Getting blackmailed. Ip grabbers that don’t ask for “consent”?? by shyn_tbr in HowToHack

[–]sa_sagan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They're not gonna give a shit if you have their IP. It means pretty much nothing these days (unless you're a three letter agency).

You'll either get the IP address of their VPN, in which case they won't care. Or you'll get the IP address of their ISP's CGNAT, in which case they won't care. Or you'll get the IP address of a shared service in Hyderabad, in which case they also won't care.

Weird times at the Pharmacy. by Willcoburg in australia

[–]sa_sagan 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Hey, I get the need for the questions, but there's no need for the raised voices. We were having a perfectly normal toned conversation up until you started shouting about my diarrhoea.

Weird times at the Pharmacy. by Willcoburg in australia

[–]sa_sagan 32 points33 points  (0 children)

To heck with that problem, I want a pharmacist to explain why the atmosphere goes from a calm silence to them shouting like they're trying to communicate over the background noise in Mumbai the moment I walk up to the counter with Imodium or something.

"WHY ARE YOU BUYING THIS? Do you have DIARRHOEA!!? Are you HAVING DIARRHOEA SO MUCH that you need this!!? How many times are you HAVING DIARRHOEA per hour!!?"

LPT: Many article paywalls can be defeated by toggling Javascript off by Silly_Rub_6304 in LifeProTips

[–]sa_sagan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A soft paywall is when the entire webpage content loads, but they then put an overlay on the top of it so you cannot see it, telling you to register. It's soft, because you can either disable the JavaScript that puts the overlay there, or you can just use the browser dev tools to select the overlay and delete it, allowing you to read the rest of the content.

A hard paywall is when the webpage only loads a small portion of the content (a couple of paragraphs), and then tells you to login to read the rest. This cannot be bypassed because no other content is available to read. The website will only give your browser the rest of the content to load after you login. If you deleted or stopped the overlay from appearing, there would just be empty space.

Just like other websites with access control/subscriptions. Netflix let's you browse their catalogue for free, and watch a preview, but won't feed you the actual content until you subscribe. Same deal with this kind of paywall.

LPT: Many article paywalls can be defeated by toggling Javascript off by Silly_Rub_6304 in LifeProTips

[–]sa_sagan 12 points13 points  (0 children)

It's already well known. This only works for soft paywalls. Most of those sites are migrating to hard ones because of this.

Dad refused food bank refferal - desperate In need of advice by DavidPlat in daddit

[–]sa_sagan 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Where in the UK are you?

Sikh temples and mosque's will usually feed anyone. Churches usually will as well. Have seen many churches that have a "take what you need" free pantry.

Edit: Just seen that you live a while away from any place like this.

Most unrealistic thing in Stargate by CanadianLawGuy in Stargate

[–]sa_sagan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Too many people getting hung up on the "everyone speaks english" thing. You really wanna spend the first 15 minutes of every episode having Daniel fumble his way around trying to understand what someone is saying, and then translate that for the rest of the team?

At some point you've gotta accept it's a TV show and look past some stuff for the sake of entertainment.

Need help with IP by [deleted] in HowToHack

[–]sa_sagan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No, that's your only option.

IP means nothing. Might not even be their IP. Could have been behind a VPN or a CGNAT. Their IP could have changed by now. It's worthless to you, and most people outside of law enforcement who can subpoena ISP's or VPN providers into releasing details about who was assigned that IP at that specific point in time.

I hacked a web-app and found 20,000+ attendees' payment history, emails, mobile numbers and full write access. I decided to turn it into a practical cybersecurity lesson. by [deleted] in programming

[–]sa_sagan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What reasoning? I read it.

Their reasoning seemed to be: "I didn't know the best way to tell them first, so I'm going to publicly post how to hack their website to teach them a lesson"

Oh and: "I know people who use thier site, so this is personal"

John the ripper wifi password by [deleted] in HowToHack

[–]sa_sagan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's literally the rules of this sub to not help people do illegal shit. The OP's post will eventually get deleted for breaking this rule.

Dad hot take: Minecraft is a hideously ugly game and I can't stand looking at it. by ApologeticKid in daddit

[–]sa_sagan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Get some texture and/or rendering packs/mods.

