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wilhil

620 karma · joined February 16, 2011

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wilhil··on Company named "><SCRIPT SRC=HTTPS://MJT.XSS.HT> LTD" forced to change it (2020)
My fav "abuse" of the system was a car park terminal that was running some flavour of Windows with an antivirus software.

It had a scanner for the barcode of a ticket, but, it understood lots of other barcodes/encoding systems and must have been logging to the filesystem.

So... saw someone encode the EICAR test string to a QR Code and put it to the scanner... that caused the AV to popup which covered the entire screen and made the terminal unusable!

wilhil··on Netbirdio/netbird: Connect devices into a single private WireGuard mesh network
We are/were an early adopter.

It's very promising, but, seriously buggy as of now - DNS keeps randomly dropping/leaking unreliably which was causing us issues and random drops to private resources along with a few other issues.

I think we switched to tailscale (I don't look after that side)... it's still a cool solution and think we will be looking at it again in the future.

wilhil··on Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor
Stripe is a nightmare and I found support to be awful and not know their own product.

We are a UK company but now have clients worldwide and worldwide bank accounts (thanks to Wise).

So many people in the US can't pay via ACH Transfer (we can't do debit without a US entity... looking in to options and setting up a LLC now), so, we need to be able to accept credit card.

I thought I had a nice workaround by having USD to my USD account and only paying standard (high) fees, but, they now charge me a surcharge for this despite no Forex fees needed, and worse, the fees always link to the wrong transactions so I can't even reconcile properly.

On top of this, they force convert my CAD to GBP despite having a CAD bank account, and charge me so many fees on top.

It's the only option I've found as of now, but, I'm far far from being a fan.

wilhil··on Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor
Adyen didn't want to speak to us unless I could show ~£1M+ a year of transactions :(
wilhil··on IPv6 Internet is broken
I'm a Cogent customer and we wouldn't be where we are without them, but, they give me the most headaches out of any provider I have to deal with.

I tried raising a complaint as their SLA states about packet deliverability/guarantees - and I said "well, you have 100% packet loss to HE"... I didn't get very far and they basically just blamed it on HE - but, I wonder if someone had more time, if they could make a complaint down this avenue?!

wilhil··on Mercedes-Benz to introduce acceleration subscription fee
Except I'm not seeing anything on subscription where you already own the hardware actually being sold for cheaper!
wilhil··on Ring0VBA – Getting Ring0 Using a Word Document
Well... you can flash and update the firmware of a mobile connected via USB through a browser... so, not sure how accurate this is!
wilhil··on Ask HN: Can I avoid being nuked by Stripe?
I recently saw Adyen and was interested, however, you need a minimum of £5M a year they told me :(
wilhil··on Critical SIP Bypass Vulnerabilities in macOS PackageKit.framework
Probably the dumbest thing I've said, but, just skim read as I'm no expert and these detailed reports go over my head.

Why is it such a bad vulnerability if it requires a sudo command?

wilhil··on Police Officer Exam Tutorial [pdf]
Question 19...

... Burst through the window/28, enter 16a isn't an answer :(

Just skim read - interesting, thanks for sharing!

wilhil··on Show HN: AI generated Magic The Gathering cards
I don't think it's ready for prime time... My first card is giving me a headache trying to understand what it is doing!

https://snipboard.io/AXjDS7.jpg

wilhil··on Prince of Persia in JavaScript
It's accurate.... I suck at this as much as I suck at the original.
wilhil··on Windows 2000 Modernization Guide
Up until a few years ago I had to support a .Net 2 app for a global company.

I had a few Windows 2000 VMs and they were a joy to use.

Started in seconds - I could have LOADS of snapshots that would only take up a handful of MBs and generally speaking, it was excellent.

Only reason I stopped was because I no longer needed to run that project.

I'm not stuck in the past - I get why things get slower and are more complex... but, sometimes I do wish we could go backwards a little!

wilhil··on $45k in AWS charges due to account being hacked to mine cryptocurrency
We are a very large AWS reseller and this drives me bonkers with EVERY Cloud, and I've written about this countless times.

There is almost no way what so ever to limit risk and it's crazy.

Cloud operators state that it is because they don't want to shut down popular services or similar - and to be honest, I get this argument - but, it is just awful in practice.

Nearly every cloud has cost report delays of anything up to a month for some services and it's just a nightmare.

I kind of agree that if you have a service costing £5,000 a month - you shouldn't limit spend to £5,001 - but, you should be able to limit to £7,500 - enough room to burst/grow, but not have risk!

All clouds could learn a thing or two from telecoms and rate limits... e.g. if you have services that when not in use have a fixed monthly limit - e.g. storage - then take that out of monthly limit and then use the excess for variable costs.

e.g. storage costs £500 a month, compute costs £200 a month... if a client sets a budget of £1,000 - then deduct £700, maybe ~£100 extra for idle transactions (if in a cloud/model that charges), then have prepay of £200 for "extras".

I just see "the clouds" do AMAZING new features - all this crazy and cool AI bits, yet they can't get basic costs correct - it's crazy in my mind.

wilhil··on The Next Backblaze Storage Pod
I'm curious what is being used for the drives (and to a lesser extent, memory) - Dell or OEM and how does support work?

We sell a lot of Dell and for base models, it is very economical compared to self built.

The moment however we add a few high capacity hard drives or memory, all bets are off the table and it's usually 1.75-4x the price of a white box part.

