Root Access

That Brazilian Guy

12:00 AM

sybbs?

qasdfdsaq

o_0

That Brazilian Guy

Uryyb dnfqsqfnd!

Bob

12:27 AM

did someone dvorak your keyboard?

Ben N

45

Q: Keys all switched on keyboard

My friend/enemy switched the keys on my keyboard as an April fool's joke. When I press Y, Z appears on the screen. Some keys work like b, x, g, i, d, and a few more. Also, when I press ctrl, it returns Enter. Even the function keys are switched!! I called a technician and even he wasn't able to...

qasdfdsaq

6 cores of Core i7 at 4Ghz is faaaaast

Zoom zoom wheeeeeeee

Michael Frank

@BenN I had a call once where the user was complaining because Windows defaults to QWERTY at the log in screen, but he used a DVORAK keyboard and layout. So it made it very hard for him to log in when the network decided he needed to change his password.

Ben N

I'm pretty sure you can finagle the Registry to fix that

Something in HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout is likely responsible for the keyboard layout on the Welcome screen

Michael Frank

Yea, that was the eventual fix IIRC.

qasdfdsaq

12:37 AM

Hah so on Online.net you can tip support personnel anything from €1 to €50 when you close a ticket

Aibobot

lol

That Brazilian Guy

@Bob Ab, va snpg, V'z whfg whfg zrffvat nebhaq jvgu ebg13. Lrf, V'z fvyyl.

Aibobot

I didn't know that

@ThatBrazilianGuy catlike typing detected

That Brazilian Guy

Who would've thought rot13 sounds just like ~~summoning Cthulhu~~ cat typing.

Journeyman Geek

Same thing. Thankfully there's no longer any Akkadian keyboards

Bob

1:33 AM

For you, @BenN: serverfault.com/questions/810046/…

Ben N

Heh, I saw, thanks :)

David Cole - Grammar Police

2:15 AM

Can someone migrate this to AskUbuntu please?

Journeyman Geek

Er. No

It's on topic here

David Cole - Grammar Police

Really? O_o

Journeyman Geek

Yup

David Cole - Grammar Police

Ya learn somethin new everyday

Journeyman Geek

Ubuntu running on a computer is totally on topic here. Au and UL and maybe even sf have overlapping scopes but that's on topic. If op or an au mod wants it moved I'd think about it.

David Cole - Grammar Police

2:21 AM

Hm okay, I would think that a user would get better support for Ubuntu on AskUbuntu

@JourneymanGeek Any idea why Windows wouldn't find updates?

Journeyman Geek

Eh. Lots of possible reasons. Which version?

David Cole - Grammar Police

8.1 @JourneymanGeek

Journeyman Geek

Typically my catch-all solution is to hit it with wsus offline updates.

Bit of a big download but you only need to do it once

David Cole - Grammar Police

2:38 AM

kk

Rahul2001

4:43 AM

Shit. Github sponsors this competition.

Are you kidding me?

Dang

I just got some github cheat sheets and a Markdown guide from Github Education, and I LOVE IT

bwDraco

Just installed LED bulbs (the soft white variety) in my bedroom.

First time I've used LED bulbs. These are Sylvania bulbs, which should be pretty good, but they don't have a heatsink or convection cooling cutouts like the Cree ones.

8.5W bulbs, replacing 60W incandescent bulbs or 13W CFLs.

Your thoughts on LED bulbs?

They're still very expensive even in the value packs ours came in.

Rahul2001

LED bulbs are pretty cheap here

bwDraco

4:58 AM

LEDs have the advantage of lower power consumption than even CFLs and natural color output (CFLs tend to have a color cast) but are still very expensive, at least here in the US. Cheapest you'll find from a name brand is about $5 a pop.

Good CFLs cost $2 each.

Well, this is $4 each:

amazon.com/Sylvania-0046185-8-5-Watt-Equivalent-Non-Dimmable/dp/…

(Pack of 8.)

Still very pricy, but lower operating cost makes up for it.

At the ~$0.19/kWh rate New Yorkers pay, over the 11,000-hour service life of these bulbs, that's ~$9.40 saved per bulb compared to 13W CFLs.

...and well over $100 saved over 60W incandescent bulbs.

