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@____@infosec.pub

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Under Trump will anything happen to my brothers Social Security Disability? He is 42 and draws it for mental illness.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  While we can’t say for sure, I’d certainly be wargaming some possible outcomes and how to respond to them.

  Wouldn’t surprise me if disability for mental health reasons was high on the list of things to cut. It’s effectively an “invisible” disability, which makes it somewhat easier to cut while limiting loss of political capital.

  I wish you all the best getting through the upcoming difficult years. You’re a genuinely good person for caring and thinking far enough ahead to realize the question needs to be asked.

  For other folks reading this, now is an excellent time to review your payroll deductions and ensure you’re paying for private disability coverage - both short and long term. It’s one of the least expensive ways to hedge against the crazy of the next four years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can't install app because it isn't "certified" by the government⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  TBH, I’m mildly surprised that this is a recent change. Signed binaries are neither new technology nor all that difficult.

  Compared to all of the other crazy things that government does, this seems like relatively low hanging fruit.

  PS don’t give our orange leader to be (or congress) any ideas…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google now requires JavaScript⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Configurable, though, to use many other engines and results.

  Lots of overlap, but there are a couple other indexes out there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should you have to pay for online privacy?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wasn’t sure I’d agree when I started reading, but I like the way you think.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reddit Undeleted all my posts and comments⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  At one time, Reddit (or at least the core server) was open source. Statistically, it’s relatively likely that someone, somewhere forked and is maintaining that code for their own purposes to this day, but I’m not actively aware of any examples.

  If someone has been maintaining a fork, I’d love to see the old comment database imported into it and made available, though I don’t know offhand what license either the code or the comments were released under.

  A FOSS Reddit, without the chaos that took over America during the presidential administration installed in 2016, and branching from there, would be an interesting point of diversion to say the least.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon practices time management⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess one could but… that just sounds expensive and weird-tasting to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon practices time management⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll see your handfuls of nuts, and raise you a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter.

  It’s a) relatively cheap b) delicious c) easily edible on the fly with a spoon, time constraints be damned. It serves the purpose quite well, and even throws a bit of sugar in there too.

  Not exactly a balanced diet, but it does accomplish the goal reasonably effectively and frequently is already in the house.

  Also good when not medically quite at 100% - when not at my best, I do everything I can to follow dr. orders, ofc, but sometimes it’s more efficient to throw a tiny bit of sugar at one’s brain in a (relatively) healthier way, than to keep fighting it during recovery.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DWP told to pay £50,000 to Deaf job-seeker after repeated failure to provide BSL interpreter⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Entirely valid question, that as a USian, I might just be qual to answer. The ratio between them varies by individual, but it boils down to a core American exceptionalism that’s taught actively from very young; some ridiculous blather about how having founding docs / written constitution makes our rights safer even in context of significant social change; and my personal least fave, the idea that if one didn’t directly and proximately earn something through capital or wage slavery, they just aren’t working hard enough and therefore shouldn’t have it.

  Those things are at the core of a very large group of American voters’ opinions, and all are fatally flawed.

  Of course, as a child of the very early eighties, growing up it was still (at least conceptually) possible to buy a house and a car on one income, within relatively recent history. As it absolutely should be.

  Kicking that exceptionalism thought process is quite the struggle (as is the rest), even for those motivated to do it.

  Civilised world has mostly lower paid docs (relative to us) but also mostly some sort of universal care. I’d gladly accept NHS-level wait times, if it meant that I could take the $2k a month that my emp and I together now pay for insurance (just 2 adults) - even if taxed to support that sort of system, that is real money.

  Things are bettter than they were in my lifetime, even though ObamaCare was basically a typical American “personal responsibility” solution, just with subsidies to avoid actively excluding only the less financially well off.

  Used to be that you had to have continuous coverage in order to get a new cost, or pre existing conditions weren’t covered under a newer policy even if one could buy one privately (you really couldn’t, practically).

  Healthcare before ACA was a sanctioned and mostly very profitable betting operation for large carriers because the risk pool for each individual policy was large, and there were max amounts and sometimes lifetime total limits that could be paid.

  By comparison, what we have is pretty great for folks who lived thru that era, but… Hot garbage compared to many other developed nations.

  We’re a nation full of people literally trained to think our system is the best in the world. Helluva barrier to overcome, all the more so when the ACA did actually make things better.

  Mild sidetrack but the only reason to assume by default our system might be better is the education (indoctrination) we receive early and often, and consistently.

  Always appreciate a comment that makes me question why/how I made some assumption.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flood water use⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems like it would be a nightmare to purify. Perhaps useful for agricultural applications, but for drinking and household use…. Most water supplies don’t have e.g., human bodies floating in them.

  Not a scientist, happy to be proven wrong here, but that’s my gut.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Make the responsible financial decision⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  With ya. I smoke an odd brand that’s hard to get, in a state that (rightfully) taxes the shit out of them.

  Still costs me an even C-note every two weeks, same as always. Have I cut back, probably. But mostly because I’ve started to face my own bullshit instead of expecting smoking to fix it for me.

