The DMZ

Now I only have Linux (an Ubuntu flavor) on my laptop, but the same problem appeared some time ago when I still had a dual boot setup (Linux and Windows). What happens is very strange, because it doesn't happen all the time, but lately it happens pretty often anyway (maybe even 50% of the times)....

I just posted that question on Superuser, just spamming it here in case you guys who know everything also happen to know what is going on

Journeyman Geek

11:32 AM

"No sign of life" ...

Can you get into the bios?

MechMK1

Also I have no respect from any government organization who's head recently posted a picture of himself standing on the burned corpses of children he murdered.

Just doesn't sit right with me.

Journeyman Geek

0_0

MechMK1

Welcome to the ATF. This is par for the course for them.

Journeyman Geek

Ah

MechMK1

Also, even in theory, the way the ATF and their firearms laws work is retarded.

Oh, forgive me, I meant "regulations"

"So I bought this arm brace" - "Yes."
"I asked you whether it was a regulated item, and you said no." - "Uh-huh..."
"So it's legal for me to own, right?" - "That makes sense to me"
"And then you changed the ruling, out of nowhere" - "Yeah, you're a felon now"

reed

11:56 AM

@JourneymanGeek yes, but I'm not sure if I can enter it when the problem occurs. To test it, I would have to try to enter the firmware setup (aka the "bios") every time I turn on the laptop. That's what I plan to do, actually

I read somewhere that it might be that the HDD isn't ready yet by the time the firmware is going to try to boot. Like a slow init by the HDD. By entering the setup and selecting the boot device from there, the HDD might have enough time to get "ready". But this might just be speculation. I'll try though

Journeyman Geek

naw

you should have an error

also turn off fastboot (you should have already)

reed

yes it's turned off

Conor Mancone

12:39 PM

@MechMK1 lol, that will keep me chuckling for a while

MechMK1

Glad to hear

I hope you've been well

Conor Mancone

Meh, life's still rough :shrug:

It will get better if I ever manage to buy a house or have another kid, but neither of those things are going to happen anytime soon.

In the meantime life continues at the non-negotiable pace of one second every second!

But, on lighter news, I found this story this morning and find it hilarious:

theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/6/8/22524307/…

reed

I'm always amazed at how stupid criminals can be, it's something common to all of them. I mean, every day in the news you hear about some criminals that were caught and the conversations they had on the PHONE

I believe it must be because criminals in general think they are smart and they will not get caught, or they know they will get caught but jail time doesn't scare them (in my country especially, it's hard to stay in jail for long unless you kill people)

nobody

I can't understand criminals obsession with "secure" phones. How long will it take them to realize that they are getting busted again and again because of these same secure phones?

@reed In some countries, it is hard to get into jail even if you kill people

MechMK1

@ConorMancone I mean hey, could be worse :D

A. Hersean

12:53 PM

I guess when you are smart enough, you don't deal in drugs. You make ransomware.

Or find a legal job, that's usually even safer.

nobody

Or sell phones to criminals and simultaneously sell access to the FBI

Wait, no, that can backfire really bad

MechMK1

@A.Hersean Idiots sell drugs. Smart people make others sell their drugs.

A. Hersean

To kids.

Always think of the children.

MechMK1

Depends on the drug

Kids take xanax usually

Coke is usually what adults use

Molly in the party scene

Heroin usually in poorer areas, PCP and meth as well

But coke is a lucrative business, because a LOT of rich people take it - like, loads of it

So you have steady demand from people who you know can pay

A. Hersean

I've a concept.

I'll deal overprived placebo.

It's legal

MechMK1

1:02 PM

I grow my own mushrooms

For personal use only

A. Hersean

I'll call it "homeopathy"

MechMK1

It's a legal gray area here

A. Hersean

It's a legal lobby here

powerfull one

MechMK1

But honestly, "young adult grows psychoactive mushrooms for personal consumption" isn't really the kind of big fish you want to catch

A. Hersean

Boiron

Boiron is a manufacturer of homeopathic products, headquartered in France and with an operating presence in 59 countries worldwide. It is the largest manufacturer of homeopathic products in the world. Homeopathy is a pseudoscience with no evidence of effectiveness for stated claims or plausible mechanism of medicinal effect. In 2004, it employed a workforce of 2,779 and had a turnover of € 313 million. It is currently a member of the CAC Small 90 stock index. In June 2005, the firm acquired Dolisos Laboratories, then the world's second largest manufacturer of homeopathic preparations.Products of...

