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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: September 30th, 2023

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  • I was forced to bin my original C64, tape deck, disk drive, joysticks, a couple of printers (one was a daisy wheel lol), many many games and apps and my own projects etc. It still saddens me thinking about it.

    These stories rub a bit of salt in the wound but it’s pretty cool that there’s still interest in them. They were a fantastic thing - easy to use for the basics, powerful enough that once you moved past those basics (and BASIC itself) it still had plenty to offer. And crucially, in a modern context, it’s not so advanced that it leaves nothing for you to do - you still need to figure things out for yourself, and there’s a lot of satisfaction in figuring out a hack to make it do something. So good.

    I’m tempted to get one but that’s a rabbit hole I’m not sure I have the time for these days!



  • I’m not an expert but have worked in these kinds of environments on and off over the years.

    It’s hard to offer broad advice as every encounter is different. Your workplace might offer training though to give you some tools, which will likely also teach you the things not to say (eg promising a result, stoking the fire, preaching, etc).

    Calming someone down isn’t always the goal either, sometimes people just need to process difficult information or grieve for the loss of a loved one. All you can do in this situation is to offer a safe place to do that, and maybe a sympathetic ear if they need to talk, and perhaps to validate their feelings. Otherwise just being present is often enough, as is knowing when to give someone space.





  • By all means call out if I’ve misunderstood, but the tracking vulnerability isn’t that BLE (by design) makes devices visible to everyone within range, it’s that by binding an unclaimed device to an account you gain the ability to look up that device via Google’s service, rather than needing to be nearby - you can simply ask Google to call on its global network to find “your” device. In other words, there’s nothing stopping me from setting an alert when a given BT device is nearby, that’s spot on, but I can’t fire up Google to look up that device when I’m not nearby, or look up its location history.

    And yes needing to have never been connected to an Android device definitely reduces the victim pool, but (and to address the other reply) I’m guessing it’d mean devices that have only ever been connected to iOS, Linux, Windows etc aren’t “claimed” and can still be enrolled by the attacker. It’s not about default creds, only having used devices that don’t enrol with Google is enough, as it leaves the device available to claim.

    3.5mm ftw and all that, but I doubt all the parents of teenagers with potentially vulnerable devices will have much luck convincing their kids to switch!






  • I’m guessing that would be if every muscle was being used for propulsion at any given time. You’d need to allow for heart and lungs, as well as face, neck, tail muscles that don’t contribute to power output, plus legs don’t provide continuous power as they need to make a return trip.

    If we really wanted to optimise a dog for power:weight there are quite a few systems we could do away with. But it would likely result in a less floofy doggo, so it’s obviously not an option.



  • In two different companies I’ve seen people refer to “the database” when they actually mean a spreadsheet. That’s not just a terminology mixup, these things were super complex, with pseudo-relational tables, lookups, links to other files etc. The sort of thing that should be in an actual database, that has less chance of breaking in obscure ways when someone inserts a row or types a value over a formula. It was actually pretty impressive, in an “impending doom at any moment” kind of way.

    Also had one where there was a spreadsheet of everyone in the business top to bottom, shared by HR and IT. Both groups needed a list of staff, so why not just keep one, right? This thing had personal details like home address and medical conditions, plus things like salary (inc garnishments), performance management notes etc, as well as of course their username and password (which was assigned to them and they couldn’t change) and security questions and answers. It didn’t even have a password on the file. I noped tf out of that place as quickly as I could, but for reasons even worse than that stupid spreadsheet.


  • Regardless of your stance on the name change, doesn’t the executive order (and subsequent updating of the names register or whatever it’s called) make it official? In which case the maps are just being updated to reflect it.

    Afaik they’re not changing it anywhere outside the US as (so far…) that’s the only place it’s been changed, so it’s not like they’re pushing that name in places where it’s not official.

    It’s also not unheard of to have map details that vary depending on where you are, to align with the official stance of wherever the map is being viewed from. Ukraine, bits of the India/Pakistan border, IIRC some islands off Japan disputed by China, etc.

    Not saying the name change isn’t stupid and not suggesting at all that the companies in question aren’t scum, but getting angry at the map maintainers for this change seems pointless. What did you expect them to do?

    Am I missing something?