...should be where you are in control of the information you read, and no one should be able to purchase themselves the top search result positions.
When you have to register, you immediate place all your privacy and trust in those who claim to protect it, as history shows us again and again, this is seldom the case - we always end up at the shallow end of the dreampool.
A library, is sort of anonymous, because they never register what books you read, they only label them, track them for recovery purposes, and after that - all is lost, and even if they do - you can freely walk into it, read any book and information you want, and no one is any wiser to whatever you where thinking, or worse yet - THINK that you are thinking.
This is the biggest problem with tracking on the net, people getting ideas of what you want, when it might not be what you want at all.
The fight for privacy, is the biggest fight we're fighting now, but our comfort makes us very complacent I'm afraid.
...you'll feel a bit overwhelmed the first year, this is completely natural.
I work for a huge corporate with IT, and in the beginning I asked myself several times "What am I doing here?", the workload and assignments are so overwhelming that I thought I couldn't even learn this the next 10 years. The truth is, the company is completely aware of this, and most likely - so are your manager.
But corporate knows, you're there because they saw the potential to shape you. Sometimes you can get a job where you have NO initial qualifications, but as long as the company do in-house training, and you're willing to learn - then you're already a valuable asset to the company, at any age!
If you have a competent manager, he/she will have seen the likes of you 10 times over and then some. They know from experience how their learning curve is, and what most of us battle with on a day to day basis. If they're worth their salt, they'll slowly but surely learn from you, observe you, and introduce you to the things you need to qualify yourself over the years, over time you become an invaluable asset to the company, and will feel somewhat more competent as you progress.
I got hired in my late 40's, I was totally clueless. But I fought hard to learn and adapt. Years later - I still feel inadequate sometimes, but I am nowhere NEAR as inadequate as I was years ago, and I now tutor many of our own new trainees - and believe it or not, I learn from them as well.
The trick is actually just to take up challenges, lead yourself. If you sit idly by, chances are that you can get by unnoticed, unremarkable in any way - still you'll have some value to the company as you're not fired yet, they would fire you on the spot if you don't bring anything to the table. Trust me - successful corporates aren't a bunch of clueless fools, they got there for a reason, they found people like you - and you might just be more valuable than you might realize.
I've talked a lot to my managers, they often speak of other values like how well you fit in with the rest of the teams, how you can "empower" others to feel better about their efforts, and how social you are. It's all about the team.
I have had numerous discussions with colleagues that feels EXACTLY like those 58% we're talking about here. I have a female colleague that has no personal interest in IT, and constantly mentions how little she knows and how hopeless it all seems, but I see it differently, she's older, but quite awesome, always nice to those she helps, and if she can't figure it out - she already have figured out those WHO CAN, and she observes when they work, and learn.
She's become quite adept at helping people with IT tasks now, but she still feels like the 58%, I prefer to call that "staying humble" rather than being safe in your position of knowledge, because in IT the knowledge change ALL the time as we get new software solutions every 6 month, and you need to stay focused on new solutions and know how to make things "fit" together, aka - the bigger picture.
If it wasn't for my colleagues constantly accepting my failures by helping me out, I'd be totally lost today, but it turns out that over some time - you become that mentor to someone new as well.
Picture this, if you got an answer to everything you had on your mind, would you have anything on your mind at all?
One of the core essentials of development, and even human development (developing ourselves, bettering ourselves, expanding our horizon of knowledge), is being able to ask the right questions. The moment we stop looking for answers, we become complacent, lazy and non-seeking.
This is one of the things that I noticed already with Altavista, yes - pre google times, this is the reason that sites like Reddit and Slashdot exist, a place where we can vent our thoughts and see them without having to "Google" them first. If you don't know what to look for, Google will do nothing for you. Google is essentially a search engine, and it's good at what it does and for what it is.
But that's just it - the difference between a search engine and say, the old library, is that if you walk into the library, you'll have thousands of books available to you at a glance, meaning you could discover something you didn't know exist along the way, and thus get ideas for your particular interest, maybe interest you didn't know you had, because you didn't know they where there.
Google's dilemma is exactly there, you can search for something - if you already know it exist.
But it's been common knowledge for years now that you can purchase chips complete with IMEI number, multi-band RX/TX, fully featured with data, phone, simcard reader (just solder directly to pins!) mic in/speaker out pins, and the commands you send to it is via normal serial connections, you can use AT commands just like on an old HAYES(tm) modem.
The ones on ebay are often batches from really old cellphones, but very simple to code as you basically can do this just by interfacing them with an USB to SERIAL adapter, and then you can in fact use them just as a regular cellphone. I have a bunch of such chips in my drawer, let me give you some numbers for fun so you can find out for yourself, it's really an open door, surprising that so few know this, here's some numbers: NEOWAY M590E and another: SIM800L, if you google the first - you'll find tons of coding examples (which is so easy a 12 year old can figure it out), and instructional videos. The chips are often found complete with DIY PCB's someone put together as a kit out there, or presoldered, usually around 2-3 dollars, what a world we live in.
And yes, these can be wired up to become your own cellphone, simple, or smart (use an raspberry pi with a touch screen, load it up with an OS, your choice). And a little software magic aka amateur hour - and you're done.
A lot of devs, have done the same thing, it's a lot easier and a LOT more accessible to construct your own phone, than most people even dare to dream of.
Because "Internet", information wants to be free. Sure, you can cover everything on the surface, but the more "secret" the information is, the more popular it will become, and the more people will attempt to copy and distribute, and print it.
Next thing will probably be outlawing 3D printers.
...You gotta appreciate the GTA5 trolling of facebook.
And yet, facebook never learns. I quit facebook 6 years ago. But every damn smartphone I purchase, has the app by default, and not possible to remove without 3rd party software which you have to "trust". In some cases, not even removable.
I work for an sort of "internal call center" where we help our employees worldwide with their IT problems and infrastructure issues.
I would absolutely LOVE duplex to replace a lot of us for this, I realize I could be out of a job if this happens, but the job is so excruciatingly mundane at times, that this would be perfect for Duplex.
Here's an example of my day:
"HI, I've locked myself out, could you unlock me"?
Yes of course, hang on while I check your network ID, seems legit - I'll send it to your nearest manager for safety reasons.
"Hi, my pc just crashed the other day, and now the screen is black, but there are some graphics glitches on it from time to time".
