January 2022

January 19, 2022

The Airbus A380 – Bigger Must Not Have Been Better

I read in the news recently that Airbus officially ended production of its massive Airbus A380 wide body jet airliner with the delivery of its last aircraft to Emirates in December of 2021. It reminded me of when I posted in 2007 of my encounter with an A380 at work when it was first entering service. My Brush With a News Item Wed, 28 Nov 2007 [I talked to the Airbus Industries A380 today while at work as an air traffic controller. We don’t normally generate paper flight progress strips on aircraft anymore at high altitudes since URET was installed...

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January 17, 2022

OMG I’ve Been HACKED!! (Or Not)

I had to laugh when I got this email posted to the “postmaster@” address of this domain. For those unfamiliar, the “postmaster@<domain>” address is required by an Internet standards for SMTP mail domains. Every domain that supports the SMTP protocol for electronic mail is required by RFC 5321 and, as early as 1982, by RFC 822, to have the postmaster address. So the “postmaster@<domain>” is the email for the administrator of the domain. Note that the Postmaster (computing) Wikipedia entry also adds, “Since most domains have a postmaster address, it is commonly targeted by spamming operations.” As this is the...

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January 1, 2022

Looking for a New Shared Web Host and the SSL Trap

I use shared web hosting services for several of my personal websites. None of them get much traffic and they’re not critical (except maybe to me) so I can’t justify the cost of expensive web hosts for them. So I’m a budget hosting buyer. That said I’m always on the lookout for a good web hosting deal. Last year my domain hosting service, Namecheap, had a special on shared web hosting so I thought I’d give them a try as I’ve always been satisfied with the domain hosting services they provide. Last year their “Stellar Plus” plan was offered for...

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