Punkie

As a forced pedestrian (can’t drive due to health issues), this is so true. Also at crosswalks, a lot of drivers turning right while looking left. They always appear genuinely SHOCKED to encounter “a walker.” Like, “A PERSON…? NOT IN A… CAR?? IS THAT POSSIBLE?” Like it shatters their entire concept of the universe and how things work. Yes, I live in America, and this happens in both suburbs and downtown DC.

Yeah, like if you’re going 45 on the highway, go faster. But not 120.

Keep in mind, whenever you think too hard about these sorts of things, this is one of those operations that could apply to Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Many people make the incorrect assumption of something like, “They must have done some clever supply-chain wizardry," or “There’s a smart cost-reduction plan behind this.” When in reality, a lot of times, the actual explanation is something like a mid-level manager wanted a slide that said “cost savings," then procurement was pressured due to some personality ego problem, engineering objections were ignored, the math was never checked, and in the end, nobody involved actually understood unit economics. Maybe exchanging a $6 part for a $4 looks good in volume, but they only did this 20 times, resulting in $40 of savings which was erased by their reputation and incompetence.

I have worked government contracts. I have worked with shitty project managers. There’s a lot more of these mistakes than you realize powering economies.

Specialization can breed a narrow limit of scope when it come to general knowledge. Sometimes the best lawyers and surgeons are complete idiots when it comes to falling for things like, say, internet scams. I am not sure if that’s what’s happening here, but I have known enough assistants of big skilled people that they always say “This guy is a brilliant surgeon, but doesn’t know how to cook or even how to shop for his own groceries.”

It’s the “not handling” part that gets us as kids. We knew better. Adults didn’t. In my case, I was in high school, but it was on a “Teacher workday, student holiday” we had each semester. I watched it live on NASA TV, which we had on channel UHF 55 in the DC area. Even the voice of mission control delayed about a minute or two. I remember thinking, “THAT didn’t look good…” but then they said nothing but normal speed and temp readings, so I thought it was just the angle of the chase plane. Only when the famous “forked cloud” appeared that the announcer said, “we have an apparent major malfunction,” or something.

Also does anyone still port knock these days?

If they did, would we know?

Basic setup for me is scripted on a new system. In regards to ssh, I make sure:

• Root account is disabled, sudo only
• ssh only by keys
• sshd blocks all users but a few, via AllowUsers
• All ‘default usernames’ are removed, like ec2-user or ubuntu for AWS ec2 systems
• The default ssh port moved if ssh has to be exposed to the Internet. No, this doesn’t make it “more secure” but damn, it reduces the script denials in my system logs, fight me.
• Services are only allowed connections by an allow list of IPs or subnets. Internal, when possible.

My systems are not “unhackable” but not low-hanging fruit, either. I assume everything I have out there can be hacked by someone SUPER determined, and have a vector of protection to mitigate backwash in case they gain full access.

I have been using Kubuntu as a daily driver for almost 10 year now, and never regretted it. I had one Windows box for things like special cases (like dumb website forms that won’t let me use Linux), Pearson Vue exams, and edge cases related to work, but it’s on standby as a secondary system I RDP into. I am not a gamer, so I didn’t need it for that. I saved so much money not having to buy hardware in the last decade or so.

Sadly, Windows 11 won’t work on anything I have (TPM issues, too old), so I recently got a cheap Windows 11 laptop before the tariffs hit and I pay more for dumb Windows-only reasons.

Linux all the way, man. Gave me a career, a life, and my hardware back.

One of the buildings around here had a piece of art commissioned (?) for their lobby, and it was “Georgia O’Keeffe” -esque. Not really an orchid, but an “abstract” of that style. Well, over the years, it sun-faded, and the colors that stood out it was pretty obvious what it looked like. Most common joke was “is this where my gynecologist’s office is?” Eventually, the building owner had it removed and replaced with sailboats.

“… I was now… a fem-MAN!” [Orchestra music swells]