MechMK1

1:04 PM

Homeopathy should be outlawed

A. Hersean

yeah

MechMK1

For a simple reason: It gives people the false impression that they are getting treatment, when in reality, they don't.

Such quacks like to label themselves "alternative medicine", the same way Dr. Pepper is an alternative to Pepsi.

But in reality, they're not an alternative - they're just the most expensive way of doing nothing.

reed

The safest crime you can commit, and maybe one day I might commit it too, is to have a cool idea that doesn't work, found a startup, and get money from investors

MechMK1

And when you listen to homeopaths, being like "Homeopathy is a very gentle treatment". Like yeah, no shit sherlock, of course it's gentle if it doesn't fucking do shit

A. Hersean

Time AI

MechMK1

1:06 PM

Fontus

Waterseer

I think better than "Cool idea that doesn't work" is "Stupid idea that appeals to a narrative"

Like Flatev

A. Hersean

My tritherapy recipe : 1 part homeopathy, 1 part magnetism, 1 part quantum detox.

2

"You will die happy"

(and soon)

(and in pain, most likely)

In Totally Unrelated News (registered trademark):

I've read a part of the specifications and design of our national mobile app for covid19 contact-tracking and other related political bullshit that do not work in practice. I shouldn't have. It's horrible. It's worse than I imagined. I did not think it was possible to design something so poorly, and my job is to analyze software, so I've seen may fair share of them.

MechMK1

@A.Hersean We pentested one of these apps here in Austria.

Conor Mancone

@MechMK1 You basically just sold me on being a coke dealer

MechMK1

"Releasing this application in its current state would not only constitute a high risk to the service provider, but also be extremely reckless in regards to the health data of the users."

@ConorMancone Don't become a coke dealer - have other people deal your coke.

Conor Mancone

@MechMK1 Considering that the manufacturing instructions are basically, "Take some substance and dilute it in water a billion times", it's literally the most benign thing ever. Almost anything would be completely benign after going through that process.

A. Hersean

1:13 PM

@MechMK1 lol

Conor Mancone

@A.Hersean You forgot about crystals

@MechMK1 lol, good point, I clearly wasn't listening

MechMK1

@ConorMancone Most likely, yes.

A. Hersean

@ConorMancone "quantum detox crystals" ?

MechMK1

@ConorMancone See, I am even more meta - I tell other people to deal their coke

Conor Mancone

"Quantum magneto-crystals"

MechMK1

1:15 PM

And just wait for my commission on their profit

@ConorMancone Blockchain-integrated quantum supermagnetic crystals

nobody

@MechMK1 Where is the AI?

A. Hersean

@ConorMancone But that would be a bitherapy, and everybody knows that only tritherapy works

Conor Mancone

Oh yeah, block chain, now we're talking

There was a homeopathic remedy out there where they forgot the "dilute" part of the recipe and actually caused adverse side effects....

A. Hersean

Wait no! I do not want to be controlled by the 5G in the blockchain

Conor Mancone

nytimes.com/2009/06/17/health/policy/17nasal.html

MechMK1

1:18 PM

@ConorMancone isn't according to homeopathy the dilution the most important part?

Also, if I remember correctly, homeopathy "works" because the water "remembers" what has been in it, and the more removed it is, the more strongly it "resonates"

So...am I actually taking in resonating urine and fecal matter too?

Since the water "remembers" those as well?

A. Hersean

Just don't bath in the sea.

reed

"Blockchain on my neck, look at my miner bitch, my rig has a kill switch, zero days in my pockets, I haxxor your web socket" (Future Trap Music)

anyway I have a quick question

Conor Mancone

@MechMK1 That, and also resonating birth control pills, methamphetamines, etc...

reed

If I force https in the browser, should I care about malicious DNS? I mean, suppose I don't trust the home router. The router gives the IP (ok) and DNS server address (could be malicious) to my computer. But should I care since I force HTTPS for everything important?

