Posts by HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange
 (DIR) Post #AUvGL2S29SMU11OCfo by HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange
       2023-04-22T21:27:19Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @craftyguy This whole area is a complete mess of both buyer and seller scams.Send’m a mostly-masked-IMEI image from the CTIA website:https://stolenphonechecker.org/spc/Some requestors are likely seeking shenanigans with the IMEI yes, and too many others believe that they can check for a blacklisted IMEI.They can check that of course, but one of the scams around has the seller report the phone as stolen shortly after the sale, which blacklists the buyer’s device after purchase. This to collect both a replacement phone from a theft-and-loss insurance plan, and to keep the buyer’s cash.If it’s an iPhone, both IMEI and Activation Lock must be clear for the iPhone to be useful to the buyer.Another scam has the buyer either swap the device for a locked device, or load their Apple ID into Activation Lock and which bricks your iPhone for you.I’ll occasionally do private sales locally and only with people I know, but remote listings and remote sales (without an escrow service or trusted and knowledgeable intermediary) are a complete mess.If it’s an iPhone being transferred, providing the original purchase receipt to the buyer allows them more control over the device later, too.
       
 (DIR) Post #AV5vzvP5IY43jSDwdk by HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange
       2023-04-28T00:07:01Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @foone If you’re willing to tweak the write power levels in the drive for writing certain sectors of the floppy, you could borrow from an old copy-protection system to prevent your CAF, err, CAC credentials from being easily cloned.Sectors recorded with margina power levels will read inconsistently.If the special sectors read reliably, it’s a copy. Yeah, it’s pre-Y2K reverse-engineering.
       
 (DIR) Post #AVcL6H58oLT7BN1jbE by HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange
       2023-05-13T16:12:46Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @lauren Worked for DEC in the Maynard Mill for a while, and then in Nashua, and then through the acquisitions.DEC was a fun ride, into the early 1990s. Lots of cool tech. Alpha, networking, clustering, DECtalk and DECvoice, etc.But the markets DEC was selling into either shifted or entirely faded away, and DEC didn’t adapt.Lower-cost product fabrication was difficult or unobtainable with the longstanding production approaches DEC used, too. Commoditization and consolidation hit hard, both hardware and software.(The fully-amortized cost of production for various DEC chips was prodigious. Competitive semiconductor chip production is not cheap.)That the core of Microsoft Windows NT was DEC MICA undoubtedly stung some in DEC management.http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/prism/mica/DEC sales channels had their own messes. Direct sales versus channel partners versus sales reps is not an easy balance to create and maintain.There were other issues.Pushing OSI when IP had won, for instance.DEC had great people creating innovative products. But markets can and will shift.Should Google implode, IT will continue on.#DigitalEquipmentCorporation #Alpha #history #it
       
 (DIR) Post #AX9eJU8J07p3PhgwRE by HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange
       2023-06-28T15:13:37Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       One of those technical oddities that falls out of forever-upward-compatibility app requirements…Somebody (Hi, JR!) had to write a compiler that accepts and parses VAX assembler (DEC’s “the architecture of the ‘80s”) and produces x86-64 object code; ELF and DWARF to feee into a linker.Yes, you can still assemble, err, compile your 1980s-era VAX assembly source code, and can now run it on an OpenVMS system on x86-64.No word yet on plans for Arm AArch64. 😈#retrocomputing #VAX #DigitalEquipmentCorporation
       
 (DIR) Post #AZEawZivQIwjfI6msS by HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange
       2023-08-29T20:34:42Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Some of the more... unusual... #OpenVMS system error messages:$ exit 2928%SYSTEM-W-FISH, my hovercraft is full of eels$ exit 13492%SYSTEM-F-GAMEOVER, all your base are belong to us$The latter has a few other related comments, too:! ADD GAMEOVER MESSAGE FOR INTERSTELLAR CONQUEST.literal SS$_GAMEOVER = 13492;!  N.B.  DO NOT CORRECT THE GRAMMAR IN GAMEOVER, THE MESSAGE IS AS INTENDED#retrocomputering #retrocomputers #history #History #digitalequipmentcorporation #digital #DigitalEquipmentCorporation
       
 (DIR) Post #AllxTtGTgPxq4gkwOO by HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange
       2024-09-07T21:03:10Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       PSA: Google has added a feature that removes much of what Google has added into their search results in recent years, by adding &udm=14 onto the search query.https://udm14.comFrom May:https://tedium.co/2024/05/17/google-web-search-make-default/it’s not quite back to the era of AltaVista, but it’s closer.#google #googlesearch #udm14
       
 (DIR) Post #Aq578rz4RCI9GBejVQ by HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange
       2025-01-14T18:09:42Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @lcamtuf Found one!