George Mari @GeorgeMari@qoto.org

Tenure-Track Faculty Position - Applied Biotechnology
James Madison University

See the full job description on jobRxiv: https://jobrxiv.org/job/james-madison-university-27778-tenure-track-faculty-position-applied-biotechnology/

#ScienceJobs #hiring #research
https://jobrxiv.org/job/james-madison-university-27778-tenure-track-faculty-position-applied-biotechnology/?fsp_sid=7914

A few days ago, a client’s data center (well, actually a server room) "vanished" overnight. My monitoring showed that all devices were unreachable. Not even the ISP routers responded, so I assumed a sudden connectivity drop. The strange part? Not even via 4G.

I then suspected a power failure, but the UPS should have sent an alert.

The office was closed for the holidays, but I contacted the IT manager anyway. He was home sick with a serious family issue, but he got moving.

To make a long story short: the company deals in gold and precious metals. They have an underground bunker with two-meter thick walls. They were targeted by a professional gang. They used a tactic seen in similar hits: they identify the main power line, tamper with it at night, and send a massive voltage spike through it.

The goal is to fry all alarm and surveillance systems. Even if battery-backed, they rarely survive a surge like that. Thieves count on the fact that during holidays, owners are away and fried systems can't send alerts. Monitoring companies often have reduced staff and might not notice the "silence" immediately.

That is exactly what happened here. But there is a "but": they didn't account for my Uptime Kuma instance monitoring their MikroTik router, installed just weeks ago. Since it is an external check, it flagged the lack of response from all IPs without needing an internal alert to be triggered from the inside.

The team rushed to the site and found the mess. Luckily, they found an emergency electrical crew to bypass the damage and restore the cameras and alarms. They swapped the fried server UPS with a spare and everything came back up.

The police warned that the chances of the crew returning the next night to "finish" the job were high, though seeing the systems back online would likely make them move on. They also warned that thieves sometimes break in just to destroy servers to wipe any video evidence.

Nothing happened in the end. But in the meantime, I had to sync all their data off-site (thankfully they have dual 1Gbps FTTH), set up an emergency cluster, and ensure everything was redundant.

Never rely only on internal monitoring. Never.

#IT #SysAdmin #HorrorStories #ITHorrorStories #Monitoring

This is incredible. An MTV simulator with almost 30,000 videos, organized by decade along with special sections for Headbanger's Ball and Yo! MTV Raps.

https://wantmymtv.vercel.app/

Periodic reminder to boost the posts you like to keep the Fediverse alive.

WE are the algorithm here

#Mastodon

In 2025, I learned to like doing this again.

I have been gone so long I did not recognize it at first.

The Joy of Intentful Making.

Not easy. I had a lot of trauma to work though -- and more still, surely. But I showed myself what I could do on my own. I had to do it or I would never believe I could.

Today marks two anniversaries that belong together. On January 6, 2016, armed militants led by Ammon Bundy seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, occupying federal buildings for 41 days in the name of “constitutional” resistance to public-lands law. Five years later to the day, a violent mob stormed the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn a lawful election. These were not isolated events. They were chapters of the same story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8M7b1ui2aQ

If you have a foldable Google or Samsung (or any Android foldable phone) you can play this game. It is a flappy bird clone that uses your folding phone as the controller

Play here: https://lyra.horse/fun/foldy-bird/

Author page and demo https://xcancel.com/rebane2001/status/2007198231479103611

The Epstein files must be worse than any of us imagined. - Andy Borowitz
#ShadesOfGWB

I can't believe the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize would do this!

9 days after Inauguration Day, 404 Media wrote about how this declassified World War II-era government guide to sabotaging fascism became one of the most popular open source books on the internet.

One of our top stories this year. Happie holidays <3 https://www.404media.co/declassified-cia-guide-to-sabotaging-fascism-is-suddenly-viral/

"... in contrast to Unix manual editions (which were formally numbered and give the Unix Research Editions their name) distributed software tapes were mostly a copy of whatever was at the time in the (single) Unix development computer."

Unix V4: The secret 1973 birthplace of "Works On My Machine."

(attn: @codinghorror )

https://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20251223/?ms261223

Let’s talk about digital freedom in 2026. What’s your new year resolution?

