Barbra Streisand
Woo-ooh, ooh-hoo, ooh-hoo, ooh-hoo

https://soundcloud.com/thathyp...

As good ole' Bill Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliette: "A plague a' both your houses!" -Mercutio

Is there anything either of these pox peddlers can provide that is necessary for living my life? The steady drumbeat of serotonin hits from exaggerated clickbait "news" and AI-written headlines designed to make my blood pressure spike? Frothy propaganda pieces posted by sock puppets and nation-states intent on sowing discord? Intrusive messages from people I tried to leave behind in high school and college? Advertisements for crap on Amazon that I paused the mouse over just long enough for the telemetry bots to smell $0.001 of revenue?

No.

Work doesn't use Facebook or TikTok or even Twitter anymore. My family doesn't use it, friends only occasionally, and the rest is just a steady fire hose of crap that makes my life worse when I look at it. Really there's no reason at all to participate in either of these. "Look away" seems like the best option.

That's my point, it's already legally/contractually banned on most devices in the country, so diddling around with discussion of a 100% ban is a diversion from the real issue. The crux is that a lot (majority? plurality?) of people use their work laptops for personal purposes, and their personal mobile devices for work, in contravention of numerous contracts and regulatory requirements -- and this is where the actual risk to data lies. Anyone who checks work email/messages/workflow/chat on the same device they install TicTok/Facebook/Insta/etc is already breaking policies, contractual rules, and/or civil and criminal laws. What we need is better enforcement, and the will to actually prosecute people for illicit behaviors they've grown so accustomed to getting away with that they no longer recognize them as a crime. A new law that mostly restates the old one doesn't solve the lack of will to enforce.

Two things: First, westerners don't generally understand that China is not a country in the western sense of the word; it is a corporation. The whole thing. Ever since the party leaders got right with that whole money thing, it's been this way. Now since the party controls the currency and operates the entire governing framework without exception, and every business operating within China has to comply with the legal framework, that effectively makes all such businesses a subsidiary of the party...corporation. The idea that a subsidiary corporation could have a policy or procedural framework to keep data private from the executive whims of its parent corporation only makes sense in a western context; but when the parent corporation is a totalitarian regime which makes the laws, runs the judiciary, and controls the currency, the idea of such a separation of control or information is laughable. It does not happen. Pure window dressing. Anyone who takes such proposals seriously is a fool.

Second... why? Is there any legitimate use case for non-work video sharing or other social media on a work device, especially one used for sensitive data or national security? No. Absolutely not. Even in a private-sector work context. If I install TicTok on a laptop used for my client's work, I should be fired. If I install it on a personal mobile phone also used for handling sensitive emails or regulated data, I should be fired and then sued or prosecuted. It's disappointing to see so many people fretting over how to accommodate other people's improper or illegal handling of data just so they can get their serotonin hit.

I am an old guy who is supposed to be watching his blood pressure, and people constantly suggest these manufactured products as a substitute for meat. The impossible burger has 370mg of sodium per 4oz portion, while an equal portion of ground beef has about 70mg. The Impossible people like to compare their 370mg patty with the typical ~370mg of a commercial burger but that ignores the 300mg coming from the cheese, bun, and condiments. So a BASIC single impossible burger prepared the same way is going to be almost 700mg of sodium, more than 1/3 of all the salt a typical adult is supposed to have in a day. The impossible patty alone is about the same salt as two pieces of fried chicken. I'm supposed to be on a low-salt diet, and this impossible stuff would give me a damn coronary. My doc (yes, a real GP with certifications in nutrition) specifically warned me away from novelty foods such as manufactured meat because of the sodium content required to make them palatable. If you want to cut back on the meat, then eat a vegetable. But once you've reduced the volume, honestly, the real thing is much healthier at least for old folks.

