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OpenAI Execs Mass Quit as Company Removes Control From Non-Profit Board and Hands It to Sam Altman
  • Facebook doesn't sell your data, nor does Google. That's a common misconception. They sell your attention. Advertisers can show ads to people based on some targeting criteria, but they never see any user data.

  • Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second
  • Some newer TVs are starting to have hard-coded DNS servers, which means they'll bypass most PiHole configurations.

    You could try configure your router to redirect all DNS traffic (UDP port 53) to your PiHole server, but that won't work if they're using DoH (DNS over HTTPS) which is becoming more and more common.

  • Meta fined $102 million for storing passwords in plain text
  • There's sometimes cases people don't think of ahead of time. For example if you log stack traces, they may contain details about the arguments passed to functions.

  • Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second
  • Oh sorry, I completely forgot to mention that. I'm using an Nvidia Shield for all my streaming.

    Another approach is to connect the TV to the internet but block all LG/Samsung/whatever stuff, for example by using a firewall on your router.

  • Is Google Maps getting worse?
  • Waze is owned by Google, and they're slowly converging over time.

  • Hacking Kia: Remotely Controlling Cars With Just a License Plate.
  • I'm still amazed that immobilizers aren't a legal requirement in the USA, and that Kia would remove them from US models just to save a small amount of money.

  • Home Depot
  • Delivery starts at $19 at my local IKEA, as long as you're within a certain radius from the store.

  • Home Depot
  • My wife's mum was helping me move everything from a two-bedroom unit, in a Toyota Yaris hatchback. Completely filled the car with stuff. It took maybe six or seven trips back and forth, but we got it done eventually.

    This was before I had a drivers license or much money, so I couldn't just rent a truck, nor could I afford to pay a mover.

  • Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second
  • Don't let your TV connect to the internet. I have mine on my wifi so I can control them using Home Assistant, but they're on an isolated VLAN with no internet access.

    Edit: Of course, this only works if you use an external box for streaming, like an Nvidia Shield, Apple TV, Google Chromecast TV or whatever they call it now, etc.

  • Meta fined $102 million for storing passwords in plain text
  • I mentioned this in another comment too: Nobody seems to reads the actual posts, just the headlines. They were accidentally stored in logs:

    As part of a security review in 2019, we found that a subset of FB users' passwords were temporarily logged in a readable format within our internal data systems,

    which is something I've seen at other companies too. For example, if you have error logging that logs the entire HTTP request when an error happens, but forget to filter out sensitive fields.

  • Meta fined $102 million for storing passwords in plain text
  • Also, nobody reads the actual posts, just the headlines. They were accidentally stored in logs:

    As part of a security review in 2019, we found that a subset of FB users' passwords were temporarily logged in a readable format within our internal data systems,

    which is something I've seen at other companies too. For example, if you have error logging that logs the entire HTTP request when an error happens, but forget to filter out sensitive fields.

  • OpenAI Execs Mass Quit as Company Removes Control From Non-Profit Board and Hands It to Sam Altman
  • It's amusing. Meta's AI team is more open than "Open"AI ever was - they publish so many research papers for free, and the latest versions of Llama are very capable models that you can run on your own hardware (if it's powerful enough) for free as long as you don't use it in an app with more than 700 million monthly users.

  • Don’t ever hand your phone to the cops
  • Ohhh I didn't consider that. Good point!

  • YouTube has found a new way to load ads | AdGuard Blog
  • I suspect that this will be a thing eventually... It's a reasonably easy way to defeat apps/systems like Comskip that detect and remove ads from videos. Comskip is what Plex, Jellyfin, etc. use to detect ads in DVR recordings.

    Those ad removal systems usually find ads by looking for changes in the video. For example, sometimes there's black frames before and after the ads, sometimes there's a TV station logo that goes away during ads (especially on channels like CNN), sometimes there's a change in volume, etc. If they make the ads look similar enough to actual content, it becomes very difficult to automatically remove them. Online platforms like YouTube are trying to achieve the same thing - Make ads "look like" non-ads to make them harder to block.

  • NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules
  • One of the four major banks in Australia used to (or maybe still does?) limit passwords to 6 characters. No more, no less. Exactly 6. They're case insensitive, too.

    One of the other banks used to silently truncate passwords (to 12 characters if I remember correctly). They removed the truncation one day, and there were so many issues because people who had passwords longer than 12 characters couldn't log in unless they knew to only enter the first 12 characters of it. It was a mess. Their phone support had a recorded message saying to only enter the first 12 characters if you have trouble logging in.

  • NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules
  • We use keys + Yubikey 2FA (the long alphanumeric strings when you touch the Yubikey) at work, alhough they want to move all 2FA to Yubikey FIDO2/WebAuthn in the future since regular numeric/text 2FA codes are vulnerable to phishing. All our internal webapps already require FIDO2, as does our email (Microsoft 365).

  • NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules
  • I'm surprised they'd expire the SSH keys rather than just requiring the password for the key to be rotated. I guess it's not too bad if the key itself is automatically rotated.

    It would be more secure to have SSH keys that are stored on Yubikeys, though. Get the Yubikeys that check fingerprints (Yubikey Bio) if you're extra paranoid.

  • Don’t ever hand your phone to the cops
  • The obesity rate in Australia (and New Zealand) isn't very far behind the USA...

  • Don’t ever hand your phone to the cops
  • A lot of countries have disabled their 2G networks (and 3G in some cases). I think 4G and 5G have a more secure signaling protocol than SS7?

  • Spectacle export to SFTP?

    I noticed that Spectacle has an option to upload to Imgur and Nextcloud. Is there a way to allow it to upload to an SFTP server?

    Ideally I'd like for it to upload the file via SFTP then put the URL on my clipboard, which is what I do with ShareX on Windows.

    3
    Lighter weight replacements for Sentry bug logging

    I love Sentry, but it's very heavy. It runs close to 50 Docker containers, some of which use more than 1GB RAM each. I'm running it on a VPS with 10GB RAM and it barely fits on there. They used to say 8GB RAM is required but bumped it to 16GB RAM after I started using it.

    It's built for large-scale deployments and has a nice scalable enterprise-ready design using things like Apache Kafka, but I just don't need that since all I'm using it for is tracking bugs in some relatively small C# and JavaScript projects, which may amount to a few hundred events per week if that. I don't use any of the fancier features in Sentry, like the live session recording / replay or the performance analytics.

    I could move it to one of my 16GB or 24GB RAM systems, but instead I'm looking to evaluate some lighter-weight systems to replace it. What I need is:

    • Support for C# and JavaScript, including mapping stack traces to original source code using debug symbols for C# and source maps for JavaScript.
      • Ideally supports React component stack traces in JS.
    • Automatically group the same bugs together, if multiple people hit the same issue
      • See how many users are affected by a bug
    • Ignore particular errors
    • Mark a bug as "fixed in next release" and reopen it if it's logged again in a new release
    • Associate bugs with GitHub issues
    • Ideally supports login via OpenID Connect

    Any suggestions?

    Thanks!

    6
    Help with powertop idle state output

    On a small form factor PC with an i5-9500, Debian 12, 6.2.16 kernel, running Proxmox, powertop shows the following idle stats: ``` PowerTOP 2.14 Overview Idle stats Frequency stats Device stats Tunables WakeUp

    Pkg(HW) | Core(HW) | CPU(OS) 0 | | C0 active 2.8% | | POLL 0.0% 0.0 ms | | C1 1.1% 0.4 ms C2 (pc2) 7.2% | | C3 (pc3) 5.5% | C3 (cc3) 0.0% | C3 0.1% 0.1 ms C6 (pc6) 1.5% | C6 (cc6) 1.9% | C6 2.2% 0.6 ms C7 (pc7) 75.2% | C7 (cc7) 92.8% | C7s 0.0% 0.0 ms C8 (pc8) 0.0% | | C8 21.5% 2.5 ms C9 (pc9) 0.0% | | C9 0.0% 0.0 ms C10 (pc10) 0.0% | | | | C10 72.8% 12.5 ms | | C1E 0.4% 0.2 ms

