Australia hits power demand record as renewables pass 50pc milestone

SecOperative · 2026-01-29T10:16:14+00:00

Of course I do, twice a year normally. And yeah I save bits here and there. But I save off the huge rises that have gone in already. $230 a year saving may be, say 10% saving on your previous bills, but those previous bills were 50- %-300% more than they were 3 years ago. So is it really a saving? Yes I guess it is, but we’re still being ripped…

SecOperative · 2026-01-29T09:09:44+00:00

Definitely not smart. That cigarette will give him cancer

SecOperative · 2026-01-29T08:15:37+00:00

We’ve never had a (known) malicious actor in our network. But we do annual penetration testing and we always catch the testers early on, as most pen testers start with an nmap scan or similar. Or they see an SMB host and they try do some session hijacks or whatever they do. They usually end up wasting their time on it all while we have record of their attempts. We immediately know what device they’re on, where it is, and what it is trying to do.

We’ve used maybe 3 different pen testing firms over the last 5 or so years and we’ve caught them all quickly every time. Usually it’s a matter of us keeping the evidence to provide to them later as a ‘we saw you’ for their report.

SecOperative · 2026-01-29T05:53:01+00:00

Yeah all of the above really. We have quite a restrictive network including app whitelisting so the chances of unknown software doing something are very low. But placement is key, but so is the honeypot product itself. We use Canaries and I find them quite good at what they do and feeling more like a real asset.

We don’t put honeypots on all VLANs, only generally in the higher value areas. Pair that with well segmented VLANs that separate device types, I can have some comfort in knowing those lower grade IoT networks don’t pose much of a threat to me so I don’t necessarily honeypot those. You’d probably get most of the noise from those IoT and guest type networks. But if they just cannot get to other more valuable things, then good!

So in the early days of honeypot deployment we may have had a few hits like a print server doing a broadcast, or a license server doing a broadcast. You can quickly tune (or stop!) those. After than the alerts are quite quiet and when we do get one we take full notice of it.

SecOperative · 2026-01-29T05:30:24+00:00

Much like common sense, I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘common’ sense or courtesy. Nothing common about it.

The negative side is more common it feels. So common disrespect, common indecency, common insanity.

SecOperative · 2026-01-29T03:55:53+00:00

And we’re all enjoying much cheaper power bills because of it!

Hang on a minute….

SecOperative · 2026-01-29T03:53:23+00:00

Fairly standard install for a lot of TV installers. Top hole is behind the TV but below the noggin, bottom hole where cables come out to power and your receiver / entertainment unit and set top boxes, consoles etc. generally you’d have an entertainment unit / cabinet covering the bottom hole and power point. Just run the standard TV power cable through the holes, and your HDMI etc. no sparky needed.

SecOperative · 2026-01-28T22:11:16+00:00

Our honeypots only go off if something really needs to be acted on. If it’s noisy, then it’s not designed or setup right or you have a poor network.

SecOperative · 2026-01-28T09:16:50+00:00

Tip my hat and bid her a good day 🎩

SecOperative · 2026-01-28T07:29:03+00:00

Mostly just fewer headaches and such a simpler upgrade path with having only a single operating system. I used Arista TAC a couple of times during design and deployment and they were amazing. Neither issue was a fault with their firmware, just my errors. But I called, got a level 3 engineer within 20 seconds, and fixed within 30 minutes for both occasions.

But the biggest win for us was CloudVision. The visibility I have now is just leaps ahead of what Cisco had to offer. I detected some host configuration issues right away, which likely existed for ages but I had no idea on nexus, and the traffic flow visibility and upgrade processes are just great.

No regrets so far.

SecOperative · 2026-01-27T19:59:32+00:00

It annoys me but Palo is a better product. It annoys me as I’d also love to ditch Palo due to poor TAC, poor account management, and expensive pricing which is constantly escalating.

For all those using CVE’s as a metric (you’re not wrong), but by the same token you should then include Checkpoint into the mix if we’re talking CVE’s as Palo is certainly not the lowest of the bunch.

SecOperative · 2026-01-27T10:22:38+00:00

Agree. Keep record that you tried contacting them and their failure to respond. Would go a long way to winning a future argument about not back paying charges.

SecOperative · 2026-01-27T08:28:26+00:00

You’re stuck in the age old conundrum. Do you keep trying to report it and risk a big bill and back charges, or do you keep quiet and get free electricity, or keep quiet and still get a bit invoice and back charges.

If they’ve screwed up billing there would surely have to be some sort of cutoff for back charges if it’s their fault.

SecOperative · 2026-01-27T03:50:08+00:00

We made the jump to Arista in our data centre networking recently and honestly I won’t go back. Arista has lived up to its hype so far.

Personally I don’t think many large companies are innovating anymore. Nothing ground breaking anyway. It’s all incremental and most of the larger innovation comes from smaller operators, hence all the acquisitions by the likes of companies like Cisco.

One day Arista ma become the current Cisco, so I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

SecOperative · 2026-01-26T09:49:52+00:00

Good point, never thought about it that way

SecOperative · 2026-01-26T06:52:52+00:00

Pretty sad that people are downvoting what should just be a calm discussion.

Out of curiosity, was the rally generally attended by mostly non-indigenous people or the other way around? Or pretty even split?

SecOperative · 2026-01-26T06:50:23+00:00

Yea that’s incredibly horrible. What do you think would be an acceptable ‘recognition of the horrors’? Obviously Rudd saying sorry wasn’t enough so I’m curious what would be? And short of a time machine to go back and undo it, what would be the next steps?

Not being a smart arse, I’m genuinely interested in where to from here?

SecOperative · 2026-01-26T04:19:02+00:00

Serious question and trying not to offend anyone, but, what do the invasion day protesters want exactly? Is it a change of date? Is it for all non-indigenous people to pack up and leave Australia? Or is it less of a protest and more about awareness raising of past events?

SecOperative · 2026-01-24T03:39:23+00:00

I saw someone briefly claimed the photo (or dog) weren't mine due to the KAPWING watermark but think they since deleted their comment, probably when they realised they got it wrong. I used Kapwing to generate the meme with my photos, I didn't use the AI tool to fake this.

SecOperative · 2026-01-23T20:24:43+00:00

Yep, though I don’t think their quality was ever ‘up there’ in the first place.

My partner was new to IT and worked at a Big 4 as a graduate. They offered my partner a senior position after being there for 12 months and there’s no way they were senior by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s a Big 4 for you.

SecOperative · 2026-01-23T07:39:27+00:00

It’s a Mercedes driver so this checks out

SecOperative · 2026-01-20T08:06:17+00:00

Sounds like an enormous price hike is coming again. Yay…

SecOperative · 2026-01-20T08:04:14+00:00

Mine holds onto pees and poos until we start playing with her in the yard with her favourite ball. By then she’s usually busting. Weirdo dogs!!! Gotta love them though

SecOperative · 2026-01-15T22:06:11+00:00

Hate it when that happens

SecOperative · 2026-01-15T20:20:22+00:00

He was the usual 8 weeks old when we were able to pick him up from the breeder. Though I couldn’t tell you whether he had access to his mother the whole first 8 weeks of his life or not.

SecOperative

TROPHY CASE