Gamergate was ignored because gamergate is not news.

My problem with it is that even if the initial event happened EXACTLY AS CLAIMED then it is still nothing.

The "story" became the reactions to that nothing event.

And then the reactions to those reactions to that nothing event.

And now we have a post mod'ed +5 Insightful for claiming that Gamergate wasn't covered.

And also, from TFA:

If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and â" importantly â" accept the consequences of his actions.

He IS dealing with the consequences. That's why he left.

What Lisa Monaco is pushing for is martyrdom.

We are supposed to be a country of laws. We should not have officials demanding martyrdom of those who oppose their policies.

What depresses me bout software is how often we JUST DO NOT LEARN!

And not just software. Look at security as well. And so many other computer-related areas.

Software development seems to be riddled with arrogant know nothings who think they can cut corners or reinvent the wheel because doing the right way isn't "7337".

For me it's more like ... someone "learned" one way of handing it when s/he was working ALONE.

Then that person never learned that the practices need to be changed when you are part of a TEAM.

And releasing your code to the public is being part of a team.

That's one of the reasons I don't use sudo on internet facing machines or have a KVM exposed to the internet, but that's another story.
To sum up I just have the opinion that one step root access from out on the internet is an accident waiting to happen - especially if you are likely to log on from anywhere and not a known trusted address.

Make a good policy, no passwords, only keys, and every employee has one.

And that laptop thief that is going to get an employees machine eventually is going to have one click access to root on your server - now that's a major fuckup isn't it?

However if an employee has to do "sudo" all the time, they just start turning their brain off while doing it.

I prefer "su" so as to keep things entirely separate although others swear by "sudo" for user tracking - either way if they can't keep track of context they should lay off the drugs.

Only about 3% of what other countries call "nuclear waste" gets turned into actual waste. The rest is converted back into more fuel.

Clearly a major error which I addressed and you embraced as propaganda with a disgusting little goalpost shift trick. If you want to be taken seriously I suggest less deliberate dishonesty.

You didn't get far in reading my post above - "That thief with a stolen laptop can't use a key to get full access remotely" was mentioned, but maybe I should add another. The tiny amount of extra effort required by disabling root logins covers a lot of possibilities. I've gained access to a former workplace as much as three years after leaving by running the wrong old script - whoops! That human intervention of cancelling accounts depends on things like those HR people talking to IT people (Eloi vs Moorlocks in some places). Having a procedure that does not have an unreliable person as a vital part of the chain is a better idea than the latter - or in more diplomatic terms keeping it simple with one less thing to go wrong.

Next step, laugh at the 'hackers' wasting all that effort trying to guess the root password

Logs get full of such attempts even when root is not able to login. Once it gets tedious you can install sshgaurd or similar to block them and not be bothered by so many of such fruitless attempts clogging up the logs.

Now that's nice - blaming me for your deliberate misleading shift of the goalposts.
Politeness is wasted on "ends justifies the means" extremists like you that just see it as weakness.

Umami just rolls off the tongue.



They are right, "yo mama's" jokes all the way down.

I can distinctly and easily identify sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. But umami? Myth.

Only two tastes for me - chilli and bland.

That's the way it goes, stuff from papers takes years to make it into set textbooks. See also the "personality test" shit that HR people are using. Debunked decades ago. About all it tells you is who is good at gaming those tests.

I taste dead ... ok let's not go there. That way lies madness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...

disabling root logins has no security benefit at al

Of course it does. That former employee that knows the root password or has the keys can't get to it. The current employee that fat fingers a command to the wrong host can't do much damage. That thief with a stolen laptop can't use a key to get full access remotely. There is a very very long list and it's just inexperience, laziness or lack of sleep that's stopping you from thinking of entries in it.

Insulation will help in both directions, but it's largely not an option for existing buildings.

Why not? They have roof space and what's wrong with wall cladding on walls that get a lot of sun? Plastic foam, some sort of thin backing, glue and paint is how it's done.

That's 65% of the legacy buildings you would need to effectively reconstruct

No.
Minor modifications are not reconstruction.

It's a prime example of "low hanging fruit" where buildings that were not designed for the climate can be altered a bit to remove obvious flaws.

The subway isn't an issue, except to say that, operating on electricity

Mass transit versus gridlock. Getting a lot more people on trains going to where they want to go gets a lot of vehicles off the street, and those ones still left on the street can move at a decent speed and use less fuel to get where they are going. A full train uses hardly any energy per person to move them, so if you can give people a good reason to ride on a train that cuts down on energy usage a lot - thus "reducing carbon" but it's best to just use energy consumption to consider things.

it's just "carbon shifting" to move the greenhouse gas generation elsewhere

Even if it was that (which it isn't) that can be a very good idea. It was the entire idea behind suggesting electric cars in California and other places where air pollution from vehicles is a serious issue. Do that energy shifting to a place where the exhaust goes through a scrubber, then out of a high stack a long way from the city and that can be a major health benefit versus people choking on smog - so even if there is no reduction in carbon dioxide output you still have an improvement. Add actual reduction and you have even more of a win. Get a lot of those people on an electric train/tram/bus and the roads are no longer so congested with idling engines creating smog.


Common sense says that living in cities is going to limit the amount of resources required per person. Most cities massively defy common sense and become huge energy sinks due to poor planning or a complete lack in some situations. Sometimes it's as easy as painting a roof to go from needing AC to not. Sometimes it's as easy as a duct to change that hot roofspace air with cold basement air. Putting a thin tinting film on a thousand windows can financially pay for itself over a summer and last for decades.

This is the easy stuff.
Going from not thinking of the summer heat at all to doing something about it is the low hanging fruit. A coastal city with a hot summer has buildings designed for a midwest winter.