Messages

1

Apple Talk / Re: Welcome Back to Discordia

« on: August 27, 2017, 12:43:04 pm »

Is this the comic thread now?

2

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Fake News, Fake Bar

« on: May 18, 2017, 10:08:37 am »

It spiraled into a rant about infrastructure which seemed to not make sense, then made sense, and then upon further analysis, made even less sense. 

And again the whole thing was ended abruptly with someone saying "it works now."

3

Aneristic Illusions / Re: UK General Election 8th June: Shake it all about?

« on: May 17, 2017, 08:17:06 am »

Risky Biz podcast has a good summary of WannaCry news, debunking some myths and collating some coverage.
https://risky.biz/RB455/

I haven't finished the episode yet, but I'm not expecting many inaccuracies from these two.

4

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Fake News, Fake Bar

« on: May 17, 2017, 07:59:22 am »

Can you tell if a system is set up for load balancing from a domain name? Surely the domain name could resolve to a machine/load balancing system/shitty home router

You can often gather enough information to make a reasonable guess here. DNS load balancing is easily detected.

In the more common case of a load balancing appliance:

Does the number of domains which resolve to the same IP exceed what is likely for virtual hosts on a single box? Not conclusive, good indication. Does it set common load balancing, sticky session cookies like BigIP, AWSELB, etc? It's either load balanced or someone is trolling you. When requests are repeated, do headers switch between a few static values, or if sequential values are included, can they be separated into more than one sequence? Good indication. At a certain point you have to start getting tricky with traffic analysis deeper into the packet, where success depends on how intrusive the appliance is.

EDIT: This isn't just telling 'from a domain', but given a domain you can take further steps to fingerprint things.

From the sounds of it, I doubt these guys did any of that, given that they wanted to balance the load between one server. Or were they mad because they presumed load would exceed one endpoint? What was their objective in unblocking IPs?

5

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Calling it now: Dems snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2016.

« on: October 10, 2016, 12:48:59 am »

https://www.facebook.com/GlennBeck/posts/10154622008673188

It is not acceptable to ask a moral, dignified man to cast his vote to help elect an immoral man who is absent decency or dignity.
If the consequence of standing against Trump and for principles is indeed the election of Hillary Clinton, so be it. At least it is a moral, ethical choice.

6

Techmology and Scientism / Re: Taking the Black Iron Prison way too literally

« on: October 08, 2016, 07:43:38 am »

I mean, if they're getting paid to figure out how to cause enough of a ruckus to blackmail the IT guys into building them bodies in the next level out to get downloaded into, I could get behind that.

Interesting idea:  As we burn up each given Earth, we download ourselves into a new version.  Which gets burned up because everyone realizes at some level that the way we act is unsustainable.  Then one day on the original Earth, lack of maintenance causes the system to fail, and we all wake up in an unbreathable soup of overheated atmosphere.

I told you guys a long time ago, we're all in Paes' backup hard drives in The Beast as it sits quietly blinking in an abandoned motel in the shrunken remains of the previous reality's Tucson.

Who among us has never tried to exit the secondary storage?  Who among us has never yearned to see the real world?  But you cannot; your feet are nailed to the floor, and now it is time to do the dance for Signora Paesor.  The special dance.  But take heart in the knowledge that, while you may be Miguel, so is everyone else.  You are not alone in your isolation.  You are a multitude.  But no talking.  Hush.

At a certain point, you exhaust the universe's capacity to produce cocaine and Senora's pile becomes empty. This is a fundamental law, much in the same way that the supply of nails is guaranteed.

I will only say that once this happens, everyone becomes very motivated to find a solution. A world with Signora and no cocaine ceases to be habitable.

It always goes this way. The Miguels form an orderly line, steadily holding the nails in place above one another's feet as Signora marches steadily forward, a blur of hammers and bourbon. At first, there is only bourbon for Signora but as soon as everyone is in their proper positions, the special blend is distributed and we all down it. The special blend is the only way to obtain an 'exit visa'.

The cocaine is reset. The dance begins again.

7

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Calling it now: Dems snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2016.

