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  • 8 Posts
  • 647 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: March 14th, 2023

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  • It would be just the same with Jill Stein or Chase Oliver as leader, Wall Street will benefit. There is obviously outsized influence of rich people in government, but big money makes money with money, doesn’t matter what the politics are.

    It’s more important that A. The US doesn’t put a leader who has real plans to become dictator and the Project2025 yes-men lined up behind it, and B. The US chooses a leader who better represents the national interests of common people, which will not happen if too many would-be Harris voters choose 3rd party or abstains.


  • If you have gas motor equipment in your garage (mower, snowplow, leafblower, boat), you should try to winterize it with specific stabilizers, otherwise you will have a hard time starting it in the spring.

    Wear layers, layers, layers and a proper winter jacket on top. Winter mittens or gloves, a hat, scarf, neck warmer, balaclava or face covering, ear muffs, snow pants, could all be stuff you need depending on how far north you go and how thick the snow piles up. Almost universally in cold climates you will need proper boots.

    Similar to Humidex, there’s a value called wind chill, because the layer of heat you radiate gets blown away making you feel colder. Pay attention to that, and remember that hands and ears left exposed will get frostbite after some time. You can find charts online (Celsius and Fahrenheit).

    Watch for black ice on roads and sidewalks, it looks just “wet” but it is very slippery ice. Use road salt or other de-icing compounds on your walkways and driveways so that you and others don’t slide around or fall.

    A bunch of driving stuff:

    Do NOT go posted speed on roads that aren’t fully cleared. In reduced visibility conditions like blizzards you might have to go half the usual freeway speed or less, with flashers on and follow the car in front. It’s best to avoid driving in snowstorms.

    Winter tires may be required in some areas, but they are strongly recommended even if not. Leave a safety kit and brush in the car, because in remote areas it may be an entire day before a tow can even get to you. Have blankets in the car in winter.

    Test recovery out of a slide in a safe place so you know what to do in a pinch. You don’t have to go too fast, just somewhere that doesn’t get cleared well with no obstacles to crash into like a rarely cleared parking lot. Two modes are: brake fail going straight (with my old car you needed to be light but steady on the brakes for best effectiveness), and a turn going wider than you expected. The car will not respond to sudden maneuvers like you would expect on a clear surface.





  • One time I played a Mario Party 8 minigame against my family, a rather simple game where you shoot 5 cards and you get to either add to or multiply your score.

    I’d very quickly figured out that there’s a maximum score and the two ways to obtain them. We practiced once and I intentionally shot whatever cards as a misdirection while the others were trying to figure out a good combination. My advantage was specifically not giving out any hints and trying to quickly going from practice to the real game with only 30 seconds to think.

    I won that, there was only a little grief given to me about it, but I felt so bad. It was then that I realized I didn’t like winning by intentionally withholding or giving bad advice. From then on I revealed these sorts of tricks, if only myself knowing about them would be an unfair advantage.




  • The bad firms are going to lay off most or all of their juniors, hire AI leash-holders or something and do fine to code everything their hearts dream of, but at some point (5-10 years my estimate) enough of the seniors have left and shit hits the fan in a way where AI models can’t save the company from its own creations.

    The thing that ChatGPT doesn’t have (at least right now) is the ability to tell management to piss off. I assure everyone that this is what the recipe for disaster for many firms will be, if any.

    The smarter firms will have a keep a sizable contingent of juniors, who will work with help from LLMs, but have seniors teach them to have a bullshit detector in their industry.

    Or, we start up all the coal power plants to keep the ever-hungry AI chatbots alive so humanity is fucked in the end anyway.




  • I am very shitty on security (I would not write this reply on a post on the cybersecurity community), and I resisted MFA for several years as being too annoying having to login to mail/SMS. After finding open source apps supporting TOTP, I feel better about it and I manually do the syncing by just transferring the secrets between my devices offline.

    Passkeys are another foreign thing that I think I will get used to eventually, but for now there are too many holes in support, too much vendor lock-in (which was my main distaste for MFA, I didn’t want MS or Google Authenticator), and cumbersome (when email and SMS were the only options for MFA, difficulty of portability for passkeys).









  • The latest: A couple comments about the US VP Debate I had started but decided against. Often times I realize that I’m angry and upset at something I read, but I should step back and breathe before posting a rant and opt instead for something more level-headed.

    In the past year: Some replies that I write sound like just backtalk so I don’t post those when they don’t meaningfully advance the discussion. Some discussion topics like about autism, LBGTQ, gender equality, wars, religion, and race issues I want to reply to, to help spur and advance awareness and discussion, but sometimes I feel it’s not my place. I want to leave it for people with more direct experience to provide better answers. Oh and one other reason: sometimes I start writing but delete too topic- or location-specific answers that could doxx myself. I don’t mind people knowing what city I live in or have been in but any more granular than that you will have to know me better personally.