Notices by John Timaeus (johntimaeus@infosec.exchange)

@cR0w @catsalad @prettygood

I think they're the ones you buy when the cybertruck isn't compensating enough for the wee bits.

@catsalad @cR0w @prettygood

There's no Tang. Just an old Tang container keeping the DoodWipes sealed so they don't dry out.

I'm starting a week of vacation, so nobody find anything interesting infosec-wise for at least nine days, OK?

@catsalad @sindarina

Apparently the reply got hijacked. Retrying:

@horse @da_667 @GossiTheDog

Like sub-contracting, only without the contract?

@da_667 @GossiTheDog

Are the jobs at Salesforce, Snowflake, or LAPSUS?
Asking for a friend.

@GossiTheDog

So you did the flight without pitot readings?

@ska @ariadne

I have had to do the:
"Yes I rebooted it; yes I'm connected to my wifi; yes the connection is still crap. Before we go further wasting both our time, please put my name into an Amazon search.

Now will you send a tech out to look at the wire that squirrels have been chewing on?"

@ryanc

Even more, I have a hate for tech journalists who quote battery size in Amp hours, with no voltage.

@ai6yr @michael_w_busch

I've seen the Guadalupe and the rest of the Hill Country creeks and rivers at what I thought was the worst they could get:
bouncing 4 foot diameter live oaks downriver like toothpicks,
Chevy Blazers rolled by less than a foot of water.
And debating how to safely do recovery from 20 feet up in a tree.

This is event was an order of magnitude worse than anything I've seen.

We need to face a very harsh fact:
Everything we think we know about the climate and expected maximum worst weather is right out the feckin window.

Policy makers aren't going to be prepared and more people will die, many more will be displaced and bankrupted.

We all need to be ready for this. Check your flood and fire maps. Have plans. Build a support network, and give support.

@ai6yr @michael_w_busch

I know the area well and have been through the floods of 1987, 2002, 2006 & had lots of friends impacted by 2015.

A friend of mine has a place near the headwaters of the south fork of the Guadalupe, 5-6 miles above Camp Mystic. It's been in the family since it was part of Mexico. It has the original schoolhouse for the area on it, from 1836. I've spent probably more than a year cumulative there and lived in the area more than a decade. They remember the floods.

The family had a girls camp there in the 1970s-80s. The cabin footings are 6 feet above the 1936 high water line. The cabins are an additional 6 feet above that, sitting on 2x2 foot concrete piers poured directly onto limestone bedrock. In 1997ish I helped the owners anchor the floor joists and hurricane strap the walls and roofs.
At least one of those cabins is gone.
As is the dam which was built in the 1910s -- more than 2 foot thick concrete with down river buttressing extending > 10 feet.

I'm pretty sure the main building at Camp Mystic was the original from 1926. I've seen pictures of cabins *uphill* from the main building with walls missing.

Crider's Dance Hall and Rodeo* was 100% feet dry in 1987. I had lunch there when we were doing SAR. The main bar is well above most of the property. The pool tables were flipped by the force of the water. Today they were going to celebrate 100 years in business.

The Hunt Store -- easily 30 feet above the first flood plain (which is 10 feet above nominal) -- is wrecked and the owner is asking not to be contacted.

This isn't a problem of not remembering. This storm several sigmas past the worst seen in written history. All the river gauges I've seen so far go off scale at 20-25 feet, and stay off line for hours.

First pass guess by looking at the damage done, the crest on the south fork was 40+ feet.

The local officials didn't assess the risk appropriately and didn't have an appropriate notification plan. And to some extent I blame them for the loss of life.

There are also long-standing issues of lack of infrastructure:
There aren't gauges that far up the river -- where the floods start.
There's nothing like a flood warning siren system.
In the 1990s we had a telephone tree, where the upstream land owners would call us, and we'd call places further down, letting them know that they needed to pull stuff up from the river. Apparently that died at some point.

I haven't been back in that area in a while, mainly because I don't fit in politically any more, but even so I mourn.

*Yes, Dance Hall and Rodeo is a thing; and was a helluva good time too.

@invicticide @violetblue

FFS. Let's just redefine "zero forest fires" to be the average of the country that was on fire last year. And while we're at it let's say that if the rain this year is the same as last year, it didn't rain at all.

@ryanc

I had a 1920s house (US, so 110v standard) that would put 220 to the light over the stove if you turned on the garbage disposal while the microwave was running. Burned out a lot of incandescent bulbs. Made the first CFL I put in explode at the base.

There were also outlets with constant 110 between neutral and ground, 220 between live and ground.

I spent a lot on wire for that place.

@gsuberland

@lowqualityfacts

I don't do patreon. PayPal or cashapp?

@b0rk

I always mention that if you're lucky, some programs might support mouse. But you shouldn't make a habit of using a mouse in the terminal, because it likely won't be there when you need it. If you build a dependency on mouse in the terminal you're going to be SoL the first time you use a cloud serial console or run
docker -it exec <container> /bin/bash

@b0rk

Cloud serial is connecting to a VM in AWS/GCP/Azure via the built-in console connection. Mouse doesn't even necessarily work over rdp to an xrdp endpoint running a terminal in gnome (where you expect it to). Honestly except for true local applications, I don't remember the last time mouse worked.

I do agree on the teaching point, examples are everything.
If I can't show you what I'm talking about while I'm talking about it, I probably won't talk about it. Students don't learn by listening to me...they learn by putting hands on keyboard and breaking things.