The single largest predictor of future wealth and earning potential in America is what ZIP code you were born in… So, with that in mind… 94027 or 33109. If you’re born in one of those two areas, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be a multi-millionaire by birth.

The issue is that they assume “I don’t have social media” is a lie. They assume it’s really just code for “I refuse to tell you what my username is.”

Not anything that I have found, but at least LL is pretty solid. It may actually help development if LL gets some more focus from the community; It sort of got overshadowed by Readarr, simply because people wanted to stay within the *arr ecosystem.

Many jobs will already disqualify applicants if they don’t have any social media, or refuse to provide account names. The rise of cancel culture means many businesses are extremely risk-averse, and don’t want any employees who are prone to posting inflammatory things.

Yeah, this recent heat is expected to cause deaths. Not only because of the heat itself, but because of the humidity. Humans can tolerate extremely high +100°F temps when it’s dry… But when you start cranking up the humidity, that tolerable temperature quickly begins to drop. At 100% humidity, that tolerable temperature is only in the mid 80’s. Above that point, even the best fans won’t help cool you. Because fans only work by evaporating sweat, and in high humidity that sweat doesn’t evaporate.

I mean, pretty much any person with central AC would read that as “without central AC.” And the answer would be the same: Fucking install AC. Installing central AC is too big of a project for most, so a window unit is a decent stopgap.

A honeypot is something that is intentionally left available, to alert you when it gets hit. In practice, they’re just a tool to tell security specialists when they need to start worrying; They wouldn’t be used by the average user at all.

The goal is to build your security like layers, and ideally have all of your services behind the secure walls. Between these layers, you have honeypots. If someone gets through your first layer of security but hits the honeypot, you know someone is sniffing around, or maybe has an exploit for your outer layer that you need to research. If they get through the second layer and hit your second honeypot, you know that someone is specifically targeting you (instead of simply running automated scans) and you need to pay closer attention. Etc…

Reinforcing the attack layer comes in two main forms, which work in tandem: Strengthening the actual layer, and reducing attack vectors. The first is focused on using strong passwords, keeping systems up to date, running something like Fail2Ban for services that are exposed, etc… The goal is for each layer of security to be robust, to reduce the chances of a bot attack actually working. Bots will simply sniff around and automatically throw shit at the wall to see if anything sticks.

The second part is focused on identifying and mitigating attack vectors. Essentially reducing the amount of holes in the wall. It doesn’t matter how strong the wall is if it’s full of holes for your server’s various services. The goal is typically to have each layer be as solid as possible, and grant access to the layers below it. So for instance, running a VPN. The VPN gets you access to the network, without exposing services externally. In order to access your services, they need to get through the VPN first, making the VPN the primary attack vector. So you can focus on ensuring that the VPN is secure, instead of trying to spread your focus amongst a dozen different services. If it’s exposed to the open internet, it is a new potential attack vector; The strength of the wall doesn’t actually matter, if one of those services has an exploit that someone can use to get inside your network.

Home users really only need to worry about things like compromised services, but corporate security specialists also focus on things like someone talking their way past the receptionist and into the server room, USB sticks getting “lost” around the building and plugged into random machines by curious employees, etc… All of these are attack vectors, even if they’re not digital. If you have three or four layers of security in a corporate setting and your third or fourth honeypot gets hit, you potentially have some corporate spy wrist-deep in your server room.

For an easy example, imagine having a default password on a service, and then exposing it to the internet via port forwarding. It doesn’t matter how strong your firewall is anymore. The bot will simply sniff the service’s port, try the default credentials, and now it has control of that service.

The better way to do it would be to reduce your attack vectors at each layer; Require the VPN to access the network via a secure connection, then have a strong password on the service so it can’t easily be compromised.

The .world admins are… Not great. There have been several instances of them cozying up to users with unfortunate viewpoints. It’s not as bad as Reddit, but it’s certainly not great either.

Trump is already deeply unpopular in NYC, so it’s not likely to change anything on the national stage. New Yorkers have been seeing Trump’s BS on parade for decades now. It won’t change New York’s opinion of Trump.

Nationally, it might. But that’s only if the media actually runs with it; The big news orgs are all in bed with the established politicians, so they’ll likely be smearing him left and right to avoid having it turn into a national shift.

I think the “exception to every rule” part is really dependent on which type of magic the writer is using. Many writers do establish hard rules for their magic. In those cases, it’s less “magic is the exception” and more “magic is engrained into the laws of physics.”

Yup, the sad reality is that you don’t need to worry about the attacks you expect; You need to worry about the ones you don’t know anything about. Honeypots exist specifically to alert you that something has been breached.

Yeah, the “GenZ males are ultra-conservative” thing is largely caused by, I shit you not, the gooner to alt-right pipeline. This is the kind of shit you can’t make up.

Just nobody wants to scan all 65k ports.

Shodan has entered the chat.