What happened?
"Err, uhm, well - it's just crashed, can you please remote to my computer?"
Well, I can't see your monitors faults by just remoting to it, unless it's a graphics driver issue?
"Err, well you see, err...I was in a hurry this morning, and I left my laptop next to the car door, and I ran over it with my car"
Hi, service - how can I help you?
"Hi, I've got an issue with Excel, I'm trying to work on a project, and my document is locked to another user, could you release the user?"
Yes of course (goes trough a sh*t ton of server information to locate user, browse through documents...) Is your document such.and.such?
"Yes, it's version 1021 in (extremely long complex name)
Hm...no search function in our tools, (browses a server, goes trough a ton of revised documents with the same name, with one change)...found it, there's a user using it currently, are you sure they're not working on it?
"Hm, well, oh , Janet, maybe she's working on the case, but I gotta check if she's still at work brb..."
Waiting...
"It's okay, you can kick her out".
(Kicks user off document on server).
Hi, Service - how may I help you?
"I'm extremely frustrated, this cr*p piece of **** has for the 100th time crashed, and I can't get to work if the documents keep vanishing like this"
Okay, what happened.
"I called you guys like a 100 times, and every time I gotta call you to fix this, why is this not properly done?"
Well, you see...we're hundreds of call center workers here, and you could perhaps give us your Case ID so we can see what has been done before?
"Case ID? I got so many of them, which one do you want, and can you prevent this from happening again so I don't have to call you guys 100 times a week to just get my work done?"
(gets a case number)
Well, is the case about outlook not syncing again?
"No, No No no, that's a different case, oh and btw. that one isn't solved either, so keep that one open, and here's another case number, how come you guys don't know what I have reported? I've called so many times!?"
Well, we're literally hundreds of thousands of coworkers, and it's hard for a small team of a few hundred to keep track on everything everyone in the world is working on, that's why it's so important that you have a case number so we can see what has been done to help you."
(user finally gets it)
"ok ok, ok...(finds correct case number)" could you please remote to my desktop so I can show you?"
Sure...(remotes to desktop, finds out what software out of the 3000+ solutions we have user is using), oh it's running in a browser I see.
"Browser, I'm just clicking on a link on the desktop!"
Yes, it's a link that opens a specific page in Internet Explorer.
"Whatever, just fix the problem, okay?"
Ok, let's try some simple stuff first (clears cache, restarts browser, remote-app works!)
"Oh so now it works, how can I prevent this from happening again?"
(explains to user about the simple steps of clearing the cache).
"But, I'm not an IT supporter, how am I supposed to learn this? This is YOUR job, not mine! CLICK!...dut dut dut dut)..
When I read this, what immediately struck me, is how easy it would be to make a simple program that does this, no special "A.I." needed to do it, unless you consider the software some sort of A.I.
Here's how I'd do it:
1) Scan the image at various tile sizes, and search for circular geometry using + and - color level differentiation, you can call it a mild form of edge detection.
2) Scan the image for unusual color range variations, such as sampling a part of the image for regular noise (level average), and then comparing this in tiles with the rest of the image.
Just those two things above there, should spot fake images / photoshopped images way better than the naked eye.
What I usually do to spot photoshop fakes, is that I extend the contrasts between high and low to the extreme, this usually unmasks "bad" photoshopping, you'll usually see a fat trace of a round brush "painting" the area by a sloppy photoshopper. There's no reason we can't use the same trickery in basic detection in software as well.
But it's a modern PR thing, oh-we-are-so-progressive, we're going to try this, we're ahead of the heard. I've seen so many countries try this by now (and later ditching it, when it wasn't making the news anymore) that I don't quite believe in the sincerity behind the project.
I'm all for Universal Basic Income, because I personally believe that no one should starve to death, and everyone should have a basic platform where they could work themselves up from rock-bottom to a worthy place in society. And of their own choice, not what WE think is a worthy place. We're all different - there's a place for us all.
But these half assed experiments aren't impressive, just depressive. And they always make the news, as if they where amazing, innovative, new and fantastic.
There's nothing fantastic, new or amazing by it. There's only "PR - LOOK how innovative we are, we're giving it a go".
No you're not. 4K is a drop in the ocean, in fact - it's a drop in a freaking POND somewhere. If you want to see the real ramification of it all, if you want to see the actual effect, it got to be introduced as a WHOLE for everyone. People aren't automatically going to ditch their job, no one wants to live on existence minimum. but it will give oddball individuals a chance to grow into their position in life. It will give people who lost their jobs to automation - a chance to re-educate themselves, it will give people time to reflect, and not just shrivel up and die on some street corner somewhere.
I got something called a Message Pad 2100, that thing was an awesome wonder (ipad predecessor) invention that packed a whole lot of power for 1993, it packed a punch of 162 MHz, could talk, had a large touchscreen, could bring you to the internet, even wireless with the right PCMCIA card.
I'm no mac fan, especially not today - but back in its heydays with powerpc and a promising new architecture, those things were the beast within the graphics industry, nearly all printing & ad bureaus worth their salt had to have one.
Today - it's all about bling-bling, and looking gorgeous (because frankly, that part they got right). But they're expensive, old-tech consumables that you can basically throw away after a few years of use, because they won't support them anymore. And if you've seen a few experienced repair tech's videos on youtube - there are downright design-flaws that has been repeated thorough the production of the mac's the last 5-7 years.
Mac needs to find its roots again, when innovation and driving our world of tech forward actually meant something.
>Isn't "rebooting" something you do after you INSTALL something for things to take effect?
You're right, and if you need a reboot, it's because the device needs to finish the installation of the software, this isn't something that "randomly" made it to your router.
So you're right to question that action..
And as someone else in this thread said: Update YOUR FIRMWARE NOW!
That's the thing......The security guys I talked to at work, thinks I've been targeted by anything else than scriptkiddies, they mention that I've just been unfortunate to be attacked, someone out there thinks I've got something serious to hide, and they've tried LONG to get to it, so the better you're at "hiding" whatever you're hiding, the more interest you're gonna attract.
So I'm thinking - maybe I should just let the damn fools in:/
Anyway, I realize that my information was a bit sparse, so I'm reposting what I've reposted a lot of places in here, just as a "thank you" to all who replied and suggested:
Well, I guess I was a little tired, and provided too little information, but I can explain why I kept it short.
