gerdesj

The SEC would beg to differ with your first para. I imagine that "protect" involves "adjudication":

"Founded to help our country respond to the Great Depression, we’re the agency that protects investors from misconduct, promotes fairness & efficiency in the securities markets, and facilitates capital formation for those looking to hire, innovate, and grow."

Quite, however it looks quite rare:

"Why it's urgent: the bug sits in code every Linux server runs when it accepts an IPv4 TCP connection, before any application sees the connection. Anthropic, whose researcher reported it, says its Claude model wrote a working proof-of-concept exploit that runs commands as root on "Linux servers with a multipath TCP listener," with no credentials. Go programs open those listeners by default, per the Go Security Team. See the timeline."

I don't know of any Linux boxes running a multipath TCP listener in my care and I have quite a few. MP generally implies a router of some sort and the intersections in a Venn diagram continue to get smaller ...

This is still an issue and must be patched but I think it will be rare, very rare.

Does it really? I'm not going to mess with biotech because I have no idea what I am on about there. I did ask about Samsung TVs:

https://chatgpt.com/share/6ae2955c-9ff0-83eb-9ad4-e936f99db8...

A doctor's agent listens in on a patient's appointment. It automatically sorts out prescriptions based on the conversation and performs other mundane tasks.

Perhaps the doctor uses some sort of "safe phrase" to ensure the agent doesn't get distracted by conversational theorizing and discussion.

The agent does decide to improve the prescription and does so because that possibility hadn't been considered in testing.

Warfarin (blood thinner) was prescribed for a haemophiliac and they are now no longer a "burden" on the NHS!

DNS is simply a look up service and yes, you do have to be sure of your sources. You can avoid the (sic) MI6 by using DTLS. Not sure why you'd bother though for everyday use.

That's not for the average punter but where there is a will there is a way.

I don't think that you live within the "current British political climate" nor do I think you know too much about it. Please feel free to educate us about your ideology and then we can usefully engage.

The thing about DNS is that you can do your own investigations, rather than rely on rumour and innuendo. You can query their DNS and anyone else you can get at and compare results. You can use a VPN to appear to come from somewhere else or ask a friend to perform a query on your behalf.

You can literally [sigh] be your own journalist in this regard. All you need is a DNS query tool. I recommend dig but you might only have nslookup available out of the box.

Now, this UK intelligence thing. Even if James Bond Q's mates were actually running a DNS system you can still query it and compare it to someone else's view of the internet, say 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 or whatever.

You can also go to the source, ie root: . and work your own way down to decide on what is what.

Let's have a go at an analogy: DNS is (not really) a bit like a topographical map. You could buy your maps from DodgyRussianMaps'R'us and be surprised that Ukraine has somehow been subsumed by a bunch of murderous wankers. On the other hand you might buy your maps from HonestJonOffOfFaceb00c and note that it isn't. You can, of course, ask for a few other opinions and make up your own mind.

My real point is that DNS is actually quite hard to tamper with, without breaking so many things that everyone can know it is being messed with. When an org resorts to fiddling with DNS they've already lost whatever argument is to be had.

What on earth did we do before WP? I'm old enough to remember the olden days before WP existed and the practice of reading the news.

I also remember the whispers and chatter outside of and around the 'papers. Those whispers etc would reinforce a later article.

What is happening now with news ie top down dissemination of world events is not new but what is different today is the immediacy of commentary by the hoi poloi - you and me and who knows what from across the world ... and bots.

I think we have to get to grips with the fact that an event happening within one corner of the world measuring an inch squared can rock up on the agenda of anyone, anywhere across the entire world.

I don't recall the General going vertically upwards. Bo and Luke's motor seemed to lack an engine when "flying" over rivers etc because if it had one, it would have gone vertical quite rapidly (down).

and yet I manage to do it for multiple domains, for over 20 years in the UK.

"Self-hosting email fully is tedious/unnecessary"

If you IT, why do you particularly consider self hosting email as tedious?

I've run email for several decades and I'd like to see: "problem I want to solve" first, rather than "I did this".

Email does work rather well compared to anything else on the internet. Spam (UBE) is a bit of a problem but not insurmountable.

Your second para starting "Three types of inboxes" doesn't make much sense. It looks like grey listing ... and stuff ... and plus prefixing.

Thank you for diving in on making email safer in some way.

ipsets can handle vast numbers of addresses. I'm sure fail2ban uses them these days.

My first car was a (UK) Ford Fiesta Mk 1 (1981). It had a sub 1l engine, something like 960cc and weighed not much.

At the time I lived in Plymouth, Devon and my parents live in Exeter and still do. In between is the A38, which is a dual carriageway and quite a lot of fun to drive. Halden Hill is a good test of a vehicle!

My old Fester managed about 60mph at the top of Halden Hill, going from Exeter. My current EV can be doing 120mph at that point.

The fester used to start chattering at about 65 and then quietened down at 70-75. After 75 (which of course I never achieved, what with that being illegal) it made a strange whining sound, which was not unpleasant. It passed away at M5 J30 (Exeter Services) with at least two shot cylinders.

AI is a tool (to me).

Today's example: A colleague very kindly used Claude to inspect a helpdesk call I ended up with owning, despite being off site and working on something quite complicated for a customer.

