Prusa, IPv6, auto-antonum, Cloud Services, SMBv1, Snail mail, Teller.io, Precrime, Documentaries, Crackers

Post date: Aug 26, 2018 4:24:15 AM

• Assembled with a friend the Prusa i3 MK2S with multi material upgrade (4 material / color aka quad extrusion kit). Finally it worked perfectly. Nice printer. Much better quality and resolution than with older Velleman K8200.
• Had long discussion about IPv6 with colleagues. Some are strongly against it and I just can't stop loving it. It just makes everything simpler, not more complex. I've been making some plans where many internal services would be only available over IPv6, because it makes all configuration so much easier. It remains to be seen if this will be reality soon. One of the major problems with IPv4 is the serious fragmentation of IP address space.
• I guess I'm not the only one getting headache from auto-antonum / contronyms. I'm not native English speaker, that's obvious, so sometimes I need to check and double check somethings when getting confused. Yet it seems easier to get things wrong with Brits than it does with Americans.
• Google Cloud Platform - In Finland should be coming in 2017. It's guaranteed to be the best major cloud provider location for Finnish and Russian services and businesses. Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS locations are significantly worse. ~30 ms. Yet Amazon will be better of as soon as Stockholm region gets launched. Google also provides best bang for buck of the major cloud platforms. If you drop that major, then you should look at UpCloud, it's awesome. If you need long term dedicated look at Hetzner and for mix of all that take a look at OVH.
  • Updated on 20180826 - Hetzner has since launched Helsinki Data Center Park in Finland. As well as the AWS Stockholm has been launched. And obvious the Google Cloud is now available in Hamina, Finland. (Yet their routing is still bad, as I've posted earlier in my blog)
• Read a long list of different ways to disable SMB 1.0 aka CIFS on Windows workstations / servers . I usually prefer removing Windows networking completely, leaving system with pure TCP stack. And getting rid of all that MS gunk. Just remove Client for Microsoft networks and File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks completely. I'll reduce server attack surface quite a lot. Also read SMBv3 what's new documentation and at SMB @ Wikipedia. Actually most systems should be right now SMB 3.1.1 compatible, which provides better security & faster encryption.
• Finland finally accepted a new snail mail law. Which says that traditional paper mail needs to be delivered only on three days of week. No more five day delivery weekly. Personally, I've been supporting that. When amount of paper mail is radically dropping, delivering mail daily is huge waste of resources. If you really need something quickly, you can buy faster delivery services, just as earlier. "Bulk paper mail" isn't that important anymore. Also the 'national official email service' (nothing to do with SMTP) will be launched soon. As soon as the service is available, I'll start using it. I've already checked out the mockup site with sample mails and user interface.
• Watched a documentary about forensic genotyping.
• Checked out Teller.io which allows API access to (some) Bank Accounts in UK. This has been a real minefield due to security requirements, etc. It remains to be seen how this will work out when PSD2 is actually here.
• With the current state of the world, I'm wondering what the status of precrime and thoughtcrime actually is. With all this surveillance and monitoring, those are getting closer, at least the precrime is obviously reality.
• Watched bunch of new interesting TED talks. One was about mass surveillance and military tactics utilized by Police. One about interesting future technologies. Also the future technology documentary series.
• Russians hacking Ukraine critical infrastructure-. Very nice and long post. Had to read it all. It's like an technology thriller or novel. But nothing surprising there. Systems are hackable and often poorly secured and configured. If nothing bad happens, it usually means, that it's only because: Not enough value / interest. But if someone really tries, it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll find multiple ways on. I especially liked this one: Twitter and pinned it to his profile for posterity: “I swear, when Sandworm Team finally nails Western critical infrastructure, and folks react like this was a huge surprise, I’m gonna lose it.” - Because it's exactly what I've been saying too. I'm also afraid that important but non-critical infrastructure would get hit hardest. Because with critical infrastructure, there's someone (hopefully) whining about all the totally insecure stuff. But with non-critical infrastructure, well, if it works, it's ok. And it works, because nobody has really tried to take it out. It's pretty much guaranteed it'll fail catastrophically if the attackers want so.