Journeyman Geek

5:22 AM

@bwDraco we found one for one replacements for our circular fluorescent lights. They're pretty darned awesome

Journeyman Geek

6:23 AM

eh. Today is preeeeeeeeety good

I'm at the other office

Bob

@JourneymanGeek o.O

Journeyman Geek

Imaging boxen. Slightly less boring.

Amusingly I can see our competition from here

Journeyman Geek

7:02 AM

hackaday.com/2016/10/19/…

@qasdfdsaq @allquicatic ^

djsmiley2k

yawwwwwn

Journeyman Geek

7:29 AM

Oo

Journeyman Geek

7:47 AM

Whoot. Hardware upgrade...

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Yea I was going to suggest that but it's still in preview and hard to get access to an instance. Ask @HackToHell :P

Burgi

morning

DavidPostill

morning

HackToHell

8:05 AM

dayum

I still don't have access to them :'(

Journeyman Geek

8:41 AM

There's a box of random pulled 2gb ddr3 sticks here.

Journeyman Geek

9:12 AM

And... I'm ofg

Ofg

Autocucumbered

what is ofg?

Off

qasdfdsaq

9:28 AM

@JourneymanGeek hasn't game streaming been around for years already?

Journeyman Geek

@qasdfdsaq a little like flying cars....

Lots of people try. No one's quite got it yet

qasdfdsaq

The usual latency constraints aside, it might work for casual gamers but really isn't cost effective for enthusiasts. Plus existing game streaming platforms are priced at like $15 a month flat rate or something

Journeyman Geek

Eh. I vaguely remember both of you talking about doing what he did

qasdfdsaq

Mind you I'm finding remote desktop with 45ms latency to be approaching imperceptible latency when there's a powerful machine at the other side

@JourneymanGeek I did rent GPU cloud boxes once, but that was for compute and not gaming.

Considering when I get stuck into a game I can easily spend >2000 hours in it, I'm not quite casual enough to be the target audience :-P

Latency is by far the biggest challenge still. You need specialist encoders, formats, and transports to make remote gaming feasible. Most video streaming platforms are optimised for bandwidth efficiency not latency

Even HP's "low latency" remote CAD platform has like 500ms of latency

The best I've seen so far is probably steam in home streaming

Ideally we'd want the video encoding to be done by hardware somewhere in the rendering pipeline of the game itself

allquicatic

10:14 AM

@JourneymanGeek too expensive

allquicatic

10:26 AM

@qasdfdsaq "Existing game streaming platforms" only seem to support an extremely limited number of uninteresting titles

Nothing I actually play

Bob

10:39 AM

@qasdfdsaq Except RDP optimises for very low framerates (more accurately, partial screen draws). Even watching video sucks, let alone gaming.

qasdfdsaq

@allquicatic True, but they have the technology in place

Bob

Hm. Maybe it's gotten better in the years since I tried.

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Which version of RDP are you talking about?

Bob

@qasdfdsaq Would've been whatever 7 came with

qasdfdsaq

(Remember I upgraded to W8 solely for the improved RDP capabilities - there was a huuge improvement)

@Bob Yeah W8 made it a lot better - QoS, UDP, lossy compression, etc.

Bob

10:40 AM

@qasdfdsaq I'd be surprised if they optimised much for full-screen framerate, though.

I'll test :P

qasdfdsaq

Also it'll redirect compressed video streams to be decoded on the client machine if you use Windows media player

allquicatic

teamviewer is still better than RDP even when RDPing between Windows 10 hosts, in my testing, but it's closer now than it's been before

Bob

Hm... Azure VM takes about 10 mins to start, so I'll test when that's up.

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Well you can RDP to my VM if you want

Then again, that's 300ms RTT in Europe >_>

Bob

@allquicatic Yea. The advantage of RDP is you can be reasonably sure there's no severe security vuln they're trying to cover up.

@qasdfdsaq Azure's the only thing I have within reasonable latency :P

qasdfdsaq

10:41 AM

Honestly, I think there's a lot of smart redirection and client side compositing going on now. There were no documented improvements in W10, but it "feels" a lot faster than W8 even

Bob

@qasdfdsaq Huh, that's new.

allquicatic

@qasdfdsaq agreed

Bob

@qasdfdsaq There is, yea, but client-side compositing does nothing for GPU-rendered games

qasdfdsaq

Things like panning a full-screen Google Maps window, you can't even tell you're doing it remotely, whereas with Windows 7 RDP it'd manage like 2fps

Bob

It's great for other programs, to be sure.

