@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

dbs

@dbs@code4lib.social

#FreeSoftware, #OpenAccess, and #LinkedOpenData are (some of) my jam.

Dad to four kids (two human, two #BeardedDragons).

#Librarian at Laurentian University (Canada). Systems, health, education, #ScholComms, #ResearchDataManagement, statistics, and other stuff.

Unions rock.

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platypus, to random
@platypus@glammr.us avatar

Oh my God, someone cut over all of our VPN IPs without giving anyone any time to update our vendor lists. All of them.

fortunately I am not the actual humans who have to do it and I am not on site to deal with any of the fallout. But that sucks

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@platypus Ugh. There are days when I wish every platform would use IPRegistry so the update would only have to happen in one place.

But then I think, gee, instead of a centralized locked down option where you have to moderate suggested updates submitted by who knows, why couldn't platforms just check your library hostname for a tiny chunk of linked-or-meta data that says "here is our authoritative set of IP addresses"

platypus, to random
@platypus@glammr.us avatar

Just found myself walking through a Google Cloud convention 😱😱😱😱

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@platypus Hmm were a bunch of people disappointed because they were hoping for an Eclipse convention?

dbs, to random
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

So after the cybersecurity incident at work, outbound SSH is blocked. Fun.

I can ask for a firewall exception for my IP address, I guess.

quintessence, to random
@quintessence@hachyderm.io avatar

I know this post may date more than a fair few of us, but what was your first computer? (This includes family computers, for those to whom this applies.)

Mine was an Apple IIGS that was bought before I was born. Was reminded of that sweet old school look-and-feel by an account that's tinkering with one on oldbytes.space .

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@quintessence My first was an Atari 600XL with a cassette drive.

dpaldrich, to random

The urge is real

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@dpaldrich Don't not squeeze the horn is what it means, right?

dbs, to random
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

SNAFU: After I built a shiny new EZproxy server from scratch on Saturday, I discovered today that someone else restored the old EZproxy server and now they're fighting over the IP address, causing network connection errors.

sigh

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

And we're back online. Something noted the IP address conflict and had shut down the interface to the new server. A reset and a reboot and all is well again (🤞)

mhoye, to random
@mhoye@mastodon.social avatar

I find myself needing a replacement for a wall socket that is specifically a plug and the switch to toggle it, in a standard North American one-gang box. Socket plus switch is an extremely standard UK thing, but is unusual here? Wanting something British is an odd experience, gotta say.

Update: Here we go! This:

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@mhoye Huh. We have a similar seat, and found that it would trip arc-fault + GFCI circuit breakers annoyingly often. Our electrician resorted to swapping in plain old GFCI circuit breakers instead. There's some strange stuff going on inside those things.

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@mhoye Or I guess we could have kept the AFCI breaker to protect the entire circuit, and just swapped in an AFCI outlet that we could reset right at the toilet.

dbs, (edited ) to random
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

I shared They Live with my kids tonight.

It's surprising at how well the film holds up. "A little on the nose, and that one fight scene went on a little long" said the 17 years old, while the 15 year old was giddy at the critique of capitalism.

Good job, John Carpenter.

dbs, to random
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

Yay, I have network connectivity again. Yesterday I was able to connect to wifi and from the wired connection in my office. The last time I could do either of those was on February 18th.

However the firewall is a little strict. It's blocking SSH, for example. And ICMP.

I'm going back in to work today to try and get our proxy server running. I'll consider it a win if I can restore access to licensed library resources within a month. It's today or bust!

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@platypus I did it! Rebuilt the proxy server from scratch. Overall much cleaner than it used to be.

IT is still working out how they want to enable access to servers, so updates for the foreseeable future are likely going to be very manual. Big ups to Mark who helped me overcome all kinds of hurdles, big (firewall and de-NATing the server) and small (sneakernet FTW!).

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@adr Security is being overseen by some externals (not sure if they're required by our insurance company or if we chose to contract it out) and they have applied a "close everything by default" approach.

We might be required to use VPN, even while on campus, to then SSH to our servers. Basically trying to segregate the servers as much as possible. Battlestar Galactica comes to mind!

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@adr But hey it's a lot better than when I first arrived in 2006 and was required to use telnet to access our library servers, because IT management back then didn't trust that newfangled SSH. But they didn't trust me, either 🤣

dbs, to random
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

LB: For more information, go to https://whoooooo.ru/who-who/who-who?I=really-wanna-know

ksclarke, to random

"The microbiome miracle: how to make your own kombucha, kefir, kimchi and kraut | Pickling, fermenting and preserving"

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/feb/26/the-microbiome-miracle-how-to-make-your-own-kombucha-kefir-kimchi-and-kraut

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@ksclarke Hey I'm not doing too bad, I've made (or have made) 3/4:

Kombucha: ✔️
Kefir: ✔️
Kimchi: ❌
Kraut: ✔️

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@ksclarke Milk-based, I was into it a few years ago. I heard about water-based kefir, but haven't looked into how that works.

For the last year I've mostly been making kombucha, mead, cider, and ginger beer, with the occasional batch of sauerkraut or fermented carrots & cauliflower. Mmm...

dltj, to random
@dltj@code4lib.social avatar

🔖 Vending machine error reveals secret face image database of college students: Facial-recognition data is typically used to prompt more vending machine sales | Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/vending-machine-error-reveals-secret-face-image-database-of-college-students/

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@dltj My eldest goes to UWaterloo and she was all over this a couple of weeks ago. Of all the campuses, UWaterloo was a very bad place to pull this stunt...

linguacelta, to random

Since returning to academic research, I’m astonished - and discouraged - how often people are confused to receive pdf documents, rather than Word. I’ve been asked by numerous people at more than one institution whether I can send Word instead. I write in LaTeX, so… no, I can’t; not usefully.
To be clear, I’m not blaming the people involved; I’m blaming Microsoft, and the universities who have put up no resistance to becoming Microsoft Indoctrination Centres, because it saves them money.

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@linguacelta Our university may be even worse as it's a Google shop, but plenty of people still use Word and upload that to Google Drive.

And then you have the really special make-lots-of-work people: "this was a PDF so I converted it to Word and added comments and revisions, I've attached it to this email so could everyone please respond with their own comments and revisions?"

dbs, to random
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

Well, now it's MPOW that has all systems shut down due to a cyber attack. Everyone has been encouraged to work from home for the next couple of days. I guess we'll find out just how good IT's backups & recovery strategy are.

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

Printing is a higher priority than library systems.

The university's home page has been resurrected as a system status page, and the printing system is listed, but no library or archives systems are acknowledged.

Our UL has been told that our systems are "tier two".

No licensed resources are accessible. No big deal.

Nobody from IT has reached out to me. But I'm just the systems librarian, why would they?

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

A few years ago, Laurentian pressed criminal charges against a student who found and disclosed significant weaknesses in our university's infrastructure.

I wonder if Laurentian's CIO will be held criminally responsible for this "incident".

https://www.sudbury.com/local-news/hacker-says-he-found-dozens-of-weaknesses-in-laurentians-security-683361

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@spagotto Well they presumably changed the password for the parking system from "parking" to something else, maybe "s3cr3tss3s".

Honestly I don't know, there is very little transparency.

astrobri, to random
@astrobri@mastodon.social avatar

I'm going to start inventing my own metrics for my activity reports, to entertain myself (and maybe even my colleagues). First up: emails sent this year containing the phrase "not a lawyer": xx

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@astrobri I love all of these.

dbs,
@dbs@code4lib.social avatar

@astrobri Number of IT tickets opened for the same problem with no root cause analysis or fix: xx

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