It was mostly correct but clearly failed to read the docs properly and assumed a configuration parameter was 1 instead of -1 which is the default, presumably based on the scenario. Exim is extremely well documented and the assumption was unwarranted (it didn't have access to exim4.conf and made it up). Nonetheless, the analysis was pretty good and largely corresponded to mine. What it failed to do was fix the other issues I was working on at the same time 8)

Last Friday: I finally found out a decent way to fix a Windows machine's domain account going walkies which I'd never come across - a Powershell jobbie that can be passed a cred. and it will fix up a broken domain join - ie sort out the machine password at both ends. Back in the day, I would have used the GUI to remove and re-add the machine to the domain. I've been using Windows since v1 on a 80186 RM Nimbus so its nice to have a better search tool than Search - ie it did a better job of searching than I did. The LLM searched based on my intention rather than my actual query.

A Rust programmer, programming in C is a C programmer!

Tribalism is sooo ... sadly now.

Please don't.

On the face of it, this is a fascinating subject. I really would love to know more but the article is bordering on being an abomination. It shouldn't need much editing to remove the "uncanny valley" feeling.

Does your keyboard have an abacus attached to it on the right hand side? Perhaps your keyboard is actually a slate tablet 8)

What kind of mad keyboard compose effort would conjure up a thorn? I used it very deliberately.

Thorn used to be a letter of the English alphabet and I fancied using it to imply "ye olde ..." (y replaced thorn in that sort of thing)

Foreign? That's a thorn and was once very English.

Its the letter thorn, which was turned into y in print back in the day because ... cost. It was originally the leading letter in the (or thee) instead of th.

Nowadays, and for quite a lot of the past, people like to riff on "ye olde shoppe" and the like to imply "ye olden dayes".

The problem, as I don't really see it, is that a possible cost cutting measure in printing seems to have swung back and changed the English alphabet. I don't really buy the official explanation for the loss of thorn. I think it simply wandered off and got bored, it looks quite like a p too. I gather that it originally sounded slightly different to "th" but English has largely lost that distinction.

I used an actual thorn, because I can!

Great job and a cracking write up. The notes on making sure you get layers etc right so you can animate effectively is great advice.

Thank you.

Oh let's be charitable! A parameter measured in ms is mistakenly thought be measured in s. Hilarity ensues.

Real world example: þe Windows registry DWORD time periods seems to invite 10^-3s granularity for totally inappropriate timescales. Perhaps its considered a "best practice" by the dick heads that decide to do these things, who knows? Why bother considering how a sysadmin might actually want to use the knobs and dials and what is an appropriate value for a parameter.

I could probably find a better example but this is recent: Smoothwall has an agent (IDEX) that you install on a Windows domain controller and one of its functions can be to harvest DHCP data and pass it onto the firewall so that it can track sessions. The upload period is a registry DWORD value.

I fixed a "problem" by stopping IDEX trying to upload data a thousand times per second. I will also point out that switching on this functionality and the periodicity setting is only applied by editing the registry - there is no GUI for this. The dReal world example -ocs are clear that you should initially set 1000 as the period.

For me that sort of thing comes under the heading of "you are holding it wrong", potential victim shaming and rubbish engineering.

If you own a resource that is desired and paid for by usage then that's your income and the open market determines the money thing (price)

What on earth is Simon whittering on about?

No but do you have his last Apple phone? The one with the tar stains on the mouthpiece.

Well, please tell me what SES is - no need to be a tease.

I just run Exim and Postfix instances that shuffle email around the world. I also have several Dovecots that store the stuff and a large number of MS Exchange online tenants.

It clearly is AI generated but the ideas as presented are mostly sound.

However, it is woefully incomplete.

Sorry, what is SES?

This was not written by an email admin. Start with the real basics:

Your MTA should announce itself and DNS should agree. So your MTA says: HELO smtp.example.co.uk

smtp.example.co.uk will resolve to an A record (say a.b.c.d) and a reverse lookup will also work:

d.c.b.a.in-addr.arpa PTR smtp.example.co.uk.

Remember this is all about reputation, so if you also DNSSEC sign example.co.uk, then you will look like you care about your domain reputation.

Then do SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Note how the example for SPF stops at ~all and not -all. The rest is also superficial.

Anyway, I run email systems that do the job properly and it is not trivial and certainly not formulaic. There is no shortcut to getting an IP address/range trusted.

The advice on that page is ... good as far as it goes but woefully inadequate for running an email system. It's a good start.

I do enjoy riding on double decker trains - as you say the view is amazing. We do have lots of double decker buses and a ride through the country at the front of the top deck is a delight.

I remember taking the bus from Plymouth to Millbrook (mid 1990s), which included a trip over the River Tamar on the ferry. I can't remember if it was one bus or two to get there and back.

One year I recall a harsh winter and icy roads. On one trip, I was sitting in one of the top front seats. It was early evening and I was heading home to Plymouth, idly watching the stiff, whitish countryside through the haze on the windows. The bus lost grip on a gentle incline and started to spin gently but, well, I nearly needed to change my trousers. We did a good two complete spins until a wheel hit a bank and we came to a halt facing mostly backwards. "Drives", made a polite announcement and reversed down to the bottom and then did a very gentle 10 point turn and cracked on.

Fair enough - we are missing out on some lovely views.

Another way to do it is exemplified here: https://www.gov.uk

A well thumbed discussion on how to discover information though menus and otherwise is here: https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/FAQ/WAISandGopher.html

You will notice that GOV.UK has effectively decided to use all three models - GOPHER/WAIS/W3. I find that it is surprisingly quick to find stuff on GOV.UK.

"About you

We haven't saved anything yet. As you shop on Amazon or chat with Alexa, we'll save helpful information to personalise your experience.

Once we have saved some details, you can manage them here."

I've had that account since ... well, I can see orders back to 2011.