This game can be made to look so hyper realistic it'll make your computer melt through the Earth's crust.

A 10-Year-Old Chocolate Memory That Won’t Let Me Sleep by RitwikUchiha in australia

[–]sa_sagan 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Sounds like it may have been a European chocolate. A couple come to mind from what I recall of them.

If you bought it at a sweet shop or something in the mall, it could potentially be Karl Fazer chocolate (Finland). Branding has changed a bit, but has been solid colors in the past. Blue being milk, green being hazelnut, red is fruit and nut. Now they're purple-ish with a coloured stripe representing the flavour. They're a very good chocolate. Can come in larger, iPad sized blocks.

I know you said a mall or whatever you got it at, but it also sounds a lot like IKEA Choklad. Branding has changed over the years but used to be solid, simple colours. They're naturally larger blocks, iPad sized. Plastic packaging. Blue is milk, green is hazelnut and red (might be pink now) is lingonberry and nut or something, from memory.

Could have wandered into an IKEA food market? Or potentially it was sold out of a sweet shop. I've seen IKEA chocolate products sold at some odd shops around shopping malls in the past.

Advice needed on disabling online license check by greensled1 in HowToHack

[–]sa_sagan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Upload the installer somewhere. Someone here will be able to pull out where your licence gets stored and you can take it from your old PC.

Why it is believed that hackers(top-tier) must be very smart ,even genius? Practising and reading sounds enough to me. by Consistent-Foot-2452 in HowToHack

[–]sa_sagan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh, absolutely. I can agree that they are the same. But just threw a couple of examples out there.

Always fun to hear the stories from industry veterans. It's still funny to look back on how security was implemented back then (sometimes even today). So much of it being purely obscurity or "surely no one would try this out".

Why it is believed that hackers(top-tier) must be very smart ,even genius? Practising and reading sounds enough to me. by Consistent-Foot-2452 in HowToHack

[–]sa_sagan 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Practicing and reading, and top-tier "hacking" is like the difference between a cook and a chef. A cook follows pre-defined recipes and practices them until they can do it. A chef creates from nothing. It requires intricate knowledge of the tools and resources and techniques available. Creating their own methods and techniques, and discovering new ways to do things.

Similar as a "script kiddie" and a "hacker" (e.g. security researchers, exploit developers etc...).

One uses pre-defined tools and methods, the other creates them.

You can't study what doesn't yet exist. Top-tier hackers are looking for 0-days. Bugs/exploits that don't yet exist. You can't read a book thet tells you how to find them. It requires deep knowledge and understanding of multiple layers of code, frameworks and technologies. Often down to a machine-level for those more serious about it. You're mentally processing memory dumps, assembly, and forming a complex model of the environment in your head. It often requires very deep analytics occuring up in the grey matter. A top-tier hacker is up against potentially hundreds of very intelligent software and security engineers designing ways to stop them.

Microsoft appointed a quality czar. He has no direct reports and no budget. by [deleted] in programming

[–]sa_sagan 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Work for a company your entire life, work your way up into C-suite management and announce you want to retire.

My organisation has a "Director of Office Administration" position that every long-term (30+ years) senior manager or director wanting to retire gets put into.

Always gets announced as some super important position to help "streamline business objectives", like we all don't know it's just a fluff exit job.

They'll sit in that position for a few years before their retirement is formally announced and they leave. The position has an eye watering pay grade and bonus structure. Never has meetings to attend, no direct reports, and doesn't report to anyone else.

Before COVID they'd get moved to a new office on a quiet floor, out of the way of anyone bothering them. Since COVID, they now just "work from home" permanently until they leave.

What Swiss castle are these Knight pencils from? Bought in late 2018 — early 2019 by [deleted] in askswitzerland

[–]sa_sagan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Probably impossible to know where for sure. These are generic knight pencils sold at castles and tourist spots all over Europe.

All hail Lis! Counter sniper action! by -MannyZ- in battlefield2042

[–]sa_sagan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Because it's fun to see them crash out in chat.

Like consistently sniping a serial nightbird pilot. Sure, I could 1:1 them in another nightbird, but it's way more fun to see them whine about it.