I talked to some of the security guys at work (I work at a HUGE world wide company, I can't disclose who for obvious reasons), and I told them a detailed story, which I didn't tell you.
They came to the conclusion that the root of my problems was that I used an unsafe router that has been infected, and that the attackers had most likely infected my router and somehow upgraded it with malicious firmware. Therefor they came to the conclusion that I should go and get a much safer router. So my first instinct, tired and a little stressed from it all - was to ask you. I'm not in my 20s anymore, and I'm not as up to code about the hacking possibilities and vulnerabilities as I once was rightfully for my time. Today, I know next to nothing compared to you guys.
The first time I got hacked:
Firefox 54: I was visiting a page to get some schematics for some home made remote control system, and I noticed that the browser had all of my CPU threads busy, and the computer became oddly sluggish. I had No-Script installed, ad-blocker and my windows 10 was up to shape with the latest defender database plus latest updates I could possibly download, I always update immediately when it suggests an update.
I immediately wanted to force stop Firefox so I went to the Task Bar and looked at the processes, oh my goodness - several instances of firefox (hidden windows/popups that aren't immediately visible?) was running, and it was creating more as I watched. I ended up killing all processes, and ran anti malware software (well, windows defender with the latest definitions) and it came out clean, or so I thought.
Went to bed, and got woken up by my phone with several warnings from my various social media telling me that someone is posting from a different IP address than I normally used, I got out of bed and panicked.
I immediately changed ALL passwords to hideously long random letter passwords on ALL my services, and went for two factor-authentication on everything I could.
This stopped the attack on my personal accounts.
Thinking it all was over, and safe - 3 weeks went by, and all of a sudden when I was working with something on my Linux partition, the computer crashed hard, and it rarely ever does that.
After that crash, the Bios (or boot menu) was completely garbled. Interestingly enough, so was the bios on my second computer, which was 10 years old, and my new work computer was only a few years old, but with relatively fresh installations of both Linux (on an M.2. NVMe storage) and Windows 10 on an normal SSD storage, totally separated from each other (well, needing 2 different boot menues to access each one).
I took a memdump of the entire bios, and found that the raw graphics area contained assembly code whereas it should be an image (you can look at the image with raw data image browser/raw graphics dump, it won't look like a clean image, but you can see that there is image data there).
What I did, is that I reflashed the bios with the help of a separate hardware switch (my mainboard has two bioses, totally hardware separated with a switch), and looking at the manufacturers homepage, they already know that their bios had been comprimised, so they provided a beta patch with ME m
The router was a TP Link Archer C2 (Gigabit dual band router) It says it's firmware updateable, but It always failed to update.
The security guys I talked to, said that this was mostly due to malicious firmware, and I should remove this router from my system asap. And get a new one, hence why I went to the slashdot crowd.
I'll post what I replied to a lot of people to you as well so you see what the details are:
Well, I guess I was a little tired, and provided too little information, but I can explain why I kept it short.
I talked to some of the security guys at work (I work at a HUGE world wide company, I can't disclose who for obvious reasons), and I told them a detailed story, which I didn't tell you.
They came to the conclusion that the root of my problems was that I used an unsafe router that has been infected, and that the attackers had most likely infected my router and somehow upgraded it with malicious firmware. Therefor they came to the conclusion that I should go and get a much safer router. So my first instinct, tired and a little stressed from it all - was to ask you. I'm not in my 20s anymore, and I'm not as up to code about the hacking possibilities and vulnerabilities as I once was rightfully for my time. Today, I know next to nothing compared to you guys.
The first time I got hacked:
Firefox 54: I was visiting a page to get some schematics for some home made remote control system, and I noticed that the browser had all of my CPU threads busy, and the computer became oddly sluggish. I had No-Script installed, ad-blocker and my windows 10 was up to shape with the latest defender database plus latest updates I could possibly download, I always update immediately when it suggests an update.
I immediately wanted to force stop Firefox so I went to the Task Bar and looked at the processes, oh my goodness - several instances of firefox (hidden windows/popups that aren't immediately visible?) was running, and it was creating more as I watched. I ended up killing all processes, and ran anti malware software (well, windows defender with the latest definitions) and it came out clean, or so I thought.
Went to bed, and got woken up by my phone with several warnings from my various social media telling me that someone is posting from a different IP address than I normally used, I got out of bed and panicked.
I immediately changed ALL passwords to hideously long random letter passwords on ALL my services, and went for two factor-authentication on everything I could.
This stopped the attack on my personal accounts.
Thinking it all was over, and safe - 3 weeks went by, and all of a sudden when I was working with something on my Linux partition, the computer crashed hard, and it rarely ever does that.
After that crash, the Bios (or boot menu) was completely garbled. Interestingly enough, so was the bios on my second computer, which was 10 years old, and my new work computer was only a few years old, but with relatively fresh installations of both Linux (on an M.2. NVMe storage) and Windows 10 on an normal SSD storage, totally separated from each other (well, needing 2 different boot menues to access each one).
I took a memdump of the entire bios, and found that the raw graphics area contained assembly code whereas it should be an image (you can look at the image with raw data image browser/raw graphics dump, it won't look like a clean image, but you can see that there is image data there).
What I did, is that I reflashed the bios with the help of a separate hardware switch (my mainboard has two bioses, totally hardware separated with a switch), and looking at the manufacturers homepage, they already know that their bios had been comprimised, so they provided a beta patch with ME microcode included as well.
I told this story to our security guys, and they said the same as someone else in this thread, someone thinks you have something to hide, and they're not script kiddies, you've been targeted - I suggest you start with a badass router, and take it from there, disable all server services in win 10 + remote services like remote registry etc.
I don't know that much about windows 10. But that's all I know for now. Appreciate all the feedback , you wonderful Slashdotters!
This is a good, in fact GREAT suggestion. Essentially a firewall/router is just a computer anyway.
I'm however looking for a more finished solution, as I'm old and tired, very tired of messing around with the inner workings of it all, I just want some peace of mind.
The cascaded routers was actually one of the suggestions suggested from the security team I talked to, so kudos for suggesting that - I'm leaning towards that now..
Thanks, I'll repost the story I posted as an answer to someone else in this thread, I am assuming too many people won't even find my posts in this insane amounth of posts, but here we go:
Well, I guess I was a little tired, and provided too little information, but I can explain why I kept it short.