@qasdfdsaq I'm about to test :P

qasdfdsaq

10:43 AM

@Bob Me too!

Bob

> Unknown

Hm. Either the VM is starting or it's dead.

qasdfdsaq

Gona try watching Youtube fullscreen. I know last time on a 80Mbps connection, watching Youtube 4K was still not quite possible

Oh wow, this is... impressive

Err yeah, even I'm impressed now. Watching a 1080p KSP video on Youtube, fullscreen, it's using 13Mbps and smooth as heck, I can't tell it's being streamed

Dunno what the latency is like, but framerate is 30fps

I remember when Windows 7 would use 50Mbps+ to watch a windows Youtube video (luckily I was on gigabit LAN at work)

There's a small amount of mouse lag if I drag the window around while the video's playing, but yeah, it's decent.

I think it's borderline OK for slow paced gaming now, and I didn't really expect RDP to do that

allquicatic

Windows 10 introduced H264 compression to RDP

Bob

@qasdfdsaq oh yea I was supposed ot test -_-

I got sidetracked.

qasdfdsaq

@allquicatic Oh

That explains quite a bit

Bob

10:53 AM

fail ms blog blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/microsoft_azure_guide/2014/12/13/…

qasdfdsaq

I'm surprised I hadn't heard about that yet... they made a big fuss about the RDP improvements in W8 (jpeg progressive I think, and UDP)

djsmiley2k

sorry

ping is blocked for security reasons?

Bob

> Average = 15.88ms

qasdfdsaq

@Bob lol

@djsmiley2k lol

@Bob You got your VM up then I take it?

Bob

blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mast/2014/06/22/…

djsmiley2k

10:54 AM

:D

Bob

@qasdfdsaq ya

@qasdfdsaq I had a win10 test VM, just had to start it

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Reminds me of one particular guy on the Citrix forums

DavidPostill

30

Q: Security risk of PING?

I have been told that PING presents a security risk, and it's a good idea to disable/block it on production web servers. Some research tells me that there are indeed security risks. Is it common practice to disable/block PING on publicly visible servers? And does this apply to other members of...

network attacks icmp

qasdfdsaq

He's been posting useless nonesense responses to just every thread for five years, that clearly show he hasn't even thought about the problem.

DavidPostill

@djsmiley2k ^^^

Bob

10:55 AM

oh, to be clear: the reason that blog post is a fail is because the firewall blocking ICMP is part of the Azure infra, not inside the VM

qasdfdsaq

I know :-P

Bob

maybe it was correct in late 2014... idk

qasdfdsaq

Someone who's clearly not tried it or totally misunderstood the actual problem.

Bob

@qasdfdsaq are you sure you aren't just describing some 80% of MS Answers "staff"?

qasdfdsaq

@Bob This is a member of the public onthe Citrix forums though, and his one name is on just about every thread I read, always derailing it...

Bob

10:56 AM

@qasdfdsaq I'm actually not sure, cause Azure RM (introduced 2015?) is a lot more restrictive than "classic"

Rahul2001

@BenN Seriously? Linky?

qasdfdsaq

Remind me to respond to his response to a 6-year-old-thread claiming shrinking partitions is impossible

Bob

> mostly harmless

qasdfdsaq

tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2979

Bob

huh, testing video now and it actually works pretty well o.O

and by "pretty well" I mean "barely above a slideshow"

and OW audio quality is shit when playing fullscreen at 1080p

better when the video is smaller...

allquicatic

11:00 AM

runSW.exe, Realtek digital signature

203,488 handles

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Well I have no idea about audio, mine's been on mute this whole time

allquicatic

more than 10 times the second most in my process list

Bob

yea it's far better than win7 was, but it's still going to be a great big !!no for gaming

at least on ADSL

Rahul2001

So the school we went to asked us to install a security certificate.