Linux updates are signed too, by the way

I'm asking this because I was thinking if I'd better set the DNS server address statically on my PC, instead of relying on whatever the router gives me. But I'm not sure it's worth doing it

MechMK1

@reed I mean, you can, but then that would also need to support DNSSEC and you would need to discard non-signed responses

Otherwise the router could just change the response on the fly

reed

1:27 PM

hmm, right

MechMK1

I'm not sure if Windows supports that

7

Q: Can you force your PC or device to use only DNSSec-verified lookup results?

Okay, I'll admit something first-off: I don't really understand some of the practical aspects of how DNSSec protections work very well.(Even after reading resources like this.) Well, I certainly understand why anti-spoofing protections for DNS name-to-address resolution lookups are very necessar...

man-in-the-middle dns spoofing dnssec dns-spoofing

Apparently not

reed

I might want to look up more info on DNSSEC then

There's also DNS over HTTPS, oh. I just read Firefox is planning to enable it

MechMK1

47

Q: Extracting work from people who are on PIPs but who we also cannot fire?

I work on a team of seven software developers where two of them have basically just given up. They got put on performance improvement plans, but instead of upping their game they are basically waiting to be fired. Normally this would be their problem, but we are one of those places where teams ar...

colleagues termination notice-period performance

"My fucking devs won't work in a horrible environment for shitty pay" - yeah gee, wonder why

A. Hersean

1:50 PM

The OP looks so brainwashed by his company, it's depressing.

MechMK1

2:11 PM

Who needs mental health when you can have money?

I take "What is a burnout?" for $500, please.

13

Q: Getting “Bye Bye Big Sur” error on installing Big Sur

My current macOS version is 10.14.6 (18G103). I have downloaded Big Sur from App Store but when I am trying to install, I am getting error "Bye Bye Big Sur" when I click on installer.

macos big-sur

Have you ever seen a more idiotic error message?

Conor Mancone

2:33 PM

Yeah, I saw that one about getting people on PIPs to work, and that was basically my same thought: this dude has missed the bigger picture! To be fair, it's easy to get "tunnel vision" in cases like this. "This thing is a disaster and these people have stopped working, and now it's more of a disaster!" When you're brain is basically stuck in panic mode, it's hard to stop and say, "Wait, why was this a disaster in the first place?"

Then the answer is obvious: "because my company is hella screwed up and has chosen the worst possible way to do this". The guys on the PIPs are the lucky ones...

I'm stretching a bit, but it's very similar to the last plane crash that finally grounded the Boeing 737 Max. I'm not at all blaming the pilot, but the accident was entirely preventable. The exact details here aren't necessarily 100% accurate, but it should be a fairly close summary:

Normally, you decrease the throttle back shortly after take off. In addition, if the plane hadn't been at full throttle, the faulty air control system would not have kicked in. However, it started causing problems before the pilot had reduced throttle. The pilot(s) spent quite a while wrestling with the faulty control system, and when they finally disabled it they introduced more problems that were exacerbated by the plane still being at full throttle.

If they had pulled back on the throttle at anytime the planes controls would have returned to normal and they would almost certainly have been able to return to the airport safely without incident. Unfortunately, the faulty control system distracted them from that very basic task, and they forgot about it during the rest of their fight with the plane.

Unfortunately, once you end up in this place where you feel like you're fighting for your life, your ability to step back and think, "Hmm... is there a different approach I can take?" goes right out the window, and as a result your plane hits the water 30 minutes later :( Or, less depressingly, you post on stack overflow about how these devs are killing you, when it's really your company that's doing it.

djsmiley2kStaysInside

indeed.

As I can't upvote, have a star.

djsmiley2kStaysInside

3:27 PM

hmmm, where will be the best place to ask about terraform :S

ThoriumBR

3:48 PM

@djsmiley2kStaysInside maybe serverfault?

djsmiley2kStaysInside

yeah, that's where I'd figured I'd ask.

ThoriumBR

some guy let OpenJDK access the internet, and suddenly some strange named process killed his antivirus... not surprised...

that's why I run almost everything on sandboxie, and I check the contents of the sandbox after running to see anything strange

A. Hersean

But, isn't the JVM a sandbox ?

I'm so surprised. Couldn't see it comming.

djsmiley2kStaysInside

welp, posted.

hopefully someone has a clue, as my first question on the terraform forums has just been duely ignored :/

Conor Mancone

4:18 PM

@djsmiley2kStaysInside Let me know if my answer doesn't work for you. I was doing this just last week, so I'm 90% sure that my answer will fix your problem, but it's terraform so it's a bit of a crap shoot

Why is this in the HNQ?