I talked to some of the security guys at work (I work at a HUGE world wide company, I can't disclose who for obvious reasons), and I told them a detailed story, which I didn't tell you.
They came to the conclusion that the root of my problems was that I used an unsafe router that has been infected, and that the attackers had most likely infected my router and somehow upgraded it with malicious firmware. Therefor they came to the conclusion that I should go and get a much safer router. So my first instinct, tired and a little stressed from it all - was to ask you. I'm not in my 20s anymore, and I'm not as up to code about the hacking possibilities and vulnerabilities as I once was rightfully for my time. Today, I know next to nothing compared to you guys.
The first time I got hacked:
Firefox 54: I was visiting a page to get some schematics for some home made remote control system, and I noticed that the browser had all of my CPU threads busy, and the computer became oddly sluggish. I had No-Script installed, ad-blocker and my windows 10 was up to shape with the latest defender database plus latest updates I could possibly download, I always update immediately when it suggests an update.
I immediately wanted to force stop Firefox so I went to the Task Bar and looked at the processes, oh my goodness - several instances of firefox (hidden windows/popups that aren't immediately visible?) was running, and it was creating more as I watched. I ended up killing all processes, and ran anti malware software (well, windows defender with the latest definitions) and it came out clean, or so I thought.
Went to bed, and got woken up by my phone with several warnings from my various social media telling me that someone is posting from a different IP address than I normally used, I got out of bed and panicked.
I immediately changed ALL passwords to hideously long random letter passwords on ALL my services, and went for two factor-authentication on everything I could.
This stopped the attack on my personal accounts.
Thinking it all was over, and safe - 3 weeks went by, and all of a sudden when I was working with something on my Linux partition, the computer crashed hard, and it rarely ever does that.
After that crash, the Bios (or boot menu) was completely garbled. Interestingly enough, so was the bios on my second computer, which was 10 years old, and my new work computer was only a few years old, but with relatively fresh installations of both Linux (on an M.2. NVMe storage) and Windows 10 on an normal SSD storage, totally separated from each other (well, needing 2 different boot menues to access each one).
I took a memdump of the entire bios, and found that the raw graphics area contained assembly code whereas it should be an image (you can look at the image with raw data image browser/raw graphics dump, it won't look like a clean image, but you can see that there is image data there).
What I did, is that I reflashed the bios with the help of a separate hardware switch (my mainboard has two bioses, totally hardware separated with a switch), and looking at the manufacturers homepage, they already know that their bios had been comprimised, so they provided a beta patch with ME microcode included as well.
I told this story to our security guys, and they said the same as someone else in this thread, someone thinks you have something to hide, and they're not script kiddies, you've been targeted - I suggest you start with a badass router, and take it from there, disable all server services in win 10 + remote services like remote registry etc.
I don't know that much about windows 10. But that's all I know for now. Appreciate all the feedback , you wonderful Slashdotters!
Well, I guess I was a little tired, and provided too little information, but I can explain why I kept it short.
I talked to some of the security guys at work (I work at a HUGE world wide company, I can't disclose who for obvious reasons), and I told them a detailed story, which I didn't tell you.
They came to the conclusion that the root of my problems was that I used an unsafe router that has been infected, and that the attackers had most likely infected my router and somehow upgraded it with malicious firmware. Therefor they came to the conclusion that I should go and get a much safer router. So my first instinct, tired and a little stressed from it all - was to ask you. I'm not in my 20s anymore, and I'm not as up to code about the hacking possibilities and vulnerabilities as I once was rightfully for my time. Today, I know next to nothing compared to you guys.
The first time I got hacked:
Firefox 54: I was visiting a page to get some schematics for some home made remote control system, and I noticed that the browser had all of my CPU threads busy, and the computer became oddly sluggish. I had No-Script installed, ad-blocker and my windows 10 was up to shape with the latest defender database plus latest updates I could possibly download, I always update immediately when it suggests an update.
I immediately wanted to force stop Firefox so I went to the Task Bar and looked at the processes, oh my goodness - several instances of firefox (hidden windows/popups that aren't immediately visible?) was running, and it was creating more as I watched. I ended up killing all processes, and ran anti malware software (well, windows defender with the latest definitions) and it came out clean, or so I thought.
Went to bed, and got woken up by my phone with several warnings from my various social media telling me that someone is posting from a different IP address than I normally used, I got out of bed and panicked.
I immediately changed ALL passwords to hideously long random letter passwords on ALL my services, and went for two factor-authentication on everything I could.
This stopped the attack on my personal accounts.
Thinking it all was over, and safe - 3 weeks went by, and all of a sudden when I was working with something on my Linux partition, the computer crashed hard, and it rarely ever does that.
After that crash, the Bios (or boot menu) was completely garbled. Interestingly enough, so was the bios on my second computer, which was 10 years old, and my new work computer was only a few years old, but with relatively fresh installations of both Linux (on an M.2. NVMe storage) and Windows 10 on an normal SSD storage, totally separated from each other (well, needing 2 different boot menues to access each one).
I took a memdump of the entire bios, and found that the raw graphics area contained assembly code whereas it should be an image (you can look at the image with raw data image browser/raw graphics dump, it won't look like a clean image, but you can see that there is image data there).
What I did, is that I reflashed the bios with the help of a separate hardware switch (my mainboard has two bioses, totally hardware separated with a switch), and looking at the manufacturers homepage, they already know that their bios had been comprimised, so they provided a beta patch with ME microcode included as well.
I told this story to our security guys, and they said the same as someone else in this thread, someone thinks you have something to hide, and they're not script kiddies, you've been targeted - I suggest you start with a badass router, and take it from there, disable all server services in win 10 + remote services like remote registry etc.
I don't know that much about windows 10. But that's all I know for now. Appreciate all the feedback , you wonderful Slashdotters!
I haven't answered because I just came home from work, and when I posted the question, it was before my bedtime. I'll answer it now, thanks for your concern.
Slashdot Mirror
...should be where you are in control of the information you read, and no one should be able to purchase themselves the top search result positions.
When you have to register, you immediate place all your privacy and trust in those who claim to protect it, as history shows us again and again, this is seldom the case - we always end up at the shallow end of the dreampool.
A library, is sort of anonymous, because they never register what books you read, they only label them, track them for recovery purposes, and after that - all is lost, and even if they do - you can freely walk into it, read any book and information you want, and no one is any wiser to whatever you where thinking, or worse yet - THINK that you are thinking.
