View Topic

I'm not sure about that one...someone disliked that post, but the actual karma record is no longer in the database. It could have been part of previous karma abuse sweep...there were several when it came to people disliking Gov's posts inappropriately. Nonetheless I've removed the actual dislike from the post and that seems to have fixed it.

That's what it is.  I noticed when I was going through old topics yesterday that there were a lot of those, especially around the election topics.  So my guess was that it's a remnant of when we had the dislike feature.  But since it was removed, the actual dislike would go away as well.  I just find it amusing that it leaves behind a "0 person likes this post" thing.

I believe I commented out the code that displays dislikes on posts, but that may have led the script to assume they were likes when they really weren't...I'd have to look into it.

Would the script originally dislikes x likes and x dislikes or similar? Thus it's technically outputting an expected output

About this whole deal with the like duplication, I would have had to use the proxy service before I even registered, and that was also two minutes behind when I first viewed something on this website. It's a very elaborate method that I wouldn't know how to do.

But the reason I came back here is because I remembered something. I remembered that when I was on a zetaboards forum, fake guests would view every new topic or topic that I started to make, but didn't, and also view something else random to make the guests not suspicious (and I'm 100% certain these were fake guests because I was on a forum with 0 possibility of anyone else getting to, and 16 guests were on it). They weren't the same 150.70.*.* IP guests, they were completely different and didn't all start the same. They came immediately after I created a topic or started to create a topic before stopping. I don't know if these are related to the like duplication, and that would be worrying to me if they were. These fake guests seem like a weird thing for zetaboards to purposely have, but it seems to be the only thing that makes sense. Does anyone think these are related?

Basically, forums hate me

I've been working in the Ops Room for my unit recently, basically Dispatch and initial investigations if you're wondering, and the 3 golden rules of Ops Room are quite relevant here, in my opinion.

Rule 1, treat every case as the absolute minimum, least serious version of that case and only escalate to more serious and elaborate versions if the evidence takes you there. Basically, if it's a case of a lost wallet treat it as a lost wallet. Don't start imagining things and treating it like a theft so as to steal the dude's identity unless the evidence takes you there. Basically follow the evidence only.

Rule 2, do not expect others to do extra work for you if you are not doing anything or intend to do nothing. Basically don't give work to others when you don't intend to do the work. Especially when there's no reason to. I'm not saying that's what you intended, in fact I sincerely doubt that's what you intended but it certainly sounded that way. You basically asked Wintermoot to spend hours of his own time to investigate a very tedious and incredibly pointless technical aspect despite the very clear evidence, which implies that you distrust the evidence or the evidence provider, solely to satisfy your own curiosity. It may not be what you intended, in fact, having known you a while I sincerely doubt that's what you intended, but that's how it came off as.

Third rule has to do with knocking tables and has nothing to do with this so I'll skip it.

Mathy, at this point it's unlikely that you'll get anyone to believe that you're innocent and since it's a pretty pointless affair I'd just plead no contest if I we're you.

Rule 2, do not expect others to do extra work for you if you are not doing anything or intend to do nothing. Basically don't give work to others when you don't intend to do the work. Especially when there's no reason to. I'm not saying that's what you intended, in fact I sincerely doubt that's what you intended but it certainly sounded that way. You basically asked Wintermoot to spend hours of his own time to investigate a very tedious and incredibly pointless technical aspect despite the very clear evidence, which implies that you distrust the evidence or the evidence provider, solely to satisfy your own curiosity. It may not be what you intended, in fact, having know you a while I sincerely doubt that's what you intended, but that's how it came off as.

That wasn't me who asked Wintermoot to look at the logs; I never even suggested for him to do anything :|

And I said the reason I came back here was because I was curious about the zetaboards thing.

I know, it wasnt you that that particular comment was about.

And again, If I were you, I'd just plead no contest.

@Mathyland has brought new data to my attention regarding this incident which is relevant enough for me to make a note of here.

Apparently Mathyland uses software called Trend Micro, which is an anti-virus/anti-malware tool. Apparently with certain settings of this software on, it sends back the webpages that its users access to their servers, and then attempts to access them themselves through a botnet, apparently to determine if they're legit or not. Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable at all with a security tool that essentially spies and follows along on the websites I go to, but this behaviour has been reported in enough places that I believe it's legit, and absolves Mathyland of malicious intent at least.

More information:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/trendmicro-servers-from-japan-accessing-webservers.331930/
https://www.belle-aurore.com/mike/2012/01/trend-micros-botnet-and-how-to-ban-it/

@Mathyland has brought new data to my attention regarding this incident which is relevant enough for me to make a note of here.

Apparently Mathyland uses software called Trend Micro, which is an anti-virus/anti-malware tool. Apparently with certain settings of this software on, it sends back the webpages that its users access to their servers, and then attempts to access them themselves through a botnet, apparently to determine if they're legit or not. Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable at all with a security tool that essentially spies and follows along on the websites I go to, but this behaviour has been reported in enough places that I believe it's legit, and absolves Mathyland of malicious intent at least.

More information:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/trendmicro-servers-from-japan-accessing-webservers.331930/
https://www.belle-aurore.com/mike/2012/01/trend-micros-botnet-and-how-to-ban-it/

Now that I know it does that, I might have to reconsider choosing Trend Micro...

Edit: thanks for looking into the evidence I brought up