WTF Bites
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
backups being critical.
Oh yeah... speaking of... *checks* WTF where did the backup program go? It's literally disappeared...
Restore it from backup.
......and you're fucked.
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The big driving factor is that it has a few key advantages:
I quite possibly phrased it so that I implied there are no advantages. There are. But many people were sold on advantages that were downright lies. For some people those lies were told through ignorance, and for many they were told because of greed.
I will give you an example that is directly from our vein. A number of years ago when Amazon Glacier became a thing there was a solution marketed towards MSPs that used Amazon Glacier as the backup target. It was touted as being cheaper, it is cold storage of data, you have to pay for egress and chances are you won't ever need much of it so it is just way cheaper, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Amazon Glacier...I am convinced that they named it that because occasionally big chunks of it fall off never to be seen again. They straight up tell you that there is essentially no redundancy of your data storage on their end. That they will not guarantee availability of your data when you need it, or that it will even be there if you do.
I keep coming back to backups because that is one of our core businesses. But these misconceptions exist everywhere. Sure, for cherrypicked examples you can find instances where it is cheaper. Go really, really, really small (a number of people run Ubiquiti controllers on free cloud instances), or you can find ways that cloud services help out businesses in growing pains. Like, one of our clients uses a LOB that is a web app from a New Zealand company. They did not have to have a huge CapEx and OpEx in order to expand in to North America. Spin up some instances on AWS here in North America and go. But we used to do that before "the cloud" became a thing. VPS, VMs, collocation, etc. Nothing that they are doing now could not have been done before.
Oh, and want to hear a funny one about said New Zealand LOB? So one thing about using "the cloud" is that you should be able to be more elastic in your resource requirements and more reliability because your instances are spread out through the datacenter, right? Well, we had an outage a while back and we were tasked with finding out from them why it happened. What they told us they heard from AWS (so, yes, this data is third hand from someone who might be trying to cover their asses) is that they have scheduled database tasks that run nightly to clean up and coalesce data. Very intensive tasks (which means they are probably doing other shit wrong, but whatever), and it turns out that their instances were running on the same machine, with other stuff that also hogged resources at the same time. So, everything ground to a halt.
When you have control of the hardware, and where resources are positioned and such, you can architect around such things. When your shit is running somewhere, on some machine, with a bunch of other shit out of your control then things like this will happen sometimes. There is fuckall you can do about it.
Cloud services were also sold based on "reliability and uptime". Sure, and they are, but what about access? Not on the datacenter end. On your end. If you are running on-premises and some asshole with a backhoe cuts a fiber line trunking you to the rest of the internet, or some idiot runs off the road and plows over a comm box then it doesn't matter if your services are still running somewhere. No one in your building can access them. Both of these things have happened to clients of ours. In the backhoe incident, they had a DSL backup line...that was also cut by said backhoe. In the car incident, they have no other options where their building is at. Their neighbor can get DSL as a backup, but they are right over the cutoff line.
I could go on and on about cloud services, but it only makes me sound like a FUD. I am not really. But "the cloud" is not a panacea and it has been sold as such. It fits some use cases really, really well. But not all use cases. And there are so many disreputable people and idiots out there selling it for uses where it doesn't make sense.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
is not a panacea and it has been sold as such
History of IT in nutshell.
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How do you tell a client that one of their employees is...not very intelligent?
Older lady, we needed to do something to her machine but she was never in the office so that we could connect while she was logged in. So we reset her password, emailed it to her, emailed it to her supervisor, and texted it to her along with instructions on how to reset it to what she wanted it to be.
She calls because she cannot log in. So we walk her through logging in, ask her if she received the email or text. She says no.
She fucking replied to the fucking email.
She can't figure out how to reset her password to something more secure than "password" (what we set it to, give us a break, she isn't that smart).
So, in the process of this she says she wants her password back to being "hunter2". (It was actually a 9 digit number, so, pretty secure actually, unless it is her SSN). So, we set it back to what she wanted it to be (yes, I realize she probably uses this everywhere, there is fuckall we can do about it in this case). We send her an email, send her supervisor an email, send her a text all telling what we had done.
This morning she says she cannot login.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
I could go on and on about cloud services, but it only makes me sound like a FUD. I am not really. But "the cloud" is not a panacea and it has been sold as such. It fits some use cases really, really well. But not all use cases. And there are so many disreputable people and idiots out there selling it for uses where it doesn't make sense.
+1
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@MrL maybe, but I am doubtful. The number was too far along the SSN scheme. She is old as fuck. If it had been something like "0000000432" then SSN would have been my first guess.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
The number was too far along the SSN scheme.
SSN isn't entirely sequential - the first three digits indicate area, and the next two (treated as a single 2-digit number) are assigned evens first, then odds (not exactly but close enough), and 00 isn't used. So you're not going to see zero-padded SSN numbers.
Sources: https://stevemorse.org/ssn/ssn.html, http://web.archive.org/web/20100816142710/http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/ID_SSN_fingerprinting/ssn_structure.article
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Sources: https://stevemorse.org/ssn/ssn.html
Why is Deep Purple's guitarist a source for SSN information?
