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1:11 PM
wat it do
 
@Jesse_b it do spinny round
 
@Kusalananda I'm not familiar with that
 
Good. It would make you dizzy.
Anyone familiar with the blah blah error from [one or another command that creates a user], or possibly sudo? unix.stackexchange.com/questions/534544
 
I don't think I would want to be "blah blah"
Yet another reason I don't like debian
 
@Kusalananda By "will not" I think you meant "should not". Because the poster certainly can.
 
1:19 PM
@FaheemMitha it’s an order, not a suggestion ;-)
 
@Kusalananda He just needs to fix the settings in the sudo file, probably.
@StephenKitt A non-enforceable order, then.
 
@FaheemMitha Ah, but it is enforceable. We can delete an image, or transcribe it (something I wouldn't do though).
 
In the military any suggestion a commanding officer makes should be interpreted as an order anyway. "Will not" == "Should not"
 
If they had already posted an image: "should not". Since it's still preventable: "will not".
 
Not really a big fan of orders.
 
1:27 PM
@FaheemMitha so you don’t like sort then? :-P
 
BTW, pulling my hair out trying to figure out what a good motherboard would be? Thoughts/suggestions?
@StephenKitt I see what you did there.
 
@StephenKitt Maybe he prefers sort -R
 
@Jesse_b nah, shuf
 
It's got to be supported by the Linux kernel, obviously.
 
@FaheemMitha I buy workstation-class motherboards, typically from Supermicro
 
1:28 PM
-bash: shuf: command not found
 
@Jesse_b huh, it’s part of coreutils
 
@StephenKitt Ah, I'm on mac. I may have gshuf
I do
 
BTW, is there any reason to prefer AMD vs Intel, or vice verse, these days?
 
@FaheemMitha I prefer intel but I have no logical reason
 
@StephenKitt Are Supermicro boards good? The last one I got was an Asus Sabretooth.
@Jesse_b Ok.
 
1:30 PM
When it comes to motherboards I have always gotten the cheapest one that meets my requirements, it has never let me down yet
I've had my current PC for about 10 years now and the motherboard did actually start going on it about 2 years ago but I bought the exact model replacement for like $30 and it's been going strong since
 
@Jesse_b Interesting approach. I look for something that looks durable.
 
@FaheemMitha not exciting, but very stable, and they support features I like such as Xeon desktop CPUs and remote administration (either AMT or BMC)
and they last forever
 
I definitely paid less than $100 for the initial one so overall it's cheaper than some of these $200+ motherboards that in my opinion are mostly just unnecessary fluff
 
@StephenKitt That's definitely a good feature. So AMD or Intel?
 
If you see anything computer related that is marketed as "gaming" don't buy it, it's the same as anything else with a 40% markup because it has fancy colors and possibly neon lights
 
1:32 PM
@FaheemMitha I don’t know, I haven’t paid much attention to Ryzen but I get the impression it’s worth looking at
 
Note that anything I buy here will by definition be extremely overpriced by US (and possibly even European) standards.
@Jesse_b Ok, thanks for the tip.
 
I like Intel CPUs with integrated GPUs because they tend to be well-supported on Linux
but amdgpu is supposed to be very nice
 
@StephenKitt Oh. So matching Intel motherboards?
I don't need anything exciting either. Just solid and reliable.
 
@FaheemMitha no, any compatible motherboard with an Intel CPU with integrated GPU
 
I wonder if @derobert has thoughts on the matter.
@StephenKitt Right, I didn't mean the mb was manufactured by Intel.
Just that it would be something that worked with an Intel processor.
 
1:35 PM
my current main setup is an X10SAE with a Xeon E3-1245v3, so not particularly relevant when discussing what’s available now
 
Does AMD or Intel CPU/MB have better Linux support?
@StephenKitt Might be the current thing in India. :-)
 
@FaheemMitha Intel is more involved in early hardware enablement on Linux, AFAICT
 
amazon.in/SUPERMICRO-MBD-X10SAE-X10SAE-Server-Motherboard/dp/… <- Around USD 500, in case you're wondering.
@StephenKitt Yes, that's my impression too.
 