17

Q: How can a service like Fastly have such an impact on the Internet?

Fastly WAF service was down a while ago, and it has affected a lot of major internet platforms and sites such as Amazon, PayPal, eBay, Spotify, HBO Max, the UK's main government website - Gov.uk, and many more. This has affected dozens of countries across North & South America, Europe, Asia, and ...

internet availability

Fire Quacker

4:34 PM

@ConorMancone Because Fastly was in the news so people know what it is

Conor Mancone

@FireQuacker And that has what to do with Security? LOL!

Fire Quacker

Right...

I think HNQs are very often off-topic for their site, or very close to off-topic

Which makes them more accessible to a wider audience

Rory Alsop

4:57 PM

Agreed - that question is completely off topic

ThoriumBR

5:20 PM

@A.Hersean no, it's not... it's a sandbox if you run java applets, not java applications. if you FIleInputStream() on a file, it reads the file...

there are even java ransonware because you can write once, run everywhere...

Conor Mancone

5:37 PM

Apparently the theme for this week in workplace is "How can I good results out of these employees that are being demoralized and destroyed by my company's policies?"

20

Q: Dealing with extremely inexperienced developers who have daily deadlines?

I recently took over a development team where the only ones left are two fairly junior people. Both are quite good for their age and I thought one was a senior as he knows his architecture but they are both assigned to use frameworks they have never worked with before and their inexperience shows...

scrum

ThoriumBR

this quote from an answer is golden: "An iron rule in development: The more you rush, the longer it takes. And they are just starting. The next iron rule: The longer you rush, the worse it gets."

djsmiley2kStaysInside

5:53 PM

@ConorMancone nice first answer :D - Didn't realise you were from here, went to check your profile!. Just testing now and it looks exactly like that

I'm not a coder, but I know some python, and my god, terraform does really have some seemingly silly things like this

like this new error (yes your fix seems to work, will accept shortly)

> Error: Invalid value for region: project: required field is not set

I think it's saying project isn't set, which it isn't... because in some example code I found, it wasn't set, but that's normally because someones set it globally elsewhere

Also, terraform will happily pull files from git, but it never actually b others to check if the files have changed after the initial pull

So i have to do this silly dance of commit, push, delete directory, re-run the terraform init, then test my changes.

Router interfaces attached to the router? Needs the project

Router peer, i.e. the other end of the connection? Doesn't need the project

It's so inconsistent in places.

If you question it.... "Well, you need to know where to put the router interface within the cloud".

Ok, but you literally couldn't have the interface, in a different project to the router.... aurggh.

@ConorMancone "module.vpn-ha-gateway[0].google_compute_router_interface.router1_interface1: Creating..." :)

@ConorMancone I sometimes like to match up the questions, so the opposite of that one is 'how do I deal with a manager who can't plan anything, and expects everything done right now?'

Anonymous

7:23 PM

wtf

Anonymous

why does my chat account still work

Anonymous

what the fuck is this

Anonymous

how do i delete me

Anonymous

@RoryAlsop i require assistance

Fire Quacker

@JsupportsPalestine meta.stackexchange.com/a/339565

Anonymous

7:32 PM

UHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Anonymous

great

Fire Quacker

you've posted so many messages that your chat account cannot be deleted except by an actual SE employee (so even Rory can't help)

Anonymous

guess i just wont login ever again

Anonymous

what a dumbass system

Anonymous

that makes NO sense

Anonymous

7:33 PM

but its fine

Fire Quacker

Change your password to something unknown then, maybe?

Yeah, not sure why they would have it work like this

ThoriumBR

could I ask why you want to delete your account?

Fire Quacker

yesterday, by J supports Palestine

@A.Hersean My decision. No reflection of anything or anyone here.

I'm guessing he'd rather keep the reason private

nobody

8:36 PM

0

Q: Why is the back-end "show password" ability considered a non-issue?

For entities that store your passwords(e.g., Google) and then give you the ability to view them later as plain text... why? When was this deemed okay to do? Even the ability to show the password while typing is beyond me, not because of over-the-shoulder-peeking, but because even if you had stron...

passwords

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