Charlotte’s Web.

All billionaires in electric chairs.

currently my only option for internet is by tethering my phone mobile data. i do it with a usb hotspot. i have a wifi router but it seems unnecessary, complicated and slower than usb, so it is not currently in use. it’s an android phone and a linux computer but i don’t feel i know enough about either device or networking in general. should i be worried or do things different? i don’t have much that’s important. i still fear i might be doing things wrong.

i got my amateur radio license (U.S. technician) about a month ago at a big convention. i was thinking of suggesting the hobby to the poster but first read through the comments, to check if it were suggested already. your initial advice is probably better. i’m realizing i overloaded myself and burned out during the time leading up to the test and now i’m not entirely sure why i tried getting the license in the first place. i still don’t even have a radio. I think i wanted to learn more about electronics and one thing led to another. now my mind goes blank when i try to think about what to do. i’m not OP but found it to be good advice, thanks.

Not quite related to the initial post topic, but “Every billionaire, deserves the electric chair.” is a phrase I’ve been spouting for the past few years. I like to think it’s a more extreme version of “Eat The Rich.” but probably not as catchy nor as easy to spraypaint onto stuff.

That’s a lot of information, for me at least. Short of searching for what those mean individually, is there a recommended way to learn more about these? Like how they ultimately effect people or could be used maliciously or effect security or privacy?

I have no usable programming skills and my knowledge in this subject is limited to roughly what I’ve learned from https://amiunique.org but those two links seem to be on a whole different level.

Maybe better questions to ask would be: How could a layman understand these things better? Is it feasible to learn more without extensive college level classes on programming and/or computer science? Should the average person need to worry, assuming they have nothing more to hide than a less-than-average bank account balance or habitual browsing of adult media which to the best of their knowledge is legal and consensual where they live and who have no social media or social life or ties to political movements, major corporations, news organizations, critical infrastructure or charities?

The 2019 Memorial Day tornado outbreak. Less than a week away from the 5 year anniversary of it.

My apartment is located roughly 500 feet (152 meters) from the end point of an EF4 tornado that hit and about 1500 feet (~450 meters) of the start point of an EF3 tornado that hit. One ended and the other began within minutes of each other.

I recall I looked out of my front door and could only see the sideways winds. I had just woken up after sleeping all day because I was tired, having stayed up late the night before, burying my cat which had eaten mouse poison, which I was unaware of the symptoms for until it was too late. I had to bury my cat a second time then next day and broke my hand in frustration while doing it.

My power was out for 10 days and I had no water for 6 days. I didn’t own a car and public transportation had halted in my area from trees blocking the roads. I walked 4.5 miles to a nearby Urgent Care for my hand but they had closed due to damage. From there I walked 9 miles to the nearest hospital. They had too many people. I gave up waiting to be seen after 8 hours and went home, then wrapped my hand with bandages myself, around an old brace I had from a previous unrelated broken wrist.

When my power came back, I learned that a power surge had fried the power supply of my computer. I eventually managed to check my email at the community college, which is when I learned my health insurance coverage through Medicaid had ended, thanks to an order from the president at the time.

My absentee landlord never checked on the building. Less than a month later, the in-wall A/C unit fell out of the wall, leaving a hole large enough for me, a 6’3" 250 lb man, to easily crawl through. It was there for 6 months before it was repaired by the landlords maintenance person, who bought a cheap window unit A/C and stuck it in the hole then filled in around it with expanding foam.

The hole was ‘fixed’ around the same time I was able to buy a replacement power supply for my computer. My data storage drive had also stopped working and I learned an important lesson regarding backups. That was right around Christmas time.

Unrelated to the tornados, that’s about when I started passing kidney stones. I tried to go to the hospital for them but without insurance, they turned me away. It wasn’t considered an emergency. I missed several days of work while I passed them at home. Work said because of the amount of time I missed, I needed a doctors note to return to work. Work would schedule me 6 hour shifts, 6 days a week, which comes to 36 hours. Employees needed 40 hours a week to be considered full time and to qualify for the company insurance. Without insurance, I couldn’t find a doctor who would see me. I was terminated and the reason they listed was that I abandoned my job.

My official last day with the company was 31 December 2019. I was ready to start a new year. 2019 had not been kind to me. I remember thinking to myself on New Years Day “At least 2020 can’t possibly be worse, right?”