I got very lucky with my wife's computer and got a dell "tower server" used on ebay for less than $150 USD
 
see the recent AMD Ryzen RDRAND issue which stopped some Linux systems booting
 
1:37 PM
@StephenKitt Hmm.
 
It came with a XEON, SAS controller, etc
 
@FaheemMitha Intel used to have more support and better performance for virtualization
 
The only problem is when all the fans spin up it sounds like a datacenter in my office
 
@Jesse_b yeah second-hand server systems tend to be good investments, and quite cheap
 
@StephenKitt I'm not sure how that would work here...
@StephenKitt Is there a hierarchy for MBs in terms of quality? I.e. avoid these manufacturers, they aren't so good?
 
1:41 PM
@FaheemMitha in the US and Europe, what often happens is that non-leased systems owned by businesses, when they reach the end of their useful life, are sold off cheaply to employees and/or brokers, and then end up on various auction sites or brokerage forums
 
@StephenKitt My last company used to give them to the IT department for free if we wanted them, or they would actually pay a recycling company to "dispose" of them
I imagine the recycling company was actually throwing them on ebay
 
@StephenKitt That might happen here too. I don't know.
I suppose it would make sense to research it. Not sure how to, though.
 
The US has fairly strict laws for electronics disposal, supposedly the manufacturer of the product is responsible so you can supposedly force dell to dispose of old servers theoretically (if they were purchased from dell of course) but I've never seen it happen that way
 
@Jesse_b yup, same goes for printer toner etc.
In other news, Linux Journal is dead again: linuxjournal.com/content/…
3
 
@StephenKitt Again?
@Jesse_b The real question is whether they are enforced.
 
1:45 PM
@FaheemMitha Well private citizens definitely throw electronics in the regular trash, myself included sometimes. However large companies are much less likely to risk it because they are likely to receive hefty fines to violating the law on it
 
@Jesse_b I see. At least, one would hope so. Things don't always work that way.
 
@FaheemMitha it shows up in any accounting audit, since hardware is purchased (ignoring leased stuff here); companies need to have documentary evidence of the correct disposal of electronics
of course that only becomes a factor if the accounts are audited
 
@StephenKitt Quite so. And at least in India, the accounting firm can be "encouraged" to ignore those little details.
Well, thanks for the comments so far. Dinner time.
 
2:18 PM
@FaheemMitha Most of the auditors I've worked with can be very easily manipulated
Records of virtually anything are easily faked and often times I think they don't look at them very carefully. They ask for documentation and usually just check the box if you provide something...anything, without carefully examining it
 
@Jesse_b sort of like the various ISO standards which look at whether stuff is documented, not whether the documentation is followed
 
@StephenKitt Yeah I think that is how most ITSM standards work too. They outline recommendations but really in order to be compliant you just need to define your own standards, even if they are simply "We will not do this"
 
2:42 PM
@Jesse_b Yes, that sounds like the sort of thing that happens. Worse in India, I expect.
But at least in the US there is a bit more social pressure not to be too crazy.
Asus has this on their web site. But isn't it horribly out of date? dlcdnimgs.asus.com/websites/global/aboutasus/OS/Linux.pdf
 
@FaheemMitha You mean ubuntu v12 isn't current?
 
@Jesse_b Dunno. Is it?
Oh, right, it's by year.
 
I think they are on version 18?
 
19 now.
 
Well at least they don't follow microsofts versioning
Ubuntu 17, Ubuntu 99, Ubuntu 18, Ubuntu XP, Ubuntu 20
 
2:50 PM
19.04 strictly speaking
 
This Ubuntu page as the following. As is depressing familiar, I've no idea what it's about.
 
there are two releases per calendar year, in April and October, numbered XX.04 and XX.10 where XX is the last two digits of the year
 
Socket A
Socket AM2
Socket AM3
Socket 754
Socket 939
Which of these should I focus on?
@StephenKitt Sounds like a lot of pressure. What if something is not ready?
 
