Randommer/Interestinglier/Weirder - now more of everything for the same low price!

[Raithe]

https://www.tumblr.com/whiteshipnightjar/740784061857071104/zoozve-my-beloved

"we don't live in a big clockwork, we live in a dance club" has to be a great takeout comment from that

[Gorth]

I sometimes come across these as recommended videos. I think they've done a good job at fixing the speed, frame rate and colorize some of these old clips from the late 1800's and early 1900's...

 

A personal favourite of mine, the last known footage of the Bismarck (movie shot from the perspective of the accompanying Prinz Eugen)

 

[majestic]

 

Yeah, Imma gonna go have some nightmares now.

[Raithe]

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth

Edited April 25 by Raithe

[Malcador]

Mexican morning TV is/was good stuff.

[Gfted1]

[Raithe]

https://archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947

"Don't Be A Sucker" -  A 1947 short film made by the US Army, in an attempt to teach US Citizens how to avoid falling for a certain type of people....

Admonishes Americans that they will lose their country if they let fanaticism and hatred turn them into "suckers." "Let's forget about 'we' and 'they' -- let's think about us!" In the context of the emerging Cold War, this film appears paradoxical.

[Gfted1]

TSMC's Lithography Machines Have a Remote Kill Switch in Case China Invades | Extremetech

[majestic]

https://www.iclarified.com/93724/icq-to-shut-down-on-june-26-after-28-years

Well, there goes a part of 'net history.

[Malcador]

7 hours ago, majestic said:

https://www.iclarified.com/93724/icq-to-shut-down-on-june-26-after-28-years

Well, there goes a part of 'net history.

Was a great IM tool, still recall my UIN, sadly 8 digits so not cool

[Raithe]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/

 

"We used to call that spyware..."

[Gorth]

7 hours ago, Raithe said:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/

 

"We used to call that spyware..."

Windows 1984 indeed

[Raithe]

BBC - Mount Everest: Eleven tonnes of garbage taken off Himalyan peaks

It took troops 55 days to recover the rubbish and bodies from Everest, Nuptse and Lhotse mountains.
It is estimated that more than fifty tonnes of waste and more than 200 bodies cover Everest.
The army began conducting an annual clean-up of the mountain, which is often described as the world’s highest garbage dump, in 2019 during concerns about overcrowding and climbers queueing in dangerous conditions to reach the summit.
The five clean-ups have collected 119 tonnes of rubbish, 14 human corpses and some skeletons, the army says.

[Hurlshort]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjll01220yeo

This story confuses the heck out of me. Is Wells Fargo evaluating employees by how often they jiggle their mouse? Why is that an important metric? 

The whole "try and look busy" philosophy makes no sense to me. Did you get your job done? Great, then it shouldn't matter how long you were jiggling your mouse.

[Raithe]

 

[Gfted1]

The 1st 'major lunar standstill' in more than 18 years is about to occur. Here's how to see it | Space

[majestic]

On 6/14/2024 at 5:12 PM, Hurlshort said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjll01220yeo

This story confuses the heck out of me. Is

What a treasure trove of fun this article is.

Quote

A spokeswoman for the firm said: "Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behaviour."

Really, a bank? A bank demands ethical behaviour from its employees? That has to be the joke of the century. Oh, wait, they mean towards the bank and their bottom lines and bonuses, not towards customers.

People shelling out 10$ for mouse jiggling software is also hilarious, that is something you can just download a free Python script for.

On 6/14/2024 at 5:12 PM, Hurlshort said:

Is Wells Fargo evaluating employees by how often they jiggle their mouse? Why is that an important metric? 

The whole "try and look busy" philosophy makes no sense to me. Did you get your job done? Great, then it shouldn't matter how long you were jiggling your mouse.

Speaking strictly from a very limited efficiency and personnel cost perspective, it makes perfect sense. If employees work only half their time and still get their jobs done, you can either assign more work to them, or fire half the staff. If someone underperforms, you can replace them with someone who does not. Never mind that in real life application and depending on the job done it is much more complicated (to cite an infamous example, like rating developers on written lines of code), but when has such minutiae ever stopped middle management and upwards from doing something dumb in the name of maximizing profits?

Obviously this assumes we are not talking about piece-work, where, for better or worse (well, mostly worse for everyone involved), task completion can be readily measured, but for that one does really not need to keep track of mouse movements. In a banking environment, that would probably only apply to jobs that were replaced by automation twenty years ago, although, who knows. Back during my school days we had a simulated bank to work at, where most of my time was spent going through huge chunks of accounting orders on paper and posting money transfers in the bank system. Somehow I doubt that banks still employ Oompa Loompas like that, but who knows. Bank often still run on ancient COBOL software.

Edited June 20 by majestic

[Raithe]

New SnailLoad Attack Relies on Network Latency Variations to Infer User Activity - SecurityWeek

[Gorth]

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et
 

Apparently some cybersecurity package has decided that Windows is malware and tries forcefully to remove it… all over the world. Affecting everything from cloud hosting over airlines to scheduled surgeries and tv stations 

 

There have been reports suggesting that a cybersecurity company called Crowdstrike, which produces antivirus software, issued a software update that has gone horribly wrong and is bricking Windows devices - prompting the so-called "blue screen of death" on PCs.

