thepacketrat

47 karma · joined February 24, 2012

IT editor at Ars Technica, former editorial CTO at Ziff Davis Enterprise, and itinerant hardware and software hacker / web scripter. [ my public key: https://keybase.io/thepacketrat; my proof: https://keybase.io/thepacketrat/sigs/ywgfXvLJPTjUAKxi0INJCg-7ZNlb-XoZPUBS-mtQCxU ]

submissions comments

thepacketrat··on Trolling a Windows support scammer

I did have other things to do... (I'm the author.) Also, I fumbled on the VM setup with VirtualBox—should have just used my vSphere Windows 10 instance, but it was already set up for sandboxing malware.

thepacketrat··on Ask HN: Is the UK's Ministry of Defence Still Using Windows XP?

Yes, the UK government is paying Microsoft a ton of cash for XP support, so this is possible.

thepacketrat··on PHP desktop GUI framework with HTML5 Chrome/IE engine

Is anyone actually using this?

thepacketrat··on Running a South Pole data center

They're hiring a webmaster. But I think it's in a different cold place: Madison, Wisconsin. http://icecube.wisc.edu/jobs/show/webmaster

thepacketrat··on NSA’s Internet taps can find systems to hack, track VPNs and Word docs

By VPN startups, they mean initiation of a VPN session. Specifically, this means they can grab the credentials at the beginning of a PPTP VPN session, and then decrypt it. PPTP has been known to be vulnerable to this sort of attack for some time.

thepacketrat··on The new Google Hangouts will not support XMPP

They're still supporting client-to-server XMPP, so third party apps can always just connect as a client rather than doing federation.

thepacketrat··on Aaron Swartz commits suicide

Having lost my brother to suicide just a year ago, I can empathize deeply with your loss. My thoughts are with your family.

thepacketrat··on Andreessen: ‘The Dot-Com Bust Was Basically A Mistake’

Oh, yeah, because Pets.com would have worked so much better as a mobile app.

thepacketrat··on Coolest jobs in tech (literally): running a South Pole data center

With the contract switching from Raytheon to Lockheed, the general NSF support contract should have a bunch of IT positions opening up next research season, I'd think.