soldier_ph

I don't like the city I live in, it's okay but I just visited Vancouver for LTX and Vancouver is way better.
 
So move is the answer? I make way too much money at a job that is hyper local and I'm well respected top to bottom in the organization.

I can't stand the drip coffee and I always demand the baristas to make it any other way possible. At home, I only cook my coffee in cezve, and I always buy an overpriced Cuban arabica coffee or an overpriced Cambodian robusta coffee since all the other options lack proper taste...

My grandfather had always done the bills and my grandma never had done them before until his Alzheimers started to set in so, my grandma bought herself a Chromebook so she could learn to do them. The very next time I came over to her house she told me she had been waiting so I could go through the setup for her. I tried explaining to her that she could just read the prompts and do It herself ,and that was the moment where I had to explain to her how to use a keyboard.

another deck

Yep, I got more straight from Japan. The Japanese really take good care of their stuff. Not a single scratch on any of the disks (or maybe they bothered to polish prior to shipping) and some still had the original little sleeve along the hinge when they were originally shrink-wrapped

 

Used 90's office chair, real leather and wood, the most comfortable chair I have ever owned. Payed 40$ for it.

An Xserve RAID! For only $50.
It lacks drives... and rails... and screws... but that's fine. It has all the drive bays, raid controllers, batteries, power supplies, etc. and that's what matters.
I won't be getting it until October though - my aunt picked it up for me since it was around Minneapolis and I live near Chicago.

I bought a ThinkPad T460p (see my signature for specs), it replaces my old ThinkPad T61p. I got it for 299 €.
 
 

Got my hands on Pokemon Black 2. 
I am so glad that my friend was willing to sell it to me for such a cheap price, I did offer higher but he didn't want to go any higher. 
Box, manuals and cartridge for $70. In most stores (if they even have it) they sell it for $200+ and then tax on top of it. 
It works perfectly. It connects to the internet. I'm so excited to finish playing my copy of Black and then jump into Black 2. Also really excited because I get to play along side my favourite Youtubers stream archives of his Nuzlockes. 
Wish me luck, I know Gen 5 is one of the most difficult Gens to play through! 
 

Magpul field case in grey. For a hand me down iphone 7.

 

Got this bumper installed today.  It's going to be a sand brown color when I raptor line the whole vehicle.  I have an aluminum skid plate that will help the aluminum look wrap onto the bottom of the vehicle, but the bumper took all of my energy today.  Have light's ordered for the bumper and rock sliders being fabricated.  Last thing for the front will be the winch and I've got to wire up the turn signals and DRL to the headlights.

Traded in my Samsung Z Flip 3, and paid the difference for a 512GB Z Flip 5, it's on preorder now, but I will post a pic or two when I get the badboy.

Something Something reject Forum Moderation, embrace Wednesday:

Wednesday theme song.mp4 posting this here because MOTF is locked once again

Summary
 
US government contractor Maximus has confirmed that health data of "up to 11 million individuals" has been accessed. The hack uses a vulnerability in MOVEit Transfer, an enterprise file transfer software.
Maximus administers programs "such as Medicaid, Medicare, healthcare reform and welfare-to-work".
The russian group 'Clop' claims to have stolen 169 gigabytes of data. The data has not yet been published.
Maximus says it has already informed direct customers as well as relevant government agencies. They will inform the affected individuals "probably" in the future. (german source (Heise))
 
According to Wikipedia the vulnerability seems to be a SQL injection CVE-2023-34362. Both the cloud and on prem version are affected.
 
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
The fact that an exploit in the data base enabled this suggests that files are not properly end-to-end encrypted (This is a file transfer software, not storage) -> WHY?! "Data exfiltration [...] may have been primarily focused on data stored using Microsoft Azure" (Wikipedia) another example why such infrastructure DOES NOT BELONG IN A PUBLIC CLOUD! Why were those data bases accessible from the internet at all? Access to these files should only be possible from strongly segmeneted Networks, interconnected via VPNs, SD-WAN or something similar. Not some computer on the internet with the client software or a mobile app! With proper network planning, none of these systems should have even be exposed to the internet. (Assuming of course that the cloud version was not used (which would even be more stupid)). MOVEit was in this case a single point of failure. Do we need some kind of regulation that requires a multi-layer, multi-vendor security approach for highly sensitive data (i.e. you need to first connect via vpn (from a different vendor) to the internal network before you can access any of the components related to MOVEit)? Would segmentation of data have been feasible and would it have reduced the impact?  
Sources
Techcrunch
Heise

