sylver_dragon @ sylver_dragon @lemmy.world

Posts

4

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965

Joined

2 yr. ago

Not a lot, but several haven't been mentioned yet:

• Darknet Diaries
• SANS ISC StormCast
• 538 Politics
• Lawfare
• Rational Security
• Perun - Technically a Youtube series, but there is a podcast feed for the audio

Food tracks the general inflation closely

That's a fine bit of bit circular logic there. The price of food is used in the BLS's basket of goods for calculating the Consumer Price Index (CPI). So yes, the goods used to track inflation do, in fact, track with inflation.

That said, the US economy (at a macro level) is doing rather well considering that we weathered a global pandemic, we have a war on in Europe involving one of the world's major oil and gas suppliers and inflation has been stubbornly high. Yet somehow, wages are up and unemployment is at historic lows. Seriously, if the administration could actually do something about the housing situation and prices rising, this election would look a lot more like 2008 than 2016. But unfortunately, people vote based on how they feel, not on an analysis of macro-economics. So long as people fell like the gains they have made are being squeezed back out of them via rising prices, the incumbent president is in trouble. When you get down to it, it's still the economy, stupid.

"High Impact" like a body hitting the ground at the bottom of a cliff.

The polls are actually pretty good. There are two problems:

1. The US is very closely divided when it comes to the Presidential Election. In 2016 the popular vote split was about 2%. In 2020 it was about 4.5%. And most of the polling was right in that range.
2. People are shit at statistics. Most of the polls will be published with an error margin of 5% or so. For situations where on candidate is ahead 10-20%, this still puts that candidate winning by a comfortable margin. When the poll is showing a race with one person ahead by 2%, that means the poll is also showing that the other candidate winning is well within the expected result.

And unfortunately, people like clean story-lines and news organizations are more than happy to supply them. Journalists looked at the polls in 2016 and confidently proclaimed that Clinton was leading. The reality was that she had a slight lead and Trump winning was well within the normal margin of error. This turned into a rather famous spat on twitter.

Sadly, we've been stuck in that situation ever since. In 2020, Biden was a slight favorite, but Trump winning was within the margin of error. Right now, polls show a dead heat and either candidate winning would not be a surprise, if the election were held today. One upshot in this, is that pools this early are not very predictive of the final outcome. They shouldn't be ignored, but that also shouldn't be taken as gospel.

So ya, the polls are fine and do a good job of reflecting the actual results of the elections. The problem is idiots that only look at the top-line outcome and don't look at the actual numbers and see that they are actually saying "it's close and could go either way."

Amen.
I was one day a week in the office during the pandemic. We had assets which required a physical presence, but with a rotating shift of 1-2 people in the office each day, we could keep the required coverage. Then my workplace started bringing us back to the office in 2022. It started with 3 days a week and we started hearing rumors of a full return to office. It was well know that upper management was hostile to remote work. So, I flipped my LinkedIn profile to "looking" (or whatever the setting was called, it's been a while). And I started both actively applying and responding to recruiters. I eventually got a message from a reciter who led with "REMOTE WORK OPPORTUNITY", yes the message started in ALL CAPS, though the rest was normal and hit all the points I was interested in. I figured, what the hell, can't hurt to talk. That was just shy of two years ago, I have been into an office since late 2022. It's going to have to be a hell of a bad situation for me to deal with commuting again.

1. Pay attention to the hand she gave me to put the ring on. Oh well, not sure anyone noticed.
2. Tapped the keg much earlier in the day for the reception. I had no idea that it needed time to settle.
3. Make sure we had someone to get the snacks out while we were taking pictures. Seriously, have one designated person, who is not in the wedding party, handle stuff like that.
4. Find a different caterer. While the food was pretty good, they missed the vegan plate for my brother-in-law, despite us being really,, really certain it was covered. Drinks and water were a disaster. I really think we could have just brought in a fuck-ton of tacos, sodas and water and we'd have been good enough.
5. Make damned sure the jeweler's idea of the ring is clearly the same as yours. We had a custom ring made for my wife and I think the jeweler failed to take good notes and the result was bad, very, very bad. We had the ring re-made, after it was presented and before the wedding. Her ring was very nice for the wedding.

But, not a lot. Sure, the year or so before the wedding was stressful. We did the planning ourselves, put together complex invitations, "save the date" fridge magnets and all the programs. But, because we did give ourselves a year to get it sorted, we had the time to find what we wanted. We had also been living together for a couple years by the time we got married. So, it was more a "ya, we should probably finally do this" than any sort of pressure to "start our life together".