@FaheemMitha it doesn’t go in
 
2:53 PM
in some cases the release has been delayed by a few days
 
Here's a nice Indian review.
Title: "Awful Performance. review after 1Yr of use"
Body: Very good performance. If you're a game lover must have this beast. delivered an amazing output.
On Amazon India. I've actually seen worse.
 
I love the amazon Q/A on products
When you have purchased something and someone asks a question about it, you get an email asking if you can answer the question. I think some people think they have to answer
 
@StephenKitt And if it's needed? Rolling back is tricky in an OS, because things are so tied together. Hence the Debian freeze.
 
I see a lot of "What size is the..." type questions with a bunch of people answering "I don't know"
 
Though of course, Debian supports a lot more than Ubuntu/Canonical does.
 
2:55 PM
If you don't know then why did you write an answer
 
@Jesse_b Glad to hear that's not only here.
I guess sitting in India, I get an exaggerated/distorted opinion/memory of how things are in other places.
 
@FaheemMitha there’s a similar process in Ubuntu
 
@StephenKitt Yes, but it sounds like they are operating on much tighter timelines.
 
3:25 PM
haha
0
Q: ubiquity alongside choose disk bug (only one item in the list)

cigamWhen installing Ubuntu18.04.2 LTS (64bit Gnome Desktop DVD), at the "Installation type" page of the installer, choosing " Install Ubuntu alongside Windows 8" results in the partitioner automatically choosing to use sdd as the drive. There is no option to select sda or sdc. Only has one item the "...

I tried to use google translate to figure out what "telepitese" and "melle" mean. Apparently in Hungarian "telepitese melle" means "Install her breasts"
 
4:08 PM
@JeffSchaller An AIX question that I dived into a bit too quickly. I'm not on AIX so I might have responded too quickly. You may give a better answer: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/534579/…
 
@Kusalananda yours seems like a reasonable response; I'll see where the IBM-provided expect package puts it, in case they used that.
 
@JeffSchaller What confuses me is that /usr/local/bin is in the $PATH.
The thing I can dream up is that PATH isn't exported.
 
@Kusalananda the ellipsis makes me wonder if it's hiding something; would prefer to see the real value
or that yum.sh is overriding it
their comment about "expect@" being there suggests a symlink that may be broken
 
I don't see the @.
 
could be a stray character; just brainstorming possibilities
 
4:16 PM
No, they specifically edited it in (which is why I did not see it)
 
@Kusalananda fyi only, the IBM-provided expect package puts out /opt/freeware/bin/expect and /usr/linux/bin/expect, so whatever's in their /usr/local/bin/ is ... hand-made.
 
4:35 PM
@JeffSchaller Ah.
 
@FaheemMitha I've mostly got Intel boxes, but they're all several years old. My workstation (at work) is nVidia, which is somewhat a pain (though dkms makes it not that bad). Performance of the Intel graphics hardware at least was a fair bit less than nVidia. I'm tempted to go with AMD next time, I've heard those now have good open source drivers. Depending on what you want to do you may have limited choices (e.g., GPU compute stuff seems to be mostly nVidia)
 
@derobert Hey. Just looking for regular hardware. Nothing fancy of specialist. But choices here are indeed limited, though maybe not in the way you are thinking about.
@derobert Good open source drivers for what?
 
@FaheemMitha GPU
 
There seems to be less mb manufacturer options than I remember.
@derobert Is there some reason I should care about the GPU?
 
Well, Minecraft runs at a higher FPS on this ancient nVidia card than a less ancient Intel GPU.
 
4:42 PM
@terdon I see you have looked at this question:
0
Q: Find and replace the columns of matched and non-matched lines with a character

user3441801I would like to find and replace the first column of matched lines with a character and non-matched lines with another character and then do the same with the subsequent column and so on until the desired output using regex script (I am using EmEditor), for instance, I have the following: 12345,...

 
Though this nVidia card is short on memory, sometimes makes things not work well :-(
 
@derobert What I meant to ask if how/why the GPU is relevant to me.
That's the graphics processor, right? I think one can use it for a specialized form of computing, but it's not really a priority for me.
As least, I don't think so.
 
