A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own

[hellymedic]

The ‘down’ cursor button on my laptop appears to have died from overuse...

[Mr Larrington]

Amazing how long you can spend looking for a missing “}” in a file with a couple of hundred pairs of braces

[Kim]

Amazing how long you can spend looking for a missing “}” in a file with a couple of hundred pairs of braces

I'm fairly sure we had something like that as a piece of coursework when I was a PSO.

[Mr Larrington]

Weird shit going down in some, or more, of the most recently released map DLCs for American Truck Simulator.  In some places every parked car is a Tesla and I can’t figure out whether it’s something I've done, an actual bug feature or just part of Space Karen’s plot to conquer the galaxy.

[JonBuoy]

It looks like there has been some OSM graffiti/vandalism local to me:  https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/52.7858/-1.2534



I spotted something similar but significantly worse a couple of days ago but most of it seems to have been tidied up.


ETA:  Looks like it is old news:  https://www.reddit.com/r/StrangeAndFunny/comments/1c1adkc/maps_andy_townsend_hates_all_of_you/

[Mr Larrington]

O hai Valve Corporation!

If you’re encountering problems with taking my money for a purchase off of that Steam, that they have now it’s probably better for all concerned if you don’t bung the Stuffs I haven’t yet paid for onto my Babbage-Engine.  Fortunately for you I am honest enough not to try diddling you out of £4.78 and also because I'm a tad worried that things might b0rke horribly at update time.  sort it out u muppets!

Kthxbai!

[Mr Larrington]

Playing whack-an-error in my game mods.  How did that missing colon go unnoticed?

[chrisbainbridge]

I am setting up a new access point in church.  I have a good but not totally random password with character replacement by special characters.

Should I bite the bullet and make the password longer and totally random?
leave the password as is and turn off SSID broadcast?
Do both?

Thank you

[Lightning Phil]

Make it a longer pass phrase rather than easy to guess special character replacement password job.

[Kim]

Make it a longer pass phrase rather than easy to guess special character replacement password job.

Ob-xkcd:



Never saw the point of turning off SSID broadcast, it's not like it hides the network from teh 1337 h4xx0rz.  Maybe if you've got multiple networks and you want to make it clear which is the public one...

[Feanor]

I am setting up a new access point in church.  I have a good but not totally random password with character replacement by special characters.

Should I bite the bullet and make the password longer and totally random?
leave the password as is and turn off SSID broadcast?
Do both?

Thank you

I'm going to go against the received wisdom a bit here.

This is a church WiFi. What are the risks you wish to mitigate?
Do you have sensitive documents on the network?
Or is it just an Internet Access Point?
Is the WiFi signal even detectable outside the building?
Are you expecting hackers to park up in the church hall car park with pringle-tube antennas?
I think that's most unlikely.

I expect your user base is highly disinclined to deal with nuclear missile access codes, and I suspect it's not necessary.
I'd be inclined to use a simple plain english passphrase, perhaps two words, easy to remember and enter. Something like 'Alpha Omega', for example. No character substitution.
Leave the SSID on.

Yes, it's not super-secure.
But it doesn't need to be; it needs to be fit-for-purpose.

You need to balance the need for security against your risk profile, and the needs and usability for your users.

[chrisbainbridge]

I am setting up a new access point in church.  I have a good but not totally random password with character replacement by special characters.

Should I bite the bullet and make the password longer and totally random?
leave the password as is and turn off SSID broadcast?
Do both?

Thank you

I'm going to go against the received wisdom a bit here.

This is a church WiFi. What are the risks you wish to mitigate?
Do you have sensitive documents on the network?
Or is it just an Internet Access Point?
Is the WiFi signal even detectable outside the building?
Are you expecting hackers to park up in the church hall car park with pringle-tube antennas?
I think that's most unlikely.

I expect your user base is highly disinclined to deal with nuclear missile access codes, and I suspect it's not necessary.
I'd be inclined to use a simple plain english passphrase, perhaps two words, easy to remember and enter. Something like 'Alpha Omega', for example. No character substitution.
Leave the SSID on.

