I got an email allegedly from Pemmi-Con, where I've asked to be a
program participant, inviting me to fill out a form. Some things about
it make me suspicious, though, and I'd like to find out whether it's a
legitimate site.

The "From" address is no-reply@grenadine.co . Grenadine.co is registered
in Colombia, as the domain name indicates. A whois check tells me the
registrant's name and address are "redacted for privacy." Web searches
on "what is grenadine.co" and "is grenadine.co legitimate" tell me a lot
about drinks but not much about the domain.

The default behavior by most people is to open any link and download any
app they're asked to. This is a big part of why data breaches are
routine. I need more reassurance before giving this site any information.

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

On Sat, 27 May 2023 06:59:28 -0400, Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:
> I got an email allegedly from Pemmi-Con, where I've asked to be a
> program participant, inviting me to fill out a form. Some things about
> it make me suspicious, though, and I'd like to find out whether it's a
> legitimate site.
>
> The "From" address is no-reply@grenadine.co . Grenadine.co is registered
> in Colombia, as the domain name indicates. A whois check tells me the
> registrant's name and address are "redacted for privacy." Web searches
> on "what is grenadine.co" and "is grenadine.co legitimate" tell me a lot
> about drinks but not much about the domain.
>
> The default behavior by most people is to open any link and download any
> app they're asked to. This is a big part of why data breaches are
> routine. I need more reassurance before giving this site any information.

Grenadine is used by a number of cons for their online programme (not
least a few Worldcons - I think it started with Renovation in 2011 and
then turned into a commercial product). Not sure why they have a .co
URL but it is valid. Quite a number of companies are using .co addresses
(good business for Colombia I guess) for some reason.

Grenadine is a Canadian company based in Montreal.

--
Andy Leighton => andyl@azaal.plus.com
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
- Douglas Adams

Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:
> The "From" address is no-reply@grenadine.co . Grenadine.co is
> registered in Colombia, as the domain name indicates. A whois
> check tells me the registrant's name and address are "redacted
> for privacy." Web searches on "what is grenadine.co" and "is
> grenadine.co legitimate" tell me a lot about drinks but not much
> about the domain.

Like Andy, I've seen other cons use it.

Lots of third-world countries have sold the rights to use their
country code to businesses elsewhere in the world, confusingly enough.
And not just on the Internet. Lots of ships that have never sailed
anywhere near Central America fly the Panamanian flag.

I'm not thrilled by all the fannish outsourcing. What next, hire a
company to organize and run the con itself, rather than relying on
voluneers? I've heard claims that a number of cons, including the
latest two Worldcons, used MailChimp to send mass emails to all their
members. I wouldn't know, even though I was a member of both cons,
as I of course have long since had MailChimp blocked as a spam site.
Even if I didn't, if I start to read an email and the first thing
I see is an impenetrable mess of angle brackets, ampersands, and
JavaScript code, I don't waste my time trying to make sense of it.

> The default behavior by most people is to open any link and download
> any app they're asked to . This is a big part of why data breaches
> are routine.

ObSF: I recently read a trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky (who, despite
his name, is British, not Russian): _Children of Time_, _Children of
Ruin_, and _Children of Memory_. (And I'm currently re-reading the
last one, in reaction to its twist ending.) The back story of the
trilogy is that there was a terrible war on Earth, as a part of which
a doomsday computer virus was broadcast into space, which caused
all computers to unrecoverably crash, killing everyone in the space
colonies in our solar system, and almost everyone in the handful of
interstellar terraforming expeditions.

My first thought was that no sane designer would set up computers to
automatically run whatever crap is sent to them. My second thought
was that present-day computer designers aren't sane.

My biggest computer-related fear isn't that AI will take over the
world. It's that someone will turn one of my computers into a child
porn web server without my noticing, resulting in my getting a prison
sentence of life without the possibility of parole. This has already
happened to hundreds of people. And some who were falsely accused of
this pled guilty in return for a sentence of only a few years followed
by life on the sex offender list.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

On Sat, 27 May 2023 16:36:32 -0000 (UTC), "Keith F. Lynch"
<kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

> My first thought was that no sane designer would set up computers to
> automatically run whatever crap is sent to them. My second thought
> was that present-day computer designers aren't sane.

The "I Robot" movie put a massive strain on my W.S.O.D. -- who would
allow radom changes to his household robots?

A few days ago I noticed a dialog box on my spouse's computer. It
said that Windows would install an update at 5:37 unless I clicked
"Install it now" or "Install it later". "Don't install it" was not
an option.

I noticed the box because I wanted to use his computer to enter
receipts into Quicken. A recent update to Quicken has scrambled all
our categories. "Groceries" are now a subset of "Dining", "Medical"
was a sub-category of "Fitness", prescription medications were missing
entirely, and there is a new top-level category called "Shopping".

Shopping? I bought a half-dozen shopping bags at two dollars each
about thirty years ago, and despite being washed with hot water and
bleach, they are just now showing signs of wear. Even if I buy more,
at the much higher prices unwashable bags are going for today, "Misc."
or "Household" will cover it nicely. What in expletive-deleted am I
supposed to file under "shopping"?

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at centurylink dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

Joy Beeson <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
> "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>> My first thought was that no sane designer would set up computers
>> to automatically run whatever crap is sent to them. My second
>> thought was that present-day computer designers aren't sane.

> The "I Robot" movie put a massive strain on my W.S.O.D. -- who would
> allow radom changes to his household robots?

Presumably the owners aren't given a choice. Indeed, the owners
aren't really the owners, but are just the possessors. That seems to
be the sales model for more and more gadgets.

I wish more people pushed back against that trend. I recently read
that someone bought an expensive HP printer. When he discovered that
it would refuse to work unless given unlimited uncontrolled access to
the Internet, he took it back, got a full refund, and vowed to never
again buy an HP product. Good for him!

There is some argument for this for products such as autonomous robots
and self-driving cars. A programmer or tinkerer who doesn't know what
he's doing could cause great risk to the general public.

I have less sympathy for DVD players that won't let me skip copyright
warnings, disclaimers, previews, and other crap. It's my player and
my DVDs, so I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with them,
other than making and selling unauthorized copies.

> A few days ago I noticed a dialog box on my spouse's computer. It
> said that Windows would install an update at 5:37 unless I clicked
> "Install it now" or "Install it later". "Don't install it" was not
> an option.

I am dismayed by how often my two Ubuntu laptops want to install
urgent security updates. They're far too large and far too frequent
for me to make any attempt to try to figure out what they're doing.
It's like being given a new thousand-page contract of dense legalese
to sign every week.

Does anyone know of a more reliable OS? After the 20th time, I have
very little faith that they finally got it right.

I'm glad I'm not one of Ubuntu's authors. The first time I was
responsible for releasing software with a security flaw, I'd be
extremely embarrassed. The second time I'd decide I was in the
wrong line of work.

> I noticed the box because I wanted to use his computer to enter
> receipts into Quicken. A recent update to Quicken has scrambled all
> our categories. "Groceries" are now a subset of "Dining", "Medical"
> was a sub-category of "Fitness", prescription medications were
> missing entirely, and there is a new top-level category called
> "Shopping".

I insist on keeping all my data under my full control, in categories
and formats of my choosing. And in multiple offsite copies, so no
possible malware, security flaw, revoked DRM, software update or
expiration, or EMP blast could erase all copies.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.