Akolyte

Hey, man, you need to be careful because it's quite a low-level system software, and you don't have many courses of action should it fail. In general, look at the release notes of the BIOS version. Does it contain anything that you think you need? If not, then probably skip it. If your power cut, or the BIOS introduced more bugs, you'd probably regret it.

I work for a consultancy, and we all have MacBooks. Even though our IT department hates it, the number of Mac converts is growing. They probably don't care about security or how easy it is for you to manage (in fact, they passively want to make it even more difficult), so you can't use security or management arguments to convince them. There will likely be a compromise to develop new standards and procedures regarding how you provision and manage their devices. One of the reasons they like MacOS may be because they have more autonomy; they aren't restricted to a sluggish, latency-bound VDI or forced to have some invasive management software on their work machine. As one of these people who use a Mac, I think the conversation points need to change: The questions you should ask are: What software do you use? Why is it essential for you to use a Mac? What are the barriers to switching to Windows? Once you find these out, develop policies to accommodate them - you want the business to make revenue, after all, and not drive this team away. If they still refuse to switch, then you'll need to get executive sponsorship to perform a complete migration of the business's corporate IT management. That would permit you to say, "Hey, this is a business project; we must migrate you by X date. Can you work with us so we can make it easy for you?" Also, glad you're leaving the software engineers alone - if I got told I was being migrated to an Azure VDI, I'd immediately find a new position.

@Agena_ if it's a work PC it could also be AD Rights Management which sometimes referred to as RMS? If it is a work machine definitely contact your service desk, don't perform any actions we recommend here.

I believe that's remote assistance. (I could be wrong) If you're not remotely connecting to your machine, I'd immediately disconnect from the internet and disable remote assistance (guide here), then reboot. Once you've rebooted, run a scan since I think you have Kaspersky? Or even better, just backup your files (with your PC offline) and fresh install.

I think they're saying, what's the goal with Oracle certs? Study a cert because it's something you want to get into, not because there's not much material out there. Unless you work for a company using MS SQL or Oracle and want you to step into a more database-oriented role, you'll probably never need the certifications, and most employers won't care unless they're looking for someone to maintain existing enterprise systems.

Whitelisting IP addresses generally isn't considered secure, and although many cloud tutorials will show that as a valid option, it's highly discouraged. It's essential to note that tunnelling can be done via SSH, VPN or any service, but it's still the same idea. Even though you use VPN -> RDP, that's quite an outdated mechanism; nowadays, it's preferred to avoid VPNs and opt for a zero-trust model via a web service or something like that, so it's even tighter nowadays. Here is what tunnelling is intended to solve: 1. In-transit security & obfuscation 2. Authentication 3. Centralised access and auditing 1. in-transit security: If you think about a database, your database could contain sensitive information - while restricting its access to a set of IP addresses could be a reasonable security control - it still leaves communication's vulnerable. Even communications via TLS will still reveal the port, hostname, and the packets will be encapsulated with whatever encryption the DBMS provides by default. Web services commonly have vulnerabilities (your RDP, a Windows server). You can't trust accessing even a secure service, if it's private, over the public internet relying on its security mechanisms alone. By using a tunnel, we connect to a server using a more robust and trusted security protocol (e.g. SSH or OpenVPN) over a more generic port to a more generic hostname, and this protocol further encrypts our traffic, providing additional security against vulnerabilities in the web service we're accessing. Lastly, these exposed services are common targets even if they are secure. Many people develop complex exploits for them, many that won't work on more straightforward, more robust security protocols like SSH. For example, there are known tools people use to compromise RDP. Using a VPN provides an extra security layer. 2. Authentication: It's less of an issue for RDP, but many companies will use tunnelling because it encourages a centralised authentication mechanism for their employees to access internal services. For example, maybe you'll have an employee login to your VPN, and they can refer to that login to view your network traffic, apply network policies, and revoke remote access quickly in case of a compromise without impacting your at-the-office credentials. 3. Centralised access & auditing : Companies these days are encouraged to have a good audit trail - they store logs on: - when you connect to what machines, - what IP address and device do you connect from, - what actions you perform, using a tunnel allows them to centralise this logging in one place, like a funnel - they can gather these logs from one place (the VPN or SSH server), and this provides them with reassurance that their audit logs are complete and have better observability so they can detect incidents quicker. -------------------- I know this was a bit long, man, but I hope this has helped you understand why some companies opt for tunnels. VPNs are pretty standard, but RDP over VPN is considered a security risk - there's usually another layer or 2 in there.

