stryk

There are options for persistent connections, with logs and detachment, etc. ZNC/PsyBNC/Quassel come to mind. ZNC, in particular, is extendable via Perl or Python (or TCL if you're a masochist). I hear good things about Quassel as well, but it's still early in development.

I get Android notifications if I'm detached from irssi in tmux and someone PMs, says my handle, or any number of custom triggers I set. All free & open source (other than the android phone).

What's wrong with IRC? It still works a treat, and has ever since the early-mid 90's.

I'd be interested to know what folks in your field think of the newly developed substance [1]'Vantablack'. Thin carbon tubes that apparently absorb 99.965% of visible light. Are there any cool applications for this stuff in practical effects?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack

THIS is a not-insignificant part of the problem. right here. You jumped straight out of the gate with calling the OP stupid. Not even a feigned attempt at some sort of discussion or debate.

You saw the word "conservative" and BOOM it's right into the Us vs. Them, Me vs. You, Good vs. Evil. I just don't see how that is healthy, at all, for anyone or anything including the country. It's childish. Social media and karma/upvotes/likes/karma/fake-internet-points, whatever you want to call it, has devolved us into kids on the schoolyard.

United we stand, divided we fall. grow up

I mean I cannot link you to a direct source, it was just something everyone knew, ya know 'common knowledge'. This was on both coasts as well as the midwest.

And it was explained to me at 3 different clinics in 3 different areas of the country that it was really about #1) liability -- particularly at clinics that accepted insurance for payment but not exclusively, there were cash-only ones with the same rule: No Benzos full-stop. If you had a legit prescription for xanax or ativan then they would send a letter to the prescribing doctor and would not dose you until they got an affirmative, positive response -- and to a somewhat lesser extent #2) they know it has the real potential to be fatal, and they're not monsters they don't want to kill all the junkies. Despite what you might think, some of them actually do give a shit and got into substance abuse medicine trying to help. Sure, for some it's just a job, and if you own the clinic it's a gold-shitting goose, but there are a lot of them who are genuinely trying to do good.

It is incredibly, incredibly dangerous to mix benzodiazepines (Xanax, Ativan, etc.) with Methadone. This is common knowledge amongst opiate addicts, at least everywhere I ever went in the US back in my wilder days. I have 3 close friends whom I grew up with that all died before age 30 from abusing that exact combination of narcotics, and know of countless more just in my home state alone.

Benzos are a respiratory depressant, and when combined with Methadone it amplifies it to the point where you stop breathing in your sleep and never wake up from respiratory failure, lack of oxygen to the brain, or your body freaks out and has a coronary episode, etc. it's really really risky -- no joke & no exaggeration. If alcohol is in the mix too then it's even worse.

And I'm not going to pretend like it's not enjoyable -- because it is. It's a great fuckin' buzz if downers are your thing. IMO it's better than heroin (no 'rush' to it, but the effects hit you like a ton of bricks and it lasts all night long. And it's a cheap buzz too), but it's also asking for your life to end.

methadone clinics know this and every one that I've ever seen, heard of, or been to personally Benzos are their one big 'no-no' [as in: if we find it in your Whiz Quiz we kick you out, some won't even give you a second chance and most clinics have mandatory urine screening twice a month, some every week]. You can test positive for damn near anything else -- and they expect you to test positive for opiates -- but if you have benzos in there then you kick rocks.

> "With Blind, users are completely anonymous, but are required to submit a verified work email to join a company channel."

That sentence doesn't make sense. How can it be "completely anonymous" but you have to submit an e-mail address?

homeless citizens and needles I understand, but 'human excrement' -- what? Is people shitting in the streets as common and as noticeable as homelessness? WTF is that about, I thought SF was, by and large, wealthy? Why isn't it clean?

We hear about these mis-configurations leading to publicly-viewable things that shouldn't be publicly viewable all the time. This makes me wonder what is the default security setting? It seems like -- and this is from the outside looking in, I have little experience with AWS -- whatever the default is, it's not nearly strict enough. Shouldn't the default config be pretty restrictive for security's sake? Or is this a case of trying to dumb it down in the name of "usability" or "streamlining the UI" or some other marketing fluff crap (aka "for people who don't/won't/can't RTFM")?

No, I don't realize. And neither should you, because you honestly cannot. It runs closed-source software and communicates with servers out of your control. Unless you are an engineer who works for Amazon directly in the smart-gadget department there is no way you could positively know with certainty.

Amazon isn't providing these devices out of the kindness of their hearts. They are a for-profit enterprise, they do not care about making your life "easier" -- they want your money. They do not give a damn about anything else, and I do not believe that it's overly-paranoid to say that if you think otherwise then you're fooling yourself. It has been proven time and time again that if a thing can be abused by others for their own gain then they will be, almost without fail. Be it the government, a company, an individual, whatever.

Amazon has already done the hard work by getting the device into your home (which you paid them to do. and walked it into your own front door yourself). It's a marketers wet dream, and we all know -- or, at least we should know by now -- how sleazy marketing is. Do you really trust them to not use that always-on microphone? Do you actually trust that they are deleting any "non-relevant" data, or even keeping the 'relevant" data safe and out of the hands of others? I do not. You shouldn't either.

It has always baffled me the things people are willing to be duped out of under such a simple guise as "convenience". I've never been able to wrap my head around it. And I refuse to buy into the defeatist attitude of "privacy is an illusion" -- that's a load of crap.

You're willing to give up the personal privacy of you, your family, and any guests in exchange for turning off light switches without getting up?

