Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[mendip_discovery]

Well since about the year 2000 I have had my own website. I am increasingly becoming annoyed with the script kiddies etc that just go poking around websites looking to break into it.

90% of the traffic was someone trying passwords to the admin page for the site, which up to now has been safe due to obscurity. I know it should be better protected but I have to spend a fair bit of my website tinker time with working out what URLs they are trying and blocking the little twats.

[SiliconWizard]

Well since about the year 2000 I have had my own website. I am increasingly becoming annoyed with the script kiddies etc that just go poking around websites looking to break into it.

90% of the traffic was someone trying passwords to the admin page for the site, which up to now has been safe due to obscurity. I know it should be better protected but I have to spend a fair bit of my website tinker time with working out what URLs they are trying and blocking the little twats.

Imagine how far we would be if all those people spent this gigantic amount of time actually building stuff rather than trying to destroy stuff.
Of course that's a general musing. I guess it's even a whole part of our human condition and life in society.
The realist in me tells me that all the people focusing on destroying others' work rather than producing their own would probably only produce a pile of crap anyway, although I have no formal proof of that theory.

[Bud]

Dont you guys love those "talking hands" style youtube videos? ...    

[mendip_discovery]

It's all because of money. They can use my server/site to spread their messages and catch more people off guard. I know that some do it for the bragging rights and some do it to teach people that unless they are willing to become a high end tech security nerd then the internet isnt for you, elitist types.

I host the village councils website which means it gets a lot of attention.

[paulca]

Yep.  Money, ultimately.  Those who are bold and criminally minded enough, hide within the packs of trolls and elitists.

Too many people assume attackers are after them and their stuff.  They then justify low security as "I have nothing worth hacking".

Wrong.  They are most likely not interested in your stuff, they are interested in using your broken server or PC as a stepping stone.  As an anonomised worker node.  From there they conduct the shady stuff like sending scam emails, phishing emails, running their port scanners, DDOS agents etc. 

At the end of their work the output is usually lists of verified identities to scam or steal, credit card details, bank account details and even transfers of entire pensions to bit coin scams.

However, there are hackers out there who will specifically target families.  Especially family photos in the cloud.  The most scary thing about this is that, just like AOL back in the day, most of these "hackers" are just cloud employees and creepers.  Google has an infestation of them currently under investigation who collect "family photos" into Google albums from random family private photos and share them for money in various news net and Tor groups.

At least when it's between your own 4 walls you know where the cable goes.  That's all I'm saying.

[paulca]

... and as a confession and a peeve. 

I got hacked.  Well, technically I didn't get hacked, I had a blonde miss configuration of an email server and the total damage done was roughly 16,000 scam emails being sent from my server before my ISP suspended my relaying for 24 hours.  Then another 3,000 emails the next morning, but by that time I was onto it.

This occured when, for some god unknown reason ticked "Masquerade" on the LAN interface.  Then (it's never just one mistake!) on seeing all the email traffic bouncing off the mailgw coming from the "mainrouter" I thought, "I upgraded that, maybe its now trying to send email alerts"... so I checked why the mail gateway was bouncing the connections and found it was configured to not respond to any local addresses without authentication. (CORRECTLY!)  I added "accept_mynetworks" thinking I didn't need internal autthentiation on SMTP.

That later stipulation was correct.  I don't.  However the mail GATEWAY is NOT, repeat NOT the local god damn mail server!  I am an idiot.

That "accept_mynetworks" and all public port 25 now appearing to come from the mainrouter (a trusted LAN address) meant it accepted and relayed any mail for anyone to anywhere.

Fixed now.  Although the whole mailgw is headed to Linode.  Extranet'ing it, if you will.

[SiliconWizard]

Dont you guys love those "talking hands" style youtube videos? ...    

Yeah, I find that pretty annoying too, but this is one of these gimmicks that many Youtubers use and that seems to "work", so.

[rsjsouza]

Dont you guys love those "talking hands" style youtube videos? ...    

Yeah, I find that pretty annoying too, but this is one of these gimmicks that many Youtubers use and that seems to "work", so.

I haven't heard or seen that. Any examples?

(My youtube searches brought a lot of wristwatch videos... )

[PlainName]

I think talking hands might be Big Clive style, but the talking upper body including shoulders and arms that can be really annoying is exemplified by Samira Hussein on the BBC (elsewhere too, but this is where she crosses my radar). Random example:

https://youtu.be/k8NvdFsdGQo?t=71

She has toned down considerably, so I wonder if someone has been (trying to) coach her. If not, they should! And, often, the shot will try to crop her hands, but they are very difficult to lose without zooming into just her face.

