viking
@viking@infosec.pub
- Comment on Kiwi Browser is shutting down. 3 weeks ago:
Excellent, thanks. Just installing.
- Comment on Kiwi Browser is shutting down. 3 weeks ago:
Is there a chromium release for Android? I thought they only launched a desktop version?
- Comment on Kiwi Browser is shutting down. 3 weeks ago:
Damn, I was so happy to get an update yesterday after I thought it had died, only to find out it did.
Kiwi was (is) my backup browser if something absolutely refuses to work in Fennec/Firefox; what are y’all using as a last resort chrome substitute?
- Comment on Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They're No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures 4 weeks ago:
I can’t speak for Terumo, in my books this has always been an issue, so maybe their management assessed how many casualties resulted out of poorly maintained machines and decided that enough is enough.
I’ve explained in a bit more details further down in the comments, the liability issue stems from the fact that people can (and do!) die due to wrongly maintained machines, and this falls back on the manufacturer, since they are the ones who trained the technician who then “certified” the machine. But given that they only do one maintenance run every half year or so, they are far from experts. So either you re-train them once a quarter (during training they work on actual machines that have been modified to throw certain errors, and give them hands-on training to fix it); or you do it yourself. Training usually takes 2 days since there’s quite some theory to cover before the practical stuff; and the training usually happens in our HQ, so include 2 travel days.
If hospital staff is missing 4 days per quarter for one device maintenance workshop, imagine how this will look like if there are 10+ machines they need to be comfortable working with that follow similar re-certification routines. Those people would be gone for 40+ days over a 90 day period. If you account for weekends and time off, they’d essentially be at work for maybe 2 weeks, and someone would have to be on call during the time for other machines in need of maintenance, so you’d end up having to hire 10 times the number of technicians just so that someone is always at work if and when needed.
- Comment on Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They're No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures 4 weeks ago:
If it was, that reply probably wasn’t coming from me. Unless I’m tripping.
- Comment on Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They're No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures 4 weeks ago:
As it’s written in the contracts, I assure you. And yet that’s not as clear as day when it ends up in court, since hospitals hardly accept liability without going through all instances. Add negative press to the mix, and you got a nice shitshow going, which is harmful for patients (going crazy for having to undergo already risky treatments with device that’s now considered faulty to some degree), the hospital staff (who faces potential charges up to involuntary manslaughter), and of course also the company that suffers from negative press (reputation and possibly financially).
If all of that can be avoided if certified technicians on the company payroll can do the maintenance, I’m not sure that’s all bad.
- Comment on Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They're No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures 4 weeks ago:
A malfunctioning device during open heart surgery means a high risk including potential death to the patient.
Liability = responsible for someone’s death.
The consequence would be a potential settlement with their family, negative publicity and whatever might negatively affect the financial bottom line, granted. But believe it or not, we actually care about patients surviving.
- Comment on Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They're No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures 4 weeks ago:
I work for a company that manufacturers a comparably product to the cited Terumo device, and I can tell you that it’s most likely not greed but pending liability issues.
Those devices aren’t in use 24/7, and only need maintenance every 15 uses, so hospital staff trained to work on them get to use their maintenance knowledge like 3-4 times a year, at most. And since there must be a redundancy in the hospital both with machines (1 replacement on hand per 1 in use) as well as staff, this number even goes down since you alternatemachines (thus stretching their use without maintenance) and people (so they both get to use their experience).
As a result, you end up with machines that are maintained by certified, yet unprofessional technicians. But since the device ends up with an ‘error free’ log, if anything were to happen to a patient due to a malfunction, the manufacturer assumes liability; and would then have to try and prove that it’s actually a human errorby the technician.
The alternatives are either to establish crazy right recertification windows for the technicians (like every 60-90 days), which is also costly and very annoying for them, and puts a serious strain on hospital staff if all manufacturers were to implement similar mechanisms, or, well, maintain the machines themselves. That way the technicians are better equipped due to doing the same steps routinely, and liability lies with the manufacturer either way.
Not everything is evil corpos at work, sometimes there are actual reasons for certain decisions.
- Comment on Twitter disappears from Mac App Store | TechCrunch 6 months ago:
First time I hear there ever was a desktop application. I assumed it’s a website. Never used that garbage, never will.
- Comment on Google is killing off the messaging service inside Google Maps 8 months ago:
I used this a lot to check in with businesses whether they accept credit cards, which is a 50:50 in Europe and large parts of Asia.
- Comment on Amazon's Fallout TV Series Renewed For Season 2 10 months ago:
Problem on couch, not on TV.
- Comment on Amazon's Fallout TV Series Renewed For Season 2 10 months ago:
POCNOT, please. If you want to get the acronym right.
I still don’t agree, but that’s your call.
- Comment on Amazon's Fallout TV Series Renewed For Season 2 10 months ago:
It’s simple to follow, sure, but it really felt like gameplay quests being completed in whatever sequence rather than an actual story being told.
I know it’s based on a game and should resemble it as such, but if it’s not appealing to those who never played it, they are missing a huge part of the potential audience.
For instance I’ve also never played The Last of Us, and that series was absolutely brilliant.
And yes, with pointless I mean bad writing and extremely poor character development. In the end I liked none of them.
- Comment on Amazon's Fallout TV Series Renewed For Season 2 10 months ago:
No, I had zero expectations as I had never played the game and knew nothing about it other than what the name already implied.
If I feel like I’m not going to like something, I don’t waste my time confirming that.
- Comment on Amazon's Fallout TV Series Renewed For Season 2 10 months ago:
Just finished season 1 and I was seriously underwhelmed. It’s well done and all, but the story is extremely incoherent and ultimately pointless.
- Comment on Tiny Tires picks up the legacy of the classic Micro Machines racing series 10 months ago:
Oh god yes, that game was amazing. Still running in DOS if I’m not mistaken. Used to play it when I was 8 or something, and you could actually play it in split screen mode on one computer.
- Comment on Roku Issues a Mandatory Terms of Service Update That You Must Agree To or You Can't Use Your Roku | Cord Cutters News 11 months ago:
Not OP, but a bluetooth mouse is an excellent remote control :-)
- Comment on The case for 4K Blu-ray in a world of streaming 11 months ago:
Takes away a ton of space, compared to a bunch of SSD or HDDs. I’ve got 8000+ movies in full HD and above contained in the same space maybe 30 DVD/bluray cases would occupy.
- Comment on What happens when you try to buy a $1M domain? 1 year ago:
Yeah, actually they do. I’ve been working for a wealth management bank in Luxembourg for several years, and we do have unlimited credit cards. Technically they have a 999,999,999 EUR limit since there needs to be something, but good luck spending this much anyway.
Also, credit card fees outside of the US are rather tame in comparison, and usually even capped. I’ve seen someone buy a Bentley worth >1M with his Visa.
- Comment on How to get past theoretical knowledge? 1 year ago:
Hacking my local ISP, electricity provider, university and a bunch of companies. Back in the late 90’s, quite a few of those took little more than dissecting cgi scripts in public folders to gain ftp credentials, uploading a script to some autostart/cronjob folder and waiting for the next reboot, that inevitably came within 72h.
- Comment on My PDF reader REALLY HAD to add a permanent "AI assistant" button that floats on every single file i open 1 year ago:
I swear by SumatraPDF. The most lightweight reader I ever used. Opens in seconds, is tiny in size, comes with zero bloat.