People misunderstand the “no security through obscurity” phrase. If you build security as a chain, where the chain is only as good as the weakest link, then it’s bad. But if you build security in layers, like a castle, then it can only help. It’s OK for a layer to be weak when there are other layers behind it.

And this is what should be sung from the hills and mountaintops. There’s some old infosec advice that you should have two or three honeypots, buried successively deeper behind your security, and only start to worry when the second or third gets hit; The first one getting hit simply means they’re sniffing around with automated port scanners and bots. They’re just throwing common vulnerabilities at the wall to see if any of them stick. The first one is usually enough for them to go “ah shit I guess I hit a honeypot. They must be looking for me now. Never mind.” The second is when you know they’re actually targeting you specifically. And the third is when you need to start considering pulling plugs.

Yeah, parvo specifically attacks multiplying cells. It’s not super bad for fully grown dogs, which only multiply cells to maintain a baseline. But for puppies that are actively growing, it basically causes them to fall apart at the seams. Their bone marrow and intestinal lining basically turns to mush, since they’re almost entirely made of multiplying cells.

My point wasn’t that fantasy needs elves, but rather that when a fantasy setting does include elves, you likely have a rough expectation of what kind of stereotype they’ll fit. That stereotype is the influence I’m talking about.

The “elves are old, somber, magical, close with nature, tall and thin, magically graceful, pale, have pointy ears, have delicate swooping architecture and designs, etc” stereotype is what you’d likely expect from elves if they get brought up in fantasy… And that stereotype is largely influenced by LOTR. A setting can still be fantasy without elves, but including elves in your story will have the reader automatically setting certain expectations about how those elves will fit into your world. You as the writer can choose to conform to (or rebel against) those expectations, but there’s no denying that the expectation exists, and is heavily influenced by LOTR.

Yeah, I do a vinegar bath when brining berries home from the grocery store. Just fill a mixing bowl with water, then add like two cups of white distilled vinegar. Let the berries soak while you put away the rest of the groceries.

I started doing it after I had some strawberries get visibly moldy only one day after I bought them. I was pissed. Since I started soaking them in diluted vinegar, they don’t get moldy anymore. They literally dry out and shrivel before they go bad. I just dunk the entire container into the mixing bowl, and let the entire thing float while I put my groceries away. Then give them a quick rinse with the sink sprayer before they go in the fridge.

When I notice them starting to dry out, I just move them to the freezer instead; They still taste fine, so after they start to dry, I use them in smoothies instead.

I can commiserate… One time I fucked up my back by picking up a loaf of bread. I had just worked an extremely heavy shift at work. Slinging +200 pound pieces of gear overhead, lots of bending and crawling around, etc… I was gross after work. Climbed into my car, toweled off with some baby wipes, and headed to the grocery store on my way home. I just needed milk and bread.

So I make a beeline to the dairy section and grab the milk first, then swing by the bread aisle on my way to the registers. I bend over to grab the bread from the bottom shelf… And I feel a twinge in my lower back. Just a small little tug. I stand back up, and start heading to the registers. As I continue, the twinge gets worse and worse. I didn’t even make it to the registers. I quickly found myself wishing I had grabbed a cart, because I needed a walker to stay upright. I had to abandon the milk and bread in the middle of the store, and slowly hobble back out to my car.

That was on a Friday evening, and naturally my doctor didn’t have any appointments available until Monday. So I suffered all weekend. Monday finally rolls around, and the doc basically goes “oh lol yeah that just happens sometimes. Have you tried taking any ibuprofen?” Uhh excuse me. What the fuck do you mean that just happens? Can we make it not happen?

He says it is extremely common for industrial athletes to injure themselves after work. During work, they’re careful enough to not injure themselves. They’re warmed up, they do team lifts, they’re careful to use proper lifting form, etc… Then they get into their car, drive home, cool down during the drive, and then get injured by something stupid and small (like picking up a loaf of bread, or bending over the sink) because their cold joints basically go “nah I already worked enough today. I’m just gonna rip instead of stretching.”

I was out of commission for a solid two weeks, all because of that loaf of bread. That was about a decade ago, and my back still gives me issues occasionally.

Even if you dislike the story, its impact on the fantasy genre is hard to argue against. I personally dislike the series too, but I refuse to call it overrated because it influences basically every aspect of modern fantasy writing.

There’s also the fact that a lot of that fantasy is going to essentially be elf/vampire/etc smut. The fantasy-romance genre is surprisingly huge, but many of the books are just labeled as straight fantasy (and just happen to have really graphic sex scenes). Further confounding the issue, male writers will use female/androgynous pen names when writing smut, because female author names have been proven to boost smut sales; Women prefer reading smut if they believe it was written by a woman.

So yeah, if you’ve been sucked into the fantasy-romance algorithm, I could 100% believe that the vast majority of fantasy books being shown are written by women, (or at least have traditionally female names on the covers.)