Perhaps I am more triggered than most because I am deaf, so I notice expressions and stuff. Her gestures make no sense at all, which is the problem - she is talking one thing and he gestures say another, and they are loud gestures. And they are typically the same ones since she has two or three that she uses in rotation. And during all this her shoulders and going up and down until, when she is done, they noticeably drop as if some great exertion has been spent and now she can relax.

[mendip_discovery]

Dont you guys love those "talking hands" style youtube videos? ...    

Yeah, I find that pretty annoying too, but this is one of these gimmicks that many Youtubers use and that seems to "work", so.

I am not sure. I quite like the output from ThisOldTony.

It is not as cringeworthy as the person behind a bench with a bunch of tools behind them talking and walking like Tim the Toolman Taylor. Acting like they are some big production and we should trust them as they try and promote a new product.

[SiliconWizard]

If you want to see one telling example that even the least allergic to this will easily spot, then you can try the "Action Retro" YT channel. Have fun.
(NB: I have absolutely nothing against this channel or this guy and don't mean to give him bad publicity. It's just about this "talking hand" gimmick.)

Quite a few other Youtubers use the same gimmick. It's a communication thing they have either been coached to do, or learned from others that do it.
It's definitely not just people talking with their hands in a "natural" way.

[SilverSolder]

SaaS ... its the end of the world, soon it will be EaaS that is: Everything as a Service.

And you will be happy!

[SiliconWizard]

SaaS ... its the end of the world, soon it will be EaaS that is: Everything as a Service.

And you will be happy!

You will be. You won't own yourself anymore either. You will belong to a company that will allow you to exist and use your own being as long as you keep paying the subscription. Sounds nice.

[armandine2]

resistance - How hard is it to measure 

just got caught out with an unfamiliar TIS1835 dmm/insulation tester continuity/resistance setup.

[mendip_discovery]

This morning volunteer for pet peeve was... paper labels from other calibration labs.

1 on each bit of gear that was send it, bag, unit, cables, power lead etc.
1 on the unit so they can scan it in next year.
1 calibration label.

It took forever to remove the damned things and clean up the glue residue.

Then I go onsite, to do a few hardness testers, paper labels, and large ones. But this time there were 10 years of labels stuck on top of each other.

Don't get me started on labels being put on askew, there is a very special place in Hell for people like that. My 17025 assessor even got to hear about a rant I did at a sub-con lab for wonky labels.

[Circlotron]

When I see a social media photo of a gathering that someone I know arranged but I wasn’t invited to. What is the value of telling uninvolved people about it?

[PlainName]

well, you can take the hint or just figure that people have lives that sometimes don't need or require your intimate contribution but still like to know you anyway.

[RJSV]

   IMPROPER AUDIO COMPRESSION, used in several radio shows, (talk radio).

   Hi, there are a couple radio shows, (mostly streaming now) that serve the trucking industry crowd, often in late night hours. My peeve, ultimately, is that (the producers) don't consider or use 'self awareness', of recurrent audio problems.
Seems like, some type of AUDIO COMPRESSION used will have a sort-of 'pre-muting', where the volume is cut,(drastically), until the person has begun talking.  This means an effect where a listener has loss of maybe a portion of a word or two, while the audio volume comes up to normal.
It's similar to when a person speaking keeps turning head away from the microphone.  I've included in text, here, approximating what I mean by drop-outs:
(Lower case text, to illustrate low volume or indistinguishable.)
   
   " this senTENCE, YOU CAN HEAR..."
   " but the beginING IS NOT CLEAR"

Something like that, but maybe one third of the sentences the show hosts are saying.
But the real question is why the show's engineers, etc. don't seem to notice this audio defect....

[paulca]

It is well known that MP3 compressed music when played via mobile phone hybrid encoding compression sounds absolutely terrible.

However, nearly ever other phone "hold" music is mp3s and they sound like the music is being played at a beach with tone washing noises and near complete garbling at times.

Mobile phone codecs are design for VOICE and VOICE only.

[Squarewave]

Mine is when people rinse off the dishes in the sink before putting them into the dishwasher - just what is the point in the dishwasher then? The dishwasher does a rinse cycle before it starts the wash. 

