Jim Miller

Jim Miller

@rellimmij.bsky.social

DFIR/Infosec. Security paranoid. Opinions and snark are strictly my own. (he/him) Also, I'm a pretty good internet dog lawyer.

68 followers69 following78 posts

Jim Miller reposted

Kevin Bunch (ubersaurus)
@atariarchive.org

If you go by Atari's internal newsletter Coin Connection, today is the 50th anniversary of Breakout, their most popular title since Pong at the time and such a massive hit in Japan that it spawned a bunch of clones and inspired Space Invaders. Granted, other internal sources say April 76, but hey

Jim Miller reposted

NPR
@npr.org

The packaging on some snacks is turning black-and-white, as the war in Iran disrupts the supply of an ingredient used in colored ink. Calbee's chips originally came in a bright-orange bag. n.pr/4wvTUuQ

n.prJapanese snack packages turning black-and-white as Iran war depletes ink supplyThe packaging on some snacks is turning black-and-white, as the war in Iran disrupts the supply of an ingredient used in colored ink. Calbee's chips originally came in a bright-orange bag.
Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

The piece of wood you are replacing is 3/8” thick. Your new replacement piece is 1/2”thick. Do you: A) notice the dimensional difference early and thickness plane the new piece down 1/8” B) notice late and cut the rabbet 1/8” deeper and use a forstner bit to take 1/8” around the screw holes?

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

Instead of content filters or age verification, is there an app that just chokes bandwidth down to that of a 56k dialup modem? Like your kid can text and email but streaming video is impossible?

Jim Miller reposted

Ariella Elm
@ariellaelm.com

If you have never been to a protest before, and you’re nervous about going to no Kings, but you wanna go, comment below with your concerns. And if you’ve protested, read the comments, and if you find one that you can alleviate their concern, reply. Hopefully this will get more people to attend!

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

Many years ago I was a federal employee. Man am I glad I left, and do I have compassion for folks still there. The shutdown reminded me of years where COLA became a political issue, so we didn’t get one. You never get that money back. They don’t do a double COLA next time.

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

You just fall behind. Like yeah you’re hard to fire, but economically it’s not great, at least for the regular working folks. Need to get promoted just to catch up to where you should have been.

Jim Miller reposted

Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social

You can't raid and arrest everyone in an entire apartment building, or even legitimately get a warrant to do that, any more than you could for a whole neighborhood. That would be a general warrant. This is the most specific core the-British-did-it-to-us thing the Fourth Amendment is written to ban.

The TRiiBE@thetriibe.com

NEW — An estimated 40 people were taken by federal agents in an overnight raid in South Shore, a predominantly-Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. A couple who live nearby said they were shocked to see the enormous militarized raid in their community. thetriibe.com/2025/09/feds...

thetriibe.comFeds detain dozens of immigrants in 'massive' South Shore apartment building raid in Chicago • The TRiiBEAn estimated 40 people were taken by federal agents in the course of the overnight raid in the predominately-Black neighborhood.
Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

Seemed like a good time to quote myself. I cannot abide bullies. You will have to go through me.

Jim Miller@rellimmij.bsky.social

I don’t post much here, and if I use this like I used Twitter, it’ll mostly be shit posting and trolling friends. But it seems a good time to mention I cannot abide bullies.

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

One of the odd ways I can tell I’m getting old: I got into consulting in 2016. I did tabletop exercises. Customers in 2016 thought ransomware attacks were unrealistic. ‘We don’t want a ransomware scenario. It will never happen’ But then we got NotPetya and WannaCry

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

Suddenly it was all ransomware all the time. And it’s stayed that way. From WP: “There were 181.5 million ransomware attacks worldwide in the first six months of 2018, 229% more than the first six months of 2017.” Makes me feel old, seeing stats like that.