Well, it depends on what you use the computer for. If you're not gaming or doing GPU computation (e.g., OpenCL) then anything half-current is going to be OK for desktop compositing, etc.
 
@terdon I tried pointing out that the poster is asking for one thing (i.e. replacing columns one by one) but then doing something different in the example(s) (i.e. inserting a column in a non-matching line)
 
@derobert Surely not everything is supported equally by the Linux kernel?
@derobert Have you worked with a variety of MBs in recent years? If so, do you have any sense of which manufacturer to choose? Or which to avoid?
 
4:46 PM
Intel stuff has been supported by drivers Intel helps maintain (open source, part of the kernel) for many years. I think AMD stuff is similar now, as of the last few years. nVidia releases proprietary drivers for their stuff.
@FaheemMitha Not really. I haven't built a PC in several years.
 
@derobert Me neither. My current machine is from 2013.
This one has good reviews, but I don't know the manufacturer.
 
Well, this workstation is, err, 2010?
 
As you can see, all the reviews are from the US site.
4.3 stars isn't bad for a MB.
 
I think my home server is maybe a little older, 2008 maybe? And home workstation is probably 2010-ish as well. Maybe 2011.
The TV PC is the most recent one I built, it's a few years newer than that, would have to look up how old
 
And as you could easily check, we pay roughly double here for the same thing.
@derobert How do you choose your hardware?
BTW, do criteria like workstataton or TUF mean anything?
My current board is Asus Sabertooth. I thought maybe it was a bit more durable.
 
4:51 PM
Depends on the build. The TV PC was more or less chosen on price. The others were more spec-driven.
 
But I'm not sure how much any of this means.
 
@Kusalananda I have a bad feeling about this; unregistered user; Last seen 24 mins ago. Hopefully they're busy registering their account and running commands to update their post.
 
This workstation is a Sabertooth X58.
 
@derobert Do you worry about the quality/reliability of the MB?
BTW, does anyone know what: Style name: FTW
means?
 
Yeah, though I can't say I've found a way to determine the quality before having it installed and finding out it wasn't quality :-(
 
4:54 PM
FTW might actually mean For The Win. Some nonsense about graphics card overclocking, or something. Who does that?
 
I forget which board this machine had first, I think the X58 was the 2nd, after some other board wasn't stable. I've had that experience a few times :-(
 
@derobert What experience? Instability?
Building machines is a giant pain.
 
yeah. Or the board failing, or at least some component.
 
I have a mid tower. Do you need to go with any specific form factor?
 
@FaheemMitha presumably ATX or smaller, unless it’s a small tower
 
4:57 PM
The bigger, the better? :-P
 
Current MB SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0
 
if you have seven slots on the back, ATX, if you have four, Mini-ATX
 
Actually, scratch that. For this one I'll be building a machine from scratch.
 
@FaheemMitha yeah that’s ATX
 
So my current computer isn't relevant.
But I'd be inclined to go with another mid-tower. They're a bit big, but a certain amount of space is good.
Though aluminium cases aren't easy to get here. Or cheap.
 
4:58 PM
I don’t find it adds any value nowadays; I prefer small systems now
 
Ironical, considering that Lian-Li is geographically quite close.
@StephenKitt Doesn't a certain amount of space help if you are trying to work on it?
 
@FaheemMitha how often do you work on it? Most systems don’t need any expansion card apart from the GPU (if it’s not integrated), and not much space for drives either. The biggest “peripheral” is the CPU cooler...
 
Yeah, especially if things aren't designed right. E.g., I my home workstation actually came from a system builder. And the way that case works is to replace one of the hard drives, all you have to do is remove the RAM. That's not so bad. Oh, and also unmount the CPU heatsink. WTF.
 
@StephenKitt I guess I don't, really.
 
(Obvious solution there is that the case is made of metal, it bends, unmount the failed drive by force a way it doesn't want to go)
 
5:02 PM
@derobert Sounds suboptimal.
 