I'd take it even one step further and say people shouldn't even have an Alexa (or Google Home, et. al.) in their home at all. There are so many downsides, and after you get past the "cool new technology" factor there are relatively little upsides.

It would be better, more worthwhile, and a hell of a lot more interesting to research and figure out how to create your own "voice assistant" type of device that's hosted locally and doesn't transmit everything that's said in your home back to some company's servers. [and don't give me any of that 'they're not listening to everything' crap -- that's bullshit. if things can be abused they will be]

Wow, really? Am i reading that right, that without an active WAN connection, the internal LAN connections don't work on Google WiFi hardware? That sounds more like an "Internet appliance" than it does a router.

Digi-Key has what has to be a top contender for fastest order processing & shipment of any company that does e-commerce ever. No exaggeration, it's almost inconceivable how quickly they will pack up and ship out your order. Especially when considering most orders likely contain many different, intricately small parts each of varying quantities. For example, I've seen YouTube videos from AvE who lives in Canada, where he ordered a few ICs late-ish the previous night and UPS dropped them off at his door the next afternoon. And this isn't a one-off occasion, it's consistent.

You have a point there the rich folks wouldn't want to be seen as gullible. Maybe I should have said "more reported cases of VCs being defrauded."

"If you were a VC would you want anyone to know that the $X00,000 you put into an "early stage company" was actually spent on hookers and blow?"

Well, if I'm a venture capitalist investment type that probably means I have "fuck you money" so... yea, actually I would. If I spent 6 figures on coke and whores then I'm telling everybody.

I'm actually surprised there haven't been more cases of VC folks being defrauded (Theranos aside). The way those people like to just throw hundreds of thousands of dollars or more at newly formed, wholly unproven, companies is astounding.

Not much beats out The Ocular Penetration Restriction Act of 2007.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee8n-xvYETg

No one is born a skull fucker.

Prostitution is the oldest career there is in the United States (also one of the very few that is genuinely recession-proof). There have always been, and always will be, people willing to pay for and be paid for sex. Take Australia for example, where it's legal, regulated, and safer - I'm sure there are plenty of men & women making a nice living off of it.

No man, there's so much more exposure that way. And remember, this is a criminal enterprise. Those people who run your fronts could just as easily rob/kill you and take it for themselves, and given the chance they will. With bitcoins you can 1) do it yourself, no middlemen other than the bitcoin processor who doesn't give a flying right-hand fuck where the money comes from, and 2) do it far, far, far quicker than traditional methods. A thief isn't going to give a damn about fees, I'm tellin ya, in the end it's all profit for them. Get in, get it, and get out. If I hit a lick for $100k, flip it in a couple days while interacting with not another soul but lose 30k to fees, I'm still up 70k that's a good lick. and if I paid the 30k to not have to deal with ANYONE face-to-face (least of all other criminals) that's worth it in spades because I'm not spending MY 30k, I'm spending YOUR 30k.

And how may I ask did you come to this conclusion? Have you ever actually laundered dirty money?

That's not how dirty money works if you want to get away with it. You need to launder it -- put it into something legitimate and, most importantly, get something back out of it that looks legitimate enough to pass casual scrutiny -- for this service anything and anyone, legit or not, is going to take a cut (or "fee"). It's the cost of doing criminal business. And if you're in a criminal enterprise and you even talk to the other members of the ent. about how you're going to move your money you ain't gonna be in the enterprise very long. That type of dirt you do by your lonesome or you die.

If I'm moving stolen money (or magic math coins or whatever) I don't give a damn about the fees - it's 100% profit either way. It costs money to have it laundered, whether that goes to a shady lawyer(s) or a Bitcoin processor who cares, it doesn't matter it's all profit for the thief.

Is it? I don't think it would be. In fact, extortion and coercion are fairly easy because there are no rules (this I can attest to from both sides of the equation). The easiest weakness to exploit is always going to be the humans involved, especially in a legitimate business. The only true way to protect data like this is to have it not exist in the first place. Once the data is created - forget it, you might as well assume if Big Bro really wants it, they're going to get it -- because they will, if they don't already have it. It's not a case of if, but when.

Say the government doesn't have it. They can just ask/force/coerce/pressure the tech company that does for your data. Or steal it from them.

Thanks for clearing that up for me. Wooo boy, another one.

Unpatched meaning systems without the Spectre/Meltdown mitigations enabled? Or is this something unrelated to the previous bugs?

Can anyone breakdown the impact and severity of this in more digestible terms for those of us not that deeply technical?

I see this question asked a lot on almost all tech-centric places on the 'net. I think it's a decent example of the "thought bubble" that happens in tech circles both online and off. Where is it that these people asking the question actually _go_ - in real life - that they don't see many people talking via voice on their phones? I ask because almost everywhere I go or practically have ever gone since cell phones became ubiquitous, up to and including this very morning, I come across multiple instances of people talking on their phones.

Have you tried ketamine? Not just for recreation, but as a possible treatment. It definitely is not going to last 60+ hours, more like .75-1.25hr, but it may be useful for acute symptoms. But if you approach an anesthetic dose it is quite enjoyable and calming, especially if you're already accustomed to psychedelic/narcotic experiences and the like.

Laying around on a couch sounds like a waste of a good shroom buzz. Shrooms are much more fun if you're with a medium-to-large sized group of people who all know and are comfortable around each other, all of whom are on around the same dose. They're so much more of a body buzz and less of a mindfuck than LSD/DMT. Then there's PCP... which is less of a mindfuck and more of a fuckyou.