    | Core(HW) | CPU(OS) 1 | | C0 active 1.4% | | POLL 0.0% 0.0 ms | | C1 0.7% 0.9 ms | | | C3 (cc3) 0.1% | C3 0.1% 0.2 ms | C6 (cc6) 1.0% | C6 1.1% 0.8 ms | C7 (cc7) 96.3% | C7s 0.0% 0.0 ms | | C8 18.9% 2.9 ms | | C9 0.0% 0.0 ms | | | | C10 78.3% 24.8 ms | | C1E 0.0% 0.0 ms ... ```

    On a custom-built server with an i5-13500, Asus Pro WS W680M-ACE SE motherboard, Unraid (which uses Slackware), 6.1.38 kernel, it shows the following output: ``` PowerTOP 2.15 Overview Idle stats Frequency stats Device stats Tunables WakeUp

    Pkg(HW) | Core(HW) | CPU(OS) 0 CPU(OS) 1 | | C0 active 5.9% 0.9% | | POLL 0.1% 0.0 ms 0.0% 0.0 ms | | C1_ACPI 14.2% 0.2 ms 1.0% 0.1 ms C2 (pc2) 0.0% | | C2_ACPI 39.2% 0.8 ms 27.0% 0.9 ms C3 (pc3) 0.0% | C3 (cc3) 0.0% | C3_ACPI 33.6% 1.2 ms 69.7% 3.0 ms C6 (pc6) 0.0% | C6 (cc6) 1.1% | C7 (pc7) 0.0% | C7 (cc7) 0.0% | C8 (pc8) 0.0% | | C9 (pc9) 0.0% | | C10 (pc10) 0.0% | |

    | Core(HW) | CPU(OS) 2 CPU(OS) 3 | | C0 active 10.4% 0.5% | | POLL 0.0% 0.0 ms 0.0% 0.0 ms | | C1_ACPI 17.4% 0.2 ms 0.4% 0.2 ms | | C2_ACPI 14.3% 0.8 ms 4.9% 0.6 ms | C3 (cc3) 0.0% | C3_ACPI 41.8% 5.4 ms 93.5% 5.5 ms | C6 (cc6) 5.9% | | C7 (cc7) 26.7% | | | | | | |

    | Core(HW) | CPU(OS) 4 CPU(OS) 5 | | C0 active 11.7% 0.2% | | POLL 0.0% 0.1 ms 0.0% 0.0 ms | | C1_ACPI 19.0% 0.1 ms 0.0% 0.0 ms | | C2_ACPI 11.3% 0.7 ms 0.0% 0.0 ms | C3 (cc3) 0.0% | C3_ACPI 39.6% 7.7 ms 99.6% 7.0 ms | C6 (cc6) 1.3% | | C7 (cc7) 25.4% | ... ```

    Both systems have C-states enabled in the BIOS.

    I have a few questions I'm hoping someone can help with:

    • Why does the older system show more C-states in the right-most "CPU(OS)" column?
    • What does it mean when they're suffixed with "_ACPI" like in the output from the new system?
    • How do I debug the new system not hitting any CPU package C-states?

    I can't find any documentation about this, neither on the man page nor on Intel's site (the official powertop URL https://01.org/powertop doesn't go anywhere useful any more).

    Thanks!

    3
    Looking for simple analytics (similar to Plausible) that supports cookies

    Google Analytics is broken on a bunch of my sites thanks to the GA4 migration. Since I have to update everything anyways, I'm looking at the possibility of replacing Google Analytics with something I self-host that's more privacy-focused.

    I've tried Plausible, Umami and Swetrix (the latter of which I like the most). They're all very lightweight and most are pretty efficient due to their use of a column-oriented database (Clickhouse) for storing the analytics data - makes way more sense than a row-oriented database like MySQL for this use case.

    However, these systems are all cookie-less. This is usually fine, however one of my sites is commonly used in schools on their computers. Cookieless analytics works by tracking sessions based on IP address and user-agent, so in places like schools with one external IP and the same browser on every computer, it just looks like one user in the analytics. I'd like to know the actual number of users.

