Interesting findings on the internet

[Specmaster]

So bored and drunk after an extremely profitable couple of days "digging people out of the shit thanks to Crowdstrike"

This is interesting, a bit over my head to sort it out, but if this what he is saying is correct, then once you know what to look for then it should be easy to resolve.

I t didn't take long for the "reboot in safe mode, use CLI to delete some files, reboot" procedure to be stated. One of the early comments was "good, but how do I apply it to 70000 endpoints".

Err, 1 at a time Seriously, if you have that many, then you are in the do dos

[tggzzz]

This is interesting, a bit over my head to sort it out, but if this what he is saying is correct, then once you know what to look for then it should be easy to resolve.

I t didn't take long for the "reboot in safe mode, use CLI to delete some files, reboot" procedure to be stated. One of the early comments was "good, but how do I apply it to 70000 endpoints".

Err, 1 at a time Seriously, if you have that many, then you are in the do dos

For example https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/19/ ... date_mess/ The second is predictably grim. The last is a doozy, and ought to have be considered while the installation was being configured.

He isn't alone. An administrator on Reddit said 40 percent of servers were affected, along with 70 percent of client computers stuck in a bootloop, or approximately 1,000 endpoints. Other administrators reported having 250,000 clients and servers all over the world to deal with.
...
He told us: "The fix, while pretty simple, requires hands on the machine, which is not great when most are remote. Talking a warehouse operator through the intricacies of BitLocker recovery keys and command prompts is not for the faint-hearted!"
BitLocker is Microsoft's encryption tool, and it makes a device's storage inaccessible without a recovery key. As such, trying to work through some of the current recovery options on a modern device will likely require the use of that recovery key. Pity the administrators who dutifully kept a list of those keys on a secure server share, only to find that the server is also now showing a screen of baleful blue.
...
Another Redditor posted: "They sent us a patch but it required we boot into safe mode. "We can't boot into safe mode because our BitLocker keys are stored inside of a service that we can't login to because our AD is down.

[mnementh]

Shockingly, another instance of "putting all your eggs in someone else's basket, no matter how much you pay them, is still a bad idea."

mnem
*pisses off to do something constructive*

[tggzzz]

Shockingly, another instance of "putting all your eggs in someone else's basket, no matter how much you pay them, is still a bad idea."

Greybeards learned that lesson in the 70s.

When PCs/Apples became available, everybody was mightly pleased to be able to liberate their data from the clutches of the Timesharing bureaux.

[tggzzz]

With a handy radar cat detector that can see through walls, you too can avoid startling feral animals.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/feral-cat-radar-detector

It is based on a 60GHz radar module you can buy from Sparkfun for $50.
https://docs.acconeer.com/en/latest/ or more boringly https://www.sparkfun.com/products/24540#documents-tab

30 years ago I worked on a 60GHz project. It was room sized, and talking was a problem due to all the equipment's ventilation fans.

The radar had a thumb-sized/shaped 20dB ceramic antenna. It also had an anti-reflection coating, equivalent to those "blooms" seen on optical camera lenses. You knew you "weren't in Kansas anymore"[1] when you saw that anti-reflection coating was a thin piece of thermoplastic stretched over the ceramic.

[1] Palo Alto, actually

[tggzzz]

Pleasingly highbrow cartoon. I'd probably rate it as highly as xkcd, but that would require I understood most of them
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/562

Too many people don't understand this...
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/557
...yet. But in years to come, they will

[Zenith]

It reminds me of a joke I heard a long time ago.

Moore came to call on Russell in his rooms in Cambridge. They had agreed to meet and the board at the bottom of the stairs indicated Russell was there.

He went up the stairs and knocked on the door and said, "Russell are you there"? No answer.

He knocked louder and said, "Russell are you there"?

The answer came back, "I don't know".

[Zenith]

Another one in the same vein is that Lewis Carroll author of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Alice Through the Looking Glass" was a rave author in the late 19th century. He was a mathematics lecturer as his day job and a somewhat strange character. A pioneer photographer who took pictures of little girls in various stages of undress.

Queen Victoria was a fan of his works and requested an audience. At the end of it she said, "Mr Carroll, you must send me a copy of your next work as soon as it's published". Sure enough, a few weeks later, a book on vector algebra arrived at Buckingham Palace.

[Zenith]

While I'm at it there's another one, not quite the same. Dr Spooner, noted for spoonerisms.

He's supposed to have told a student,

"You have hissed all my mystery lectures. You have been caught fighting a liar in the quadrangle. You have tasted two whole worms. You will leave Oxford on the next town drain."

I had a history teacher who was interviewed by Doctor Spooner for a scholarship just after WWI. Spooner asked a question about when rum was first drunk in England, which he muffed and he didn't get the scholarship. We asked and he wasn't treated to a spoonerism.

[tggzzz]

Where I grew up there was a chippie named "Chish and Fips". Not too many proles around there

(Chippie is a shop selling the tradition UK fast food: battered cod fried with chipped potatoes, optionally doused in NaCl and industrial CH₃COOH)

[Zenith]

There's a chippie in Bristol called "Cod Almighty". There was one in Kidderminster called "Pete's Plaice".

[mnementh]

This is an archive of HP calculator manuals and workbooks all converted to fully functional HTML documents. Very nicely done; I tripped over it while seeking resources on my HP 85A business PC.

https://archived.hpcalc.org/greendyk/

Cheers!

mnem
*tail-deep in the rabbit-hole*

[bd139]

[tggzzz]

I find it amusing that neons have been used both as a noise source (e.g. there) and as a voltage reference (e.g. Solartron LM1420).

