, but nowadays it’s just not worth it. The most recent and egregious example that comes to my mind was the latest Battlefield. My goodness was that a turd, and lots of people felt rightfully burned after preordering that game and essentially getting a totally unfinished product.

5 years of software updates - that's a lol. My wife has had 3 different generations of Pixel phones fail (hardware failure, not dropped or broken by the user).

She keeps going back to them though because the camera smokes the competition (according to her).

GE sold their appliance division in 2016[1].

[1]https://www.ge.com/news/reports/done-deal-ge-sells-its-appli...

This is a great article. Thanks for the link.

I have a relative (now in his 60's) who is a globally renowned network engineer from Silicon Valley. He has many patents, worked on just about every protocol known out there, etc. Truly one of the people who made the internet what it is today. From what I can see, he was always equally interested in the money and changing the world. But now, he's in the luxurious position of being able to "work for free" if its a project that he believes will change the world for the better. Both factors have always mattered for him.

Same, last tweet from me was in December and I check Twitter daily. My last self-composed tweet is well over 2 years ago.

I second the notion of a minimum 2 week vacation. Over the years I’ve found that 7 days is simply not enough to slip out of the work mindset. I noticed that after 8-10 days I was more relaxed, and after 14 I had basically all but forgotten work. As others have mentioned, if it continues after that, you might need to consider other options.

I was thinking the same. What we have here is a security nightmare. You have executable code on globally unique URLs with no protective mechanisms in front of it except for the ability to do IAM. Yikes.

In my experience, this most frequently occurs if the company does business with the government (fed, state, or local). In such cases, the "charade" is required by Federal or State law. I agree its absolutely ridiculous, but large companies can and are in fact frequently audited on these and other hiring practice requirements (such as interview notes, etc.).

At my $BIGCORP, if you want to give somebody a band promotion (meaning, up to the next major band), the job must be posted both internally and externally and you must interview any candidates who appear to meet the requirements. It's a pain in the ass, especially when you clearly have someone in mind. There are always people both internal and external looking at our jobs site because we're a well known Fortune 50; you're bound to get applicants to the higher level roles. It just creates extra work and wastes the time of all involved...but alas, regulation.

eta: could also be a requirement of publicly traded companies, though I'm far less sure on this.

The 'hup' for me will always be associated with Quake, as I played that for a long time.

When I was a youngster in the early 90s, a grade school classmate of mine had a huge computer network at home. His dad worked for the (local) Washington, DC NBC affiliate as one of their system engineers. Their house was fully networked mecca of multiple Unix, Windows, and Apple machines on different floors.

Back then most homes didn't have a computer, and if they did, it was just one. Internet connections were achieved with dial-up modems to the local BBS or service provider. Almost nobody my age was playing computer games, only people working in industry. Even fewer had a network, since online play didn't exist for most games (tho there were exceptions, like Netrek...miss that game too)

I originally learned the command line by using it to start computer games. This guy had basically ALL of the major gaming titles through about 1997, at which point I bought my own computer. Many of the other shooters back then were horror-themed knockoffs of Doom and Quake (like Hexen, Heretic, etc.), though all had their nuances. What I think of as the golden age of FPS games happened shortly after, in 98, with the release of Half-Life and Unreal.

That early experience was how I got into computing at a time when most kids had no real exposure to computers. Still miss those times.

Glad someone mentioned GH Actions. Recent SaaS issues aside, one of the value-props to me with GH Actions is that I can leverage it in a multi-cloud environment if I'm using GitHub for SCM, which my organization is. There are some other benefits I specifically care about that others might not as well.

Infra is still largely a separate concern (as in, it doesn't matter what I use, I have options). I suppose I need to look into Dagger more to understand the value-prop.

I would rather have a team of all-FTEs than a mix. But the company wants more contractors because when cost-pressures arise, they can dump them without any thought. In fact this happened during COVID, hundreds of contractors at my firm were let go in one fell-swoop. Some FTEs were also cut, but it was like a 4-1 margin of contractors to FTEs, maybe more.

Well, I’m not a preacher, and LinkedIn is brutal. Regarding providing the avenues to full time, that’s sort of the plan. I hope to convert them - if they want to. Some people enjoy being contractors I’ve found, others are just there looking for the next full time gig.

Your comment REALLY resonates with me. When I was fresh out of school, I joined an enterprise software team as a junior engineer. The team was mostly FTEs, but there were 2 or 3 contractors as well - one of whom was extremely talented. It was the talented one that everybody ganged up on. He was ridiculed (it was supposed to be in good fun but I think it went too far), and he was abused and given all the hard problems to solve. Here's the thing - this guy made up for all the rest of those shitty FTEs. He fixed all their problems, he did all the real work, developed the best features, and fixed all the hard bugs. The lead engineer was an absolute joke (I once caught him making changes to a live production database). The roles were all reversed.

Well, it didn't sit well with me then, and I became friends with that guy and the other contractors. We're still friends to this day. I'd say he got the last laugh because he started his own company and is doing well. But I promised myself that I would never treat any contractor like that ever. I'm a Director now, with a team of my own. Similarly, it has a few contractors, and every single one of those guys is treated like an FTE, with regular 1x1s, objectives, and personal development. As a leader, I invest the time in them like they're my own, because they are people too - regardless of the SSO number or the ".consultant" in their email address.

I'm not knowledgeable on the topic of RPA, but it has always felt to me like RPA was nothing more than a trendy scam. I suppose there must be some value to it under the right circumstances, but how it went down at my last company influenced my pessimistic view.

Anyway circa 2016-2017 at this $BIGCORP, somebody got excited about RPA, created a lot of buzz with the executive team, and secured funding to build an entire RPA department.

Everyone was was excited! People were speaking at conferences after 6 months of scripting, grand claims of thousands of hours of work being eliminated were made, and so on. 2 years later, the entire department was gone. I never met anyone there who actually had work eliminated by the so-called RPA scripts...so it just felt like a big joke to me.

I imagine there are people who have had good experiences, but I've not really heard of them. I'd be interested to hear of legitimate benefits in this space.

The workaround is already in use for ad hosting - serve all the content from one domain (or an IP) with services natted behind that, so if you block it, nothing works.

Every time someone posts about a WAF bypass on HN, someone like you comes along and talks about how WAFs are nothing but security theatre. Simply not true. Are they perfect? Absolutely not. I'll simply repost one of my previous comments on this topic:

  You deploy a WAF as part of a defense in depth strategy, with one of the best use-cases being situations where you have legacy web systems that nobody is maintaining. Additionally, you can get TLS upscaling, easy HTTP rewrite capabilities, DDoS protection, and other granular controls with some SaaS offerings. So while it's true that a WAF won't stop a determined attacker, there are certainly benefits to operating them, particularly in large enterprise environments.

I agree. We're currently affiliated with Sam's Club (we switch back and forth to maximize the free membership deals). I feel like we never get out of Sam's Club or Costco for less than $100, regardless of what we went for originally.