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Punkie

@ punkwalrus @lemmy.world

Posts
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94
Joined
2 yr. ago

Linux nerd and consultant. Sci-fi, comedy, and podcast author. Former Katsucon president, former roller derby bouncer. http://punkwalrus.net/

  • Stupid meetings

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  • One of the things I have learned is that a lot of middle management don't have tangible roles, so they make up for this by recognition, which is usually "presence." So they have meetings to be seen, stay relevant, and look important. Like, how do you measure management as a product? It's a social game, primarily. I'm not saying all or any large percentage of management is like this, but there are a LOT.

    "What do you say you DO here, exactly...?" And they start to sweat.

    Edit: Clarifying I know there ARE effective ways for an organization to do this, but that doesn't mean they do or even know how :/

  • Feet are as expressive as the face. Moreso because they are uncorrupted by intelligence.

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  • When I was in theater camp as a pre-teen, one of our actors was a very enthusiastic foot guy. I had heard of foot fetishes, but never understood them. But this guy was like an overexcited fan boy of feet. My curiosity triggered this guy into a huge brain dump, and one of the things he went on about about how feet were the "true expression of a person's feelings." Feet turned towards you? They like you. One foot pointed away? They don't. He then showed me how girls' feet would match their mood, so no matter what parts they were rehearsing, he could tell their underlying mood: anxiety, sadness, anger, happiness, etc... I have no idea if he was right, but that was my first exposure to another person's fetish. I could only understand it abstractly, but I found it fascinating.

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    TIL ancient Romans used communal toilets—stone benches with keyhole-shaped holes—where people sat side by side without privacy, chatting while waste drained beneath them using flowing water.

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  • Thank you for this!

  • Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

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  • It's pretty scary: I am seeing it in the IT sector as well. It's not just knowledge; anyone can look up things, even Einstein did it. "I never memorize anything that I can look up," he said once, about the why he never memorized cosine tables and such. But it's basic logical flow of thought and problem solving. Like the skills behind the knowledge, that I see less and less of.

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    TIL ancient Romans used communal toilets—stone benches with keyhole-shaped holes—where people sat side by side without privacy, chatting while waste drained beneath them using flowing water.

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  • Source?

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    TIL ancient Romans used communal toilets—stone benches with keyhole-shaped holes—where people sat side by side without privacy, chatting while waste drained beneath them using flowing water.

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  • Also "without privacy" is also in question, because you could use cloth partitions hanging from a rod; something known to be used in stadiums to separate class.

  • Instead of Orange Man doing Tariffs would it not have been better for him to talk about shopping locally and so forth. And giving more tax breaks to companies that stay and sell in the US?

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  • I often think he's a second grader lying on his oral book report.

  • U.S. citizen says he and his wife detained without explanation after returning from Canada

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  • I have seen some rhetoric about this, like "a few bad apples," but here's the problem with this and a lot of enforcement jobs.

    • Polite and decent people, on average, dislike confrontation. Thus, are not particularly attracted to these types of jobs.
    • This leads to an uneven amount who are fine with confrontation or even like it. Some of these people are sociopaths and psychopaths.
    • People who are psychopaths are actually very attracted to position where they have power over people.
    • US Customs are not regulated under the same laws as police or military. They can do what they want, when they want, with little to no discretion.

    Are all US customs agents bad? No, of course not. But unchecked power is dangerous for anything. I can't tell you what percentage is or is not, because you can't measure a negative. But I see this in military, police, hired guards, and politics.

    Many years ago, they cavity searched an underage girl at my local airport (Dulles) as she returned with her family from a vacation in Jamaica. They separated her from her family, did not tell her family, and searched all her holes "for drugs." They defended their actions by saying, "if we told people we didn't cavity search babies, they'd hide drugs inside babies." Essentially admitting, with no shame, they'd cavity search an infant. All in the name of "stopping drugs." Oh and the girl? US citizen, but dark skinned. The mistake they made was her dad was a powerful attorney and went public.

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106hhrg66023/html/CHRG-106hhrg66023.htm

    https://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/circle/raceprofiling/stories.racial.profiling.html

  • A Palestinian activist expecting a US citizenship interview is arrested instead by ICE in Vermont

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  • And these are probably only the cases you're hearing about.

  • Why does it seem that "freedom" and "security" are antonyms?

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  • I was in a discussion the other day about this, and someone brought up the "freedom vs. security" as the kind of "trade" someone assumes if they would, with complete freedom, fuck up someone else because they had no restrictions. We were discussing how the reason most laws exist is because somebody fucked it up for someone else.

  • DOGE Now Has Access to the Top US Cybersecurity Agency

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  • Here's the thing: Trump may has said he allowed it via executive order, and whatever. But you come after data I was sworn to protect? Come here with a judge-vetted legal warrant and court order. Oh, you'll fire me? Then I did my job. I'll be arrested for doing the right thing, not cowardly giving in "because they might yell at me." Yeah, I did that once, and I got a big fat nothing out of it. I got out before the S&L crisis, but I saw it coming a mile away. I have no loyalty to some rando from South Africa. I have a loyalty and duty to my job and country and fellow citizens.