Yes, it's not super-secure.
But it doesn't need to be; it needs to be fit-for-purpose.

You need to balance the need for security against your risk profile, and the needs and usability for your users.

We may have some admin work on a computer during work hours but turned off otherwise.  A passphrase sounds a good idea.

[Jaded]

Daily Mail: "Church donkey porn scandal!"

[Feanor]

We may have some admin work on a computer during work hours but turned off otherwise.  A passphrase sounds a good idea.

If your router supports it, look for a setting called 'Client Isolation', sometimes called Wireless Isolation or AP Isolation and enable it.

This allows individual WiFi clients to access the Internet, but not each other (or other devices on the LAN).

[chrisbainbridge]

Top tip. Thank you.

[Kim]

And then remember that you've done it when you can't work out why your foo can't connect to your bar n years later.

[TheLurker]

One for Mr. L.

VAXen rool

[Mr Larrington]

 

[Lightning Phil]

One for Mr. L.

VAXen rool

I wrote stuff in Pascal on Vax in the mid 80s 

[Mr Larrington]

My employment history switched from driving VAXen to Alpha running VMS in the mid-90s, which continued until 2013.

[MattH]

I wrote stuff in Pascal on Vax in the mid 80s 

The Vax was too new and shiny for us to use in the 80s. As an electronics bod I got to write Fortran on the PDP10, only those on the computer science course got to play on the Vax. Although later I did use it to do file transfers on the internet, mainly from NASA who had a big software archive.
That was telnet from a PC to Vax to Janet gateway, put a batch  job on a server at Imperial IIRC, which could actually FTP, and would push the results back. Then use Kermit on the pc to pull from the Vax to floppy. Getting a remote directory listing was an individual job, took forever to even find the file you wanted to pull. Youth of today don't know they're born.

[DaveReading]

The Vax was too new and shiny for us to use in the 80s. As an electronics bod I got to write Fortran on the PDP10, only those on the computer science course got to play on the Vax. Although later I did use it to do file transfers on the internet, mainly from NASA who had a big software archive.
That was telnet from a PC to Vax to Janet gateway, put a batch  job on a server at Imperial IIRC, which could actually FTP, and would push the results back. Then use Kermit on the pc to pull from the Vax to floppy. Getting a remote directory listing was an individual job, took forever to even find the file you wanted to pull. Youth of today don't know they're born.

Gosh, Kermit, brings back memories.  I remember hacking Kermit (or it might have been XModem) to build a Prestel emulator running on CP/M so that I could use a spiffy new Teletext-based home banking service.

[TheLurker]

I wrote stuff in Pascal on Vax in the mid 80s 

VAX-DSM, but we didn't swap to VAXEN until something like 89 or 90. It was the NHS, nuff sed?   Before that it was DSM-11 on a variety of PDPs.  Can't remember now if we'd moved to Alphas by the time I got pissed off with the right royal fuck-up that was EDS' attempt at run it as a privatised operation.

[T42]

I got curious about computers when a female chum I was trying to get off with wrote a = a + 1 when our bunch we were having a coffee in the refectory.  Turned out she wasn't inventing new mathematics à la Terrence (1x1=2) Howard but programming in Atlas Autocode. I eventually ended up doing the same on an English Electric KDF9 with 14k of 48-bit words (grubby PSO's stay outside the machine room).  Great fun that was. She ended up with a bloke called George.

[T42]

Anyway, I'm currently trying to set up MrsT's new computer, somewhat hampered by the fact that I use German keyboards and her new Windoze only has the French driver available. Swearing away and trying to map AZERTY onto QWERTZ from memory.  "No prob," sez MrsT, "use my old KB."  Unearth old KB from computerish midden, turns out she replaced it because she'd worn all the letters off the keys.  Went through all the other old KBs but most of them German and the ones that aren't have the wrong plugs.

Eventually remembered one stashed away in a cupboard. It had come with her current machine but she had bought a Microsoft orthopederastic KB immediately on getting it. It was still in the cupboard but whoops no dongle.  Tried it anyway, and by a fluke it works.

I need my lunch.