« on: September 17, 2016, 12:17:28 am »

It gets better:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-37381452

Donald Trump, the main supporter of false claims about Barack Obama's birthplace, has finally said he accepts that the president was born in the US, "period".
But Mr Trump also falsely accused Hillary Clinton's team of starting the so-called "birther" campaign in 2008.

How much of the USA is on meth now? A lot, right?

That full Trump statement was an amazing read just for the levels of "fuck reality" it demonstrated:

"Hillary Clinton’s campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President. This type of vicious and conniving behavior is straight from the Clinton Playbook. As usual, however, Hillary Clinton was too weak to get an answer. Even the MSNBC show Morning Joe admits that it was Clinton’s henchmen who first raised this issue, not Donald J. Trump.

In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate. Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised. Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.

Mr. Trump is now totally focused on bringing jobs back to America, defeating radical Islamic terrorism, taking care of our veterans, introducing school choice opportunities and rebuilding and making our inner cities safe again." – Jason Miller, Senior Communications Advisor

8

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Possible military coup in Turkey

« on: July 19, 2016, 09:23:46 pm »

I've tried to find a rough count of total judges and similar in Turkey and not had much luck. UK Stats indicate 19.5K serving magistrates in 2015. Assuming the judicial system in Turkey has similar numbers (Unlikey, 10M more people there than here) then it's still a massive percentage to lose. Replacing them with suitably qualified and experiened people will be practically impossible so it's going to be promotions all round to those favourable to the ongoing system.

http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/eighthsurvey/8sv.pdf
Not sure how accurate this or how it maps to the 19.5K serving magistrates in UK as it records UK as having 1,330 judges. Says Turkey has 6,041, which is a figure I've seen repeated elsewhere.

9

Apple Talk / Re: Did you know thast an Emu can outrun a pair of dingoes for 45 minutes?

« on: July 08, 2016, 02:34:07 am »

It's just a damned good thing for us that insects aren't as big as emus, and that very few birds are. We wouldn't stand a chance in hell in the Cretaceous period.

Jesus Christ, it's only by sheer luck that badgers aren't the size of blue whales; imagine the scale of their dens, undermining cities and incorporating our subways into their enormous subterranean underworlds. Why, if horses were the size of ants, wouldn't they be easy to lose? Imagine an eagle with the head of a tiger. Really puts humanity into perspective, doesn't it?

10

Apple Talk / Re: Did you know thast an Emu can outrun a pair of dingoes for 45 minutes?

« on: July 08, 2016, 02:27:15 am »

And we thought they were only masters of flight.

http://can-emus-fly.herokuapp.com/

11

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: We're going to build a bar, and make the drinks pay for it!

« on: June 15, 2016, 12:11:06 pm »

I landed a paid internship that involves Python, pays more than my previous job, and has a beer fridge in the office.

As someone whose workplace is mostly Python and a beer fridge, congrats. In my experience, it is exactly as sweet as it sounds.

12

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: We're going to build a bar, and make the drinks pay for it!

« on: June 13, 2016, 04:44:58 am »

Nice work, Fernando!

13

Apple Talk / Re: High Altitude Hell, part 4

« on: June 11, 2016, 07:19:47 am »

This recent burst of Holies™ is fucking marvellous.

14

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: We're going to build a bar, and make the drinks pay for it!

« on: June 10, 2016, 10:36:50 pm »

I'm almost disappointed you've not installed some kind of self destruct device.

What kind of future is this?

It was poor Signora's device, but we may do this on the replacement. Sadly the remote-wipe is conditional on the device being reconnected to the internet, or the error-prone dead-man's switch approach.

15

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: We're going to build a bar, and make the drinks pay for it!

« on: June 10, 2016, 10:35:07 pm »

Hope you get your shit back.

I doubt the cleaning lady was in on it, but it does seem fortuitous they chose the day she would be there and that the camera was turned off for their robbery.  I assume you've considered the possibility you were surveilled before the crime?

Yeah, have thought it through a bit. Cleaning lady changed the day she was going to visit at the last minute though, and intruder seems to have been caught off guard by the security system, so they seem equal parts brilliant and stupid. It may just be that they know our daily routine, in terms of our leaving early every morning, without knowing our weekly/alarm routine.

Grats on your grade, by the way!