Notices by Hal Pomeranz (hal_pomeranz@infosec.exchange)

@anna Exactly this. They may not be engaging in the ways the OG want or expect them to. But you know what? The OG doesn’t get to choose.

@futurebird @wmd I wonder if you could recruit some of your students to be your own skunkworks IT department? I bet if you asked around you would find some who already have knowledge in this area. Turn it into an afterschool club for eager beavers and you could create a knowledge transfer pipeline. It won’t happen right away, and there will need to be some hardware investment (crowdfunded? grant money?), but over time I bet you could get the bespoke network of your dreams.

@futurebird I bet you have a student who has set up their own network for home use. They can help.

Setting up the network itself could be as easy as installing a consumer-grade WiFi router. The “internet side” of the router hooks up to your regular school network, and all your stuff connects to the WiFi network and the LAN ports on the router. The router will handle protocols like DNS and DHCP with little or no intervention from you.

@futurebird Ugh. Sorry your IT people are that way.

@molly0xfff An on-prem Exchange server perhaps? That’s a security incident waiting to happen.

@dalias @paninid It is sad and terrible that so much of journalism has been captured by forces interested in pushing disinformation.

@paninid I have a metric for when the stock market is due for “correction” that is based on the pace and tenor of popular press articles exhorting you to buy into the market and/or increase your retirement savings. The markets are screwed.

Don’t let other people stomp on your happiness. If it’s not hurting anybody, do the things that make you happy, even when others belittle them or say they’re uncool.

Being true to yourself is cool. Having a passion is cool. Finding joy is cool.

Rolly polly kitty

#caturday

@hellomiakoda There are people alive today who remember when pink was the gendered color for boys.

Automation has eliminated countless jobs. I suspect that there is no longer enough meaningful jobs/work for the entire population. But we tell people who are un(der)employed that they just aren’t trying hard enough.

Unfortunately, the fruits of automation are being hoarded by a few ultra-wealthy individuals who were in the right place at the right time with a big pile of capital. But there’s absolutely no reason that the investments they made should have been taxed at a lower rate than any other form of income.

Tax their assets. Fund the housing, food security, healthcare, and education programs that they should have been funding all along.

All of this automation should be transitioning us into a world of leisure. End the artificial scarcity created by vast concentrations of capital. If we don’t do it via taxation, history shows that it will come via bloody revolution.

Anybody out there looking for entry-level hires in infosec or IT in general? I regularly get people who are just starting out asking me for help connecting them with job opportunities.

I’m sitting in the doctor’s office waiting to receive my testosterone booster—a non-event for me as a cis male. Just another data point for the despicable cruelty of denying the same hormone to my trans brothers. All in the name of gaining political advantage by creating moral panic. Disgusting.

I’ve had multiple independent conversations with friends in the tech industry that all boil down to feeling torn between wanting to do something that makes the world better and needing a job that supports our families. I know I’m in that place.

There is a lot of tech talent out there looking for a good mission.

This blog by @pluralistic on the housing market is a banger https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/11/nimby-yimby-fimby/

So does the spirit of Brian Thompson now appear on Christmas Eve fettered with red tape and stacks of paperwork, warning other healthcare CEOs to become better people?

Some people say healthcare companies removing executives’ photos from their web sites is a good security measure. I suggest that it shows consciousness of guilt.

My thought process this morning:

“I hate that so many people who bring joy to my timeline are scared right now.”

(corrected: it’s not about me)
“I hate that so many people who bring joy are scared right now.”

(corrected: it’s not limited to one group)
“I hate that so many people are scared right now.”

(corrected: crap, maybe it is about me)
“I hate being scared.”

The LibreWolf browser with the udm=14 extension added is really a very nice browsing experience. Everything Firefox should have been before they went to the dark side.

The only negative is manually adding cookie exceptions for sites where you want to stay logged in—infosec.exchange for example.

@feld @cult Bind to ports below 1024 and then drop privileges. Unix/Linux daemons have been doing this for decades. See BIND for example.