Well, now the silly alignment-assist tabs are fully bent out of the way, installing and removing drives is much easier!
 
@derobert So you don't have any words of wisdom to offer re choosing a MB?
How about Intel vs AMD?
 
MB? Not really.
 
Motherboards. Just to be clear.
 
Intel is AFAIK much more popular. And if you want fast, I think they have the fastest CPUs. AMD, though, I think currently wins on price (and price per performance). Not sure about in the real low end.
 
5:06 PM
@derobert What about reliability? Not sure if that means much for a CPU these days.
 
Though if you want real low end, I think that's all ARM :-)
 
Or is it a wash?
 
@FaheemMitha I've never seen a CPU fail.
Given, I don't overclock mine. I'm sure they fail if you push them enough out of spec.
 
I was thinking about trying to set up like a NAS or something, but that probably doesn't make sense.
Seeing as I should have a second "proper" computer on hand in case this one fails.
@derobert Me neither. Overclocking is silly.
 
@FaheemMitha I have two NAS-format PCs, which work as fall-back computers if necessary (they run Linux)
 
5:10 PM
A big problem here is price and availability. If it is available, it's insanely overpriced. And lots of things are not available.
@StephenKitt Are they as good as a regular machine?
 
@FaheemMitha the older one is slow, but the newer one is fine; the only thing lacking is a GPU
 
For example, that EVGA board is currently at at around 4 times what is sells for on the US site.
@StephenKitt Oh.
> Military-Grade Motherboard with Aerospace-Grade CeraM!X Cooling Techology.
Does this stuff mean anything, or is it just marketing speak?
Also: TUF Components [Alloy Choke, Cap. & MOSFET; Certified by Military-standard] - Certified for Tough Duty
I was impressed at the time, but I find that as I continue to grow older, I continue to grow more cynical. It's sad, but that's how it is.
 
You'd have to read the fine print. There are a couple of standards it might be certified against. Which could matter if, e.g., you want to shake your PC constantly.
 
@derobert I wasn't planning on constant shaking.
It's hard for a non-expert to know whether something is hocus-pocus or not.
Don't you agree?
 
Yeah. Though I suspect they've helpfully marked the hocus-pocus for you with exclamantion marks...
Which they sure use quite a few of.
 
5:19 PM
"Military grade" just means manufactured by the lowest bidder
 
@Jesse_b Nah, the lowest bidder willing to deal with obscene amounts of paperwork.
 
@derobert You mean like: "TUF ENGINE!" Power Design?
@Jesse_b So you think it's all bollocks, then?
Also -> "Ultimate COOL!" Thermal Solution
 
Take "TUF Thermal Radar" for example. PWM control of fans has been a standard feature on mobos since, errr, 2000-ish?
So that's a bunch of marketing BS describing a feature you'd be hard-pressed to find a board without.
 
@FaheemMitha I was in the US military and literally none of the equipment I worked with was better than it's civilian counterpart. In most cases it was significantly worse
 
@Jesse_b Good to know. Marketing speak, then?
Though I suspect there aren't any civilian counterparts for nuclear weapons.
 
5:24 PM
The firearms are manufactured by the lowest bidding companies, the vehicles are trash, the IT equipment was mostly just off the shelf civilian equipment stuck into green "tactical" boxes and sold with a 400% markup
 
@Jesse_b It was probably much better at paperwork, and bribing^W making campaign contributions to congressfolk
 
@derobert @Jesse_b What I'm basically asking is if I should ignore all this tuff and durable talk, and just buy something based on relavant specs and features.
 
@FaheemMitha I normally go with "military spec" in that I look for the lowest bidder :p
 
Which might be the path of sanity, but often that path is not clear - it's obscured by the undergrowth of deception and untruth.
 
There isn't a single pair of Marine Corps camouflage pants that doesn't have a hole in the crotch
 
5:26 PM
@derobert The equipment was?
 
@FaheemMitha It had better be, with how much the US military costs!
 
@Jesse_b I'm not sure that's entirely relevant.
 