Hey mate, I know you've got an excellent marked answer there - I want to expand on this and add some extra info. Avoid third-party antivirus if you can - it usually installs very deep modules in your system to analyse your files, giving them a lot of access to your personal data, even if Windows encrypt it. These modules can also make your system more vulnerable or even unstable as they usually aren't maintained as well as Microsoft's code, and so, for a bit more. malicious code detection capabilities, you're losing your privacy and confidence in your system's robustness. People will tell you otherwise, but don't trust third-party antivirus - stick with Defender. Just make sure you: - Install Windows Updates - Keep your browser up-to-date, check for updates every morning or afternoon if you can, - If anyone sends you any files, especially a document or an exe you don't trust - ask someone you know to review it or upload it to virustotal.com.

Hey mate, Same answers as above, check your CPU temperatures and see if you can get into your BIOS. If you google your motherboard brand, you should be able to see what keys you need to press to get in. Once in, see if you also crash after a couple of minutes. If it's a CPU temperature issue, you must resolve it yourself by re-applying the cooler and some thermal compound or taking it to another repair store.

10 years and I'm still holding onto it.

I understand why Linus doesn't expect a significant ROI from Linux content. It's not what most of his audience wants to see and might duplicate what's already out there. If Linus did release a Linux/Unix channel, it would make sense to theme it around SME (Small/Medium Enterprise) to cover more business-oriented solutions. I think it would still get a decent audience and might make a bit more ROI since enterprise vendors could sponsor him, and Linus has built significant trust in the tech community. Even then, though Linux would be a tool you use instead of the show's star, it could still cover some of the big news surrounding it. In addition, you also have the Anthony issue, it would be hard to find people who are familiar enough with the kinds of technology a channel like that would cover.

I agree with you the idea sounds terrible. Why not keep building deep underground data centres? You could also store a storage array significantly cheaper than sending it to the moon. If they could build some highly resilient filesystem and protocol that could ensure data resiliency, even then, it still doesn't make sense. If your entire business depends on Earth being in a stable condition, then why store it on the moon? If the earth is gone, then no disaster recovery will help you.

I contract for various clients and work with many languages - sometimes, I have to pick up an enterprise application, it could be in Java, GoLang or .NET, and need to refactor it and make it cloud native. I will tell you that most roles rely on your knowledge of frameworks as opposed to the language ins and outs. You don't need to be an expert, you just need to know what they are, and how they impact your application. My suggestion of things to do before you go looking for jobs: You should be able to build a basic REST API in Java, and should be able to implement all the basic features into it (JWT, ODB, Serialisation, Error Handling, etc). There are frameworks and libraries out there that will make it easy, but this means that you at least know how to build an API. Be able to test your API using Postman and be able to build a programmatic test suite of your API (an app that tests every possible combination of inputs of your API, so you can verify it works). Research Spring Boot, and the basics of enterprise apps (CQRS, Event-Sourcing, Microservices Architecture) Have used Java with at least one SQL database, and at least one NoSQL database, you don't need to build a full app, just connect to it, add and retrieve data. Build a free CI/CD Pipeline with GitHub Actions (free), to build your Java App, as well as to containerise it and upload it to Docker Hub (free to use). All this stuff will be free, and I hope it shouldn't be too complex, but I think it will demonstrate that you know the basics of application development and should be able to decipher some Java platform code.