[bd139]

I find it amusing that neons have been used both as a noise source (e.g. there) and as a voltage reference (e.g. Solartron LM1420).

Well most things are a noise source. The objective is of course to usually get rid of that rather than embrace it

[MED6753]

Is the British bond system still based upon a lottery or is it now interest based like US savings bonds?

[Zenith]

There are at least two things, Premium Savings Bonds, and guaranteed Bonds like all governments issue. There maybe others such as National Savings Certificates and Granny Bonds, if they are still going.

The Premium Savings Bonds have winnings (or dividends) based on a random draw process with various levels of prize. Being winnings, I don't believe they are taxed. The process is skewed so that the returns are on average, generally less than from a bank account.

There's also a National Lottery. The tickets cost £2 (I think) and you can either choose your own numbers or the system will allocate them randomly, if you choose to invest in a "Lucky Dip" ticket. The prizes can be anywhere from over £10 million, to I think £100.

[bd139]

They are all a poor investment in the UK but attractive from the success bias of happy winners.

My father was a fine example. He was happy with his 0.6% return at average on NS&I Premium Bonds because occasionally he got a few hundred quid.

I've made more in the last quarter on stocks / ETFs than he did in the decade of his investments.

[tggzzz]

They are all a poor investment in the UK but attractive from the success bias of happy winners.

My father was a fine example. He was happy with his 0.6% return at average on NS&I Premium Bonds because occasionally he got a few hundred quid.

I've made more in the last quarter on stocks / ETFs than he did in the decade of his investments.

The national lottery and premium bonds have a 100% success record - provided you realise you are buying a dream. As I like to point out, you have a higher chance of dying while the lottery balls are being selected than you have of winning the jackpot.

As for stocks; timing is everything.

[bd139]

As for stocks; timing is everything.

Well knowing what you are doing is everything there. Timing is very different.

[tggzzz]

As for stocks; timing is everything.

Well knowing what you are doing is everything there. Timing is very different.

Everything is easy in a bull or bear market. Timing is spotting the change from one to the other.

[bd139]

As for stocks; timing is everything.

Well knowing what you are doing is everything there. Timing is very different.

Everything is easy in a bull or bear market. Timing is spotting the change from one to the other.

Well it's more prediction and that involves research and modelling. Timing is the bit that comes after that.

Two recent wins for example:

- BAE - geopolitical situation and noise on purchases.

- Raytheon / RTX - everyone loves a rebrand!

Currently crossing fingers on INTC at the moment which was a "well it can't get much work for a sovereign semiconductor fab company with their own IP". I'm up but not much yet

[tggzzz]

Well knowing what you are doing is everything there. Timing is very different.

Everything is easy in a bull or bear market. Timing is spotting the change from one to the other.

Well it's more prediction and that involves research and modelling. Timing is the bit that comes after that.

Two recent wins for example:

- BAE - geopolitical situation and noise on purchases.

- Raytheon / RTX - everyone loves a rebrand!

Currently crossing fingers on INTC at the moment which was a "well it can't get much work for a sovereign semiconductor fab company with their own IP". I'm up but not much yet

I always regard rebranding as a negative. Either there is something to forget, or the managers know something isn't right but don't know what to do. That leads to "something must be done, this is something, this must be done".

Always unwise to concentrate on either the wins or the losses.

Always worth remembering that 75% of professional fund managers under-perform the market. There have been spectacular failures recently, where fund managers who have made very decent returns over many years suddenly lost their mojo. Aberdeen Asset Management springs to mind (rebranded as Ardn).

To beat those people you have to have to be either wiser (possible, unlikely) or have inside knowledge (illegal).

[bd139]

I always regard rebranding as a negative. Either there is something to forget, or the managers know something isn't right but don't know what to do. That leads to "something must be done, this is something, this must be done".

Always unwise to concentrate on either the wins or the losses.

Always worth remembering that 75% of professional fund managers under-perform the market. There have been spectacular failures recently, where fund managers who have made very decent returns over many years suddenly lost their mojo. Aberdeen Asset Management springs to mind (rebranded as Ardn).

To beat those people you have to have to be either wiser (possible, unlikely) or have inside knowledge (illegal).

Well in the case of defence companies they are perpetually trying to get people to forget what they do which does tend to work. RTX is a stupid brand though what with the nature of it being used already by NVidia. Perhaps that was the idea; get investors to buy RTX stock thinking it was NVidia.

As for fund managers, the old idiom goes: never trust an advisor (or fund manager) because if he knew what he was doing he would be taking all the money himself.

Wiser, yes, that is the objective. With greater portfolio diversity and varying risk appetite of course. A fund manager's job is to obtain capital and keep hold of it, possibly making a profit while pocking trade fees and commission. The customers are just convenient people to steal capital off. My objectives and modelling is based on my own capital and self-serving interest only with no customers.

[Cerebus]

I always regard rebranding as a negative. Either there is something to forget, or the managers know something isn't right but don't know what to do. That leads to "something must be done, this is something, this must be done".

I apologise if I've told y'all this anecdote before.

I used to work with a salesman, Nick, who in a former job had sold custom carpets, the sort with a made-to-order pattern in them, often a company name or logo. Nick discerned a pattern in one sub-class of his sales; when he sold a carpet complete with corporate branding to a company that was refurbishing its reception area in more than half the instances that company folded within 6 months.