It broke CPanel with https

Bob

@qasdfdsaq sounds like 64kbps MP3

worse, even

Rahul2001

11:01 AM

And DuckDuckGo didn't work either

Bob

sounds like 20kbps HE-AACv2

Rahul2001

Isn't it illegal to force someone to install a security cert?

Bob

@Rahul2001 uh, no?

Rahul2001

I remember reading something about it on infosec.se

djsmiley2k

force them?

with hammers?

Bob

11:02 AM

it's a perfectly normal requirement for access to corp/school networks

qasdfdsaq

> Note that there are 'server hardening' manuals out there who advice to block ICMP. They are wrong (or at least not detailed enough.). They fall in the same category as wireless 'security' via MAC filtering or hiding the SSID.

djsmiley2k

lol @Rahul2001 I think you're confused.

Bob

you don't have a right to access the network

Rahul2001

@djsmiley2k Cannot use it otherwise

Agh yeah

just checked

qasdfdsaq

15

A: What are reasons to disallow ICMP on my server?

ICMP consists of a large collection of commands. Disallowing all of those will break your network in strange ways. ICMP allows things like "traceroute" and "ping" (ICMP echo request) to work. Thus that part is quite useful for normal diagnostics. It also is used for feedback when you run a DNS s...

Funny enough our SU answer is better than the one on security.SE

Rahul2001

11:03 AM

@qasdfdsaq What's so funny about that?

The SU community is awesome!

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Where it gets dodgy is when you're forced to permit remote wipe capability to access your email account

@Bob Huh are you using an up to date RDP client?

Back on Windows 7 it was sufficiently OK to listen to Spotify over, though it would sometimes oddly drop the bitrate to mobile phone call standards

djsmiley2k

@Rahul2001 in which case, don't use it

Bob

@qasdfdsaq yea it's just limited bandwidth

sounds fine when the video isn't fullscreen

I'm running Win10 1607 on both ends

Rahul2001

@djsmiley2k The event was in a basement, so 4G wasn't working

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Ah

Rahul2001

11:07 AM

They also blocked FTP :(

qasdfdsaq

Yeah I'm on a 200Mb "fibre" connection atm

Bob

@qasdfdsaq Yea. And phones. MDM sucks.

qasdfdsaq

Shared and unstable, but 200Mbps nonetheless

Tomorrow I'll get to try it on a 2Mbps traffic shaped pile of poop connection!

Bob

@qasdfdsaq to be fair, it's doing better than Win7 did on 100Mbps LAN

very very slightly better

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Yeah, exactly

Thee fact it makes possible with 5Mbps what Windows 7 could barely do with 100Mbps is the main point

Bob

11:10 AM

@qasdfdsaq files.vulpin.com/s/etjramhuCHedSqB, RDP folder

yes, I have a folder named qasdfdsaq on my owncloud server :P

qasdfdsaq

Ah, music video, that's what I should have used

What screen recorder did you use?

Bob

@qasdfdsaq Snagit

just what I had available

qasdfdsaq

Cool

I need one to record my expreience :-P

djsmiley2k

@Rahul2001 'the event?'

Rahul2001

@djsmiley2k Hackathon

Bob

11:11 AM

@qasdfdsaq ah. if you need a free one...

djsmiley2k

and they made you installa ssl cert?

i'd be very suspecious

Rahul2001

yeah

Bob

@djsmiley2k it's fairly typical of restrictive networks

qasdfdsaq

@djsmiley2k Many corporations do

djsmiley2k

...

guys

Bob

11:12 AM

just don't visit anything private, and delete the cert after

qasdfdsaq

Every university I've been to have their own CA and you install their certs to do use it

djsmiley2k

did you miss the bit where he's in a basement

Bob

or install the cert on a VM

djsmiley2k

:D

Bob

or just manually accept sites you want to allow them to intercept

@qasdfdsaq heh, my uni didn't <3 that internet connection though

Rahul2001

11:12 AM

@Bob They possible got my webmail and cpanel password, since I was forced to use them over http

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Well UK may be different

djsmiley2k

i didn't board at uni

private internets ftw

Bob

@Rahul2001 protip: set up an HTTPS proxy somewhere

even if they intercept, you can still tunnel another layer through

Rahul2001

@Bob Will do :)

qasdfdsaq

But now that you mention it, I don't think there's anything preventing them from forging certs for other sites

Rahul2001

11:13 AM

I need a free ssl cert though

qasdfdsaq

Is there a "Valid only for xyz.com" value that can be put on a CA?