This is the biggest problem with tracking on the net, people getting ideas of what you want, when it might not be what you want at all.
The fight for privacy, is the biggest fight we're fighting now, but our comfort makes us very complacent I'm afraid.
...and you can basically use the same "god mode" hack as with any other "Pc".
Check this video out for details, but..ahem, use responsibly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
...you'll feel a bit overwhelmed the first year, this is completely natural.
I work for a huge corporate with IT, and in the beginning I asked myself several times "What am I doing here?", the workload and assignments are so overwhelming that I thought I couldn't even learn this the next 10 years. The truth is, the company is completely aware of this, and most likely - so are your manager.
But corporate knows, you're there because they saw the potential to shape you. Sometimes you can get a job where you have NO initial qualifications, but as long as the company do in-house training, and you're willing to learn - then you're already a valuable asset to the company, at any age!
If you have a competent manager, he/she will have seen the likes of you 10 times over and then some. They know from experience how their learning curve is, and what most of us battle with on a day to day basis. If they're worth their salt, they'll slowly but surely learn from you, observe you, and introduce you to the things you need to qualify yourself over the years, over time you become an invaluable asset to the company, and will feel somewhat more competent as you progress.
I got hired in my late 40's, I was totally clueless. But I fought hard to learn and adapt. Years later - I still feel inadequate sometimes, but I am nowhere NEAR as inadequate as I was years ago, and I now tutor many of our own new trainees - and believe it or not, I learn from them as well.
The trick is actually just to take up challenges, lead yourself. If you sit idly by, chances are that you can get by unnoticed, unremarkable in any way - still you'll have some value to the company as you're not fired yet, they would fire you on the spot if you don't bring anything to the table. Trust me - successful corporates aren't a bunch of clueless fools, they got there for a reason, they found people like you - and you might just be more valuable than you might realize.
I've talked a lot to my managers, they often speak of other values like how well you fit in with the rest of the teams, how you can "empower" others to feel better about their efforts, and how social you are. It's all about the team.
I have had numerous discussions with colleagues that feels EXACTLY like those 58% we're talking about here. I have a female colleague that has no personal interest in IT, and constantly mentions how little she knows and how hopeless it all seems, but I see it differently, she's older, but quite awesome, always nice to those she helps, and if she can't figure it out - she already have figured out those WHO CAN, and she observes when they work, and learn.
She's become quite adept at helping people with IT tasks now, but she still feels like the 58%, I prefer to call that "staying humble" rather than being safe in your position of knowledge, because in IT the knowledge change ALL the time as we get new software solutions every 6 month, and you need to stay focused on new solutions and know how to make things "fit" together, aka - the bigger picture.
If it wasn't for my colleagues constantly accepting my failures by helping me out, I'd be totally lost today, but it turns out that over some time - you become that mentor to someone new as well.
It really is, you know.
Picture this, if you got an answer to everything you had on your mind, would you have anything on your mind at all?
One of the core essentials of development, and even human development (developing ourselves, bettering ourselves, expanding our horizon of knowledge), is being able to ask the right questions. The moment we stop looking for answers, we become complacent, lazy and non-seeking.
This is one of the things that I noticed already with Altavista, yes - pre google times, this is the reason that sites like Reddit and Slashdot exist, a place where we can vent our thoughts and see them without having to "Google" them first. If you don't know what to look for, Google will do nothing for you. Google is essentially a search engine, and it's good at what it does and for what it is.
But that's just it - the difference between a search engine and say, the old library, is that if you walk into the library, you'll have thousands of books available to you at a glance, meaning you could discover something you didn't know exist along the way, and thus get ideas for your particular interest, maybe interest you didn't know you had, because you didn't know they where there.
Google's dilemma is exactly there, you can search for something - if you already know it exist.
IF...you know!
I don't know if anyone of you are into Arduino?
But it's been common knowledge for years now that you can purchase chips complete with IMEI number, multi-band RX/TX, fully featured with data, phone, simcard reader (just solder directly to pins!) mic in/speaker out pins, and the commands you send to it is via normal serial connections, you can use AT commands just like on an old HAYES(tm) modem.
The ones on ebay are often batches from really old cellphones, but very simple to code as you basically can do this just by interfacing them with an USB to SERIAL adapter, and then you can in fact use them just as a regular cellphone. I have a bunch of such chips in my drawer, let me give you some numbers for fun so you can find out for yourself, it's really an open door, surprising that so few know this, here's some numbers: NEOWAY M590E and another: SIM800L, if you google the first - you'll find tons of coding examples (which is so easy a 12 year old can figure it out), and instructional videos. The chips are often found complete with DIY PCB's someone put together as a kit out there, or presoldered, usually around 2-3 dollars, what a world we live in.
And yes, these can be wired up to become your own cellphone, simple, or smart (use an raspberry pi with a touch screen, load it up with an OS, your choice). And a little software magic aka amateur hour - and you're done.
A lot of devs, have done the same thing, it's a lot easier and a LOT more accessible to construct your own phone, than most people even dare to dream of.
Because "Internet", information wants to be free. Sure, you can cover everything on the surface, but the more "secret" the information is, the more popular it will become, and the more people will attempt to copy and distribute, and print it.
Next thing will probably be outlawing 3D printers.
...You gotta appreciate the GTA5 trolling of facebook.
And yet, facebook never learns. I quit facebook 6 years ago. But every damn smartphone I purchase, has the app by default, and not possible to remove without 3rd party software which you have to "trust". In some cases, not even removable.
...it's always about lifestyle and looking great.
If you want performance and longevity, this is not what you would purchase.
I work for an sort of "internal call center" where we help our employees worldwide with their IT problems and infrastructure issues.
I would absolutely LOVE duplex to replace a lot of us for this, I realize I could be out of a job if this happens, but the job is so excruciatingly mundane at times, that this would be perfect for Duplex.
Here's an example of my day:
"HI, I've locked myself out, could you unlock me"?
Yes of course, hang on while I check your network ID, seems legit - I'll send it to your nearest manager for safety reasons.
"Hi, my pc just crashed the other day, and now the screen is black, but there are some graphics glitches on it from time to time".
What happened?
"Err, uhm, well - it's just crashed, can you please remote to my computer?"