Yeah, no. I might not be in the exact center of the target demographic, but I'm definitely in the group. This whole notion of avoiding interaction with other humans even for basic tasks like getting food... why? I mostly work from home, and I can avoid people by staying home, and ordering shit from Amazon. If I leave my house, part of the reason I walk out the front door is to get a break from the silence and to interact with other people. Then I find they've been removed from places where they're expected... without lowering of prices or actual improvements in service. On top of that, why should I participate in the demise of the lower half of our economy? When you shove people out of low-level jobs like this it's not like they magically get some other better paying job, or simply die off and disappear -- no, they become poorer and more dependent on aid, which in turn jacks taxes and costs for everyone. So the smooth brains at McD's and YumCorp decide they need to cut corners even more, and it gets worse. Race to the bottom.

I'll pay more for my damn cheeseburger. I'm ok with that. But I'm not shopping at any brick-and-mortar that is eliminating entry level jobs, still delivering crap service, and charging me the same. I've walked out or ditched my cart when I've been refused service by a human, and that's ok. (Kroeger and Lowe's, I'm looking at you 15-watt geniuses.) My shopping and cooking at home probably won't really slow this damage to society, but at least it won't be on my dime.

Former member of InfraGard here. I went through a long and silly hazing/vetting process to join, and then came to the realization that it's organizations like this that are part of the problem. You know that weird sensation of being an actual old person in a crowd then listening to what they're saying and thinking "oh my god these people are old" even if they're younger than you? Yeah, that. That was almost every InfraGard session and meeting, with olde dudes in DC and Redmond giving powerpoint presentations about vulns known 18mo prior, grossly mis-attributed threat actors ("the APTs are comin for yew!! Fancy Bear!!1!1!!!"), 101-level errors in data gathering and basic analysis, hopelessly outdated kill-diamond malware circle-jerks, results from clustering algorithms they'd picked but couldn't explain, and other wheezing exhortations to vague action made by people who smell like mothballs and coffee with too much cream.

Seriously, we need an organization LIKE IngraGard to share information as a coordinated community. But running it with the organization of a stereotypical frat combined with the speed of the feds ... there's no there there, and even if there was or will be, that org moves too slowly to be useful, by at least an order of magnitude. But hey, if you like a dependable flow of disappointment with absolute consistency, there they are.

From ethics.org.au: "The Panopticon is a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells. From the tower, a guard can see every cell and inmate but the inmates can't see into the tower. Prisoners will never know whether or not they are being watched." https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Now imagine that instead of just building a watchtower in the center of the circular prison to see your movements, it can see your eyes. And everywhere you look. And it can see those things too. And it fits on your head. And you *paid* for it.

This is the beginning of some true horror. "Orwellian" doesn't even begin to do this justice.

I live very close to this bullshit, and none of this is a surprise or even worth a raised eyebrow.

Comcast rates are usurious, and anytime any infrastructure work is necessary they want the first user to pay the full load... even if Comcast will then turn around and charge the next customers the full rate for new service as well. Their investment philosophy is that the customer should invest. It would be like requiring an apartment seeker to pay for building the apartment, and then expecting them to pay full rent. There's no slack at all. On top of this, they continue to roll out old copper-based tech where it saves them money, instead of fiber or wireless. Aaaaand on top of that, they make it extremely hard to NOT run their dual-mode wireless base stations to provide cellular service that they sell to other people. So yeah, double- and even triple-dipping, using other people's money to shift the risk.

The homeowners should have done their homework, and expected to get wireless in that area. For example, T-Mobile home base-station service is available there for $50/mo, and the "up to 100Mbps" service actually averages 30Mbps, which is sufficient for at least two people working from home and watching a moderate amount of fhd-4k video. There are other options as well, they just have to let go of the notion that cable is king. It's not.

IMHO, it's kinda like when you take your car to the shop and they quote you $1k for a tuneup or $8k for transmission work, --- you are supposed to understand they want you to go elsewhere; they don't actually want the business. The failure here is not really on Comcast, it's the homeowners' failure to recognize when they've been given "the fuck-you price."

Broadly speaking, use of the word "cringe" or "problematic" -- especially ad-hominem rather than against a position, action, or event -- is an indication that it's safe to stop reading or listening to the speaker, as nothing of significant use or meaning will follow.

