Monument @ Monument @lemmy.sdf.org

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2 yr. ago

There’s one by …. Microsoft, I think?

It actually requests your password (vs email for HaveIBeenPwned) and checks it against rainbow tables. It doesn’t ask for other identifying information, so it’s okay, but feels super sketchy.

No clue!

The power almost never goes out at my house, which is nice, but there are 4 appliances with clocks in my kitchen. The microwave runs fast and is usually about 12 minutes ahead every time the clocks change, the stove is always rock solid, the coffee pot is never set (despite being the only appliance with a timer mode that would actually be useful), and the air fryer is only accurate during summer because I can’t remember how to set it (and I don’t care enough to fix it).

I tried not to, but it formed a mesh network with the neighbors toaster, and that connected to someone’s dishwasher the next street over, which connected to a washing machine down the block, and so on, until they found a self-aware microwave that just happens to be benevolent but sort of mischievous, and now whenever my toast is done, the Grindr chime sounds off and the toaster asks me to put it back in.

Currently stuck in the prison lair?

audience groans, throws vegetables. A copy of The Communist Manifesto sails through the air, just past my head

I think it was Leeja Miller who said Vance is a dark horse in that he can rationalize and communicate significantly better than Trump - making the insane sound reasonable.

One of my fears is that while I disagree with Trump on practically everything, a JD Vance replacement of him would lead to greater competence to execute and justify the same agenda.

Someone else pointed out it’s now not a bomber so much as a cargo hauler, but the phrase “Bomber of Theseus” came to mind and gave me a good chuckle.

I binged this with “ibm json evil”: https://gist.github.com/kemitchell/fdc179d60dc88f0c9b76e5d38fe47076

Well, shit. It’s been one of those kind of decades.

My organization seems to have already thrown in the AI towel, or at least are resorting to magical thinking about it

We’re highly integrated with Microsoft - Windows Login, Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and even a managed version of Edge as the org-wide ‘default’ browser that we’re encouraged to sign into with our organizational credentials to sync account information, etc. Our AI policy is basically “You can use any Microsoft AI feature your account can access.”
They can try to block whatever sites they want with the firewall, but once you let a user get comfortable with the idea of allowing systems to exfiltrate data, you aren’t going to also make them more discrete. They’re trusting that by throwing open the floodgates users will actually use Microsoft’s offerings instead of competing offerings — as if folks who sometimes still cannot tell the difference between a web browser and ‘the internet’ will know the difference. And they are also trusting that Microsoft is going to uphold our enterprise license agreement and their own security to keep that data within our own cloud instance.

Boy howdy, this will be interesting.

Showing my age, and I guess my privilege, but I don’t split expenses that way. (And on reflection, showing my trauma, too.)
As a principle, I try to keep my friendships generous and non-transactional.

If I owe someone and it’s not formal, I round up to the nearest whole amount and give or send them the money (besides, if a friend is counting out the change, they can keep my pennies). I usually tell friends they can cover me the next time — with no expectation that will occur. If a friend is adamant about giving me money, I’ll round down, usually to the nearest 5 or 10.

It would make me feel sort of weird to be given exact change from a friend. I think if a friend insisted on paying exact amounts, and then got it wrong in a way that underpaid me, I’d probably mentally flag it.
I suffered from a lot of manipulation and guilt around money when I was younger. It’s not that I’m super chill about money. I still notice the details, I just make a choice not to give value to money in the context of my relationships. (And forgetting ‘normal’ interactions is easy, because ADHD, so they just disappear into the void. Abnormal ones do get remembered.)
So the pattern would quickly stand out and the relationship would be handled appropriately. I’m not going to be party to micro-aggressions by a wannabe sociopath.

Mind you, this is either fake or that person is extremely dumb. I don’t think an actual sociopath would brag about it on social media - those sort of low-stakes ego games seem like something they’d keep in the dark. I just like exploring my feelings and positions in the form of long-winded comments that I sometimes actually post.

But now Reddit will know every subreddit you visit will be entirely your choice. Removing the random button improves the quality of user analytics.

It also allows for algorithms fined tuned to keep you engaged not to be waylaid by some random sub that gives you a “well, that’s enough internet for today” moment.
Purely speculation, but would not be surprised to learn that subs that don’t encourage more scrolling or interaction (subs that are reading heavy, or direct people off site and keep them there) are shown less frequently than others. A random button breathes life into subs like those, whereas an algorithm-driven feed would slowly strangle them.

I already can’t do half the things I’m trying to do on my network, now I gotta figure out DNS?!?

The cities also indexed their streets off of the same river, but at different places along the curving bank. As a result, traveling south in KCMO increments the street numbers, but in KCK, the numbers increment when you travel west.

For more hilarity, the cities to the south of KCK adopted the KCMO street number designations, so KCK is the odd city out.

My tin foil hat theory is that he was planning out another shooting and got interrupted.

Headline is a little silly. It didn’t ignite or stoke anything, really.

My issues with the health insurance system didn’t get worse as a result of this. I have just felt a sense of camaraderie that I haven’t felt in a long time. The discussion and shared consensus has been a good reminder that I’m not alone, and hopefully to other people, too, that they aren’t alone, either.

