S3E17: "China Dentata"

Posted 2018-10-22 03:59
Modified 2018-10-23 11:01
Comments 2

We talk about the tiny chips embedded in motherboards by Chinese companies and give updates on our personal projects.

• News
• Notes
• Sysbadministration Award
• Errata
• Music

News

• We are on Spotify!
• We have a potential Doom night coming up on November 3rd! We need to get an idea of interest so we can plan accordingly, please @ us on Twitter or get in touch via our contact page! We’ll probably be playing co-op vanilla campaign, maybe some deathmatch, who knows?
• There has been a security flaw detailed for Flatpak.
  • The “competitor” for Flatpak is Snap.
• There is a VMWare Security advisory — apparently various products have an infinite-loop condition that can be triggered in their 3D shader.
• An Amazon employee was fired for releasing customer email addresses.
• Windows 10 is deleting users’ personal files. No, I’m not kidding.
• Blackvue users may be unwittingly broadcasting/streaming their recording.

Notes

Starts at 25m15s.

I was drinking a Flying Fish Abbey Dubbel. Paden was drinking water (and possibly vodka). Jthan was drinking 4-Noses’ Pump Action.

• China caught embedding surreptitious surveillance hardware in motherboards. Possibly.
  • Not only designed to look like they blend in (and VERY small), but also undocumented.
  • SuperMicro stock fell 41% (despite it not really being their fault, most likely – they most likely had no idea the hardware in question was there).
  • Post-publication of this episode, I came across this as well. However. it does have its own issues – it presupposes a lot based on “it wouldn’t work exactly how Bloomberg said it would therefore it’s entirely fabricated”. Keeping in mind that Bloomberg is not a technical mag, it’s an economy mag — obviously its audience needs things simplified and there is always a loss of accuracy in that translation.

• Personal projects update.
  • Jthan’s work with contracts has picked up.
  • He’s also been working more with Go lately.
  • I’ve been working with a lot of LDAP and infrastructure cleanup with work.
  • I’ve also been picking away at the BDisk 4.x rewrite.
  • And optools!
  • Paden received a new cabinet, so he’s been racking his machines and kit.
    • He still needs to do some cable management.
  • He’s been working on Python 3.
  • He also has a baby coming! And mounted shelves.

• Bob Vila’s awesome.

Sysbadministration Award

In this segment, we highlight system administration mistakes. Think of them as the IT equivalent of the Darwin Awards. (1h01m49s)

(This is the wrong kind of leak/leek. And geoduck digging looks fun.)

Google Plus had a massive breach, and decided it didn’t need to tell its users.

Errata

• The “cookin’ by the books” thing Jthan says is a reference to this.
  • I prefer this.
• “Happy Birthday (to You)” is actually public domain as of 2016 per this case! Thanks, nosbig!
• Sorry, Jthan; S2E9 was not when Paden was drinking vodka, nor when you make the vodka/white girls equivalency. He was drinking it in S3E2, but the vodka/white girls thing is actually a reference to S2E0 (which we reference again in S2E22).
• Jthan does risk/benefit all wrong (and definitely should not be an attorney).
  • Also, when I said Apple “dumped their servers”, I’m fairly certain it was not in landfills, let alone the ocean, Jthan. I meant “removed from their fleet”. It is also illegal in California to throw that shit away haphazardly, as it is most other places.
  • This has been “Jthan knows nothing about real-world/environmental impact”. Tune in next week when he finds out about this.
• Jthan is 100% not a doctor, medical or otherwise, and is not a scientist either.

Music

Author r00t^2
Categories Season Three