Outside of the first world economy, lots of people buy a sim and have a pay-as-you-go account, for which they prepay in cash. They might go to a store and buy a prepaid card to load onto the account, they might buy credits from a broker or reseller and redeem them via sms, etc etc. Paying in crypto would be a trivial change from the way payments are made already. Things work rather differently over there.

I'm the prime market for expensive new vehicles...
And just NO. I don't want a goddamn touchscreen at 70mph, I want knobs I can turn without taking my eyes off the road and staring into something bright while driving at night. When I'm in the car I want to DRIVE, not fumble with somebody's shit entertainment system and repetitive childlike warnings. I have a fucking supercomputer in my pocket, and it gets directions on its own, reads them to me when necessary, and if I want to poke at a screen, I'll pull it out. There's no legit use case for duplicating all that on a dashboard with some other controls inconsistent with the mobile device. And don't even start with built-in obsolescence; my friend's 5yo mercedes is hopelessly outdated and doesn't work with her new phone, and another's decked-out Lexus has seven (!!) screens with two competing nav systems that never agree with each other, and were obsolete before they left the dealership. There's no reason these should exist at all; they should just be mirror/dumb terminals at most.

What worries me is the integration of essential car functions with the entertainment system. I bought a pickup a few years ago, and within a week I got a "renewal" bill from Siruis/XM mailed to my home(!). Apparently they got my personal information from constantly searching state licensing data for updates (device ID > VIN > title change > home address) and sent me a bill with no prior contact. When I didn't respond, they started calling, insisting they had a right to spam me because of a 'previous business relationship.' When I told them I'd ripped out their device and thrown it away, first they squawked that it was a licensed device I'd have to pay for, and then when I told them to send me any contract I'd signed with them, they responded by telling me it was still active and pinging them, and that by "using" it I had consented to being billed. Turns out I'd pulled the two parts of the head unit, but missed a third transponder hidden under the seat. So then I had to dig the SIM card out of the fucker and leave the rest or the bluetooth adapter wouldn't work. Jesus Habanjero Christ, all this for a fucking used pickup truck to haul junk to the dump and milkshakes to the yard. And if you pull the msft/goog entertainment/tracking/licensing system on a large number of slightly newer vehicles, it'll freak out that essential engine or safety features are missing and disable the vehicle. FML.

The demographic data indicates that I'm the prime market for a car between $80-120k, but they're just not listening. So fuck it, I'm off to buy a nice classic car and refurb it. If I really want blinky shit on the dash, I'll spend $200 for some standard double-din android infotainment system that isn't tied to the engine management, never presents me with a legal document while driving, never EVER phones home about my shit taste in music, mirrors or provides maps and nav only how it's permitted to, and the whole thing gets tossed when it's out of date. If the young'uns ever shake their heads and wonder why the grey-hairs buy a $5k beater and spend $25k transforming it into a pimpalicious ride, now you know it's actually a bargain for what's wanted: The unseen killer-feature in the comfy ride is that it does nothing when I want it to do absolutely fucking nothing.

I love how they so deftly demonstrate the MacBook having this miraculous technology called a HINGE, in contrast to the floppy mess that necessitates a kickstand sticking out the back... and they think this is an advantage? To be sure, I would choose neither of these. A pox on both your houses.

It pains me to say nice things about HP, but their X2 Chromebook Tablet/Laptop was some excellent engineering: all the portability of a true tablet with an excellent touchscreen, and a thin detachable keyboard with an excellent magnetic connection that supported a true hinge (making it usable on an actual lap!! -- unlike anything with a kickstand). It was sad to see them revert to the kickstand for the equivalent-level X2 Windows units; we would have bought a bunch of those for work.

Already done. 2.5+ years ago.
Amazed at how much time I got back.
Wish I'd done it sooner.
And no, I don't miss much. People from high school I don't want to talk to. Marketing from a hundred places I did casual businesses. Relatives I wish were more contained. Political activism that doesn't have a defined goal or success condition. General agitation and angst. I can't imagine my stress level if I was still mired in that shitshow.