J. Stro Makes Things

"Oh, we're a huge utility with thousands of interconnected systems!" Sounds like you can afford to have an out-of-band network connected to an Operations Center then, bub. And that operations center? No internet in the control room, please and thanks.

"But we need remote access to that system!" You can, you know, have a firewall rule that only allows access from a specific set of IP addresses on the main network right, and even then, only to the RDP or other screen sharing port, right? Right?

"[$NATION] hacked the water plant!" My response: "When are you replacing your entire IT staff with someone(s) competent?"

If your water plant gets hacked over the internet, the problem is that it's connected to the internet. When I managed networks with SCADA, my rule was: "SCADA here. Internet there. Never the twain shall meet." Harder to manage, sure. But nearly impossible to attack.

When the world goes to crap, and all else fails, the Apple II keeps running. Apple II, forever.

Just as I started spinning up an Entra session with PowerShell... it gets afraid and decides to work. That's what I thought.

Me: Checks sign-in logs for MS365. MS: shows 24 hrs. Me: switch filter to 7 days. MS: -no data- Me: switch back to 24 hrs. MS: shows data. Me: filters by someone who is /visible/ on the 24 hr list. MS: -no data- Like... what? Hard to do a routine security check when the tool doesn't FSCKING work.

I got hung up in the Claude interface trying to find the connector menu because I don't use it. He asked, "Oh, do you use GPT then"? No sir. I don't use AI unless it's a deeply integrated thing I cannot avoid. I'm not anti-AI. I'm anti "abrogating my thinking to a machine that can't think".

And before y'all say "oh, he's just having it summarize or whatever..." No. Not this guy. I know this guy. He's intentionally choosing that route because "AI is the way". He's choosing a slower, more expensive, less accurate way because "its how it's done now".

Young user wanted Claude connected to his MS 365 account. I got management approval, did the admin thing and got the connector done. The very first prompt he used: "check my email". Not "find blah" or "analyze blah" or whatever. Just checking his email. He knows that Outlook exists, right?

Your Friendly Reminder: Sean Lee Robinson, AKA "Geek With Social Skills" is a known scammer. He has run cons on video game, arcade game, and vintage computer communities for decades - and is still doing it-. Just look up his name.