    My hope, and it's a thin hope, is that they really can't fucking do anything with the data because they don't understand it. Or lied they have it, and we let them believe this lie as part of the protection. They only have 200 copies of "WideWorldImporters Sample Database for SQL Server and Azure SQL Database" and think it's real. Or whatever. Unlikely, but I gotta have hope somewhere. Part of this is because I know how PII is stored, and it's not like one large file. It's multiple systems with "just in time" joins and a horrible complex mess that's a wonder it works at all. A bunch of 19 year olds and a rich liar are monkeys with baseball bats hitting a random laptop as a comparison. Millions are spent on contractors to work with it, and rarely does any single one person know how it ALL works. Just pieces of it. And some of it was in COBOL. What, one of those kids has a spare PDP/11 in their garage? But, maybe that's thinking too hopefully.

    Even if they suddenly stopped, it will take decades to undo the damage they have already done.

    Side note: "the launch codes" are not like, two hex keys to launch nuclear missiles. It's so much more complicated than that, that I used to fear in the 1980s that the Ruskies would bomb us flat before someone with the right laminated notebook was located. "What? The keys didn't work? Didn't anyone test if the keys fit? NO???" I'm not saying that's an exact case, but an example of shit I have run into. I have to also hope for sheer incompetence saving us, like out of the movie Brazil or something. God damn, this is a bleak dystopia.

  • DOGE Now Has Access to the Top US Cybersecurity Agency

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  • I had the same thing happen at a bank, my manager threatened to fire me if I didn't hand over my login and password. After being trained to never give anyone, even your boss, the login and password. And why? Because she was doing illegal things under the teller's logins. If she had gotten caught, I would be blamed. So I quit that job. And then the whole S&L scandal happened, and I was unsurprised. After that, I learned never to give anyone a login and password. I tell myself it's a test. I'll be fired for giving them the login and password. And if they fire me, well, get another job. I have skills to get another job these days.

    And yeah, "well, your director will just give it to them." That's on my director. I will at least lose my damn job without a guilty conscience. I know I did my part for the right reasons.

  • DOGE Now Has Access to the Top US Cybersecurity Agency

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  • This doesn't anger me as much at the people just letting this happen at this point. Those of us who have taken the DISA training about PII and such are told never to share this info. But someone is allowing it. I mean, maybe if they have a gun to your head or jailed your family, maybe, but who the fuck is rolling over and just going "okay?" If these fuckers can do it, this data was never safe.

  • Have any of you been memed about/turned into memes?

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  • A friend of mine started the anime meme "Is this a butterfly?" She's actually employed as a translator for anime, so it made sense.

  • How do I stop laughing at stupid shit all the time

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  • These are two types of cartoon sounds when a character snores.

    The "Inside you there are two wolves" is the name of a proverb which began being parodied towards the end of 2018 and through the beginning of 2019. In the original proverb, a grandfather says there are two wolves fighting inside him, an evil one and a good one. His grandson asks, "who will win?" The grandfather replies, "The one you feed." In parodies, the story is often simplified to "There are two wolves inside you. One is X. The other is X. You are X." The proverb's actual origins are murky. It has been attributed to Christian pastor Billy Graham in 1978, as well as the Cherokee Native American tribe.

  • The only downside to wearing crocs

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  • I bought a set without holes. Like, for professional kitchen workers or nurses when you don't want fluids getting on your foot.

  • I didn't know you were supposed to disable root user...

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  • Also does anyone still port knock these days?

    If they did, would we know?

  • I didn't know you were supposed to disable root user...

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  • Basic setup for me is scripted on a new system. In regards to ssh, I make sure:

    • Root account is disabled, sudo only
    • ssh only by keys
    • sshd blocks all users but a few, via AllowUsers
    • All 'default usernames' are removed, like ec2-user or ubuntu for AWS ec2 systems
    • The default ssh port moved if ssh has to be exposed to the Internet. No, this doesn't make it "more secure" but damn, it reduces the script denials in my system logs, fight me.
    • Services are only allowed connections by an allow list of IPs or subnets. Internal, when possible.

    My systems are not "unhackable" but not low-hanging fruit, either. I assume everything I have out there can be hacked by someone SUPER determined, and have a vector of protection to mitigate backwash in case they gain full access.

  • Trump’s FCC chair investigates NPR and PBS, urges Congress to defund them

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  • I have done a lot of personal study on this. There are "Christians" and there are "Team Christian." Actual Christians usually practice what they preach, or try to. The "Team Christian" folks are like people who have a favorite football team: they wear the jerseys, watch the games, and claim the tribal aspect of "I am good, they are bad." But know nothing of the philosophy or inner workings any more than the average football fan plays professional football, or runs the corporation end that manages the team.

    Also, like most bullies, they love saying the opposite just to make you mad. "If Jesus were alive today, he would have shot all the immigrants with a machine gun," so you go "NO HE WOULDN'T HAVE YOU EVEN READ A BIBLE YOU HYPOCRITE GRRRR!!!" and they laugh at how mad you got. Like a bully saying "nice hair!" because they know it will make you angry, and they'll act all innocent.