Well, I can't see your monitors faults by just remoting to it, unless it's a graphics driver issue?
"Err, well you see, err...I was in a hurry this morning, and I left my laptop next to the car door, and I ran over it with my car"
Hi, service - how can I help you?
"Hi, I've got an issue with Excel, I'm trying to work on a project, and my document is locked to another user, could you release the user?"
Yes of course (goes trough a sh*t ton of server information to locate user, browse through documents...) Is your document such.and.such?
"Yes, it's version 1021 in (extremely long complex name)
Hm...no search function in our tools, (browses a server, goes trough a ton of revised documents with the same name, with one change)...found it,
there's a user using it currently, are you sure they're not working on it?
"Hm, well, oh , Janet, maybe she's working on the case, but I gotta check if she's still at work brb..."
Waiting...
"It's okay, you can kick her out".
(Kicks user off document on server).
Hi, Service - how may I help you?
"I'm extremely frustrated, this cr*p piece of **** has for the 100th time crashed, and I can't get to work if the documents keep vanishing like this"
Okay, what happened.
"I called you guys like a 100 times, and every time I gotta call you to fix this, why is this not properly done?"
Well, you see...we're hundreds of call center workers here, and you could perhaps give us your Case ID so we can see what has been done before?
"Case ID? I got so many of them, which one do you want, and can you prevent this from happening again so I don't have to call you guys 100 times a week to just get my work done?"
(gets a case number)
Well, is the case about outlook not syncing again?
"No, No No no, that's a different case, oh and btw. that one isn't solved either, so keep that one open, and here's another case number, how come you guys don't know what I have reported? I've called so many times!?"
Well, we're literally hundreds of thousands of coworkers, and it's hard for a small team of a few hundred to keep track on everything everyone in the world is working on, that's why it's so important that you have a case number so we can see what has been done to help you."
(user finally gets it)
"ok ok, ok...(finds correct case number)" could you please remote to my desktop so I can show you?"
Sure...(remotes to desktop, finds out what software out of the 3000+ solutions we have user is using), oh it's running in a browser I see.
"Browser, I'm just clicking on a link on the desktop!"
Yes, it's a link that opens a specific page in Internet Explorer.
"Whatever, just fix the problem, okay?"
Ok, let's try some simple stuff first (clears cache, restarts browser, remote-app works!)
"Oh so now it works, how can I prevent this from happening again?"
(explains to user about the simple steps of clearing the cache).
"But, I'm not an IT supporter, how am I supposed to learn this? This is YOUR job, not mine! CLICK!...dut dut dut dut)..
Yes please!
Google DUPLEX NOW!
PLEASE! I beg of you! Take our jobs!
When I read this, what immediately struck me, is how easy it would be to make a simple program that does this, no special "A.I." needed to do it, unless you consider the software some sort of A.I.
Here's how I'd do it:
1) Scan the image at various tile sizes, and search for circular geometry using + and - color level differentiation, you can call it a mild form of edge detection.
2) Scan the image for unusual color range variations, such as sampling a part of the image for regular noise (level average), and then comparing this in tiles with the rest of the image.
Just those two things above there, should spot fake images / photoshopped images way better than the naked eye.
What I usually do to spot photoshop fakes, is that I extend the contrasts between high and low to the extreme, this usually unmasks "bad" photoshopping, you'll usually see a fat trace of a round brush "painting" the area by a sloppy photoshopper. There's no reason we can't use the same trickery in basic detection in software as well.
...that this is an excellent investment.
Computer says:
This is NOT Count Olaf.
This is NOT Count Olaf....neeext
This is NOT Count Olaf...
...was it Finland that did this experiment first?
But it's a modern PR thing, oh-we-are-so-progressive, we're going to try this, we're ahead of the heard. I've seen so many countries try this by now (and later ditching it, when it wasn't making the news anymore) that I don't quite believe in the sincerity behind the project.
I'm all for Universal Basic Income, because I personally believe that no one should starve to death, and everyone should have a basic platform where they could work themselves up from rock-bottom to a worthy place in society. And of their own choice, not what WE think is a worthy place. We're all different - there's a place for us all.
But these half assed experiments aren't impressive, just depressive. And they always make the news, as if they where amazing, innovative, new and fantastic.
There's nothing fantastic, new or amazing by it. There's only "PR - LOOK how innovative we are, we're giving it a go".
No you're not. 4K is a drop in the ocean, in fact - it's a drop in a freaking POND somewhere. If you want to see the real ramification of it all, if you want to see the actual effect, it got to be introduced as a WHOLE for everyone. People aren't automatically going to ditch their job, no one wants to live on existence minimum. but it will give oddball individuals a chance to grow into their position in life. It will give people who lost their jobs to automation - a chance to re-educate themselves, it will give people time to reflect, and not just shrivel up and die on some street corner somewhere.
...for those of you in here, old enough to remember that, this will bring a little smile on your wrinkled faces.
That was many years ago.
I got something called a Message Pad 2100, that thing was an awesome wonder (ipad predecessor) invention that packed a whole lot of power for 1993, it packed a punch of 162 MHz, could talk, had a large touchscreen, could bring you to the internet, even wireless with the right PCMCIA card.
I'm no mac fan, especially not today - but back in its heydays with powerpc and a promising new architecture, those things were the beast within the graphics industry, nearly all printing & ad bureaus worth their salt had to have one.
Today - it's all about bling-bling, and looking gorgeous (because frankly, that part they got right). But they're expensive, old-tech consumables that you can basically throw away after a few years of use, because they won't support them anymore. And if you've seen a few experienced repair tech's videos on youtube - there are downright design-flaws that has been repeated thorough the production of the mac's the last 5-7 years.
Mac needs to find its roots again, when innovation and driving our world of tech forward actually meant something.
>Isn't "rebooting" something you do after you INSTALL something for things to take effect?
You're right, and if you need a reboot, it's because the device needs to finish the installation of the software, this isn't something that "randomly" made it to your router.
So you're right to question that action..
And as someone else in this thread said: Update YOUR FIRMWARE NOW!
That's the thing... ...The security guys I talked to at work, thinks I've been targeted by anything else than scriptkiddies, they mention that I've just been unfortunate to be attacked, someone out there thinks I've got something serious to hide, and they've tried LONG to get to it, so the better you're at "hiding" whatever you're hiding, the more interest you're gonna attract.
