3 rants for the price of 1, isn't that a great deal!

1. HP, you braindead fucking morons!!!

So recently I disassembled this HP laptop of mine to unfuck it at the hardware level. Some issues with the hinge that I had to solve. So I had to disassemble not only the bottom of the laptop but also the display panel itself. Turns out that HP - being the certified enganeers they are - made the following fuckups, with probably many more that I didn't even notice yet.

- They used fucking glue to ensure that the bottom of the display frame stays connected to the panel. Cheap solution to what should've been "MAKE A FUCKING DECENT FRAME?!" but a royal pain in the ass to disassemble. Luckily I was careful and didn't damage the panel, but the chance of that happening was most certainly nonzero.
- They connected the ribbon cables for the keyboard in such a way that you have to reach all the way into the spacing between the keyboard and the motherboard to connect the bloody things. And some extra spacing on the ribbon cables to enable servicing with some room for actually connecting the bloody things easily.. as Carlos Mantos would say it - M-m-M, nonoNO!!!
- Oh and let's not forget an old flaw that I noticed ages ago in this turd. The CPU goes straight to 70°C during boot-up but turning on the fan.. again, M-m-M, nonoNO!!! Let's just get the bloody thing to overheat, freeze completely and force the user to power cycle the machine, right? That's gonna be a great way to make them satisfied, RIGHT?! NO MOTHERFUCKERS, AND I WILL DISCONNECT THE DATA LINES OF THIS FUCKING THING TO MAKE IT SPIN ALL THE TIME, AS IT SHOULD!!! Certified fucking braindead abominations of engineers!!!

Oh and not only that, this laptop is outperformed by a Raspberry Pi 3B in performance, thermals, price and product quality.. A FUCKING SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER!!! Isn't that a great joke. Someone here mentioned earlier that HP and Acer seem to have been competing for a long time to make the shittiest products possible, and boy they fucking do. If there's anything that makes both of those shitcompanies remarkable, that'd be it.

2. If I want to conduct a pentest, I don't want to have to relearn the bloody tool!

Recently I did a Burp Suite test to see how the devRant web app logs in, but due to my Burp Suite being the community edition, I couldn't save it. Fucking amazing, thanks PortSwigger! And I couldn't recreate the results anymore due to what I think is a change in the web app. But I'll get back to that later.

So I fired up bettercap (which works at lower network layers and can conduct ARP poisoning and DNS cache poisoning) with the intent to ARP poison my phone and get the results straight from the devRant Android app. I haven't used this tool since around 2017 due to the fact that I kinda lost interest in offensive security. When I fired it up again a few days ago in my PTbox (which is a VM somewhere else on the network) and today again in my newly recovered HP laptop, I noticed that both hosts now have an updated version of bettercap, in which the options completely changed. It's now got different command-line switches and some interactive mode. Needless to say, I have no idea how to use this bloody thing anymore and don't feel like learning it all over again for a single test. Maybe this is why users often dislike changes to the UI, and why some sysadmins refrain from updating their servers? When you have users of any kind, you should at all times honor their installations, give them time to change their individual configurations - tell them that they should! - in other words give them a grace time, and allow for backwards compatibility for as long as feasible.

3. devRant web app!!

As mentioned earlier I tried to scrape the web app's login flow with Burp Suite but every time that I try to log in with its proxy enabled, it doesn't open the login form but instead just makes a GET request to /feed/top/month?login=1 without ever allowing me to actually log in. This happens in both Chromium and Firefox, in Windows and Arch Linux. Clearly this is a change to the web app, and a very undesirable one. Especially considering that the login flow for the API isn't documented anywhere as far as I know.

So, can this update to the web app be rolled back, merged back to an older version of that login flow or can I at least know how I'm supposed to log in to this API in order to be able to start developing my own client?

Why don't keyboards sleep?

Because they have 2 shifts.

Finally, I have everything under my control 😁

Just a idea for some joke you can do to your co-workers credit go to 9gag as I found it there

Challenges sister to a typing contest.
Finishes his turn and switches the keyboard to Dvorak.
Sister types every word wrong except a and h.
Laughs hilariously.
*Sister throws the keyboard at the wall*
Totally worth it.

In a meeting yesterday working through our WebAPI coding standards, starting from File -> New project..etc..etc.. and ironing out some of the left-or-right decisions so we can have a consistent coding style, working in a meeting room with an overhead projector and sharing keyboard around with one another.

Then we hit the routing 'rules' in the WebApiConfig, "api/{controller}/{id}"…

DevMgr: "Do we need the 'api' prefix? It seems redundant."
Ralph: "Yes it's needed. Prefixing the controllers with 'api' is industry best practice. Otherwise, how is anyone to know it's a web api"
Prancer: "Yea, it's part of the REST standard."
Me: "I don't think so. That is only part of the Asp.Net routing rule. We can put anything we want or take anything out."
DevMgr: "Yea, it looks silly. All the new services are going to be business process specific."
Ralph: "That's how everyone does it. It's kind of the point of why REST services are called WebApi"
Prancer: "What's the point of doing any of this work if we're not going to follow industry standards."
Me: "I understand if the service is part of larger web site, but we're developing standalone services. Prefixing routes with 'api' is redundant. I mean who are these 'everyone' you're talking about?"
<ralph rolls his eyes>
Ralph: "Lets see …uhhh… Netflix?. They're kinda a big deal."
Me: "Like I said, it's an integral part of their site and the services they provide. That's fine. I'm talking about the 12 other 3rd party services we integrate with. None of them have 'api' on any of their routes."
Prancer: "We're talking about serious web services."
Me: "Last time I checked, UPS is a big and serious service."
Ralph: "Their services are a fracking joke" – he didn't say fracking.
Me: "Our payroll system, our billing system, billion dollar companies, didn't have '/api' prefix anywhere. Heck, even that free faxing service we used for a while was a dead-simple routing path."
<I take the keyboard away from Ralph, remove the 'api' from the route.>
Me: "There. Done. Now, lets talk about error handling.."

Rest of the meeting Ralph and Prancer don't say much of anything, arms crossed…I swear Ralph looked like he was going to cry.
This morning I catch my boss…
Me: "What did you think of the meeting? I thought Ralph was going to take a swing at me when I took the keyboard away from him."
DevMgr: "Oh yes…I almost laughed out loud….blows my freaking mind how worked up people get about crap that doesn't matter. Api..or not…who the frack cares. Just make it consistent"
Me: "Exactly…I didn't care either way, but I enjoyed calling out that nonsense."
DevMgr: "Yes..waaay too much."

If I didn't call them on their BS and the 'standard' allowed to continue, I can bet my paycheck when the subject comes up in a few months (another mgr asks 'isn't this api prefix redundant?') Ralph and Prancer will be the first to say "Yea, its stupid. We fought really hard to remove it from the standard...its not our fault...its <insert scapegoat> fault."

Quiet working environment (aside from hearing a joke from time to time)

Fast computer, lots of screens, keyboard and mouse of my choice

Good product owner that doesn't accept bullshit request into the sprint

No legacy crap

Holy fuck EA (yea I went there)

So here I am playing NFS Heat, and my laptop is hot enough to cook eggs on the keyboard, no joke, yet spec wise I should have 0 issues running this game.

I switch on the turbo cool (basically spin the internal fans at full speed... It's an MSI) and this usually covers any heating issues, nope... not this time.

this fucker of a fan can't keep up , so I've turned down the settings from ULTRA, that's depressing, to Medium... it feels like 2006 showed back up, but here's this laptop still burning a whole in my fingers.

My GPU (GTX1060 6GB) is running at 95'c on Medium graphics, and LOW looks like I fell into a 8bit world with slow ass rendering.

Guess I'm going to need to get some cooling assistance for this thing.

Thank you EA for turning my 2.5k laptop into a stove top, I appreciate it.

I guess the name checks out, "heat"

I have a project idea:
Web app that will automatically generate random like-a-facebook project ideas that will handle the buisness side and automatically post that offer on multiple forums, linkedin and send email with it. All using AI, Nural Networks, Big Data and VR.

Seriously, once fucking more some african or indian guy messages me to work for his awesome "its like a facebook but different" idea where he needs "just backend, frontend and mobile apps" and that he will just "handle the rest" and that "have no money now but after I sign a NDA he will give me some shares", I am gonna find him and shit on his head. Monday did not even ended yet and I already read 9 "offers" like this on my mail and facebook, only one guy white, rest indians or africans.

Why are then people suprised that we consider black and indian devs as a fucking joke 90% of the time. I have a indian dev friend and he could not find a dev job for 2 months, because everyone would rather work with less skilled asian / white guy than indian / black guy. This is not about racism, but about those retards that are acting like idiots. Hope I did not offend anyone (unless you do shit like this, then, please just smash your keyboard over your head).

Words like AI and neural networks are used just to lure the investors to our gofundme campain and steal their money after 2 years of silence.

How I feel about loud and endless keyboard typing.

Hint: it's an exaggerated joke

!rant
Digging though my old emails found this joke sent to me long time ago. Think that originally was posted in a 1997 issue of Computerworld. Maybe you already suffered the effect of the "Opcodes" listed here. Hope that !tl;dr

ARG Agree to Run Garbage
BDM Branch and Destroy Memory
CMN Convert to Mayan Numerals
DDS Damage Disk and Stop
EMR Emit Microwave Radiation
ETO Emulate Toaster Oven
FSE Fake Serious Error
GSI Garble Subsequent Instructions
GQS Go Quarter Speed
HEM Hide Evidence of Malfunction
IDD Inhale Dust and Die
IKI Ignore Keyboard Input
IMU Irradiate and Mutate User
JPF Jam Paper Feed
JUM Jeer at Users Mistake
KFP Kindle Fire in Printer
LNM Launch Nuclear Missiles
MAW Make Aggravating Whine
NNI Neglect Next Instruction
OBU Overheat and Burn if Unattended
PNG Pass Noxious Gas
QWF Quit Working Forever
QVC Question Valid Command
RWD Read Wrong Device
SCE Simulate Correct Execution
SDJ Send Data to Japan
TTC Tangle Tape and Crash
UBC Use Bad Chip
VDP Violate Design Parameters
VMB Verify and Make Bad
WAF Warn After Fact
XID eXchange Instruction with Data
YII Yield to Irresistible Impulse
ZAM Zero All Memory

Oww my spacebar

So this year, one of the guys in my class was complainig about someone leaving eraser shavings on his desk and moving around his monitor. Meanwhile, I also complained about my monitor being moved around.

Well, we discovered somehow that we were sitting in the same seat.

A friend of mine left an eraser under my keyboard that said "oh boi!!! Here we go..." so I took that eraser and left some eraser shavings on the other guy's desk as a joke, and he moved around my monitor.

The real funny part though was the group chat eraser emoji war that ensued. I posted an eraser as a reaction to all his posts, which got the eraser taken down. And then put back up again. Until I sneaked it back after the whole thing was over heheheheheheh

The year before, there was an all-out prank war. But that's another story for another time