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SSN isn't entirely sequential - the first three digits indicate area, and the next two (treated as a single 2-digit number) are assigned evens first, then odds (not exactly but close enough), and 00 isn't used. So you're not going to see zero-padded SSN numbers.
I guess I should have pointed out that I was making a joke.
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@Polygeekery there's so many common misconceptions about SSN that yes, you should.
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@Gąska fair enough. That one was all on me.
I really like how everyone thinks that SSNs are private or something, when in reality if you know when and where someone was born you can make reasonable assumptions about what their SSN is.
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Sources: https://stevemorse.org/ssn/ssn.html
Why is Deep Purple's guitarist a source for SSN information?
He registered at Wikipedia. That's enough qualification to be taken seriously, isn't it?
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RMM tool used to deliver ransomware payload to MSP customers:Turns out that Webroot's management console was used to deliver the payload. That's even worse.Very glad that we don't use
KaseyaWebroot today.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
backups being critical.
Oh yeah... speaking of... *checks* WTF where did the backup program go? It's literally disappeared...
Restore it from backup.
......and you're fucked.
I probably will. I did store the program alongside the encrypted data, so it should be reasonably easy to Re-add the dataset back.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
RMM tool used to deliver ransomware payload to MSP customers:Turns out that Webroot's management console was used to deliver the payload. That's even worse.Very glad that we don't use
KaseyaWebroot today."comment was changed, so fuck embeds"? GG Reddit...
Also, yes, fuck Kaseya. They happily got a rootkit and worm installed on the main server at a doctor's office I've been assisting. That was a fun journey, especially since two of the drives in a four-drive array were failing with bad sectors...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
They happily got a rootkit and worm installed on the main server at a doctor's office I've been assisting. That was a fun journey, especially since two of the drives in a four-drive array were failing with bad sectors...
You need some sort of remote monitoring of stuff like that. There is almost no way to do it all, and if you could there is almost no way the client will pay for it.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
Amazon Glacier...I am convinced that they named it that because occasionally big chunks of it fall off never to be seen again. They straight up tell you that there is essentially no redundancy of your data storage on their end. That they will not guarantee availability of your data when you need it, or that it will even be there if you do.
Should've called it Amazon /dev/null.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
They happily got a rootkit and worm installed on the main server at a doctor's office I've been assisting. That was a fun journey, especially since two of the drives in a four-drive array were failing with bad sectors...
You need some sort of remote monitoring of stuff like that. There is almost no way to do it all, and if you could there is almost no way the client will pay for it.
I know, got any better suggestions? Their guy isn't the greatest at this. All talk and no show. He literally let the backups fail for weeks before going "hur dur, did you guys know the backups are not working?" no, fucktard, that's your job! There's also a Windows 7 machine that I'm pretty sure has a bad hard drive as well, but I haven't been back to swap it out yet. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know about that either.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
I know, got any better suggestions?
On the small scale, no. But only because I have never dealt with them. What's your budget for this? How many endpoints?
I think it is myrmm.com that resells offerings at like $2/machine, but I am pretty sure that is Kaseya, which I won't touch with a 10' pole.
ManageEngine has some free options that might cover what you want to do.
I have heard of some people cobbling together RMM solutions based on their own scripting through SimpleHelp, but I have no idea how or how well that would work.
Hmmmmmm, what else is out there for the little guy? NinjaRMM is not too bad, they monitor a lot and do really well on RAID and other stuff, at like $4/endpoint (maybe less?). Not sure if they have minimums or if they sell outside the channel.
What exactly do you need to do for them? Well, and others?
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@Tsaukpaetra A friend of mine works for an architects office, turning architectural drawings into 3-D CAD images. They have an IT guy like this guy. Completely clueless but thinks he isn't. A couple years ago, all the CAD staff there had been complaining for a while that their machines were way too slow for their jobs, so he was tasked with updating them all. Now, seeing as the computers are used almost entirely for 3-D rendering, the obvious solution for anybody with an ounce of knowledge would be to buy half-way decent GFX cards to replace the built-in graphics they were currently using. Yes, an office where almost the whole work is complicated 3-D rendering is using on-board graphics chips. This clueless idiot went and sourced a whole load of brand-new computers with quad-core, state of the art CPUs and replaced all the machines in the office. Only he still relied on the on-board GFX which meant that the improvement in actual performance for their purposes was undetectable.
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Now, seeing as the computers are used almost entirely for 3-D rendering, the obvious solution for anybody with an ounce of knowledge would be to buy half-way decent GFX cards to replace the built-in graphics they were currently using. Yes, an office where almost the whole work is complicated 3-D rendering is using on-board graphics chips.
It might not have mattered:
TL;DR, AutoCAD fucked an update and lots of machines using it started defaulting to the onboard graphics chip.
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@Polygeekery They don't use AutoCAD, they use more specialized architectural software. Can't remember what it's called off the top of my head.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
What's your budget for this? How many endpoints?