So I'm thinking - maybe I should just let the damn fools in :/
Anyway, I realize that my information was a bit sparse, so I'm reposting what I've reposted a lot of places in here, just as a "thank you" to all who replied and suggested:
Well, I guess I was a little tired, and provided too little information, but I can explain why I kept it short.
I talked to some of the security guys at work (I work at a HUGE world wide company, I can't disclose who for obvious reasons), and I told them a detailed story, which I didn't tell you.
They came to the conclusion that the root of my problems was that I used an unsafe router that has been infected, and that the attackers had most likely infected my router and somehow upgraded it with malicious firmware. Therefor they came to the conclusion that I should go and get a much safer router. So my first instinct, tired and a little stressed from it all - was to ask you. I'm not in my 20s anymore, and I'm not as up to code about the hacking possibilities and vulnerabilities as I once was rightfully for my time. Today, I know next to nothing compared to you guys.
The first time I got hacked:
Firefox 54: I was visiting a page to get some schematics for some home made remote control system, and I noticed that the browser had all of my CPU threads busy, and the computer became oddly sluggish. I had No-Script installed, ad-blocker and my windows 10 was up to shape with the latest defender database plus latest updates I could possibly download, I always update immediately when it suggests an update.
I immediately wanted to force stop Firefox so I went to the Task Bar and looked at the processes, oh my goodness - several instances of firefox (hidden windows /popups that aren't immediately visible?) was running, and it was creating more as I watched. I ended up killing all processes, and ran anti malware software (well, windows defender with the latest definitions) and it came out clean, or so I thought.
Went to bed, and got woken up by my phone with several warnings from my various social media telling me that someone is posting from a different IP address than I normally used, I got out of bed and panicked.
I immediately changed ALL passwords to hideously long random letter passwords on ALL my services, and went for two factor-authentication on everything I could.
This stopped the attack on my personal accounts.
Thinking it all was over, and safe - 3 weeks went by, and all of a sudden when I was working with something on my Linux partition, the computer crashed hard, and it rarely ever does that.
After that crash, the Bios (or boot menu) was completely garbled. Interestingly enough, so was the bios on my second computer, which was 10 years old, and my new work computer was only a few years old, but with relatively fresh installations of both Linux (on an M.2. NVMe storage) and Windows 10 on an normal SSD storage, totally separated from each other (well, needing 2 different boot menues to access each one).
I took a memdump of the entire bios, and found that the raw graphics area contained assembly code whereas it should be an image (you can look at the image with raw data image browser/raw graphics dump, it won't look like a clean image, but you can see that there is image data there).
What I did, is that I reflashed the bios with the help of a separate hardware switch (my mainboard has two bioses, totally hardware separated with a switch), and looking at the manufacturers homepage, they already know that their bios had been comprimised, so they provided a beta patch with ME m
Thanks, this is actually excellent advice!
The router was a TP Link Archer C2 (Gigabit dual band router)
It says it's firmware updateable, but It always failed to update.
The security guys I talked to, said that this was mostly due to malicious firmware, and I should remove this router from my system asap. And get a new one, hence why I went to the slashdot crowd.
I'll post what I replied to a lot of people to you as well so you see what the details are:
Well, I guess I was a little tired, and provided too little information, but I can explain why I kept it short.
I talked to some of the security guys at work (I work at a HUGE world wide company, I can't disclose who for obvious reasons), and I told them a detailed story, which I didn't tell you.
They came to the conclusion that the root of my problems was that I used an unsafe router that has been infected, and that the attackers had most likely infected my router and somehow upgraded it with malicious firmware. Therefor they came to the conclusion that I should go and get a much safer router. So my first instinct, tired and a little stressed from it all - was to ask you. I'm not in my 20s anymore, and I'm not as up to code about the hacking possibilities and vulnerabilities as I once was rightfully for my time. Today, I know next to nothing compared to you guys.
The first time I got hacked:
Firefox 54: I was visiting a page to get some schematics for some home made remote control system, and I noticed that the browser had all of my CPU threads busy, and the computer became oddly sluggish. I had No-Script installed, ad-blocker and my windows 10 was up to shape with the latest defender database plus latest updates I could possibly download, I always update immediately when it suggests an update.
I immediately wanted to force stop Firefox so I went to the Task Bar and looked at the processes, oh my goodness - several instances of firefox (hidden windows /popups that aren't immediately visible?) was running, and it was creating more as I watched. I ended up killing all processes, and ran anti malware software (well, windows defender with the latest definitions) and it came out clean, or so I thought.
Went to bed, and got woken up by my phone with several warnings from my various social media telling me that someone is posting from a different IP address than I normally used, I got out of bed and panicked.
I immediately changed ALL passwords to hideously long random letter passwords on ALL my services, and went for two factor-authentication on everything I could.
This stopped the attack on my personal accounts.
Thinking it all was over, and safe - 3 weeks went by, and all of a sudden when I was working with something on my Linux partition, the computer crashed hard, and it rarely ever does that.
After that crash, the Bios (or boot menu) was completely garbled. Interestingly enough, so was the bios on my second computer, which was 10 years old, and my new work computer was only a few years old, but with relatively fresh installations of both Linux (on an M.2. NVMe storage) and Windows 10 on an normal SSD storage, totally separated from each other (well, needing 2 different boot menues to access each one).
I took a memdump of the entire bios, and found that the raw graphics area contained assembly code whereas it should be an image (you can look at the image with raw data image browser/raw graphics dump, it won't look like a clean image, but you can see that there is image data there).
What I did, is that I reflashed the bios with the help of a separate hardware switch (my mainboard has two bioses, totally hardware separated with a switch), and looking at the manufacturers homepage, they already know that their bios had been comprimised, so they provided a beta patch with ME microcode included as well.
I told this story to our security guys, and they said the same as someone else in this thread, someone thinks you have something to hide, and they're not script kiddies, you've been targeted - I suggest you start with a badass router, and take it from there, disable all server services in win 10 + remote services like remote registry etc.
I don't know that much about windows 10. But that's all I know for now. Appreciate all the feedback , you wonderful Slashdotters!
This is a good, in fact GREAT suggestion. Essentially a firewall/router is just a computer anyway.
I'm however looking for a more finished solution, as I'm old and tired, very tired of messing around with the inner workings of it all, I just want some peace of mind.