I get not supporting the part itself, but, had them not support a raid card error (corrupt memory) after they saw we had a third party drive.... we only buy a handful of servers a month - I can imagine this possibly being a huge problem for Backblaze though...

wilhil··on Tesla Recalls Cars with EMMC Failures, Calls Part a ‘Wear Item’
Can't agree enough.

I'm not wealthy, but, got enough to be happy... I really wanted to treat myself to a Tesla and went to the local shop a while ago and I went out thinking - I'm not buying this.

The glovebox required such force to close. I put my arm on the armrest and the rear drinks holder opened The centre console was VERY loose.

and so many other problems.

Compare this to a family member's ~£13k Hyundai i10 where the gear selector was SOLID, I just didn't feel like the Tesla (Model S) was good value for money in the slightest.

I don't think anyone can touch them technically (yet), but, they have A LOT to learn about building cars.

wilhil··on BitLocker Lockscreen Bypass
Heh! Memories! RM Networks ~1998/1999 when I was in School... You would login and then you got their interface popup saying you were over your space allowance and clear files or you can't login...

I did this exact same trick (passed network login though) to get out of it! Although, mine was to go to c:\windows, type . then right click explorer.exe and click open!

wilhil··on Microsoft patent: Creating a conversational chat bot of a specific person
Remembering the start of the film Idiocracy and how many resources have been spent on erection pills...
wilhil··on Windows XP leak confirmed after user compiles the leaked code into a working OS
That sounds like a bug!

Easter egg to me is a flight simulator in Excel or pinball in word etc.!

wilhil··on Microsoft Surface Duo – Dual-screen Android phone
Yep - but, the iPhone came from nowhere, and, "no copy and paste" was put out by Microsoft to say how bad it was...

Microsoft basically took a backwards step from Windows CE and then did the same years after it was the norm in other systems.

wilhil··on A website to make 3D geometry shapes out of paper
To try to convert the Batman insignia to draw on this!! Just meant to be a bit of fun!
wilhil··on Microsoft Surface Duo – Dual-screen Android phone
It reminds me when I was at a user group at Microsoft for the launch of the new Windows Phone OS...

... The guy gave a long marketing speech about how "beautiful" it was, how they did so much user research on what people wanted and spent a fortune developing and using a brand new font for the interface(s).

Then, someone stuck their hand up and said "Is it true that you don't have copy/paste features yet?"

Why can't people learn... things may be important, but no one cares about the technicalities... I don't care if this is algorithm, AI, ML... neural network processing or some other fancy new term...

... just give the user a setting for what screen something should pop up on and everyone will be happy!

wilhil··on A website to make 3D geometry shapes out of paper
So... can anyone convert the Batman Equation to a format this site understands?!
wilhil··on MagiCan
Silly question maybe...

Why didn't they just put the prize in a sterile packet and fill it with Coke like normal?!

Seems like it would solve pretty much all the complaints and issues!

wilhil··on Trello handed over my personal account to my previous company
I hear stories like this all the time - I'm all for "cloud" in certain areas, but, there are an increasing amount of companies that either don't care or have short sighted policies.

I really think the future needs to look more at "master" accounts with Azure/AWS and similar services, make it much easier to delegate access to third parties so that the third party contains the core logic/application but the data resides fully with your own account.

Data ownership is so important and overlooked by so many people who want an easy life and want to forget physical servers to look after.

wilhil··on Scottish Power: "Billing chaos caused by a new IT system"
Easily... it's just a contract - anyone can contract a debt collector.

A reasonably one would require proof including the original contract, but, big companies like this are so automated, they have their processes down to an art.

It will pretty much be an export of unpaid debt gets sent to a collection agency. The collection agency will try to hound people as much as possible to pay.

People who don't pay may get taken to court and the debt collectors will either win by default, or, the person will show up, say they haven't been a customer and win with ease.

Also, any reasonable debt company would drop immediately upon sending proof, but, so do a lot of liars, so it's a hard one, but the law is on the customer's side.

wilhil··on AMD Threadripper 3990X 64-Core beats dual Xeon Platinum 8280 in benchmark leak
Agreed, but, not really for servers/enterprise usage which the parent thread was about...

For example, I7/I9 is much cheaper and more powerful than entry level Xeons, but, you VERY rarely see them in a rackmount chassis/server.

Same goes for Epyc and Ryzen.

wilhil··on AMD Threadripper 3990X 64-Core beats dual Xeon Platinum 8280 in benchmark leak
I said before - it's more than just this. AMD's ecosystem just sucks... Intel may be doing things that are questionable, but, as a OEM on the much smaller size, Intel have a great partner program.

With Intel, I get advanced warranties, presales support, next day parts, details marketing and product information alongside access to privileged information and roadmaps.

With AMD, I was waiting the best part of 3 months for a call back, and their "partner" site which is open to the world is severely out of date and doesn't even have all products listed.

Intel is frictionless when it comes to doing business, AMD put up roadblocks.

wilhil··on AMD Threadripper 3990X 64-Core beats dual Xeon Platinum 8280 in benchmark leak
The only annoying thing here is the thread count!!

Intel do servers at all levels including low core count/high core frequency, where as AMD have a very decent core count, but, performance between the models is largely just an increase in core count (there is very little difference in frequency - e.g. NO high frequency/low core)

So many jobs still require Windows licenses unfortunately and since the shift to core count, it's ludicrously expensive to license a lot of the new AMD machines on SPLA licensing.

Not that I'm not trying though...

wilhil··on ThinkPad Mods, Done Right
Is there really a market for modding a 7+ year old laptop? I know thinkpads used to be great (And some still are), but, I just don't get the point in trying to give more life to something so so old - most likely ~3rd-4th gen intel.
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