I was the intern for my high schools IT department because in my area I was the only real "computer guy" (it was very rural and would take 2 weeks for someone to come out to fix anything) and I "fixed" an incredible amount of printers not working, no audio on boards/no display ect. It was a bit annoying but at least i got out of class a lot! 🙂

Me is dum
so I recently built myself a new pc, and got it up and going, so I borrowed one of my dad’s old monsters, thinking that it would be fine on modern gaming ( it had VGA and DVI, and the a HDMI port that was ancient. So, after about 30 ish minutes of playing kerbal space program 2 ( which is on the list of games most likiely to melt your computer) my monitor shut off, no BSOD, just a loud buzz in the audio. 
 
i turned off and on the computer, checked all my drivers were up to date, found nothing, assumed somthing that it happen only once, and 10 mins later, same thing. 
 
I put my hand on the exhaust of the monitor, and I got a mild burn. 
so in conclusion, do not use a 20 ish year old monitor, with a high power computer, as it will overheat your monitor. 
 
Also, this was the world’s crappiest monitor, it was ever so slightly smaller resulting than 1080p, so I had to do weird get arounds for format. Also the color is awful, and it made you set the gamma value manually, it was that old. 
 
So, we learned, the money is worth it for a new monitor.
A new crappy monitor is way better than an old crappy monitor, remember that.

Picked up a Tripplite UPS for my server and networking equipment.
 
Uptime matters.
 
 

Bought a Transcend card reader. It came with a nice piece of protective film. So of course here's a me peeling it off. Enjoy! 🙃
 
 

Got a discount code for being a YouTube supporter. Figured may as well have another screwdriver & then a bunch of bits & a JerryRig knife because why not.

Just bought an i7-11700F for $100 lmao hope I didn’t get scammed and it works

Lime day haul, sans the couchripper pillow in the corner. Mystery hoodie ended up being the exact hoodie I wanted, so thank you whomever packaged my order.

Moondrop chu 2.

Summary
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched action against Meta (Facebook), with the court ordering its subsidiaries pay $20.4 million dollars AUD* (included court costs) for misleading advertising of its VPN security application Onavo Protect, which was advertised to "keep your data safe" but was in fact scraping user data to form aggregated data that was sent to Meta for commercial use.
 
* $14 Million dollars USD.
 
Quotes
 
 
 
My thoughts
Yay! Facebook admitted it did something wrong... while their spokesman claims all their problems are in the past while ignoring they still have a Cambridge Analytica case still pending in Australia.
 
The most disappointing thing is the last quote from the Judge that she thinks $20.4 million dollars (AUD) is enough of a "sufficient sting"... the same day Meta reported a $32 billion dollar in revenue this year, a 11% rise in revenue, and earned them a 7% surge in its share price in trading.
 
Like $145 billion dollar maximum would of stung and woke up most of silicon valley to immediately review every advert, EULA,TOS, privacy policy and then promptly make them to just delete all the data they scraped from Australia in the last 20 years out of fear.  It was a missed opportunity to sting them harder to get a positive change out of the industry.
 
Sources
Australian Broadcasting Corporation News https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-26/meta-subsidiaries-ordered-to-pay-aus-govt-20-million/102649008
Reuters https://www.reuters.com/technology/australia-court-fines-facebook-owner-meta-14-mln-undisclosed-data-collection-2023-07-26/

Summary
South Korean scientists claim to have developed a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor called LK-99. If confirmed, it could revolutionize technology as superconductors usually need extreme cooling. LK-99's critical temperature is 127°C, making it suitable for various applications without requiring high pressure. The researchers believe LK-99 exhibits superconductivity due to stress on lead from copper atoms. Further verification is needed, but if successful, it could open new possibilities for humankind. The paper is available on arXiv.
 
Quotes
 
My thoughts
Because of previous events in this field of research, these Papers are subject to very strong doubt (e.g. https://www.iflscience.com/roomtemperature-superconductivity-has-been-achieved-after-109-years-with-a-catch-57478 this paper claiming similar things has been redacted 2 years later). The paper still needs to undergo peer-review, but if this turns out to be true, the future technologies with this would be changing for the whole world.
 
Sources
 https://www.iflscience.com/first-room-temperature-ambient-pressure-superconductor-achieved-claim-scientists-70001
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2307/2307.12008.pdf

Poor Doggos being scared of the Thunderstorm and heavy rainfall: