Darrell Root

Retired network engineer. Independent Swift dev. MacOS Apps: “CIDR Trainer”,“Network Mom ACL Analyzer”,“Network Mom Availability”,“Netrek”. CCIE #8302 Emeritus

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@PeterJAngel @senatorshoshana Imagine buying a product and before they decide on a price they ask to see a list of your family’s income and assets. That would be crazy!

Oh wait. That’s the current college system.

[Green Beret Nap Time @GBNT1952]

Remember when the Marxists and Islamists teamed up to overthrow the Shah in Iran in 79, and then the Islamists imprisoned, exiled, or executed all of the Marxists to create the Islamic Republic?

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@SawyerMerritt @kylaschwaberow I bought FSD and it came with a Tesla

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

Counterpoint: the best audit I ever dealt with was a PCI audit where I:

1) Read the PCI DSS document

2) Had time to complete all the network-related items (for the datacenter, which was my scope)

3) Documented each item (for example, the network map of the card holding environment) in an internal wiki, which included timestamps.

During the PCI datacenter network meeting I just started walking the auditors through the wiki, showing objective evidence I’d completed each item.

15 minutes in they asked for copies of the documentation: I handed them a USB stick with screenshots. This was their only question until we ran out of time (1 hour meeting)

Since they had “objective evidence” that each item in my scope was completed, I didn’t hear back from them that audit cycle.

I’m still embarrassed it took me several years before I learned to handle PCI audits this way: unlike the government compliance vagueness 🤮, PCI DSS has a list of what you need to do and all the auditors want is objective evidence you did it.

But it was a luxury having time to prepare adequately. I didn’t have that luxury in earlier years.

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

In 1996 at Intel the senior fileserver administrator was out sick so I had to show the internal auditor the datacenter being used for the Pentium Pro design project.

The auditor asked why the safe with the backup tapes was not locked. I explained the safe was only for fire protection: we were already inside the secure datacenter. And (this was my mistake) locking the safe was irrelevant because the fileserver had hard drives on sleds which could be slid out of the server.

Auditor report: fileserver doors need to be chained and padlocked.

Management never let me talk to an auditor again.

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@motvallz @drandolph “Caution: do not look into laser with remaining eye”

This sign actually applied to my Dad, who was not allowed to work on fiber optics by his employer due to one bad eye.

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

I had something similar happen with COBRA.

In April someone at my wife’s former employer figured out they forgot to adjust the COBRA health insurance rates for the new year. They notified the COBRA administrator and retroactively increased the premium.

BAM: we were retroactively over a month behind and our health insurance was terminated.

The funny part was getting letters notifying us of the change in rates and our termination for late payments on the same day.

It took a management escalation to fix it, since normally COBRA doesn’t let you resume coverage if it terminates for any reason.

[Whole Mars Catalog @wholemars]

Based on my experience testing FSD in Amsterdam I feel like @aelluswamy and his team deserve a Nobel Peace Prize

Tesla Self-Driving is in its own league. This technology is going to change the world. Even the Tesla bulls have not wrapped their head around how absolutely huge this tech is going to be.

[CBS News @CBSNews]

Spokane arson suspect had planned devastating wildfire for weeks, police say. https://t.co/f6CFFu0Cb5

[Jaxon @jaxoncoder]

My friend Jake got his iPhone stolen
outside a bar in Brooklyn last month.

9 minutes later, his Apple ID password
was changed from his own phone.

The detective who helped us file the report
opened his own iPhone
and showed me exactly how they do it.

[PoIiMath @politicalmath]

Sorry, can't train more doctors. People in charge of training doctors says it's not allowed

Best we can do is import doctors who couldn't get into American medical schools while we tell 80% of our best students that they're not allowed to be doctors

[Colin Wright @SwipeWright]

One things students need, especially first-year students, is accurate feedback about their ability.

Not everyone should go to college, and immediate feedback is crucial because students often go into 5-figure debt to pay for college.

If you want to be an engineer and it turns out you're terrible at math, you need to know this. Grade inflation already obscures valuable information from students and future employers.

Implementing a new system where first-year students are issued only Pass or No Credit obscures this even more and helps no one. In fact, it actively harms students who could use accurate feedback to know whether they should either change majors or drop out of college entirely.

Obscuring grades from students limits their ability to make responsible life decisions. Receiving a poor grade can be the wake-up call students need.

I took a brutally difficult cell biology class as an undergraduate. I underestimated how much effort it would require, and my grade on the first exam reflected that. I used that information to drill down and study harder, and ended up receiving a respectable final grade. If my score on the first exam had been shielded from me, I wouldn't have been able to respond appropriately.

[Hans Mahncke @HansMahncke]

The worst part of the mask hoax was not even the appalling coercion, the destruction of civil liberties, or the daily indignity imposed on hundreds of millions of people, horrific as all of that was. It was that Fauci falsely convinced people that masks would keep them safe, giving them a false sense of security that led many to lower their guard and become sick. How many people died because Fauci lied about masks?

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@NetEng_Ian @TracketPacer Mandatory “what’s in the box” gif:

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@myproductguy @BasicAppleGuy A memory for you:

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@BasicAppleGuy Also the first Apple Watch! 😂

[Jobs.Now @JobsNowPR]

Part of the traditional internship process has been distorted by OPT, which induced many more mid-career “masters” students to move to the US for degrees that are obtained purely for the visa thus hurting undergraduates.

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@sabrinablittle @HiyaYellowBoy My AP Chemistry teacher docked me points because reading my handwriting constituted “mental cruelty”

She wasn’t wrong. 😂😬

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@STvSW @doffcocker_ I stand corrected. I was used to the syndicated edits. I guess that means i can watch the original versions and see the whole episode now.

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@CourtneyRigo @doffcocker_ You’re probably right. I stand corrected. KPTV 12 showed Star Trek every Sunday at 4pm for my whole childhood, but it was probably the slightly shortened versions.

[Darrell Root @DarrellRoot]

@ClassicII_MrMac Reminds me of the Babylon Bee “Elon Musk subscription tier” 😂