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

Looks like I never posted my unpatented-works-95%-of-the-time method to get #shmoocon tickets when that was a thing. So here goes. 1) put a reminder in your calendar. Really. You absolutely need to be ready the moment the link goes live. 10 seconds late is a lifetime in Shmoo tix

View full thread
Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

6) now you’re ready. Watch your time source. Hit your tab reload the instant it’s 12:00:00.000. Now it’s down to your reading speed, and hand/mouse coordination. Read, find the link, click. Read the captcha, solve the captcha (or copy paste the answer they gave) hit enter.

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

If it’s a good day, congrats, you’ve snagged two tix. This method worked almost every year for me. The fallback is pool with your friends. Have a buddy or three also try for tix each round. Very likely everyone gets a ticket. I never missed Shmoo cause I couldn’t get a ticket.

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

Looks like I never posted my unpatented-works-95%-of-the-time method to get #shmoocon tickets when that was a thing. So here goes. 1) put a reminder in your calendar. Really. You absolutely need to be ready the moment the link goes live. 10 seconds late is a lifetime in Shmoo tix

View full thread
Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

4) (I think this was a biggie) Get a *really* precise time source. If your watch is a few seconds off, you’re already late. I used timeanddate.com because their clock appeared to sync well with whatever the moose cluster used (I’d guess an NTP server somewhere)

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

5) only have like 4-5 browser tabs tops. Turn off all your extensions. Anything that might make a call in the background is bad. Install an extension to one-click reload all tabs so you can be ready right at noon. Have the landing page loaded but no need to refresh it obsessively till it’s time.

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

Looks like I never posted my unpatented-works-95%-of-the-time method to get #shmoocon tickets when that was a thing. So here goes. 1) put a reminder in your calendar. Really. You absolutely need to be ready the moment the link goes live. 10 seconds late is a lifetime in Shmoo tix

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

2) don’t rely on mobile. Get a laptop or a desktop. Wired if you can (a busy WiFi network is bad) Tempus fugit. 3) Turn off everything else. No discord, no weather app, no news feed, no chat apps. Can’t have i/o blocking or throttling at the wrong moment.

Jim Miller reposted

John Scalzi
@scalzi.com

The entire global economy is currently so over-leveraged on "AI" that if we don't find a credible use case for it, and fast, we're likely to tumble into an economic meltdown of 2008 proportions, so please, your corporate overlords beg you, use "AI" to write that fucking email

Faine Greenwood@faineg.com

Have we ever seen a technology go from zero to "your boss is aggressively demanding you use it every day" quite as quickly as modern "AI" tools? (This is a genuine question).

Jim Miller reposted

NPR
@npr.org

Efforts to ban congressional stock trading have stalled for years. But a group of bipartisan lawmakers has a new consensus plan and wants a vote to show lawmakers aren't profiting from their roles.

n.prA bipartisan bill to ban lawmakers from trading stocks is unveiled in the HouseEfforts to ban congressional stock trading have stalled for years. But a group of bipartisan lawmakers has a new consensus plan and wants a vote to show lawmakers aren't profiting from their roles.
Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

You ever realize just how weird a thought you’re having? I was walking the dog and contemplating forensic artifacts for ADS in NTFS under certain use cases. And I thought ‘what does this look like’ and laughed a second later.

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

I’m wondering what a minute magnetic field looks like, surrounded by millions of other tiny magnetic fields that you could not really tell apart visually. The level of abstraction involved in modern computing is a wonder.

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

Ladies and Gentlefolk of the jury, I present the suspect, Samantha Miller, in case L-4688899, the People vs Samantha Miller. You will note the accused is naked in her booking photo. She is accused of conspiring to find poop to roll in, smearing it into her neck and collar.

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

The state was forced to get a dog towel and clean her and then her collar which is now being washed. The smell was, I am informed, quite unpleasant. How do you find the defendant, and if guilty of this heinous act, what sentence do you impose?

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

It is the year of our lady Dolly Parton 2025, I see we still can’t automatically parse a resume into a form so you get to manually copy it all over. Why is that still a hard problem?

Jim Miller
@rellimmij.bsky.social

MFW I forget a VM password and go through the process to reset it. Then I decide to write the new password down in the VMware info section, only to find I saved the old password in the VMware info section. 🤦