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Trouble with the Muskovite

Rafiki expressing his dislike of MuskI’m in this quandary with regards social media, much of it is being turned off. I used to have a twitter account (under my own name) and I’ve deleted it since Musk brought the thing, and it descended into the Vile, festering quagmire of sewage that it now is.

I do how ever have a troll account – and even that is nauseating. But there are 2 or 3 people on that platform who I do like to keep tabs on. I might note that one of those people is valiantly trying to find a positive alternative… (Bluesky wheres my invite?).

I also for a while thought that it would be amazing to start to colonise Mars… but they would have have to have good bacon and whisky available at reasonable prices before I seriously consider making the jump. But then the whole thing of Musk running the place…. again nauseating.  Also what would they call the capital of Mars? Muskville? Musk-o-gee? You would then become a Muskovite..?

I also thought a tesla car would be very nice. To be honest if someone gave me one I would probably say thank you very much (and then sell the thing). But I have heard that it may be possible to hack the international comms that run Tesla cars (and apparently the security may have some bumps in it). Think about the insanity an evil genius could unleash?

Could you imagine it, you get in the car one morning and it locks you in and rick rolls you blasting the sound up to 11. Or just orders all Tesla cars to stop until you pay 1 trillion dollars in bitcoin, to some nefarious individuals account.

I think a hand built electric for about 15 K is looking a lot better alternative, that and I like old cars. It’s a shame, I used to like Musk in the old days, even though he destroyed a Gordon Murry art work (the F1) … before he became an ………..(insert you favourite insult ).

 

Related ….
I found this today, thought people may find it an interesting asside
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/23/why-is-elon-musk-attacking-wikipedia-because-its-very-existence-offends-him

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Battling Digital Onslaught

A couple of times on this site I’ve mentioned some of the garbage that some ip address spit at my wee server. It’s interesting and frustrating especially when you think about how much people do or do not care.

Admittedly the people at AWS on occasion have constructively addressed the odd concern (but they do require lots of information inducing your time zone preferred type of porridge etc) But on the whole if you make a complaint to an ISP about the scanning or bs coming from an IP address you often never get a response.

So one approach is to just set up firewall rules and hope that the Aholes don’t come back via another address, but this does become a vexatious game of Whac-A-Mole.

I made this project public in 2018
https://github.com/nevetsanderson/sshfail

It is useful in that it on a day to day level can bring awareness to how much junk is rattling at your front doors. I remember telling a manager once about the number daily number attacks and he went rather pale in the face.

I hope that someone can find sshfail as a useful tool, even if it does turn managers pale.

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Python3 and http!

Python, a versatile and widely-used programming language, has proven its worth across various domains, from web development and data analysis to artificial intelligence and automation.

The command

python3 -m http.server

is an interesting one I’ve been thinking about and using of late.

This one little cli command can make all files accessible in the directory that the command is executed in… I checked it as an admin and standard user and sure enough you can share any data in any directory you have access to!

This opens up some significant security vulnerabilities. Since the server allows public access to the files in the directory where it is executed, there is a risk of exposing sensitive information inadvertently. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to gain unauthorised access to confidential data or sensitive configuration files. This should never be used on a production server!

With great power also comes great responsibility…. I think all young programmers and developers should watch the Oppenheimer movie!

 

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Patterns of random

Ever since I started my adventures with computers, I’ve been fascinated by the process and delight of random. Of taking something so precise  as a computer and having it cough up random information. I think my first experience of this was with the venerable “Hypercard” running on a mac. Danny Goodman wrote a wonderful book on how to use and write for this product and it was a good initial introduction to programming.

I was thinking about how creativity contains elements of random – or new concepts (created because of random actions) and how AI is becoming rather good at defining, refining and regurgitating content to create the new.

Machine learning, giving a set of criteria and a desired result – infinite testing and the ability to weight or to project concepts. To test at an incredible rate – add to this the possibility of quantum computing and humanity is at a very interesting nexus.

Recently a group of researchers hooked an AI up to a robotic arm and sensing device (effectively giving the AI access into the physical world via the robotic arm and something similar to vision) when asked to identify an extinct animal it picked up a plastic model of a dinosaur. When asked what object might be the best for hammering a nail, it picked up a rock.

We live in interesting times.