I for one, am severely disappointed that i do not have relevent and targeted ads to view, while i am filling out online applications for jobs. i also still don’t see ads when i put the same information again on a paper application, as part of their company’s interview process or when filling out the tax paperwork if i get hired and i haven’t gotten ads yet when applying for food stamps due to the job not paying anything close to enough to survive off of and you know, come to think of it, i have not once seen an ad on any of my termination letters or paychecks either. actually, that’s probably because i never get either of those, they just tell me to stop ringing the bell and hand them the bucket of cash or tell me to return the wendy’s uniform within a week or i get a $35 fine deducted from my last paycheck and that i’m no longer allowed on the property after what happened behind the dumpster but that’s another story, i digress.

they should have ads on cash too. just because some people only use plastic cards and NFC to pay for things, doesn’t mean everyone does. poor people have a right to be bombarded with ads from their choice of currency, even if it is for things they cannot afford. it is a grave injustice of equal rights, that when i’m holding a cardboard sign on the freeway onramp begging for change, the pittance of coins i’m being pelted with aren’t blaring slogans from tiny built in speakers. when i’m dancing at the topless bar, the greasy singles being crumpled up and thrown at me don’t even play ads that sync up with the song i dance to and never, not one fucking time has my song and dance been interrupted for an important advertising announcement, it’s only ever interrupted by the strip club staff telling me to leave and never come back and that guys can’t dance to ‘touch myself’ by the divinyls no matter how flexible they are. i digress.

this is sarcasm mixed with weak attempts at humor. nothing should be considered truthful or accurate however some might be based on true events which have been altered or exagerrated for effect. This message was brought to by typing and no AI was harmed or used in the making of this comment.

Making new year resolutions and actually following through with them until i have succeeded. Each new year, if i completed my previous year goal, i will spend some time thinking about what i could do to best improve my life. i also very carefully word the resolution, so i am not able to ‘cheat’ in any way.

I started off by doing something i saw as a joke. the resolution was to watch every episode and movie of star trek, star wars and dr who. After accomplishing this goal (after 3 years) i realized that making the goal specific is more important. a vague goal that says “do better” in some way is bad. it is better, for me, to aim for a reasonable and achievable goal.

For example, “losing weight” is a bad. if i never stopped losing weight, it would be worse than if i never stopped gaining weight. if i make the goal “get to, then stay within 180-200 pounds”, it is a good goal. (for my height, this is a healthy range).

i started doing this in 2006. since starting i have quit drinking alcohol, quit illegal drugs and reconnected with family members i lost contact with, during the time i was doing the other two.

the most recent goal i made, in 2020, is actually the opposite of my first goal: quit watching tv and movies, quit playing videogames and educate myself as much as possible, until i get a college degree (this is difficult. i have developmental disorders) or buy a house. since they are harder goals than before, i gave myself a deadline of before 2030 begins.

your comment is innacurate and does not add to this discussion in my opinion.

i do not trust ford for many reasons beyond the invasion of privacy outlined here. while i never stated it explicitly as the reason for my mistrust of ford, i’m well aware that all car companies do data trading/selling and that details of the extent are largely unknown outside the shady data brokerage world. at no point did i state that they did not or that there are companies that do not.

this example is an example of what i feel is a company that went too far, by extracting data from the vehicle without informing me they were doing it. a vehicle which was brought to their authorized dealer, to repair their faulty parts, which they were deemed responsible for after numerous complaints and fatal accidents, some involving children falling out of the vehicle after the doorsprings malfunctioned, even when the doors appeared to be locked, while the car was moving in excess of 60mph. this was not the first recall for the issue either. it was the second for all doors except for the back/trunk door, where it was the third.

that is still irrelevant information though. the car was no longer under their warranty, it was purchased used. i gave no permission for them to do anything beyond the necessary and required repairs which came about due to their negligence. i signed no contract with them. i was supplied with no terms or conditions.

if i went to the doctor to get my appendix removed, i would not expect to wake up and learn the doctor decided to do a colonoscopy just for shits and giggles, even if it did detect something critical. if i mentioned my grandparents address while going under with aenesthesia, i would not expect the doctor to send them an offer addressed to me, to purchase my tonsils.

at no point did i make the claim that anyone could buy a car without it selling data of the purchaser. until now, where i will state that yes, you absolutely can buy a car that is not selling data. any car being sold that isn’t younger than me will not be selling any data, unless major customization was performed because they would be far too old. the technology didn’t exist 40+ years ago.

what motivation was behind your assumptive and half false comment?

I see this post is old enough that my comment is less likely to be seen but i feel this is a somewhat relevant anecdote regarding the sale of automotive data.

last april i bought a used car. i had not owned or driven a vehicle in well over a decade. i had never operated a vehicle with a computer, not like the kind this car had at least with its ‘infotainment’ console and numerous digital featrures. one such ‘feature’ was the navigation system. a map on the little tv in the console would show me directions after i entered an address into it. how useful!

i was taking a trip to visit my grandparents not long after buying the car and to test out the navigation system, i entered their address into it. it failed to give me correct directions however, since the nav system was ran off an SD card inserted into a port inside the storage space between the driver and passenger seats. the car was made in 2013 and the sole previous owner had never used the nav system. the SD card was in its original packaging, unopened and in the glove box.

