Our News Team @ 11 with host Snot Flickerman
Yes, I can hear you, Clem Fandango!
So my question is, since everyone on lemmy is a programmer, what do you guys actually do?
Hey now, some of us hate programming and the deepest we go is being scripters. I, for example, am dogshit at coding, but I am pretty solid at systems and network administration.
Agreed on that, it’s not the best solution, but for people who need access to computing and whose devices have aged out of other support, it’s pretty much the only option available.
I’m in the minority who thinks Linux isn’t for everyone and that people who approach computing from that standpoint should really stick with macOS or Windows. Linux gives you more freedom to be in control, but that freedom to be in control also demands more knowledge and involvement to be able to be in control. “With great power comes great responsibility” kind of thing.
For an analogy Windows is like being a passenger in a car with someone else driving, and Linux you’re in the drivers seat of the car. You simply are required to be aware and involved in driving more because you are in control, and that control requires knowledge. You don’t get to sit back and go “I don’t need to know what all this stuff does because I don’t want to.” Understanding how the pedals and steering wheel work is a requirement for driving, as is paying attention to what is going on around you on the road. As a passenger, you aren’t required to know or pay attention to as much because you’re not being given the freedom of control, you’re just along for the ride. Linux is giving you that freedom of control of being the driver, but you have to know a lot more to do it than you need to know just being a passenger (Windows).
I know everyone else thinks Linux is ready for the prime time and ready for regular users who don’t want to have to learn and just want something that works… but I personally don’t. Simply because Linux is a lot less guaranteed to “just work” than the other options.
It’s basic in the sense that Linux is always a work in progress and no matter how hard you try, you’re going to need it at some point.
When your system randomly turns on to a black screen and there is seemingly no way to log in, knowing how to switch to the command line and at bare minimum back up your settings and documents before you wipe and start over is pretty key. To be clear, I have been in that exact situation and even more confusing situations where the PC has basically become unusable but I was able to fix it via CLI.
Just imagine losing months or years of work because you don’t know that you can probably fix it all from command line and likely don’t even need to wipe your computer and start over if you can narrow down what is going wrong and remove it via the command line.
I dunno seems pretty important to me.
Graphics driver installation is pretty key on any system but AMD graphics systems.
For example if your parents want to watch any videos without them stuttering or being weird, whether Intel or Nvidia, they will need the non-free graphics drivers installed so it doesn’t run like shit.
To my knowledge nearly every AMD chipset already works out of the box on Linux.
At least a basic primer about finding your way around in Linux in command line, and where various configuration files live.
When shit goes wrong (and it likely will at some point) knowing how to dump to another tty and log in via the console and fix issues via command line is pretty key. This has saved my ass more times than I can count now.
Having trouble finding a CLI focused course, but this is a free course that covers a lot of basics:
https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/introduction-to-linux/
The patch is for Windows 10, Windows 11, and Server 2008 up to Server 2025.
Further, there’s companies that make custom-built modern machines that support classic PCI and modern operating systems and classic operating systems.
It’s conceivable that legacy systems are using modern OSes with virtualization running a legacy OS and legacy PCI cards, for example. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
Don’t forget pie and coffee.
There’s a reason his nickname is TACO.
Hang on a minute, baby, someone is wrong on the internet.
Uh huh huh huh. You said package.
I feel personally attacked.
Right, it was referenced in one of the articles that a bunch of legacy industrial machines likely still use this hardware, so the people using those old machines are probably going to have to go dig up PCI modems from that era without the Agere/Lucent chipset.
I’m sure you’re right and there’s lots of stuff they’ve missed like this over the years that they sort of kept on for compatibility but that opens exploits due to how old they are.
Other articles make more clear why that is.
https://cyberpress.org/windows-agere-modem-driver-0-day-flaws/
Rather than issuing a traditional patch for each vulnerability, Microsoft’s October cumulative update completely removes the ltmdm64.sys driver from affected systems.
As a result, all fax modem hardware relying on the Agere Modem driver will cease to function. While mail and messaging over IP have largely supplanted analog modems, some industrial and legacy applications still depend on fax modems.
Organizations must therefore audit their environments for any remaining modem dependencies and either migrate to supported alternatives or implement workarounds where available.
Microsoft’s advisory explicitly recommends that customers eliminate any reliance on the deprecated hardware to avoid service disruptions.
So maybe not all the way back to the original release, but back to the first release that included this specific telephony modem driver, ltmdm64.sys. If I recall correctly, Windows 3.1 brought networking capabilities.
However, another article claims it has only been shipped with every version of Windows since 2006.
https://www.thestack.technology/windows-users-hacked-due-to-legacy-fax-modem-driver/
CVE-2025-24990 was credited to a security researcher going by the handle @shitsecure who told The Stack by DM “it’s a driver from 2006, never changed… I think it was historically shipped with everything, although that doesn’t make sense at all.”
Which honestly makes a lot more sense, since the “64” part of the driver name implies it’s for 64 bit systems, which were first introduced in 2003.
Some more extraneous info on this driver/hardware:
https://www.sysnative.com/forums/drivers/1216/driver
I mean… she voted for the healthcare subsidies to expire by voting for the Big Bullshit Bill.
I feel like she’s just playing the usual games here. She could have not voted for the BBB. The Democrats are simply trying to roll back changes that were made in the BBB.
So, was she just an idiot who didn’t read the bill (possible) or just playing the rotating villain (more probable imho).
Perhaps, either that or they made a very quick fix making updates to address them the day before this patch release.
Looks like he’s a potential terrorist because he’s saying the USA flag represents Nazis. Better lock him up for “anti-American sentiment.”
We can play these stupid fucking games, too.
To anyone misreading this, these exploits were patched yesterday and thus were included as the final patch for Windows 10 before the extended security updates requirements kick in.
Known exploits are always reported to the company first to give them time to patch it before releasing info on the exploits.
All Windows 10 users will continue to have access to the patches in this final freely available patch Tuesday for Windows 10. They just can’t get new updates without joining the ESU program.
I hate Microsoft too and only use Linux, but let’s stop the circlejerk of false claims here please and thank you.
The patch has already been released, that’s literally my point. It was part of their final patches released for Windows 10 yesterday.
This is from the CVE page for the exploits discussed in the srticle.
As stupid as it is: Faith is what keeps bubbles afloat. Faith can go a long way towards forcing reality to what you want it to be, and if you have the wealth, you can play nearly endless money-games to make it seem like you’re ahead when you’re actually losing your shorts.
The reason there is so much faith is because this is a make it or break it moment for late stage capitalism. The businesses (including non-AI businesses) viscerally need it to work so they can get rid of human workers. If they can’t make humans slaves, they will make digital slaves. This may be a last gasp for the old order if it fails because so many entrenched companies from automobile makes like GM and Ford to airframe makers like Boeing to general electronics like General Electric have finances that are literally upside down and they have been using stock buybacks to fake growth for the better part of two decades now.
This quote by Upton Sinclair is usually used to describe lower level employees who don’t understand how unionization could be good for them, but it applies here as well. The faith persists because this is their “salaries” that depend on this working so the bottom doesn’t fall out from under them. They have to believe it will work and as such will keep dumping money into it as long as humanly possible.
AI is like Theranos but bigger and affecting numerous industries who are all betting the future of their companies on this all working out. For their livelihoods and their plan to continue ignoring all the little people in the world, there is no losing state they can or will accept until they are on the edge and about to leap from the top of their buildings to avoid the consequences.
Once the faith breaks, it will be like a dam breaking and flooding out too fast to escape.