• 0 Posts
  • 457 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

help-circle
  • This is so pathetic and stupid.

    This isn’t aimed at Russia or China, whom the article calls out by name.
    This is a dick measuring contest with Iran and North Korea.

    I mean - he made the announcement in South Korea.

    Diplomatically, Trump (well, his administration) has stated to learn that befriending and allowing tinpot dictators to humiliate the U.S. is non-viable. So they’ve moved to cold-war era tactics of arms races and implied threats of nuclear holocaust.
    They, of course, are focusing on smaller nations that while powerful in their own right, aren’t actual threats to the U.S. global hegemony. Not that I support continued U.S. dominance on the world stage, but it’s a weird priority.
    Maybe by the end of the admin, they’ll be caught up to Clinton, who realized the best way to apply pressure was economically and via international partnerships — assuming the U.S. has an economy and international partnerships to leverage by then.




  • A few years ago I noticed an annoyance with a soundbar I had. After allowing it onto my WiFi network so we could stream music to it, it still broadcast the setup WiFi network.

    While dorking around one day, I ran a port scan on my network and the soundbar reported port 22 (ssh) was open. I was able to log in as root and no password.
    After a moment of “huh, that’s terrible security.” I connected to the (publicly open) setup network, ssh’d in, and copied the wpa_supplicant.conf file from the device to verify it had my WiFi info available to anyone with at least my mediocre skill level. I then factory reset the device, never to entrust it with any credentials again.



  • And it’s an act of constant, willful effort by yourself and your community.

    One neighbor is a rental, they are a large immigrant family and are barely getting along. Property owner lives out of country. Another neighbor thought it would be a fun idea to feed neighborhood stray cats. They wound up creating a very healthy breeding family of raccoons out the run-down garage of the rental. For years their offspring have wreaked havoc in our neighborhood. Every fall I’ve had to call a pest control company to trap the tiny raccoons that are small enough to climb downspouts (the big ones aren’t) and destroy the siding and soffits of my neighbors houses. The cat food guy moved away, I figured out how to occlude the raccoons from my downspouts with ample and unsightly flashing, and along with other neighbors, have built or repaired fencing in in our backyards (mostly because of pets and trespassing neighborhood kids, honestly).
    It seems like the raccoon misadventure has finally concluded. I’m now stuck with damaged soffits that squirrels have moved into (on account of a looming walnut tree that lives in a neighbors yard and is so large it overhangs my roof), and a repair estimate that was $5k a year ago, when I had the garage roof redone but wasn’t sure I’d gotten the raccoon problem licked, so I didn’t want to proceed with those repairs. Who knows what it’ll be now. … yay.



  • His detractors don’t get it. The doctors just called him back for his second once a year exam to admire him. Trump is in unbelievably good health.


    It’s Trump’s business acumen showing again. He gets his yearly checkups each calendar and each fiscal year.


    Saying this is a check up is a cover story. The doctors obviously called him in to consult on a particularly tough case.


    Yes, these are jokes. I hope president pudding brain remains cognizant enough to see all he built crumble, see his reputation ruined, his criminal enterprise dismantled, see his children jailed, to realize that he’s going to die before his political and criminal enemies, and that it all unfolds exceedingly quickly. Not all hopes are rational or possible, but I’ll accept any part of the above.


  • In my community, street racing seems to be the entertainment du jour for people with nothing better to do. I live about a half mile (800m) from a major roadway, and very often am jarred by the noise of people racing full tilt. There are a few people who even have modified their cars to be louder, and you can distinctly pick out the sound of their cars.
    I’m a light sleeper, and these people will wake me up in the middle of the night with their ‘shotgun exhausts,’ racing down the street. They kill about 5 people a year. Earlier this year, a street race injured over a dozen people, and killed a kid.

    As a result, the city has re-timed the lights so that when traveling at normal speeds, traffic is stopped at every stoplight, which means that most drivers now just wontonly disregard speed limits to beat the light timing and not get trapped in a frustrating cycle where a 2-mile drive down the road takes upwards of 15 minutes instead of 5. This just causes the street racers to race later, when they can run the lights and wake everyone up. Plus the increase in speeding by normal drivers decreases safety on the road.

    Both the direct and network effects of their stupidity are pretty significant.
    So - yes. Street racers are bad people. They are callous, immature, and both actively and passively endanger other motorists. Also, I’m fucking tired, and my dogs are traumatized.










  • Everything you said is valid, and in my experience mailings easily take a week to orchestrate.

    If you have to send out 5,000 letters, you have to first print 5k letters — assuming the local water department already has a robust template in place, and it doesn’t wind up dragged on by reviews and approvals.

    If they haven’t made generic prints to keep in stock, they have to have their own print facilities, or have an on-call printer capable of dropping all other work to deal with emergencies, or possibly taking on work outside of business hours.

    Even then, it’s a minimum turnaround of a day. The mail has to go into the system, be sorted and sent to local post offices, then given to mail carriers. The few times I did direct mail, they estimated a minimum of 3 days to deliver, even when dropping off first thing in the morning and the addressee was in the same city.

    Even if they managed to get next day delivery, they’d still have a 24h delay in which people could be drinking contaminated water.