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    1. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      9 votes
    2. Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

      Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

      Here is my schema:
      
      ```sql
      CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
        article_id   INTEGER
      , warehouse_id INTEGER
      )
      ;
      ```
      
      How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
      
      12 votes
    3. DDOS question/curiosity

      Non-comp person here; is there a record for longest period of time a DDOS attack occurred on a website? Would it be possible to forcibly keep a site offline for an extended length of time with a...

      Non-comp person here; is there a record for longest period of time a DDOS attack occurred on a website? Would it be possible to forcibly keep a site offline for an extended length of time with a continuous DDOS attack?

      7 votes
    4. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      11 votes
    5. What features do you want to see in a userscript manager?

      I'm currently developing a minimal userscript manager who's main goal is to be fully auditable by any user in only ten minutes or so - my prototype uses less than 300 lines of javascript, and I'm...

      I'm currently developing a minimal userscript manager who's main goal is to be fully auditable by any user in only ten minutes or so - my prototype uses less than 300 lines of javascript, and I'm trying to keep it that way.

      To get the codebase this small, however, I have to be very picky with what features I implement - most notably, the code editor has to be very barebones. Are there any features that I'd be shooting myself in the foot by not including?

      For example:

      • syntax highlighting
      • cloud sync
      • regex url matching
      • fullscreen editor (currently, it's just a browser popup - the intention is that you write code elsewhere and paste it in)

      Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

      7 votes
    6. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      13 votes
    7. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      10 votes
    8. What is a class in Python?

      I've been learning a bit more Python, going through a Udemy course to expand my skills a little. One of the programs the course guides you to make is a little dictionary, but it currently only...

      I've been learning a bit more Python, going through a Udemy course to expand my skills a little. One of the programs the course guides you to make is a little dictionary, but it currently only runs once and then quits.
      I'd like to adapt it to use a nice TUI that keeps itself open until the user specifies they want to quit, using something along the lines of npyscreen. However, this library uses classes, and that's not something I'm yet familiar with. I'd rather have an understanding of what classes are, how they work, and why to use them before I take the plunge and start fiddling around with npyscreen (although I'd be interested to hear if you think that I should Just Do It instead).
      Can anyone give or point me towards a good explanation of the what, how, and why of Python classes? Or better yet, a tutorial that will give me something to write and play with to figure out how it all fits together?
      Thanks!

      9 votes
    9. Friday Security Briefing

      Friday Security Briefing Hello there! I hope you're all looking forward to something this weekend. Today's briefing will cover a captivating tale of scheming against financial centers, woes of...

      Friday Security Briefing

      Hello there! I hope you're all looking forward to something this weekend. Today's briefing will cover a captivating tale of scheming against financial centers, woes of virtual networking, and the possibility of Russia behaving quite unnecessarily.

      "Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf." ~ Unattributed proverb


      Wall Street targeted by new Capital Call investment email scammers

      The tactic of exploiting enterprise email systems remains a successful and active attack vector for bad actors. The emerging development is the use of "capital call" style scam, wherein scammers pretend to have investor or insurance business with the business.

      "In an example shared by the researchers, the scam email attached a Capital Call Notice for US $970,357.00 to be deposited into a bank account under the fraudsters’ control."

      "If the targeted investor was duped into wiring the funds, then it is likely that money would be quickly moved into other accounts and withdrawn by mules to prevent the payment from being returned to the victim."

      The flexibility that cryptocurrencies provide to discreetly rearrange money may actually be disadvantageous for banks in certain situations.

      Source: Tripwire, Wall Street targeted by new Capital Call investment email scammers



      High severity Linux network security holes found, fixed

      (CVE-2021-26708) Alexander Popov of London has discovered five security holes in the Linux kernel's virtual socket implementation. This is concerning, my personal use of virtual networking systems could be a lot more thought out. I do tend to keep my use of libvirt to a minimum but ideally I would be running my virtualization workstation on a separate box optimized for safe practices.

      "These holes entered Linux when virtual socket multi-transport support was added. This networking transport facilitates communication between virtual machines (VM) and their host. It's commonly used by guest agents and hypervisor services that need a communications channel that is independent of the VM network configuration. As such, people who are running VMs on the cloud, which is pretty much everyone these days, are especially vulnerable."

      Source: ZDNet, High severity Linux network security holes found, fixed



      Ukraine: DDoS attacks on govt sites originated from Russia

      Ukraine is proposing that information on the threat actors responsible for a DDoS on Ukrainian government websites originated from Russian domains.

      However, they did not claim that the threat actors were affiliated with the Russian state.

      I am curious about the motivations if this was sanctioned by Russia. Are they testing their capabilities against a softer target in order to learn from the European and American Cyber-Defense response? Perhaps this was a way for Russia to demonstrate it's competency at cyber warfare.

      "The National Coordination Center for Cybersecurity (NCCC) at the NSDC states that these DDoS attacks have been massive and have targeted government websites in the defense and security sector."

      Possible retaliation?

      "Last week, news leaked that Ukrainian law enforcement, in cooperation with the US and French police, arrested alleged Egregor ransomware operation members.

      Three days later, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) issued a press release about the Egregor arrests and seizing the ransomware group's equipment."