[RJSV]

   MYSELF.            (lol)

Bet you didn't see that one coming.
   I'd like to put a tech 'burden' on somebody that's asking some important stuff,...(like "Have you seen where I put my heart medication?"...).
   Like for example:
   1.). "Would you like me to continue, in English ?"...(press or say '1').
   2.).  "After we talk, would you be willing to take a brief survey?"
   3.).   "I'm sorry, could you please provide a 2nd. authentication, of your I.D. ?"

   This is sounding too much like a real (phone) conversation, not really so funny;
But  using that paperwork / phone agent model, for a typical human to human chat,
   4.). "We / I don't discriminate on any basis and strive to provide 35 translations, in any language on earth,...including 'Tagalog'...if you prefer that..."
   5.). "Please see my Web site, for more info on how I process 'Heart Medication questions'."

Not really funny....get it ?

[mendip_discovery]

   IMPROPER AUDIO COMPRESSION, used in several radio shows, (talk radio).

   Hi, there are a couple radio shows, (mostly streaming now) that serve the trucking industry crowd, often in late night hours. My peeve, ultimately, is that (the producers) don't consider or use 'self awareness', of recurrent audio problems.
Seems like, some type of AUDIO COMPRESSION used will have a sort-of 'pre-muting', where the volume is cut,(drastically), until the person has begun talking.  This means an effect where a listener has loss of maybe a portion of a word or two, while the audio volume comes up to normal.
It's similar to when a person speaking keeps turning head away from the microphone.  I've included in text, here, approximating what I mean by drop-outs:
(Lower case text, to illustrate low volume or indistinguishable.)
   
   " this senTENCE, YOU CAN HEAR..."
   " but the beginING IS NOT CLEAR"

Something like that, but maybe one third of the sentences the show hosts are saying.
But the real question is why the show's engineers, etc. don't seem to notice this audio defect....

They got rid of the engineer "because they have software for that". But it may well be some compression stuff coming from the place that streams the show to the masses. Every byte needs to be saved.

I had to stop listening to BBC Radio 2 (one of the big UK radio stations) on my drive home from jobs especially on a Friday as they would have regular phone in sessions where they would have people going on about being stuck in traffic as they head away for their holiday. The audio was always terrible, of course due to crappy mobile phone compression, but it was fine for the presenter who is in a studio with nice headphones to listen to this, me well I am in a van with a crap radio and sat in the traffic as I live in the area all the grockels are heading for.

[CatalinaWOW]

Mine is when people rinse off the dishes in the sink before putting them into the dishwasher - just what is the point in the dishwasher then? The dishwasher does a rinse cycle before it starts the wash. 

Funny, one of mine is dishwashers that don't get the dishes clean without that pre-rinse.  Which is the vast majority of them.  Unless you are in the situation where you can run the dishwasher before the food dries.  In our situation that means running a nearly empty dishwasher every time which we choose not to do.

[AndyBeez]

They got rid of the engineer "because they have software for that". But it may well be some compression stuff coming from the place that streams the show to the masses. Every byte needs to be saved.

Sound engineering is as much of an art as it is a science and a practice. You might even argue that a sound engineering remains the last of the analog jobs? Compression artefacts in audio is possibly someone just being lazy/inept or, 96Kbs breaks the studio bandwidth as it was only designed to handle 10KHz talk for AM broadcast.

Recently, we were at a staged event where the performers microphones were clearly picking up a rumble which was likely a blend of the tom-toms and a reverb from the wooden auditorium. The result was a muddy phase cancellation which at times sounded like a dumper truck. The audience could see this was causing a significant irritation to the lead performer. In the interval we asked the guy on the sound desk if he had EQ'd the mics to cut the low end? His response, "they're all default." As if to say, what's wrong, I set all the dials to +/- zero which is how I always do it. I'm not paid to listen. But I am qualified. The second part was equally muddy. The lead performer was even less happy.

[Squarewave]

Mine is when people rinse off the dishes in the sink before putting them into the dishwasher - just what is the point in the dishwasher then? The dishwasher does a rinse cycle before it starts the wash. 

Funny, one of mine is dishwashers that don't get the dishes clean without that pre-rinse.  Which is the vast majority of them.  Unless you are in the situation where you can run the dishwasher before the food dries.  In our situation that means running a nearly empty dishwasher every time which we choose not to do.

I have never had that problem before. I can put in dishes with dried on bits and they all come out clean. The only time I've ever heard of that in the past was from when people used crappy dishwasher detergent from a brand called Finish, they are utter crap.