@FaheemMitha They are military grade
 
@derobert Taken literally, you said that the equipment was much better at bribing congresspeople.
 
Ooh, that board is Windows 8 Ready! Now there's a critical and timely feature.
 
5:29 PM
Bottom line - you don't think that board is specially Tuf?
 
@FaheemMitha Yes. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader of how literally that should be taken ☺
 
@derobert It's because they can only buy from a limited number of approved vendors. I think all the way down to the smallest things the spending is non-trivial. The military is only allowed to buy office supply type things from a company called GSA Advantage. I remember comparing things like staplers and reems of paper
 
I'm not sure how I feel about sapient military equipment.
 
Like $30 for a stapler for the government when you can get the exact same stapler from walmart for $3
 
What would a self-aware atom bomb think, if it could think?
 
5:30 PM
@Jesse_b Yep, because you wouldn't want a stapler that wasn't "competitively bid"!
 
BOOM!, perhaps?
 
@FaheemMitha I'm guessing "wheeeee!!!!!" on the way down...
 
@derobert Perhaps.
 
It would probably think about what @FaheemMitha would think it should think
 
But, would the self-aware bomb prefer to be ridden by Major Kong or not?
 
5:32 PM
@Jesse_b Not likely. My social circle doesn't include atom bombs.
 
Facebook thinks I'm more of a creep than I really am
You look at one marketplace listing of a woman selling used panties and all of a sudden you start getting bombarded with all sorts of strange listings
 
The trouble with this modern world is that you have to know too much stuff.
It's exhausting.
 
@FaheemMitha I barely know anything and I get by just fine
 
It was easier back in the day, when folks lived in caves. Then you just had to know to hit things that looked vaguely edible with a club.
 
@FaheemMitha Wait. I thought everyone there went dancing with missiles... :-P
 
5:37 PM
@derobert Everyone where?
 
In India :-P
 
@derobert That's a fairly weird video.
@derobert It's a mad country, but it's not that mad.
 
Indeed. With great comments like "people will stop buying your weapons if you actually show this video to them." If only that were true!
 
Also, there are a limited supply of nuclear weapons to go around.
 
(I hope from all the :-P you realize I'm not being serious)
@FaheemMitha We have enough here for the whole world. So too probably does Russia. I don't think we dance with them, though. I don't think Trump could be convinced to dance with one, but parade with one is certainly possible!
 
5:41 PM
Also, Bollywood numbers are not normally in English.
@derobert Right, but I thought we were talking about India.
 
@FaheemMitha I'd guess Bollywood numbers are also not normally commissioned by Israeli weapons manufacturers :-/
 
Also, I'm not sure those women are actually Indian.
@derobert Probably not. Though one never knows.
 
@FaheemMitha Are they Native American?
 
@Jesse_b I don't think so.
 
Oh, because Native Americans are often confused with Indians for some reason
 
5:45 PM
There are certainly some strange things on the internet.
@Jesse_b I meant actual Indians.
 
@FaheemMitha As far as strange things on the Internet, I doubt that makes the top 100
 
@FaheemMitha Yeah I was trying to make a joke about how in 2019 the majority of people still refer to Native Americans as Indian
 
I mean, as afar as Internet weirdness, how does it compare to Birds Aren't Real?
 
@derobert Do they really believe it or is it a parody on flat earth?
 
It's the Internet, you can never be sure
 
5:52 PM
Yeah I'm still not even sure if the flat earth thing is a troll
 
@Jesse_b Ok. Actually, I regularly run into people who insist that it's perfectly reasonable and that I'm being unreasonable.
They don't necessarily use the term unreasonable.
Do I need to look at the socket? Something else I know nothing about. ATX is the form factor, right?
 
MicroATX is that one's form factor
The socket needs to match the CPU
 
Oh, the socket refers to the CPU. Right.
Ah yes, Form Factor: MicroATX. Which means mini, I suppose.
Would that be a reasonable choice? MicroATX, I mean.
Probably not a lot of places to plug things into.
 