      Source: Bleeping Computer, Ukraine: DDoS attacks on govt sites originated from Russia


      8 votes
    10. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      7 votes
    11. Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

      Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

      Here is my schema:
      
      ```sql
      CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
        article_id   INTEGER
      , warehouse_id INTEGER
      )
      ;
      ```
      
      How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
      
      6 votes
    12. What is the most difficult or complex thing you have programmed, created, or otherwise made?

      I'm mostly just curious what types of in-depth projects you all get up to. The weekly "what are you working on threads" are always full of cool things, so I am curious what people's self-rated...

      I'm mostly just curious what types of in-depth projects you all get up to. The weekly "what are you working on threads" are always full of cool things, so I am curious what people's self-rated most difficult or complex projects have been.

      26 votes
    13. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      8 votes
    14. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      9 votes
    15. Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

      Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

      Here is my schema:
      
      ```sql
      CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
        article_id   INTEGER
      , warehouse_id INTEGER
      )
      ;
      ```
      
      How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
      
      8 votes
    16. Input from a text file, pull from multiple APIs, formatting output, etc. in Python

      I don't need answers so much as an idea of where to start. Essentially, I have a Google Sheet that uses importjson.gs to pull from the following APIs OMDB (IMDB) TheMovieDB TVMaze I also use...

      I don't need answers so much as an idea of where to start.

      Essentially, I have a Google Sheet that uses importjson.gs to pull from the following APIs

      • OMDB (IMDB)
      • TheMovieDB
      • TVMaze

      I also use another script to scrape Letterboxd for ratings.

      This works well, but sometimes it'll time out or I'll hit urlFetch limits that Google has in place.

      Basically, I'd like to have a text file (input.txt) where I pop in a bunch of titles and year or IMDB IDs, then the script runs and pulls set endpoints from all of these, outputting everything on one line (a pipe as a delimiter.)

      My thinking is that I can then pull that info a sheet and run all of the formatting, basic math, and whatever else so it suits my Sheet.

      I have a feeling I'll be using requests for the JSON and beautifulsoup for letterboxd -- or maybe a module.

      Can anyone point me in the right direction? I don't think it'll be too difficult and should work well for a first python project.

      7 votes
    17. Help with Google accounts authentication on iOS/iPadOS

      Edit: This was resolved by @tomf (cf. this comment). Google’s account authentication appears to broken for me for some reason. I have several devices and several Google accounts accumulated over...

      Edit:

      This was resolved by @tomf (cf. this comment).


      Google’s account authentication appears to broken for me for some reason.

      I have several devices and several Google accounts accumulated over the years.

      Accounts:

      1. Work Google account (this was set up by IT staff at the company where I work as they are a paying enterprise Google services customer)
      2. Undergraduate University account (this was set up when I attended undergrad, where the University is a paying Google services customer)
      3. Graduate University account (this was set up when I attended for grad school, where the University is a paying Google services customer)
      4. Personal Google account (this was set up a long time ago, it’s just a non-paid, consumer Google account)

      Under iOS and iPad OS, Google apparently asks you to download the official Google app in order to sign in and “trust” devices, so that they can send you prompts to acknowledge when you sign in on other devices. There is also the Google Authenticator app that lets you do traditional 2FA.

      Further background, I got an iPhone 12 Pro circa October 2020. I gave my old iPhone handset to my dad (after signing out of everything and resetting it according to Apple’s instructions). Ever since, I’ve been having issues with logging into my Google accounts from the new iPhone, my iPad, and my Mac (provided by work). I’m actually afraid to log out of my work Google account on my work Mac, because I’m afraid I won’t be able to log in again, and that would prevent me from being able to get work done.

      For example, let me walk through the steps I would normally take to log in to my Undergraduate University Google account on my iPad:

      1. Open the Google app
      2. Tap user icon in top right corner
      3. From the modal menu, tap the downward chevron (circled in red)
      4. Tap “Add another account” (circled in red)
      5. Tap “Continue” on the confirmation widget when prompted
      6. Enter the Gmail address for the account in the provided “Email or phone” input box and tap “Next”
      7. At this point, I wait for the progress indicator (the blue bar with the red arrow pointing to it) to indefinitely traverse from left to right over and over again and I cannot progress further.

      Virtually the same steps can be reproduced from my iPhone by going to accounts.google.com from any browser (I’ve tried Safari and Chrome).

      The same sort of authentication redirect from accounts.google.com happens when trying to add my associated Gmail accounts to my iOS devices from the Settings > Mail > Accounts > Add Account, and similarly stalls at the same point.

      I’ve tried logging out of my accounts from my personal Mac where I can still log in from google.com, and also tried going into the security settings for the accounts and disabling, then re-enabling 2FA (I can receive the text message with the code to associate my iPhone as a second factor authenticator, so Google knows my phone number).

      Google’s support documents don’t provide any guidance on this situation where the accounts.google.com authentication hangs, and there seems to be no way to contact a human being at Google to provide technical support. I’ve searched their help portal/forums, and found nothing similar to my issue. They point me down a tree that ends here, which is not useful to me.

      If Google’s services don’t work for you, it seems to be your problem, not theirs. I get that I’m not paying for their services, so it is totally unreasonable for me to expect any sort of technical support from Google. But, at the same time, it seems very strange that I am alone in my use case of simply trying to log into my accounts that have worked for years in the past without issue.

      Anyone have advice on next steps?

      5 votes
    18. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      9 votes
    19. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      13 votes