  I straight up enjoy my Kamel Reds, and while I don’t want to model that to the next generation, I’m the better part of thirty pack-years in.

  I can either take the risk, or downright break all the other mental health progress I’ve made. Since I have a wife and some folks I care deeply about in my life, imma go with the mental health.

  For unrelated reasons, I once was an unmitigated SOB in any interaction. On the rare chances I’ve been in hospital, I’ve been miserable.

  Right or wrong, I prefer to communicate with people rather than attack them, and quitting now would not help that.

  RJR can have my money, they won’t get the next genration’s money. We have dispensaries, video gaming, and casinos on every corner in my state. My choice of vice could be far worse, and I’m kind of grateful that I settled on smokes, and not gambling.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DWP told to pay £50,000 to Deaf job-seeker after repeated failure to provide BSL interpreter⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Things are no better stateside. To get social security disability takes years, and a lawyer who will take a portion of your back pay settlement when finally awarded.

  And of course one can’t be earning money during the process.

  Even with private short term disability coverage through employer, while it was more efficient than that, I still barely had the strength to get through it just to get partially paid for 10 hrs a week for a few months, in hopes that I can regroup, get things back together, and be able to make it through forty hour weeks.

  Since that’s an external company, and our HR and payroll is a different external company, now I have to stay on the latter to make sure a) they get the memo and b) I actually get the pay in question.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Massive issues with sleep and desperate for a solution.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you seeing a family doctor, or a sleep specialist? You want the latter, and a sleep study.

  The classes of drugs that might help are imperfect at best, I’d be partial to a benzo before e.g., Ambien or related, given the inherent risks of sleepwalking and worse with those drugs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DWP told to pay £50,000 to Deaf job-seeker after repeated failure to provide BSL interpreter⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What was said internally is absolutely brutal.

  How many others lack the energy, strength, or (bs) “social skills” to work through this?

  Might actually result in change.

  My own lived experience is that the blind/deaf orgs who pursue these things should be a model for other orgs serving folks w/ other disabilities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British tech firm Raspberry Pi lines up £500m float⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  On one hand, I’m a fan of the ESP32 as a challenge.

  OTOH, sometimes you actually need a full fledged computer for your semi embedded task, and sometimes you just don’t want to (or can’t be seen to, from PR standpoint) support Beijing.

  While arguments can be made either way about the prior para, from a biz POV, it’s pretty binary.

  Would love to find similar platforms that don’t involve those concerns and might theoretically be commercializable by hackers, but I’m not aware of many.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do arranged marriages persist in many cultures?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Some of this - and I speak exclusively from a layman standpoint of having worked extensively with quite a few Indian colleagues - has to do with whether an education system (or culture) prioritizes rote memorization vs critical thinking. India tends towards the former, the West mostly tends towards the latter.

  Much simpler to persist the practice across many years when the majority of folks are explicitly taught to accept what they are told and not to actually consider it.

  Context, I’m an American working for a large public company whose execs appear to have actually realized they got too aggressive with offshoring in recent years and are actually reversing the practice to a relatively sensible degree.

  There is shareholder value in workers who come from e.g., a caste system, but there is also a significant risk to shareholder value when too many levels of decision-making are sent to places where that mindset is common.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sleep apnea: Mouthguards less invasive, just as effective as CPAP⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I grind and have other issues, use CPAP, and use semi disposable mouthguards to help w the grinding at same time.

  Invasive is a pretty strong term for this case, I would class neither one as such. The Inspire implant is “invasive,” by definition, given context.

  OTOH, the mask was difficult to adjust to for me, and my wife’s “encouragement” and justifiable pushiness is big part of why I’m a reasonably successful mask wearer.

  On my own, I would have tossed it out the window quickly! But I’d say the same thing re the disposable mouth guards, TBH. She intro’d me to them and I wasn’t a huge fan initially. But the difference it made after a few days was significant.

  Ultimately, all three solutions exist because none are perfect for everyone.

  Worth noting there are a handful of large dental practices shilling those mouthguards because $$$, but same is probably true for both the mask and the implant.

  Incidentally, I’m currently in physical therapy recovering from an unrelated issue and it’s really made clear to me that for me, the mask is way better than implant. PT is a bitch, and that’s for an injury rather than surgery. But that’s me personally - it seems mildly disingenuous to throw around terms like “invasive” here, though CPAP is certainly a major adjustment and takes real work to get used to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sleep apnea: Mouthguards less invasive, just as effective as CPAP⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Concur, and the objectivity is pretty critical here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't I bruise?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Also not a medic, but always understood alcohol to be a blood thinner. Not the cause of it’s direct negative effects afaik but would seem to explain difference in bruising while drunk vs sober.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Returning to the office is 'wildly more expensive' today than in 2019—here's how much people are spending⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Hell, no. I was hired remote, the position was approved as remote, and remote is where I’m going to stay.

  If I go job hunting, that’s my #1 criteria. I took less money because remote, and because health insurance. I stand by that decision today, and would do the same again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Routers have been rooted by Chinese spies US and Japan warn⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t be Cisco, don’t be Cisco…

  Fuck.