What did I miss?

Anything where the nut will regularly be in a counter-clockwise rotation. Ideally you want the nut spinning toward tightening, so that it doesn't back out over time. So, for some application "left-handed" threads make more sense.

Interesting, thank you for the insightful reply.

What they think/fear privately doesn't matter, Evangelical Christianity is a performative religion. The entire goal is to appear to be the most pious prig on the block. What you get up to, behind closed doors, doesn't matter, unless you get caught. And no one believes that they will get caught. So, the religion devolves into a game of "one-ups-man-ship". With each one trying to prove how "holy" they are by claiming ever higher standards of "holy", while basically none of them live up to the ideal they are putting forth. When a member's discretions get exposed, they then have to engage in a ritual "purification", claiming how bad they were, that they have learned the error of their ways and now they have found God again (he got lost behind the dryer with the socks). And all will be forgiven, so long as you do not question the delusion religion.

It’s only a matter of time until one has its user database hacked.

Not exactly porn, but the Ashley Madison data breach was in the same zip code. It caused a lot of embarrassment for a lot of people. But, self righteous prudes will be self righteous prudes, not matter what they are trying to limit/ban.

I'm sorry I don't have a good suggestion. Just please, don't use BetterHelp. They have already been caught selling health data to advertisers.

But do they have colorful RGB LEDs and shit management software?

No wait, don't answer that, I'm afraid I already know the answer.

There was a really good novel, On the Beach which did a very good job of almost that exact plot.

Unfortunately, yes. There have been a lot of efforts to shift the energy mix in the EU away from Russian oil and natural gas. But, the effort has been slow and has meant rising costs. Also, by removing Russian production from the supply side, prices will invariably increase. Ukraine does have to balance the damage that can do to foreign support, against their war aims. Personally, I think it's pretty selfish of the EU and US to ask Ukraine not to strike those resources. It's essentially the US/EU saying, "more of your people need to die, so we can save money." It's a really crappy thing to ask.

So, what does a publisher do, anyway? Are they just glorified, outsourced marketing? Do they deal with licensing on the consoles? What's stopping the developer from "publishing" by just putting the game out on Steam or GOG?

War is logistics. If the Russian war machine can be starved of fuel and money, the machine will grind to a halt. It's just a question of, can Ukraine cause enough damage to Russia's oil infrastructure fast enough to survive the advantages Russia has in manpower and equipment?

I mean, the US could do that, but it's kinda pointless. Ukraine would just be buying them with money that the US Government gave them in the aid package. It would mean the US Treasury moving money from the "aid going to Ukraine" column to the "US DoD budget" column. Sure, some of the aid is structured as loans. However, the President has the power to forgive half of those loans by the end of the year and the next President will have the power to forgive the rest of those loans in 2026. Unless the war suddenly ends and Ukraine suddenly finds a shit-ton of money somewhere, those loans are just going to be forgiven. As there is just no way they will ever be paid back.

I got my mile down to 23 min and I’m proud of the improvement from where I was

And that really is great for you. I wish you all the best in seeking to better yourself.
But, a 15 minute mile is a fast walking pace. And when talking about police officers, I'd expect a bit more fitness than "I don't die of a heart attack when faced with a flight of stairs". Sure, I recognize that they are more likely to use a radio to outrun a suspect (and that's how it should work); but, they are also somewhat likely to face situations where physical exertion is expected.

This might partly be because 18-24 year olds have a history of poor turn-out at the polls in general. For 2020 (The last Presidential Election and a year of historically high turnout), The US Census Bureau has the 18-24 age range of US Citizens voting at a rate of 51.4% (Source, see Table 1, Row 9, Column L). The next lowest is 25-34 year olds at 60.3%. And it just goes up from there.

It's a bit of a self-feeding cycle. Young people don't vote, so politicians don't care about them. Politicians don't care about young voters, so young people don't show up at the polls. Sure, if some magical politician could figure out how to get young people to the polls, there's a lot of untapped potential. But, in reality, that's balanced against the potential of tuning out older voters, who show up at the polls regularly. Politicians and activists have been doing everything they can to get young people to show up at the polls, since I was young enough to be the target demographic. That was decades ago, and it hasn't helped much.

Just had to call this one out:

... Maria “Maki” Haberfeld, chair of the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said. “It’s not about tattoos or running a mile in 15 minutes. ...”

If it takes you 15 minutes to "run" a mile, you aren't actually running.