    I'm looking for a similarly lightweight analytics system that does use cookies (first-party cookies only) to handle this particular use case. Does anyone know of one?

    Thanks!

    Edit: it doesn't have to actually be a cookie - just being able to explicitly specify a session ID instead of inferring one based on IP and user-agent would suffice.

    13
    ATX case with room for 5 hard drives

    I'm replacing an SFF PC (HP ProDesk 600 G5 SFF) I'm using as a server with a larger one that'll function as a server and a NAS, and all I want is a case that would have been commonplace 10-15 years ago:

    • Fits an ATX motherboard.
    • Fits at least 4-5 hard drives.
    • Is okay sitting on its side instead of upright (or even better, is built to be horizontal) since it'll be sitting on a wire shelving unit (replacing the SFF PC here: https://upvote.au/post/11946)
    • No glass side panel, since it'll be sitting horizontally.
    • Ideally space for a fan on the left panel

    It seems like cases like this are hard to find these days. The two I see recommended are the Fractal Design Define R5 and the Cooler Master N400, both of which are quite old. The Streacom F12C was really nice but it's long gone now, having been discontinued many years ago.

    Unfortunately I don't have enough depth for a full-depth rackmount server; I've got a very shallow rack just for networking equipment.

    Does anyone have recommendations for any cases that fit these requirements?

    My desktop PC has a Fractal Design Define R4 that I bought close to 10 years ago... I'm tempted to just buy a new case for it and repurpose the Define R4 for the server.

    25
    NAS vs larger server

    Sorry for the long post. tl;dr: I've already got a small home server and need more storage. Do I replace an existing server with one that has more hard drive bays, or do I get a separate NAS device? ________

    I've got some storage VPSes "in the cloud":

    • 10TB disk / 2GB RAM with HostHatch in LA
    • 100GB NVMe / 16GB RAM with HostHatch in LA
    • 3.5TB disk / 2GB RAM with Servarica in Canada

    The 10TB VPS has various files on it - offsite storage of alert clips from my cameras, photos, music (which I use with Plex on the NVMe VPS via NFS), other miscellaneous files (using Seafile), backups from all my other VPSes, etc. The 3.5TB one is for a backup of the most important files from that.

    The issue I have with the VPSes is that since they're shared servers, there's limits in terms of how much CPU I can use. For example, I want to run PhotoStructure for all my photos, but it needs to analyze all the files initially. I limit Plex to maximum 50% of one CPU, but limiting things like PhotoStructure would make them way slower.

    I've had these for a few years. I got them when I had an apartment with no space for a NAS, expensive power, and unreliable Comcast internet. Times change... Now I've got a house with space for home servers, solar panels so running a server is "free", and 10Gbps symmetric internet thanks to a local ISP, Sonic.

    Currently, at home I've got one server: A HP ProDesk SFF PC with a Core i5-9500, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, and a single 14TB WD Purple Pro drive. It records my security cameras (using Blue Iris) and runs home automation stuff (Home Assistant, etc). It pulls around 41 watts with its regular load: 3 VMs, ~12% CPU usage, constant ~34Mbps traffic from the security cameras, all being written to disk.

    So, I want to move a lot of these files from the 10TB VPS into my house. 10TB is a good amount of space for me, maybe in RAID5 or whatever is recommended instead these days. I'd keep the 10TB VPS for offsite backups and camera alerts, and cancel the other two.

    Trying to work out the best approach:

    1. Buy a NAS. Something like a QNAP TS-464 or Synology DS923+. Ideally 10GbE since my network and internet connection are both 10Gbps.
    2. Replace my current server with a bigger one. I'm happy with my current one; all I really need is something with more hard drive bays. The SFF PC only has a single drive bay, its motherboard only has a single 6Gbps SATA port, and the only PCIe slots are taken by a 10Gbps network adapter and a Google Coral TPU.
    3. Build a NAS PC and use it alongside my current server. TrueNAS seems interesting now that they have a Linux version (TrueNAS Scale). Unraid looks nice too.

