Wxfisch

@Wxfisch@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the point of the "Airport Security" (aka: TSA) in the USA? Does the "Airport Security" ever actually scare away potential terrorists?⁩ ⁨⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Perhaps for you, but for millions of Americans it no longer did. I mean I don’t disagree with you, but the reality is the increased presence and technology of airport screening is mainly an economic force to keep folks flying. The average American doesn’t really understand it frankly care that TSA doesn’t increase security in relation to the costs and hassle (and I’m not talking about the folks that ask questions like OP, or give TSA agents a hard time in line, or even uncle crazy that we all ignore at Thanksgiving as he rants about how mmWave machines give us all cancer, I’m talking about the folks that just grumble a little about how long it takes the once or twice a year they fly, then forget about it again, the 80% fliers).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the point of the "Airport Security" (aka: TSA) in the USA? Does the "Airport Security" ever actually scare away potential terrorists?⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  So many have noted how the TSA is security theater, and even explained why it’s so bad, but I want to offer some reasoning as to why it’s still worth it. In a nutshell, it makes passengers feel safer. We all know that TSA is mostly useless at actually stopping a motivated threat. It’s really only good for stopping poorly planned or spontaneous threats which are generally uncommon in air transit. But for the general masses, that intrusive security screening feels thorough and so people assume their flights are safe and continue to fly all over the country. This keeps airlines in business, taxes going to localities and states from their airports, and creates a ton of jobs from gate agents to coffee shop clerks to rental car agents and beyond. The minute people stop thinking air travel is generally safe and secure is when all of that collapses. So we pour money into theater to make things look and feel secure (though most of the effort to actually secure things is behind the scenes, DHS/FBI/CBP/etc. using threat intel to stop planned attacks long before TSA would ever need to interact with anyone).

  To your second question, we don’t really know if it scares away threat actors, but it likely does to some extent. It preps passengers to be somewhat more alert that they are in a secured area past the checkpoints, and complicates planning attacks at a minimum. No security system is 100% effective, especially one that needs to work at scales like TSA does, but the theater isn’t really an accident and for sure TSA heads know that’s all it really is, and they are fine with that.

  Lastly, it’s not just the US with screenings like this, flying through Heathrow in the UK was just as bad in every way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨how do you separate your clothes and linens to avoid fabric degradation and bleeding?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  We don’t, we separate into bulky clothes (sweats, jeans, heavy shirts), everything else, and delicates. We wash with only cold water (modern machines and detergents don’t need hot water and it won’t get things any more clean, it just wastes energy). Bulky goes in first, then normal, then delicates. I’ve done this for at least 10 years with zero issues across a variety of machines and water hardnesses.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do cell phones have a data limit but home internet doesn't?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  In theory at least it’s because you pay for a specific bandwidth for home internet (the size of the pipe) but a specific amount of data for cellular (how much stuff you can get through a fixed sized pipe).

  Home internet is a little unique in that way, almost all other utilities are consumption based with no real tiers in terms of how it’s delivered (you pay for the volume of water or gas you use, electricity is the same, just different units).

  Networking equipment gets more expensive based on the bandwidth it supports, but it doesn’t much care how many bits you push through it. So ISPs charge based on their capacity to deliver those bits, and provide tiers at different price points. Cellular though is much more bandwidth constrained due to the technologies (and it used to be much more so before LTE and 5G), so it didn’t makes sense to charge you for slow or slower tiers. Instead the limiting factor is the capacity of a tower so by limiting data to small amounts it naturally discourages use. That model carried forward even now that the technologies support broadband speeds in some cases. As such and ISP could provide the biggest pipe (highest speed) to all homes and just charge based on consumption (they used to in the days of dial up, and satellite before starlink always has). Many ISPs instead are now double dipping though and charging for both.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What careers are relatively easy to get into with decent unions behind them?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In case you’re looking for something more white collar, I have found working for government prime contractors to be a sweet spot. I know, it feels gross to work for “the man” or to be the ones taking in those tax dollars, but hear me out.

  The work is well defined, they are very often unionized, even the office staff, and it’s essentially guaranteed employment as long as you want to work there. I’ve also found that putting in what I consider pretty normal levels of effort is highly rewarded because often the bar is pretty low by those that have been in the various companies for decades that no longer care. As long as you guard against professional apathy and keep driving yourself to do the best you can, it’s can be a great sector to work in.

  I would suggest looking for ones you don’t already know the names of though (often small subsidiaries of the larger companies are fine). Battelle for instance operates almost all of the DoE national labs and I hear from colleagues they are a good company with labs all over the country that need scientists, engineers, accountants, IT pros, facility folks, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Differences between USA and AUS broadcasts of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games Opening Ceremony⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As a USAian I would be grateful if someone could provide a link to this section of the ceremony because it looks really cool but the split audio makes it tough to watch with my wife (and I don’t really need to see the shit NBC coverage in the corner).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Differences between USA and AUS broadcasts of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games Opening Ceremony⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  At least on Peacock, NBCs streaming platform that claims it has all streams that are being broadcast in the US, there was only the main NBC feed. They do show world feeds during the day of various sports but usually opening and closing ceremonies we are stuck with the truly terrible broadcasts NBC puts together.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Don't worry, we only lost the dangerous parts... not something personal like your dob⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The reality is they may not know exactly what was obtained, but they do know it wasn’t anything they don’t collect (like DOB, SSN, etc listed in the message). Instead of looking at this purely as a CYA message, instead looking at it as informing you as soon as they had any idea your information may have been impacted instead of waiting weeks/months to inform you. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For folks who write for Medium.com, what's your engagement like, and how much do you make?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Or you can use something like Squarespace or Wix and have a fully functioning website with everything you need in a few hours and start monetizing your views with ads. Both start at $16 a month so it’s a larger hill to climb sure but you get custom branding and don’t have to deal with the baggage of a Medium page (largely that it’s considered in many circles an untrustworthy source for pretty much any topic mainly because of how easy and barrier free it is to write there. They also have a pretty well established history of working to screw over contributors to profit off of your work including you automatically giving a full license to medium for everything you post).

  If all you want is a newsletter though without a webpage to back it you can setup something in mailchimp with a custom domain (.coms start at about $10 from cloudflare). Again an hour or so of reading and configuring and you’re on your way, with an Adsense account you can even embed inline ads to your newsletter.