I don't think the board size matters so much, as long as it has the ports/connectors you want and fits in your case. Smaller is probably better then.
I have no idea how you live with only 4x SATA ports. But whatever :-P
 
@derobert SATA/RAID expansion card
 
6:03 PM
@derobert ?
 
@Jesse_b Sure. Or SAS. But on that board, that'd eat your one 16x slot.
 
You mean by current MB? I have 6 drives installed, currently. Not really using two of them.
 
I've always wished boards came with more SATA connectors than they did, and that was with 8 of them!
 
I have found it hard to find full size ATX motherboards lately
 
@derobert What do you need so many for?
@Jesse_b Why?
 
6:05 PM
@FaheemMitha They just seem to be less common. Granted this is with my lowest bidder mentality. I don't think I would ever spend more than $100 for a motherboard
 
@FaheemMitha An optical drive or two, piles of hard disks
 
Yeah my motherboard has 8 sata ports and I could use two more
 
Oooh! If I bought a Supermicro server board, I could have 16x SATA ports :-P
Quite a bit more than $100, though :-(
newegg.com/… ... and up to a whole TB of RAM. That might be enough to run both Firefox and Chrome without swapping!
 
@derobert That will just give you a few more days before you have to kill all browser processes
 
LOL, true.
What we really need is board with hotswap online-expandable RAM, so every week or so you could add more RAM to keep the browsers satisfied.
 
6:14 PM
@derobert Is Supermicro particularly expensive?
 
No, they're just fairly popular server boards (we have a ton of them at work)
 
@derobert Have you seen anything to suggest they're better than anything else?
 
I think they are only popular because people love to hate dell
@FaheemMitha They are specifically known to contain chinese spy chips but I'm not sure that is much different from the rest
 
AFAIK, that chinese spy chip story wasn't actually from any credible source. But it's not exactly unbelievable either.
 
I was going through the Amazon IN MBs in order of increasing price, and this appears to be the first ATX MB - amazon.in/MSI-B250-Mate-USB3-Motherboard/dp/B01NCSE38Q
 
6:17 PM
I think there was also a fairly large scale DRAC exploit that involved china as well
 
@Jesse_b Ooh, I love me some Chinese chips. Especially crisp fried.
 
Finding a mobo without anything made in China would definitely up the price.
 
@derobert I think it was reported by a few credible sources but I do remember supermicro saying they weren't credible
But I believe in the same statement they said they were going to stop procuring hardware from the source in question so it seemed like they were just trying to minimize impact
 
It was reported by one source (Bloomberg), who never could provide any real evidence. And then it was denied by a bunch of people.
 
@derobert When I was still in the military my unit ordered like 300-400 lenovo laptops and when they arrived we got told not to use them because some of the components were made in china. This was around 2010
 
6:23 PM
ROFLOL, they ordered computers from a Chinese company and then were surprised they contained Chinese-made parts?!
 
@derobert well yeah I was surprised because literally all computers have components made in china, specifically all the ones we used
 
Well, that's some true Military Intelligence right there!
 
so I think there was something else more credible that was actually going on with them but we just weren't told about it
 
Could be. Or just random stupidity. Lenovo has managed to preload spyware on their machines at least once...
Or if not spyware, at least programs with huge security issues
 
Well we certainly didn't use any of their software. All the machines get reimaged with a compliant image
At the time they did mention a specific piece of hardware was in question. I think it was the NIC but don't remember specifically
 
6:27 PM
Some of it they shipped in UEFI, which Windows would re-install on a clean install...
 
At the time lenovo was owned by IBM
well maybe not
 
Lenovo wasn't ever owned by IBM. IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo.
 
but I swear they said "IBM Lenovo"
 
Possibly they branded it that way for a while, don't recall. I'd guess you all used to by ThinkPad machines, and that got sold to Lenovo
"Although Lenovo acquired the right to use the IBM brand name for five years after its acquisition of IBM's personal computer business, Lenovo only used it for three years. " from Wikipedia ... so I guess that's why it was IBM Lenovo
So, if it wasn't utter idiocy, it was probably caused by that sale; e.g., purchase originally planned before IBM sold business to Lenovo, and either no one thought to cancel it or it couldn't be canceled.
 