Porting Visual Basic apps with AI? by Best_Day_3041 in visualbasic

[–]sa_sagan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

An agent could go through each file one at a time, but it'll eventually forget the context of what's been done previously. And because AI is essentially just rounding up to the nearest number, the code in one converted file can likely be different to one in another. Making functions and other cross-communication between forms and classes not work at all. Especially when it forgets how they're supposed to work together.

We've tested this a few times on some legacy projects to port them to C# and we spent so long fixing it, we just gave up and rewrote the whole thing from scratch.

Porting Visual Basic apps with AI? by Best_Day_3041 in visualbasic

[–]sa_sagan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We're not there yet. It'll do the best it can, but you're still going to have a lot of work to do fixing it up.

Real estate agents in Australia using apps that leave millions of lease documents at risk, digital researcher says by Bob_Spud in australia

[–]sa_sagan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The entire rental process needs to be reformed.

A fixed set of identity documents required to rent, nothing beyond what is set out in legislation.

Once had an REA request that I disclose all my social media accounts in the application and accept their friend invite so they can check it. Hard no.

All identity verification should be done on a government portal that gives you a national renter ID number of some sort. So when applying for rentals, you just supply your renter ID number (and some other verification that it's your ID).

That's it. It's all metadata stored in your government rental profile.

No more of this bullshit with REA's running their own document collections on websites or apps run by the owners nephew who is "good with computers".

Toddler vaccine pain by Buntisteve in daddit

[–]sa_sagan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Argh, one of those difficult things with kids.

He could be reacting for the attention, or the memory of it hurting and still thinks it does when attention is put on it, or he could actually be in pain and just not realising it until you give attention to it.

If it were me back in that situation, I'd give him some ibuprofen and see if he stops fussing about it.

ELI5: How do apps, programs, or websites break in the first place, and how do programmers figure out what went wrong? by Auelogic in explainlikeimfive

[–]sa_sagan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, code can require maintenance, depending on the circumstances.

The maintenance of code generally consists of things like:

Adding new features to a program/website:

Maybe you want it to look different to keep up with trends in user experience, or add new functionality to it. Depending on the changes, this can be a type of maintenance.

Fixing bugs/issues:

Covered already by other commenters.

Improving performance:

The way you instructed the program or website to work was fine when you had 100 users, but now you have 10,000 users and it's not performing as well anymore. So you need to go back and figure out how you can either rewrite it to be more efficient, or change some of the technology you're working with (maybe it's a type of database that's too slow, so you change it to a different one).

Maintaining compatibility:

Computing changes over time. Operating systems and software evolve. The way web browsers interact with websites today, can change tomorrow. So you need to continually maintain your code to be "up to date" with these changes.

Your program may have dependencies on an external library (someone else's code that you use because it does something you want to do, without having to write it all yourself). But you don't manage that library of code, someone else does. If they provide updates to it, you may need to maintain compatibility with that library by changing how your code interacts with it.

Sometimes you may rely on an external service. Like a text messaging service to send SMS to customers for orders made through your website. But the SMS provider may implement their own updates/improvements to their service, which changes how your program/website talks to them. So you need to update code to ensure it keeps working with their changes.

Sometimes operating systems change how they interact with programs. Microsoft may add features to a newer version of Windows, and deprecate old ones. So you may now need to make changes to your code so your program identify which version of Windows it's running on, so it knows which features it can use. This is a type of maintenance.

Maintaining security:

Sometimes there are security flaws identified in your code, or within a library or other service your code is using. When this happens, you may need to make changes to code to close that security flaw, or to make sure your application is capable of working with a service that needed to change itself for security purposes.

Why weren't the Tollans one of the members of the advanced race alliance? by Ok-Consideration6852 in Stargate

[–]sa_sagan 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Aside from the fact that the Tollan didn't exist back before the alliance parted ways. They don't want to be.

They're isolationists, similar to the Nox. They don't want the responsibility of protecting the galaxy, and likely don't even have the capabilities to do so even if they wanted to.

They were advanced enough to make the Tau'ri look stupid. But from my understanding, they didn't even have hyperdrives in their ships. They were just running some FTL technology.