Welp ... I was just informed through a Slack DM that I will no longer be working at the place I'm working at in two weeks' time. That is, evidently, how we handle that now. Not entirely unexpected as the writing on the wall was evident, but still not loving that approach for reasons I haven't quite worked out yet.
If anyone needs help with their #accessibility from someone with both native #screenReader experience and a coding background, keep me in mind I guess :)
Located in the eastern Netherlands, primarily interested in remote opportunities.
#fediHired #layoffs

China is running out of critical battery material: here are the countdowns https://electrek.co/2025/12/29/china-running-out-critical-battery-material-countdowns/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Even though I have a few strong job leads, I’m doing a #GetFediHired post even though I’m not a programmer.
- BSBA, Management w/minor in Research
- MBA, Data Analytics/MIS
- 5 years teaching business & math
- 5 years of event planning management
- 2+ years of inventory management
Certified in: bookkeeping, tax preparing, Microsoft Office Suite, project management
Looking for management roles: operations, inventory, customer service, center store

#JobSearch #JobHunt #Business #HireMe

New post: TEN Episode 563 | “And Finally” – A Year Of Final Stories https://www.transportevolved.com/2025/12/27/ten-episode-563-and-finally-a-year-of-final-stories/

GPLv2 affirmation…

I don’t generally post here as people have probably noticed, but here’s a pdf of a recent court ruling, and this turns out to be the easiest way for me to link to a copy of it, since I don’t really maintain any web presence normally and I don’t want to post pdf’s to the kernel mailing lists or anything like that.

And the reason I want to post about it, is that it basically validates my long-held views that the GPLv2 is about making source code available, not controlling the access to the hardware that it runs on.

The court case itself is a mess of two bad parties: Vizio and the SFC. Both of them look horribly bad in court - for different reasons.

Vizio used Linux in their TVs without originally making the source code available, and that was obviously not ok.

And the Software Freedom Conservancy then tries to make the argument that the license forces you to make your installation keys etc available, even though that is not the case, and the reason why the kernel is very much GPLv2 only. The people involved know that very well, but have argued otherwise in court.

End result: both parties have acted badly. But at least Vizio did fix their behavior, even if it apparently took this lawsuit to do so. I can’t say the same about the SFC.

Please, SFC - stop using the kernel for your bogus legal arguments where you try to expand the GPLv2 to be something it isn’t. You just look like a bunch of incompetent a**holes.

The only party that looks competent here is the judge, which in this ruling says

Plaintiff contends the phrases, “machine-readable” and “scripts used to control compilation and installation” support their assertion in response to special interrogatory no. 4 that Defendant should “deliver files such that a person of ordinary skill can compile the source code into a functional executable and install it onto the same device, such that all features of the original program are retained, without undue difficulty.”

The language of the Agreements is unambiguous. It does not impose the duty which is the subject of this motion.

Read as a whole, the Agreements require Vizio to make the source code available in such a manner that the source code can be readily obtained and modified by Plaintiff or other third parties. While source code is defined to include “the scripts used to control compilation and installation,” this does not mean that Vizio must allow users to reinstall the software, modified or otherwise, back onto its smart TVs in a manner that preserves all features of the original program and/or ensures the smart TVs continue to function properly. Rather, in the context of the Agreements, the disputed language means that Vizio must provide the source code in a manner that allows the source code to be obtained and revised by Plaintiff or others for use in other applications.

In other words, Vizio must ensure the ability of users to copy, change/modify, and distribute the source code, including using the code in other free programs consistent with the Preamble and Terms and Conditions of the Agreements. However, nothing in the language of the Agreements requires Vizio to allow modified source code to be reinstalled on its devices while ensuring the devices remain operable after the source code is modified. If this was the intent of the Agreements, the Agreements could have been readily modified to state that users must be permitted to modify and reinstall modified software on products which use the program while ensuring the products continue to function. The absence of such language is dispositive and there is no basis to find that such a term was implied here. Therefore, the motion is granted.

IOW, this makes it clear that yes, you have to make source code available, but no, the GPLv2 does not in any way force you to then open up your hardware.

My intention - and the GPLv2 - is clear: the kernel copyright licence covers the software, and does not extend to the hardware it runs on. The same way the kernel copyright license does not extend to user space programs that run on it.

9 days after Inauguration Day, 404 Media wrote about how this declassified World War II-era government guide to sabotaging fascism became one of the most popular open source books on the internet.

One of our top stories this year: https://www.404media.co/declassified-cia-guide-to-sabotaging-fascism-is-suddenly-viral/

When an entire class of technology states on the packaging that it was made in China but intended "for overseas use only," this should really give you pause before plugging it into your network.

You will find this verbiage on a lot of Android TV streaming boxes for sale at the major retailers. There's a very good reason the country that makes this crap doesn't want it on their own networks. My advice: If you have one of these Android streaming boxes on your network or get one as a gift, toss it in the trash. I'll have a lot more about this in the New Year, but these things are responsible for building out a botnet that currently has ~2M devices and is growing rapidly. https://blog.xlab.qianxin.com/kimwolf-botnet-en/

Mastodon has the most thoughtful discussions I’ve seen on the internet.

Mastodon attracts the most intelligent users of any platform.

Real conversations. No "Brain Rot." People actually read. Less rage, more jokes. Better humor.

Every platform has users. Mastodon has thinkers.