It sounds like you know what you're talking about, but I wonder if anyone would be willing to implement that. You have the problem of technical issues, false positives, and funding. I'm sure if someone created a business case for this, if it was an e-sports company it would make sense, but for many companies, it would get rejected as there wouldn't be enough incentive for the business (better anti-cheat doesn't necessarily equate to more profit). Unless you built a company dedicated to building anti-cheat software and selling it maybe? But even then, you have the added complexity of potentially causing technical issues in multiplayer and the fact most development teams will find it too difficult to implement. Besides, people will bypass it eventually, regardless of how complex it is - so eventually this cutting-edge solution will become like the other anti-cheats, attempting to keep up with the cheat developers. In my opinion, the best anti-cheat is a combination of the best software currently out there (that you can afford) combined with hiring a lot of really great staff to review reports and create an open community around your game that has a good rapport with the moderators. The reason I hold that belief is that spending a huge amount of time on the best anti-cheat could destroy game-play, exclude people and take money out of the game's budget, thus defeating the whole purpose of anti-cheat - to make your game fun and safe. Foster a good community, and hire enough staff so every report can be actioned in a timely manner.

As some people have pointed out, this is most likely for security reasons. Public wifi is a bit of a hot bed for malicious activity, whether it be attempting to sniff network traffic and gather what data you can from it, or piracy, etc via VPNs. Also keep in mind that cafes and small businesses in general might buy more specialised network equipment that allows them to perform security scanning on the network traffic - to prevent things like ARP cache poisoning, etc that someone might do to perform a man in the middle attack. They can't analyse that traffic if it's being routed through a VPN. Even though a lot of VPNs claim to not log your data and be secure, there are still ways someone's connection can be traced back to their computer, beyond that. Cafes are businesses, and they don't want their ISP or any businesses to have any issues with them because suspected pirates are using VPNs on their network to do sussy things. Their wifi is simply meant to allow their customers to browse the web, do some work, etc while at their cafe. Yes, there are security risks using public wifi, they aren't nearly as hyped up as VPN providers want you to believe. In, fact, in some instances, using a VPN can be more insecure (probably not than public wifi, but definitely home network). Just make sure you're using HTTPS and if you want to, use an encrypted DNS using a free service like Quad9. I know you're not wanting to bypass it, but often businesses will have terms and conditions you'll need to accept before being able to connect to anything on their wifi. Have a read of it if you have time, see what they say about using VPNs, Proxies or Tunnels.

Hey, so for context - here's how it works: You setup a mysql database or whatever database you're using. This needs to be set-up as a server, and then you log into it and create a database. You can create a user to access MySQL on the server you set up. The MySQL connector allows the Python application to access your MySQL database server and send queries to retrieve or post data. This makes the beginning of a 3-tier architecture to allow for scalability, it's quite old and probably won't be used outside of development but it's great to learn for sure as it leads onto more complex system decoupling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitier_architecture if you want to learn about it. Now, if you want to set-up the database - you have a couple of options: Set up one yourself, this could be in a virtual-machine or a docker container. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-mysql-on-ubuntu-20-04. You will need to set up a virtual machine using virtual box or something and connect to that btw, I wouldn't do this on your own machine unless it's in a container. Rely on a Cloud Provider like AWS and set-up an RDS Database using the free-tier. Remember that you'll have to make sure it falls within the free tier before you deploy it (I'm not responsible for any incurred costs of course), but if you're just creating your AWS account you should get 1 year of an RDS database running on a small EC2 instance for free. https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/free-tier-rds-launch/ Finally, make sure if you do opt to use the cloud option you secure your database by using strong credentials and setting your security group to only allow connections from your IP address (make sure /32 bit netmask). If this sounds complex to you, I'd take a course or follow a tutorial on setting up and using MySQL first so you can know what you're doing. Taking a course on a cloud platform like AWS or GCP will be helpful as well so you can spin up development resources such as databases quickly. This site looks like a great starting point for the basics: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/mysql/index.htm if this does sound complex.