Bob

@qasdfdsaq not that I know of :\

qasdfdsaq

So it can't be used to sign certs for domains outside xyz.com for example...

Hmm

Rahul2001

@qasdfdsaq NO

qasdfdsaq

That seems like a huge omission...

Rahul2001

11:14 AM

And they expected us to do all this work, didn't even give ftp

Bob

@qasdfdsaq what you should do instead is not install the CA, and just add (temporary) exceptions for individual server certs as they come up

djsmiley2k

you called it work

it sounds dodgy as hell XD

qasdfdsaq

@Bob Erf, there's hundreds, and how would you know every server cert was genuine?

Bob

@qasdfdsaq the idea of these intercepting firewalls is that none of the server certs are genuine :P

and if there's hundreds then the "valid for * only" thing is gonna be hard to verify anyway :\

qasdfdsaq

Well we never used any intercepting firewalls, at least not SSL intercepting ones

Bob

11:16 AM

@qasdfdsaq oh. I thought that's what this was about.

Rahul2001

@djsmiley2k It was organized poorly

This chat room was blocked, incidently

Bob

if it's just for a specific server, that's a different story entirely -_-

qasdfdsaq

@Bob In the university's case it'd be easy, "valid for *.universty.ac.uk"

Journeyman Geek

@Rahul2001 they probably blocked chat.*

Bob

@qasdfdsaq yea, I thought we were talking about interception

qasdfdsaq

11:17 AM

@Bob I thought we were just talking about installing a standalone CA cert

Rahul2001

@JourneymanGeek Nah chat.stackoverflow was working

qasdfdsaq

>_> Maybe I should have read up further

Journeyman Geek

@Rahul2001 downvoted your sysadmin?

Rahul2001

@JourneymanGeek This wasn't my school

Bob

@qasdfdsaq I don't think Rahul actually specified :P

qasdfdsaq

11:18 AM

@Bob Rahul's fault then, not mine

Rahul2001

Well, I used to study there a few years ago, but never knew the sysadmin

I blame the system!!

@Bob cert.tsrs.org

woah my eyes

LOL IKR

11:20 AM

> Cyberoam - Securing You
https://www.cyberoam.com/
Hardware appliances offering content filtering, firewall, load balancing, anti-virus, anti-spam and caching features. Includes online demo.

smells like interception

Rahul2001

yeppyyepyep

djsmiley2k

it was a tarp

Rahul2001

Which is why I didn't want to install it

@djsmiley2k Had no option

djsmiley2k

run away

always an option

preferrably with the money

Rahul2001

At least I got github stickers :)

Github was a sponsor

qasdfdsaq

11:22 AM

OK interception is a different matter to independant CAs aentirely

djsmiley2k

I presume this was a cert to let them see his traffic

not a authenication cert

that'd be ok

qasdfdsaq

Just when I wanted to show Bob how smooth my RDP was my RDP's become unstable and unusable -_-

Rahul2001

@djsmiley2k not ok

qasdfdsaq

Maybe someone's trying to intercept my traffic :-P

Bob

lol

I'll be busy for a bit anyway

qasdfdsaq

11:32 AM

That reminds me, I need to get Hetzner to reroute my router

Bob

@qasdfdsaq I wanted to test on mobile but all networks are pretty shit tonight :\

Telstra, which costs something like $10/GB, is giving me 9/4

qasdfdsaq

Erf

Oh it's evening

Heh I just had breakfast

Oh yay another ESA mission failed

God dammit why is ESA so pathetic compared to NASA

Hennes

Budget?

djsmiley2k

50 years of difference?

qasdfdsaq

Huh I have to say Online.net's console and support are probably the best of the budget providers. Weird they seem to be mentioned so infrequently compared to OVH and Hetzner

djsmiley2k

11:38 AM

maybe they outsource it and it costs them lots when customers use it

qasdfdsaq

Have to say Hetzner seem pretty fast today. Submitted a ticket to have my IPs rerouted, less than five minutes later everything goes unreachable

I was worried it'd take like 3 hours or something