i ended up visiting the grandparents by finding their home by memory, the way i normally navigate, and went on with my life. after that weekend, i learned the car had a recall. i could take it to a authorized dealership and have the faulty system replaced at no cost to me. so i did just that. the recalled part was supposedly fixed and all seemed well.

a week or two passes and i get a call from my grandfather. he recieved mail addressed to me, asking if i wanted to sell my vehicle. my name, his address. i have never searched for his address on the internet, i know it by memory. the only place i have ever entered the location was in that car navigation system. i have never even spoken the address out loud nor heard it spoken in several decades, so those who believe phone are always recording with their microphones.

i believe the only way that mail could have been sent in my name to their address, was through the navigation system data being downloaded from the car and sold to third parties. my grandparents have recieved several pieces of mail addressed to me since then. always, it is referencing my vehicle, with the correct make, model and year showing.

i will never trust ford or purchase their products ever again. i should have known better than to have purchased this car, but it was a very good price with only one previous owner and a great carfax report.

i used sweethome3d at first and then imported it into blender. it works pretty well although isn’t exactly accurate to scale. i started by recreating my current apartment and used it to plan rearranging my furniture but now i have two files, one for planning my apartment and one to buildout my dream home by expanding on what i currently have.

One important factor regarding submissives: 2 submissive people, regardless of how attracted they are to each other, are less likely to connect due to their submissive nature. in my opinion, people in general want a dominant person to take charge, excluding sociopaths/psychopaths, due to human laziness.

as for women specifically, from what i’ve seen the majority tend to be submissive, so that goes back to my first point, but also they usually don’t seem to care as long as the guy is over 6 feet tall, has immaculate teeth and they get some kind of benefit from it (money, free meals or rides, status, jewelry etc.) but my opinion there will probably get me all sorts of probably deserved hate. This is mostly theoretical. I’m speculating because I tend to be on the submissive side and i’m jaded as fuck, so take anything I say as worth a grain of salt.

In my area, a medium sized U.S. city, there are no male specific groups.

there are plenty of “women in (insert hobby)” groups and other groups that are designed towards what are considered minorities (in the U.S.), which meetup groups seem to exist for everything except for men, unless the man is also gay or racist or black or transitioning, etc.

i think many people in my area assume that any group which doesn’t name a specific minority, is a ‘male’ group but it’s not the case at all. i constantly have trouble finding social activities, because i’m a straight white male. i don’t fit in with any of the local meetup group demographics and don’t drink or care about sports or videogames.

so in my opinion and experience, i wouldn’t say it’s easier for men everywhere, just in certain locations perhaps.

i would compete in a race.

sl -alFc | lolcat -itas 819

rainbow snake train

sewing with a needle and thread. nothing complicated, the bare minimum is useful in a lot of ways.

i keep a small kit in my car because my pants waistlines keep shrinking mysteriously and i’m starting to randomly lose buttons and getting blowouts in the crotch. [likely due to far-reaching, nefarious, conspiracies and not b/c of the other kit in my car that’s full of snacks].

what used to be my crippling, irrational fear of inadvertently exposing myself at like a job interview or in an uber with a cute driver, is now an easy fix i can do in a minute AND it’s certain to make an impression.

old winter jackets with a lot of zippered pockets are especially great practice. try unstitching and removing a few of the pockets, then add them to other jackets or whatever you can think of.

I have a similar, but different setup for similar, but different reasons. Some call it ADHD. That’s a terrible term for it but that’s another conversation. I get sidetracked easily, so multitasking is risky. When that happens, I forget everything. If I get distracted, it can lead to hours, if not days, of forgetting to do critical things like: sleep, bathroom, eat, bathe, reply to texts from friends, family, bosses etc. An innocent wikipedia link can cause me to lose a day or two. So I use the virtual desktops as a way to ‘break away’ from whatever meaningless distraction has pulled me away from whatever i was doing. More on that in a bit.

Other important notes: I am left handed. I have rheumatoid arthritis. It effects both hands but my right hand is much worse. Keyboard shortcuts are not friendly to people who are left hand dominant. Keyboards period, are usually not left hand friendly. I have 2 monitors always and sometimes 3 or 4. I recently got an ultrawide and have been using just 2 lately. The 2nd monitor, the smaller one, is where I usually put things that are always running like chat clients, music player, daily agenda, timers for cooking etc. If I have a 3rd, it will have a text editor, firefox or things i read to assist with whatever i’m working on.

I have 4 virtual desktops. They are arranged and named like so: | Main | System | | Art | Porn |

Don’t let the names fool you.

“Main” is what it sounds like. It’s where I do most of my work. It’s also where I keep my ‘to do’ list. The list keeps me organized somewhat. It’s a shortlist of important things I need to remember.

