Please do not go buy a lottery ticket or play the stock market today ;-)

ACK, sorry if I missed that. Well, hmmm yeah depending on the laptop you can still do some of the things I said.

Then again, I see you edited now and is was Garuda issues so there’s that :) Glad you figured it out.

There are of course a myriad of reasons for which you’ll get a lot of ideas. Some have already suggested running memtest.

I’d suggest a full hardware “scrub”. Open the case, clean out all dust with a blower (don’t forget the PSU!!!), wiggle or remove-reinsert all electrical connections, especially CPU and RAM, but also GPU and expansion cards, storage (data and power), etc etc. Basically if you can plug it in, give it a wiggle to break any oxide layers or as I said remove-reinsert. Might not even hurt to double check your CPU and GPU thermal paste contact if it’s old and might have dried out.

Then double check your overall air flow. Your CPU might be cool as a cucumber, but maybe your m/b is getting too hot from lack of air flow. Ironically its possible that a cool CPU = slower fan = less airflow around SB chips and power chips.

I was having escalating browser freezes from random weekly to random daily to random hourly or worse, on a system that was stable for years. I did the above and added another case fan for better MB flow. Now my CPU runs cooler, the CPU fan runs even slower, and I’ve been rock steady for 2 weeks without a single freeze-up.

OH! NO!

Anyway.

But the way they stopped it was hilarious!

It was a risk not adding /s especially since I tried really hard to not be too absurd as to be obvious. I will take your unease as a compliment :)

A common misconception. Take the so called “light bulb” for instance. People think they emit light. They do not. They ingest darkness. They are dark suckers. They pull in all the darkness around them, but objects get in the way, and that’s why there are shadows. And when they’re full, they stop working. That’s why they have a brown spot when they stop working, they are full of dark.

Don’t fall for the light emitting conspiracy. LONG LIVE THE DARK SUCKERS!!!

Yup. I had a rental condo in Vegas I sold after 20 years because I read the writing on the wall. And Vegas is doing an amazing job of preparing for water issues.

not just any rando city, literally Austin https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/27/a-75-billion-boondoggle-advances-in-austin

It is not possible to explain the horribleness that is Austin road planning and the complete and utter lack of available transit. Exhibit 1 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/27/a-75-billion-boondoggle-advances-in-austin

Just consider what it must mean for an average Californian to say traffic is bad. These aren’t people coming from rural Montana complaining about city traffic.

[face palm] that is an amazingly important point I hadn’t thought of / not heard discussed before, about the service fee vs actual increase hourly wages. I mean it’s totally obvious now that you said it.

And I really do agree with owners taking the risk if they want the reward. I will only say that there IS a place for balance, and reward for performance. I think the current tip system is tilted WAY WAY WAY too much to the server’s risk and needs to go away. I also think restaurant margins are actually too thin to go 100% wage based and put all that risk on the owners. I fear the bankruptcy churn in restaurants would be too much.

And yet it seems to work out in Europe so I’m probably wrong.

Do we really need to answer that question for you?

good point about the room.

as for an installed keylogger, there are organizations that will inspect for that and catch it. My point is this is a way to get an actually unmolested USB device into play.

But I hear you, this isn’t likely an ideal option right now, but it is an option for maybe some niche case. And these are early days, put enough funding behind it and it might become more viable. Or not. Mostly I’m just offering the thought that there ARE use cases if someone puts even a moment’s creative thought into trade craft and the problems it might solve like breaking the air gap, emplacement, avoiding detection, and data exfil. Each of those are problems to be solved at various levels of difficulty depending on the exact target.

Hmmm not totally. A bad actor could record the keyboard and then figure out a way to get it installed. Either through a logistics attack (not everyone maintains a secure supply chain), or an insider threat installing it. Everyone’s trained not to allow thumb drives and the like. But a 100% completely unaltered bog standard keyboard brought into a building is probably easier, and for sure less suspicious if you get caught.

Sure you might say, “but if you have an insider you’ve already lost” to which I say, your insider is at risk if they do certain things. But once this keyboard is installed, their own detection risk is less.

Now the question is, how far away can the mic be? Because that’s gonna be suspicious AF getting that installed. BUT!!! this is still a great way to break the air gap.

I want to laugh but … well … I’m not crying YOU’RE CRYING

(that’s just speculation on my part though).

I see what you did there, even if you didn’t :)

pretty much yes to keys and hashes. Just think HDCP and HDMI

That said, I imagine it’ll have to be easier to hack software that isn’t embedded in hardware. but it’s also easier to issue revocation lists when you don’t have to worry about bricking everyone’s hardware. So I have no idea which way that balance tilts.

why did you waste your time asking that question when you already knew the answer?

It’s always the profits!!!

yes I’m well aware of how much I screwed up. Also owned a few grand of Applied Material (AMAT); bought and sold around the same time.

Then again, when I sold it felt like they were gonna be the next .com bubble victim. I panicked. It was a very expense lesson at the time. Even more so now in retrospect.

[crying] Bought $10k AMZN late-1999, sold in late-2000, because it lost like 50% value. A very expensive lesson learned not to play in the market. Ironically I now both know better than to buy individual stocks, but also have the fortitude to stick it out.

VTSAX and chiill.