Yeah I think they were T60s or T90s
 
6:35 PM
(And, honestly, back to the alleged Chinese covert modifications of Supermicro boards ... seems like a lot of work for little gain. I mean, is anyone at all confident their IPMI firmware is secure? It sure as heck is buggy.)
 
@derobert I dunno, I do believe china has pretty obviously been doing all sorts of spying in order to steal r&d from as many people as they can
 
Among other purposes, yeah. But putting a hidden extra chip on the board is rather risky. Seems like something you'd only contemplate against chosen targets, not do in general. Exploiting one of the no doubt many firmware flaws, OTOH, is much harder to pin on you. And with the number that are never upgraded, you can just use a patched flaw, which has essentially no cost.
 
Those IBM Thinkpads were nice. It's a shame they're gone.
 
7:09 PM
195
Q: Why can I log in to my Facebook account with a misspelled email/password?

aMJayI've been playing around with different login forms online lately to see how they work. One of them was the Facebook login form. When I logged out of my account my email and password were autocompleted by my browser. Then I decided to misspell my email and see what would happen if I tried to log ...

I certainly do not agree with the "this is actually still perfectly secure for a few reasons." comment from the top answer
 
7:25 PM
@Jesse_b Nobody in their right mind uses Facebook voluntarily.
 
@FaheemMitha I've never met anyone forced to use it
 
 
2 hours later…
9:32 PM
@Jesse_b Password insecurity is the least of your concerns with Facebook if you don't have a Credit card linked to your account.
I deleted my account because of Snowden and every time I read about Facebook in the news I grin profoundly: People should just delete their accounts.
 
@Fabby Seems excessive. Didn't Snowden prove that attempting to obtain privacy is futile?
 
@Jesse_b Meh: better than changing my icon
Now it's 150$ less in Facebook's bank account.
 
You had to pay facebook?
 
People who want to keep in touch should create a LinkedIn account.
@Jesse_b It's what they make from you.
 
Linkedin is certainly no different
 
9:36 PM
I was one of the few people that had a facebook account before they went public.
 
I stopped trying to obtain privacy when I learned my phone microphone is recording me at all times anyway
 
well... i was in early
@Jesse_b That's why I used to have an Ubuntu phone...
(screen is broken now)
 
I stopped using ubuntu when it became based of debian
 
I'm german: I'm a privacy nut.
Yeah. That's why I'm more active here now.
I'm going to switch to Manjaro.
Arch without the headaches.
Rolling updates: never upgrade again...
But here I'm just a midget learning from giants...
 
(I'm pretty sure ubuntu was always debian based. I just don't like debian or it's spawns)
 
9:41 PM
yesterday, by Fabby
 
10:02 PM
Aww someone deleted my affectionately coding comment :(
 
10:22 PM
@Jesse_b It really is not a significant shrinking of the search space, even without accounting for all the other avenues that protect it
I could see the email address part maybe leaking something if they're not careful
 
Yeah I kind of agree with the arguments made about the passwords. Apparently they are checking for the presence of capslock too so you can't just paste in the password with the wrong case. However the username variations must add literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands of possible combinations for your login when there should only be 1 acceptable combination
 
The username part requires you to have an existing cookie showing that you have previously logged in to that account, apparently
So not even that
I don't think the browser can detect capslock
 
I thought they said that was only if you mess up the actual user part of the email (before the @)
Yeah I wasn't sure either but I figure javascript can do some interesting browser stuff
> Of particular interest is the caps lock scenario. I tested this by first manually typing my password into notepad, reversing the case, then pasting that result into Facebook. It denied that password. I then turned on caps lock and typed my password as though cap lock were off, thus reversing the case. That attempt was successful, and I was logged in. Facebook is not only checking what the password is but how you enter it.
 
Yeah turns out you can
KeyboardEvent.getModifierState('CapsLock')
 

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