It’s not that folks suddenly realized they hated their health insurance. They’re just talking about the same thing for once, and generally have the same view about the industry. It’s a strange catalyst for discussion, but it is something universal that affects a lot of people in the U.S.

I would not have expected for a shooting to lead to that sort of unity, but I think it has. At least a little bit. My wife is on X and told me that even Ben Shapiro supporters were disagreeing with him when he said something political and divisive about the shooting. Just sort of shocking.

Do you remember those “That was Easy!” buttons that proliferated about … 20 years ago. (Yikes.)

In this flight of fancy, Biden has one of those placed on the Resolute desk and custom records audio for it, then goes on a wild spree of political edicts fulfilling everyone’s wildest dreams.

Forgiving all student loan debt. Done. Pardoning illegal immigrants. Done. Amnesty for everyone currently seeking asylum. Done. Full citizenship for DREAMers. Done. Removing the post office retirement Fund requirement. Done. Legalize Weed? Done. Nuke the whales? Believe it or not, done.
And after the scrawling of pen across paper has completed, the caps clicked safely back into place, another sound: cheap plastic clacking together, and Nixon’s disembodied voice emanating from the Easy Button’s tinny speaker “when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal!”

I have too many of each of those things, with more on the way. Literally, in the mail right now.

In the ultimate synthesis of things, I’m currently working on building a new bed frame/headboard. I’m building one that has flip down cushions at the headboard with storage behind them, and a shelf (or two) up top. It’ll have integrated sensors/buttons and lights for reading, viewing inside the storage area and adding mood lighting to the room. It’ll have a lot of available power inside the storage area, so we can keep our sex toys stored and charged there, and not in the bathroom where we have to wonder if we’ve hidden things appropriately before we have company, in totes (where they get forgotten) or like, on our bedside, where they wind up with dust or stolen by a pet that thinks it’s a chew toy. Oh, and it’ll have hard points, obviously.

This house used to be a duplex. It wasn’t built that way, and it’s not that way now, but there’s a patch of siding at the back of the house that’s the shape of a door. When I moved in, I had to pay the local utility company on two bills, because the electricity was being billed to my street address, and the water was billed to my street address, Fl 1. It was a huge pain in the rear, because the utility company just shrugged and said “Oh, you’re the landlord over both those units.” And set me up as a master account holder over them as if the floors of my house were rentals. (IT’s weird they saw that one that doesn’t get water, and one that doesn’t get electricity and just shrugged it off, but whatever.) I had to call the city to have them send a letter to the utility company to tell them that my house was a single family residence. They didn’t do anything, but I called a few months later to ask if they ever got the letter. They said they had, and about 9 more months after that, they started sending me a single bill. Mercifully. The utility company doesn’t bill on the same day each month. I don’t know what math they use, but it seems to shift. Maybe they bill every 4 weeks instead of every month, but as a landlord of the single family home that I solely inhabited, they enrolled me in paperless billing and didn’t send ‘the landlord’ any billing notifications, so paying the bill on time was contingent upon not just checking the site in accordance with the calendar I keep, but also randomly checking it, too, as the billing date moved around. Do you have any idea how hard that is for someone with ADHD?

Anyway - all that is to say this house is totally whack. The furnace is about 3x the size needed for the square footage, so the air coming out of the vents is like 20 degrees hotter than it should be, and the blower struggles to push the appropriate volume of air through the old, hodgepodge, and (in at least one case) improvised ductwork. Instead of cycling and like, circulating air properly, it just blasts the area around the vents with hot air, and leaves cold spots cold. The plus side is that our HVAC guy says he expects the heat exchanger to burn itself up any time now, and when that happens, I guess I’ll spend the money I’m saving up for a down payment on a new house to deal with it. Or take out a HELOC and hope that when the market turns we don’t lose that much equity. Then we’ll get a nice heat pump or something - you know, for the next person who lives here, because this house’s problems are many.
But for right now we’re just running the thing with the cheapest, crappiest air filters we can find so there isn’t much air impedance, and changing them often. Sometimes I feel like living here is like living on the Serenity.

My realtor really did me dirty with this one. I mean, I still bought in 2019 before the market went insane, but like, it was my first house, and I really needed him to do better.
Next time I house hunt, I have a plan. I already have topographic maps of the whole city saved on my computer to ensure I’m not buying a house at a low spot (water issues). The state government provides maps of noise and environmental pollution, so I won’t be dealing with train tracks I thought I wouldn’t hear, or a metal plating company 3/4 of a mile away that makes the neighborhood smell like hot metal sometimes. I also now have thermal imaging gear, boroscopes, all manner of outlet testing gear, and a ruthless determination to not have to worry about a house that clearly wants to fall down. I’m going to be an unholy terror of a traveling home inspection for any house we’re looking at next.

After having just deleted 3 paragraphs… uh. This one, I guess.

I just talk too much. Add too many details. And then realize that I am actually bored with what I’ve written, and it would be awful to subject others to that.

I could have a good ramble about just about anything. Just before this comment I wrote and deleted 3 paragraphs about what temperature I keep the house. Programmable thermostat. Different modes for different seasons. Special seasonal cycles for morning/evening. Old house, renovations done to it, and not a great HVAC system, so some choices made to work around that, etc. Just rambly stuff.