The other 3 are where my biggest sources of distraction go.

“System” is where I put anything related to the tools I use. This is not limited to the operating system, it includes software and hardware troubleshooting stuff but also things like the manuals for my car, planners for building computers, electronic schematics, health related stuff like insurance crap or research papers and plenty more. Stuff that I need to be operational. It’s also a week/month/year planner and where I keep phone numbers, notes for projects, all sorts of stuff.

“Art” is mostly for image and video editing software. If I get frustrated by something, it becomes a vacation spot. A zen garden of sorts. Occasionally I will run “feh -rzsZFD 5 /path/to/my/shittyart” which starts a nice slideshow of images and watch it for awhile.

“Porn” is for anything that is not important. This is where wikipedia lives if it’s not related to anything important. This is where the youtube videos go, that friends/family send me that i’m worried they will distract me. It’s more of a ‘to do later’ section. That’s part of the choice in name for the desktop, ‘do’ sometimes used as a euphemism for sex. Another way of putting it, it’s the “fuck that for now” desktop. Also, I quit watching TV and movies and also playing videogames, as a new year resolution back in 2020. This is where those things used to go. Also, this is where I watch porn.

Keyboard: I remapped a lot of keyboard shortcuts. I wont list all of them, just the important/relevant ones. CTRL+[F1…F4] These switch to the virtual desktops. F1 is Main, F2 is System, F3 is Art and F4 Porn. CTRL+[top row 1…4] These send the currently focused window to the corresponding desktop. Most useful when I catch myself getting distracted by something. I can CTRL+4 to ‘throw it away for later’ Meta+top row 1/Meta+ top row 3 Moves current focused window left or right in regard to which monitor it is on. Meta+ top row 2 Maximize toggle focused window. Meta+4
Meta+WSAD Tile ↑↓←→ F1 Application Launcher (because I don’t need help lol) F2 Window menu F3 Krunner F4 Yakuake toggle

This allows me to use my left hand almost entirely by itself, useful when my right hand is locked and curled up in a clenched fist from the rheumatism. Another part of the reason I named the 4th desktop what I named it, because i’ve become really good at typing with one hand.

There are a lot of F row combinations that are unused. F5-F8 with shift, alt, meta and ctrl can be done with either hand once you do it a few times and understand how your hand can reach them. F5 alone is refresh. meta+f5 and f6 do mouse focus stuff i don’t really understand or use. I don’t use or know of any programs that use any combinations of them. To me it means there are 30+ shortcuts that could be made if i include shift+another modifer key.

I also made caps lock the 3rd level chooser, pause/break the compose key, mousewheel on the desktop switches desktops, mousewheel on the titlebar of any window moves that window and switches desktop, alt+menu (the keyboard menu button) and crtl+menu to open the emmoji picker and special character select dialogues.

I originally designed this with the KDE desktop cube switcher. It really helped the ADHD aspect of things. Something about being able to mentally ‘put stuff on the cube’ helped keep me focused. The visualization itself also worked as a distraction, one that I could use to help break away from my distractions. Convoluted way to do things, I know. Losing that silly cube animation really messed me up for awhile. I can’t wait for it to return, although I doubt it will have the same functionality.

Like you mentioned at the end, I am probably forgetting to talk about something.

This is a low quality gif I made, when I was first working out the shortcuts and stuff. Felt relevant.

https://imgur.com/SQsqa6C

Here’s a scenario: You have the password to my paypal account. The police arrest me for an unrelated public indecency charge after I urinate on the local government courthouse building. The account is then used to purchase illegal drugs from another country while I am in custody. Having no access to my account or the internet, I could not have made the purchase. The police learn of this purchase when customs detects a strong odor from a package and decide to inspect it, finding a massive hoard of marijuana and jenkem. the police are alerted and ask me, the account owner, who else has access to the account. Me, under duress and probably having shitty withdrawals, tell them everything i know about you, specifically things that might implicate you. As the only known person with access and having no alibi for the time period, you are then arrested for suspicion of involvement in an international crime ring. After searching your computer they find a VPN and TOR and then you are sequestered in a secret military prison and forced to do the chicken dance naked until you confess to every unsolved crime ever.

While this scenario might be far-fetched, hyperbolic and not really accountability per se, it is a plausible worry some people may have. Just playing devils advocate here.

Most places, the store employees are trained to do nothing. Several stores I worked at specifically state with a lot of emphasis to never engage a shoplifter. They might have a gun or attack you or who knows what else. Plus the cost of prosecuting someone for shoplifting is often greater than the value of what was stolen, so the small time thefts are largely ignored. Instead preventitive measures are used like visible cameras and engagement. So if you’re ever at a store and you find employees are repeatedly asking if you need help with anything, there’s a good chance someone thinks you are shoplifting (but not always!)