[Hawke64]

22 hours ago, Gorth said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et
 

Apparently some cybersecurity package has decided that Windows is malware and tries forcefully to remove it… all over the world. Affecting everything from cloud hosting over airlines to scheduled surgeries and tv stations 

 

There have been reports suggesting that a cybersecurity company called Crowdstrike, which produces antivirus software, issued a software update that has gone horribly wrong and is bricking Windows devices - prompting the so-called "blue screen of death" on PCs.

It was morbidly fascinating to watch (I cannot say whether or not my company uses CrowdStrike or the Windows OS). The update caused a BSOD bootloop on the affected PCs (so no online updates since the system can't start and check for them), while the current workaround requires manual action and, for the BitLocker-protected devices, the BitLocker key. The alternative is to boot from a USB drive with a Linux system and remove the faulty driver, but on the corporate PCs it is usually disabled.

From what I can see, it is likely to cause an increase in phishing attacks.

What I am curious about is whether it is going to affect the requirements for the software (e.g. no CI/CD and no auto-deployment) and security procedures on the government level, because the NHS was among the affected organisations. Additionally, CrowdStrike has the usual "We promise nothing" in its EULA, so I would love to see these kind of EULAs to be challenged in court (though, I do not think that part worked in the EU to begin with).

Quote

8.2 Product Warranty. If Customer has purchased a Product, CrowdStrike warrants to Customer during the applicable Subscription/Order Term that: (i) the Product will operate without Error.

[...]

There is no warranty that the offerings or CrowdStrike tools will be error free, or that they will operate without interruption or will fulfill any of customer’s particular purposes or needs. The offerings and CrowdStrike tools are not fault-tolerant and are not designed or intended for use in any hazardous environment requiring fail-safe performance or operation. Neither the offerings nor CrowdStrike tools are for use in the operation of aircraft navigation, nuclear facilities, communication systems, weapons systems, direct or indirect life-support systems, air traffic control, or any application or installation where failure could result in death, severe physical injury, or property damage.

[...]

10.1 To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, except for liability for any amounts paid or payable to third parties under section 9 (indemnification), customer’s payment obligations, and/or any infringement or misappropriation by one party of the other party’s intellectual property rights, neither party shall be liable to the other party in connection with this agreement or the subject matter hereof (under any theory of liability, whether in contract, statute, tort or otherwise) for any lost profits, revenue, or savings, lost business opportunities, lost data, or special, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, even if such party has been advised of the possibility of such damages or losses or such damages or losses were reasonably foreseeable; or (b) an amount that exceeds the total fees paid or payable to CrowdStrike for the relevant offering during that offering’s subscription/order term. These limitations will apply notwithstanding any failure of essential purpose of any remedy specified in this agreement. Multiple claims shall not expand the limitations specified in this section 10.

Overall, this kind of failures are on the C level, since it is related to the procedures, strategy, and the lack of QA, rather than the specific developer who pushed the update.

It also reminds that monopoly might not be good and having a diverse fleet of PCs, software, and at least 1 IT support person available at all times improves the resilience of the system (and also makes managing it more complex and increases the number of possible points of failure).

---

Also, it does not seem to be the first incident of this magnitude with a manual intervention required for the resolution under the CrowdStrike CEO. Granted, in 2010, the related software was less widely used.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/07/major-outages-at-crowdstrike-microsoft-leave-the-world-with-bsods-and-confusion/

Quote

As noted on Mastodon by LittleAlex, Kurtz was the Chief Technology Officer of security firm McAfee when, in April 2010, that firm sent an update that deleted a crucial Windows XP file that caused widespread outages and required system-by-system file repair.

 

Edited July 20 by Hawke64

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, Hawke64 said:

Overall, this kind of failures are on the C level, since it is related to the procedures, strategy, and the lack of QA, rather than the specific developer who pushed the update.

CrowdStrike is the Boeing of software companies?

[Hawke64]

1 hour ago, Gorth said:

CrowdStrike is the Boeing of software companies?

The comparison is justified, considering the wide adoption of the software and the encouragement of frequent and fast deployment at the cost of thorough testing (I'd like to note that in the case of the antivirus software specifically, it might be reasonable). But hey, the planes do not fall often, so it is probably will not happen under the CEO making the decision, while the profit will definitely go up. /s

I have read a rather curious theory (i.e. not a fact) that the current business education leads to these issues, where the short-term profits are preferred to the long-term sustainability.

[Azdeus]

Well, on the bright side, next time someone asks me why I don't want anything messing with my kernel, such as anti-cheat, I can now point to this as an extreme example.

[Hurlshort]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cek9mr43x1xo

Great, now we have coked up sharks.

[Gorth]

3 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cek9mr43x1xo

Great, now we have coked up sharks.

It would be interesting to follow shark meat prices the next couple of months