This is exactly correct. I grew up an ugly duckling, then filled out in my mid twenties. The transition from 'can do no right' to 'can do no wrong' was striking.
One slight adjustment though. If she's a drama queen, talking isn't required. Being in the same place and ignoring her is enough because you're 'gross'.

While wiring under the desk in a cubicle, three women in the next row over were talking and didn't realize I was there. They were coordinating the three false sexual harassment claims they were going to (and did) make to get a male co-worker fired because they considered him unattractive and wanted him replaced with someone hotter. (HR told me to STFU when I reported that, then acted on what the women said - they were concerned with liability/lawsuit expense not truth or justice) Later one of those three women propositioned me, making a threat of a false harassment claim against me if I didn't sleep with her - and I already knew HR would back *her* up without question.

O M G! I'd love to be a fly on the wall, that sounds hilarious. A bored brilliant woman in a target rich environment - priceless! She could troll for victims all day... I'm still laughing about the concept!

They believe it soooo much they've make a clickbait article with more column inches of booth babe pictures than text - and no pics of booth grandma. Suuuuure they think that, this certainly isn't do as I say not as I do...

White Knighting mostly.

I have Comcast business connections at three locations. There is a quality option, but it's not cheap or what you'll get if you just order through the retain website.

Two locations are retail Business accounts. Those are home connections with an extra charge fixed IP and slightly less crappy customer service.

One location is fiber and seems to be run by an entirely different subsidiary of the company. It costs 15x what the other connections do, is fast, low latency and problem free.

And auto makers to selling data about my frequent speeding to improve $afety via highway patrol.

The Mark II version will simply report on you and you'll get your ticket in the mail, bypassing the insurance company. (well, they'll raise your rates and get a cut too) I can't wait for the redlight camera scam version of that where they 'misprogram' a road at 15mph below the posted speed and ticket everyone.

And fighting FOIA requests in a friendly court to set a precedent that FOIA doesn't apply to 'The most transparent admin ever'. The court ruling is the result of the Whitehouse opposing transparency.

It's one arm of the federal gov't empowering another. The judicial wolf pack approved the Whitehouse wolf packs choice of mutton for dinner. Political sheep hail victory by 'their' pack, not realizing what being invited to mutton dinner means. (to paraphrase 'tyranny is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner')

In bright light, we see better with daylight 5,500K(ish) color. When illumination levels drop to the point our night vision begins to be a significant factor (rods and cones) a warmer light is easier to see by. I prefer 3,500-4,000K myself, a bit bluer than halogen (though halogen is fine).

Assuming the Gov't doesn't feel empowered enough to simply throw the suit out 'because screw you, what are you gonna do about it?', they'll win a CoIntelPro victory where 'that' intel program is shut down. Of course it's shut down by re-shuffling it's duties into a slightly different structure with new names. The wholesale warrant-less spying doesn't slow down for a moment. Those with the power to meaningfully reign it in are the biggest beneficiaries of what the NSA is doing.

The GeForce 3 was a new processor core supporting DX8. The Geforce 4 line was marketed as an updated GF3 core supporting DX9, but Nvidia sold warmed over Geforce 2 cores supporting only DX7 labeled as Geforce 4 without making the switch clear - in fact burying any disclosure of what that meant in terms of performance and compatibility.

At launch at retail from what I remember, the posters and pamphlets touted the GF4 cores supporting DX9. The box for the GF4 MX cards didn't contain any information outside the shrink wrap to let a customer know it was really a GF2 with a higher clock. If you advertise 'Buy GF4 for Direct X 9 capability' then your GF4 parts need to deliver that or you're being deceptive. It's not acceptable to require consumers to learn processor architecture to know the marketing material aren't true, rather the marketing mustn't contain out right lies.

Yeah. It's soooo tough to, just for example, go grab the information at Apple servers directly after Apple announces end to end encryption. They already know where to get the information in the clear, and that's assuming they don't already have a secret court order compelling Apple to turn that information over. They don't -say- it's safe from oversight, just that it's encrypted in transit.

The public noise about encryption is more likely a ruse to get people to keep putting information in the cloud where it can be taken easily. After being caught at cointelpro, what actually happened was rearranging the deck chairs while not stopping the illegal spying for one moment. If you think you're getting something even tamper resistant from an Apple or Google you're the sucker born every minute PT Barnum talked about. Their encryption is to keep your cable/phone company from snooping and getting the same creepy stalking marketing information about you that they collect. It's there to block the competition, not the NSA.

For cloud safety, the data has to be encrypted with keys only you have on your side. You'll also have to use tools not provided by the cloud service, or compromising the tool is too easy an attack. Then only sync the encrypted blob onto the cloud. (and be very careful with that key)

Yes, they have F8 lenses. Ebay is full of them. Parent is referring to the manual focus fixed aperture mirror lenses. Those use a telescope design that renders out of focus areas in an unpleasant way, and out of focus highlights terribly.

In the real world, they're one trick ponies only useful if you can contrive a scene where everything is in focus to avoid the poor bokeh, you have time to manual focus and there is enough light to use F8 and still have a reasonable shutter speed. Those lenses exist on the market only because proper full frame 500mm lenses cost thousands of dollars. It's more useful to get (bright light only) budget 500-600mm by adding a small sensor superzoom camera to your collection. You'll get image stabilization, lighter weight and (slow) autofocus too.

Yep. Valerian root is a great sleeping pill too. (FYI: The capsules smell like they'll taste terrible, but are tasteless) I used that and benadryl in place of Ambien, which needs to be take off the market. Everyone I know who's used Ambien had memory problem side effects. (recall, memory fixing, amnesiatic episodes)

You forgot serving malware dropping ads they claim they're not responsible for, while shaming users as thieves for blocking those infection vectors. Flashblock + Adblock edge dropped our employee's infection rate to 1/3. When I can recover damages from website who infect my systems, I'll review the decision to ad block.

Countries like the US with asset forfeiture laws creating a special interest group and cottage industry around the legal fiction that your assets are a person and you have no legal standing if they're 'incarcerated'. My introduction was while I was renewing my sales tax license. I overheard a conversation next to me. The person had been pulled over and arrested on invented drug charges which were thrown out in court because they were baseless (it sounded like friends pooled money for a defense lawyer). In the meantime the State had seized and sold his car, and taken his life savings from his bank accounts. The clerk was explaining to him that 'It's our policy to retain those funds after trial'.

So the state got paid, and the lawyers got paid - and now we know why he was pulled over for 'waste of time' charges...

Apparently just taking everything is only a good idea if you're too small to make large political contributions.