The cascaded routers was actually one of the suggestions suggested from the security team I talked to, so kudos for suggesting that - I'm leaning towards that now..
Thanks, I'll repost the story I posted as an answer to someone else in this thread, I am assuming too many people won't even find my posts in this insane amounth of posts, but here we go:
Well, I guess I was a little tired, and provided too little information, but I can explain why I kept it short.
I talked to some of the security guys at work (I work at a HUGE world wide company, I can't disclose who for obvious reasons), and I told them a detailed story, which I didn't tell you.
They came to the conclusion that the root of my problems was that I used an unsafe router that has been infected, and that the attackers had most likely infected my router and somehow upgraded it with malicious firmware. Therefor they came to the conclusion that I should go and get a much safer router. So my first instinct, tired and a little stressed from it all - was to ask you. I'm not in my 20s anymore, and I'm not as up to code about the hacking possibilities and vulnerabilities as I once was rightfully for my time. Today, I know next to nothing compared to you guys.
The first time I got hacked:
Firefox 54: I was visiting a page to get some schematics for some home made remote control system, and I noticed that the browser had all of my CPU threads busy, and the computer became oddly sluggish. I had No-Script installed, ad-blocker and my windows 10 was up to shape with the latest defender database plus latest updates I could possibly download, I always update immediately when it suggests an update.
I immediately wanted to force stop Firefox so I went to the Task Bar and looked at the processes, oh my goodness - several instances of firefox (hidden windows /popups that aren't immediately visible?) was running, and it was creating more as I watched. I ended up killing all processes, and ran anti malware software (well, windows defender with the latest definitions) and it came out clean, or so I thought.
Went to bed, and got woken up by my phone with several warnings from my various social media telling me that someone is posting from a different IP address than I normally used, I got out of bed and panicked.
I immediately changed ALL passwords to hideously long random letter passwords on ALL my services, and went for two factor-authentication on everything I could.
This stopped the attack on my personal accounts.
Thinking it all was over, and safe - 3 weeks went by, and all of a sudden when I was working with something on my Linux partition, the computer crashed hard, and it rarely ever does that.
After that crash, the Bios (or boot menu) was completely garbled. Interestingly enough, so was the bios on my second computer, which was 10 years old, and my new work computer was only a few years old, but with relatively fresh installations of both Linux (on an M.2. NVMe storage) and Windows 10 on an normal SSD storage, totally separated from each other (well, needing 2 different boot menues to access each one).
I took a memdump of the entire bios, and found that the raw graphics area contained assembly code whereas it should be an image (you can look at the image with raw data image browser/raw graphics dump, it won't look like a clean image, but you can see that there is image data there).
What I did, is that I reflashed the bios with the help of a separate hardware switch (my mainboard has two bioses, totally hardware separated with a switch), and looking at the manufacturers homepage, they already know that their bios had been comprimised, so they provided a beta patch with ME microcode included as well.
I told this story to our security guys, and they said the same as someone else in this thread, someone thinks you have something to hide, and they're not script kiddies, you've been targeted - I suggest you start with a badass router, and take it from there, disable all server services in win 10 + remote services like remote registry etc.
I don't know that much about windows 10. But that's all I know for now. Appreciate all the feedback , you wonderful Slashdotters!
Well, I guess I was a little tired, and provided too little information, but I can explain why I kept it short.
I talked to some of the security guys at work (I work at a HUGE world wide company, I can't disclose who for obvious reasons), and I told them a detailed story, which I didn't tell you.
They came to the conclusion that the root of my problems was that I used an unsafe router that has been infected, and that the attackers had most likely infected my router and somehow upgraded it with malicious firmware. Therefor they came to the conclusion that I should go and get a much safer router. So my first instinct, tired and a little stressed from it all - was to ask you. I'm not in my 20s anymore, and I'm not as up to code about the hacking possibilities and vulnerabilities as I once was rightfully for my time. Today, I know next to nothing compared to you guys.
The first time I got hacked:
Firefox 54: I was visiting a page to get some schematics for some home made remote control system, and I noticed that the browser had all of my CPU threads busy, and the computer became oddly sluggish. I had No-Script installed, ad-blocker and my windows 10 was up to shape with the latest defender database plus latest updates I could possibly download, I always update immediately when it suggests an update.
I immediately wanted to force stop Firefox so I went to the Task Bar and looked at the processes, oh my goodness - several instances of firefox (hidden windows /popups that aren't immediately visible?) was running, and it was creating more as I watched. I ended up killing all processes, and ran anti malware software (well, windows defender with the latest definitions) and it came out clean, or so I thought.
Went to bed, and got woken up by my phone with several warnings from my various social media telling me that someone is posting from a different IP address than I normally used, I got out of bed and panicked.
I immediately changed ALL passwords to hideously long random letter passwords on ALL my services, and went for two factor-authentication on everything I could.
This stopped the attack on my personal accounts.
Thinking it all was over, and safe - 3 weeks went by, and all of a sudden when I was working with something on my Linux partition, the computer crashed hard, and it rarely ever does that.
After that crash, the Bios (or boot menu) was completely garbled. Interestingly enough, so was the bios on my second computer, which was 10 years old, and my new work computer was only a few years old, but with relatively fresh installations of both Linux (on an M.2. NVMe storage) and Windows 10 on an normal SSD storage, totally separated from each other (well, needing 2 different boot menues to access each one).
I took a memdump of the entire bios, and found that the raw graphics area contained assembly code whereas it should be an image (you can look at the image with raw data image browser/raw graphics dump, it won't look like a clean image, but you can see that there is image data there).
What I did, is that I reflashed the bios with the help of a separate hardware switch (my mainboard has two bioses, totally hardware separated with a switch), and looking at the manufacturers homepage, they already know that their bios had been comprimised, so they provided a beta patch with ME microcode included as well.
I told this story to our security guys, and they said the same as someone else in this thread, someone thinks you have something to hide, and they're not script kiddies, you've been targeted - I suggest you start with a badass router, and take it from there, disable all server services in win 10 + remote services like remote registry etc.
I don't know that much about windows 10. But that's all I know for now. Appreciate all the feedback , you wonderful Slashdotters!
I haven't answered because I just came home from work, and when I posted the question, it was before my bedtime. I'll answer it now, thanks for your concern.
...Chinese clones on eBay costing literally 1000 times less.
Thanks Boston Dynamics, this is going to be interesting times.