I don't really know what their budget is! But there are approximately 14 desktop computers in the office and a few VMs. I'm not sure if this is his only office, but it's the only one I know about.
@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
What exactly do you need to do for them? Well, and others?
I'm just there because the doctor knew my dad who touted my abilities. You can skim the Status thread for my posts regarding what I've been doing recently. Much of what I post there involves this little office, especially the CT machine (that I think is not a CT machine).
Personally I don't want to have to do anything more than assurance and someone else monitors things.
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GFX cards
Oh yeah, that's another thing. The computers in the operating rooms are gaming rigs (I kid you not) stuffed inside an enclosed cabinet with a tiny joke hole for ventilation. Not a few times have I been called where said machine spontaneously turned off in the middle of an OP. It's rather toasty in there.
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@Tsaukpaetra They should swap with these guys, sounds like they each have the computers the other needs.
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As another example of "cloud services" missing the point, for Quickbooks Online, you cannot have multiple companies on one subscription.
I get asked somewhat regularly about Quickbooks Online because a lot of SMB bookkeepers like to occasionally work from home, or do small tasks while on vacation. But it is a shit fit for its intended market because you cannot have multiple companies under one subscription.
Lots and lots of businesses operate multiple entities. They will separate out real estate from core business. Or big CapEx from core business. Whatever. Tons of reasons why. They might have multiple locations with split liabilities. Etc.
Quickbooks Desktop will allow you to run a virtually unlimited numbers of company files under the same ~$300-$500 expenditure, that realistically you only need to make every 2-3 years.
Quickbooks Online will cost you $840-$1,800/year....per company file.
I don't even know why they are bothering with the advanced features. They should just target the tiny guys. The freelancers and one man bands. Because the price for Quickbooks Online for most SMBs could easily equal an employee's payroll for a few months, or the cost of an outside bookkeeper to just do it all. It is a solution that doesn't fit a market segment, and it is missing a shitton of features that the desktop version has.
Give the users management of 5-10 companies for $50-$80/month and you have a service you can sell. As it stands, only idiots or really small businesses would touch it. And for those really small businesses, take a look at FreshBooks and the like. Much cheaper and likely has the functionality you actually need.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
Amazon Glacier...I am convinced that they named it that because occasionally big chunks of it fall off never to be seen again. They straight up tell you that there is essentially no redundancy of your data storage on their end. That they will not guarantee availability of your data when you need it, or that it will even be there if you do.
Should've called it Amazon /dev/null.That seems unfair to
/dev/null
.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
How do you tell a client that one of their employees is...not very intelligent?
Older lady, we needed to do something to her machine but she was never in the office so that we could connect while she was logged in. So we reset her password, emailed it to her, emailed it to her supervisor, and texted it to her along with instructions on how to reset it to what she wanted it to be.
She calls because she cannot log in. So we walk her through logging in, ask her if she received the email or text. She says no.
She fucking replied to the fucking email.
She can't figure out how to reset her password to something more secure than "password" (what we set it to, give us a break, she isn't that smart).
So, in the process of this she says she wants her password back to being "hunter2". (It was actually a 9 digit number, so, pretty secure actually, unless it is her SSN). So, we set it back to what she wanted it to be (yes, I realize she probably uses this everywhere, there is fuckall we can do about it in this case). We send her an email, send her supervisor an email, send her a text all telling what we had done.
This morning she says she cannot login.
The absolute best part: I mentioned all of this to the tech who went to the location. He claims, and I have zero reason to doubt him, that when he set her password back to what she wanted that he put a Post-It note on her machine telling her what had been done because he knew what got ignored the first time.
You couldn't make this shit up. We need flashing marquee signs to alert some users to changes, and they still might not see it.
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Happy 14th birthday, MySQL bug!
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@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:
Happy 14th birthday, MySQL bug!
Comment from 2005:
We should fix in 5.1, at the latest.
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@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:
Happy 14th birthday, MySQL bug!
Any idea whether it was fixed in MariaDB?
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@pie_flavor said in WTF Bites:
Happy 14th birthday, MySQL bug!
Any idea whether it was fixed in MariaDB?
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
@hungrier: whoever typed the text misspells "responsibility", but always the same way?
We have a thread about that.
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Is there anything we don't have a thread about?
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
Is there anything we don't have a thread about?
Good forum software.
https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/20333/non-wtf-forum-software
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
Is there anything we don't have a thread about?
Good forum software.
https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/20333/non-wtf-forum-software
Then go ahead and
<del>
the "a thread about" part. But .
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@Zerosquare said in WTF Bites:
Is there anything we don't have a thread about?
I can't seem to recall a thread about flanders pigeon murder. But my memory isn't big enough to load the topic lists in full to search...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
But my memory isn't big enough to load the topic lists in full to search...
Did you remember to upvote it?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
But my memory isn't big enough to load the topic lists in full to search...
Did you remember to upvote it?
I won't know until I revisit it. But past a certain cutoff time, not, since before the rule was Discourse, and before Discourse I didn't exist.
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Damn you're quick. (QOOC bait)
@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
before Discourse I didn't exist.
You mean you're a Discourse feature?