    Any thoughts? I'm leaning towards option 2 since it'll use less space and power compared to having two separate systems, but maybe I should keep security camera stuff separate? Not sure.

    27
    10Gbps internet connection isn't maxing out 2.5Gbps network card?

    I have a 10Gbps internet connection. On a system with a 10Gbps Ethernet card, I can get ~8Gbps down and ~6Gbps up:

    !

    I'd expect this to easily max out a 2.5Gbps network connection. However, while the upload is maxed (or close to it), I can only ever get ~1.0 to 1.5Gbps down:

    !

    Both tests were performed on the same system. The only difference is that the first one uses a TRENDnet 10Gbps PCIe network card (which uses an Aquantia AQC107 chipset) whereas the second one uses the onboard NIC on my motherboard (Intel I225-V chipset).

    This is consistent across two devices that have 10Gbps ports and two devices that have 2.5Gbps ports.

    I'm using an AdTran 622v ONT provided by my internet provider, a TP-Link ER8411 router, and a MikroTik CRS312-4C+8XG-RM switch. I'm using CAT6 cabling, except for the connection between the router and the switch which uses an SFP+ DAC cable.

    I haven't been able to figure it out. The 'slower' speeds are still great, I just don't understand why it can't achieve more than 1.5Gbps down over a 2.5Gbps network connection.

    Any ideas?

    1
    My 10Gbps Home Networking Closet

    I couldn't find a "Home Networking" community, so this seemed like the best place to post :)

    My house has this small closet in the hallway and thought it'd make a perfect place to put networking equipment. I got an electrician to install power outlets in it, ran some CAT6 myself (through the wall, down into the crawlspace, to several rooms), and now I finally have a proper networking setup that isn't just cables running across the floor.

    The rack is a basic StarTech two-post rack (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001U14MO8/) and the shelving unit is an AmazonBasics one that ended up perfectly fitting the space (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09W2X5Y8F/).

    In the rack, from top to bottom (prices in US dollars):

    • TP-Link ER8411 10Gbps router. My main complaint about it is that the eight 'RJ45' ports are all Gigabit, and there's only two 10Gbps ports (one SFP+ for WAN, and one SFP+ for LAN). It can definitely reach 10Gbps NAT throughput though. $350
    • Wiitek SFP+ to RJ45 module for connecting Sonic's ONT (which only has an RJ45 port), and 10Gtek SFP+ DAC cable to connect router to switch.
    • MikroTik CRS312-4C+8XG-RM managed switch (runs RouterOS). 12 x 10Gbps ports. I bought it online from Europe, so it ended up being \~$520 all-in, including shipping.
    • Cable Matters 24-port keystone patch panel.
    • TP-Link TL-SG1218MPE 16-port Gigabit PoE switch. 250 W PoE power budget. Used for security cameras - three cameras installed so far.
    • Tripp Lite 14 outlet PDU.

    Other stuff:

    • AdTran 622v ONT provided by my internet provider (Sonic), mounted to the wall.
    • HP ProDesk 600 G5 SFF PC with Core i5-9500. Using it for a home server running Home Assistant, Blue Iris, Node-RED, Zigbee2MQTT, and a few other things. Bought it off eBay for $200.
      • Sonoff Zigbee dongle plugged in to the front USB port
    • (next to the PC) Raspberry Pi 4B with SATA SSD plugged in to it. Not doing anything at the moment, as I migrated everything to the PC.
    • (not pictured) Wireless access point is just a basic Netgear one I bought from Costco a few years ago. It's sitting on the top shelf. I'm going to replace it with a TP-Link Omada ceiling-mounted one once their wifi 7 access points have been released.

    Speed test: https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/d/3740ce8b-bba5-486f-9aad-beb187bd1cdc

    Edit: Sorry, I don't know why the image is rotated :/ The file looks fine on my computer.

    13
    dan dan @upvote.au

    Aussie living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Coding since 1998. .NET Foundation member. C# fan https://d.sb/ Mastodon: @dan@d.sb

    Posts 8
    Comments 2.5K