planetaryprotection

@planetaryprotection@midwest.social
0 Post – 38 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

I once applied for a "database admin" job at one of the big credit card companies. The job description was basically "run all our Oracle databases" and the salary was in the mid 2 millions USD, but I assumed that figure was typo'ed or something ( an extra 0 maybe?)

In the interview I learned that there was no typo and it was to be one of the seven people on the planet that run the databases for this credit card processor. They said "if the database goes down then we are losing billions of dollars a minute".

Anyways I didn't get the job, but they're not all underpaid.

6 more...

I used to work for a startup that laid claim to all "ideas" that I had, in or out of working hours, during my period of employment with them.

3 more...

I had COVID a couple months ago. I was told to strictly self-isolate for two weeks after my first day of symptoms. That meant not leaving my house, even if masked. I was also told to strictly mask for two weeks following that self-isolation period.

Programmer: 2 + 2 is 3.99999999999999999

Sampson Boat Co. - British man and friends rebuild wooden sailing boat. If you have any interest in boats or craftsmanship you'll enjoy. Watch from the very beginning to see their incredible progress.

Beau Miles - Charming and slightly rough Australian man has strange adventures and philosophizes along the way. He gets excited about particularly useful/edible bits of trash along the highway.

Primitive Technology - Silent man with blue shorts exists alone in the jungle and has been working his way up to iron tools. He is freakishly fast at making fire with only two sticks. Watch in order to see his progression and turn on captions to see his commentary.

Spirit Of The Law - Extremely thorough Age of Empires II science and analysis. If you thought this 24 year old video game was dead, think again.

Settled - Old School RuneScape player plays the game with extra restrictions that create surprisingly compelling storytelling. "Swampletics", his Morytania-locked Ultimate Iron Man is legendary.

DIY Perks - British guy makes mostly brass/wooden PCs and other tech. His creations aren't always the most practical but they are always interesting. His slim PlayStation 5 was neat.

There's a handful of sustainable farming channels that I like: No-Till Growers, Richard Perkins, and Josh Sattin Farming. If your interests include food or growing stuff then these are for you.

1 more...

Like when I'm going from my shift at my first job to my shift at my second job?

In practice, I believe the private key should contain the public key (or at least sufficient data to recover it): https://superuser.com/questions/814409/gnupg-opengpg-recovering-public-key-from-private-key#814421

I believe you only need your private key to sign files so, technically you only need to back up the private key, but you should test this to be sure it fits your use case.

Depending on how you're backing things up, and what your security goals are, remember that backing up a private key may involve putting that private key on somebody else's computer - i.e. if you use a remote git repo, or cloud backup service, or even send the key to your own (different) machine over an insecure network. Make sure that you've got a way of securely backing up your private key, otherwise you may undermine the whole cryptography thing anyways :).

As always, you should test by backing up your key(s) and then testing that you can actually restore them and successfully sign a file. Backups are only as good as the last time you tested restoring from them.

2 more...

IDF can probably find entrances that are in use, but probably can't easily detect how those entrances connect to each other, or what is actually in the tunnels (a weapons cache? Communications bunker? Hostages? Nothing?) Not to mention emergency exits or booby traps. If IDF seals an entrance, how do they know there isn't a back door that nobody uses regularly? How do they know they aren't sealing hostages inside too?

Seedless grapes already exist, but I suppose you could now insert the gene into other plants/varieties to make those seedless as well.

I'm thinking more about how big ag companies could use this to prevent farmers from saving seeds/propagating a copyrighted variety (though I don't know if that's common with any crops where the seed itself isn't the end product) or maybe more charitably, preventing their copyrighted plants from cross pollinating neighboring fields of the same species (e.g. ruining that neighbor's non-gmo status).

Finally, this could be useful if it can be "switched on" i.e. by deliberately polluting an invasive plant's gene pool with this gene and then switching it on to stall the invasive's population growth. But I think most invasives are perennials, so would still need to be removed some other way.

1 more...

This article is worth reading if only for this line:

However, though drug companies have had some success targeting the Death Receptor-5, no Fas agonists have made it into clinical trials.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is my favorite movie. It's got great characters, including three played by the same actor, is well written with some very quotable lines, and the story is both absurd and believable (even now).

I'll be the first to admit that it's not for everybody, but if you're asking for movies to watch it's probably for you. With movies I always recommend going in knowing nothing.

I could quote the whole thing probably, but I'll spare you and just say that the way the Russian ambassador says "fresh fish" is weirdly seared into my brain.

3 more...

X11 because it's what I already have installed.

When I have/want to make a change then I'll go with Wayland :)

Is "research chemicals" a euphemism or are you literally referring to chemical substances/precursors purchased and used by laboratories that are also available to the public?

Do you have the questions right now? If so, ask away.

I wish the US had better passenger rail infrastructure so people traveling long distance didn't need to road trip.

I'm lucky to be in a position where I can ride a train to the two closest cities so I'm picking up an EV. Anything longer distance and I'll either fly or rent an ICE.

Depending on what you're cleaning and the nature of the pipe (is it smooth or does it contain sharp bends?) you could consider pigging.

1 more...

"Is that a wet sock in your pocket or are you incontinent?"

In 2021 there was some planning/writing done for a prequel, but I don't think anything came of it.

That film is having a bit of a cultural comeback, so there's still hope.

Power cut

The Grand Canyon! Must seem even grander to an ant

Reminds me of 2016's smash-hit mixtape WATCH THE STOVE from Hamburger Helper.

Panera stopped being good when it stopped being bread co

Yeah I had convinced myself that I would only do it for a year and be able to retire much much sooner.

I've never heard of k8s described as a modern implementation of a Linux distro. What makes you say that?

Cats are variable the same as dogs. Maybe I got lucky but my cat doesn't have any of those problems. On the other hand, my sister's cats do all of the things you described.

Thousands of military drones have been remotely piloted for decades. This news isn't as ground breaking as it might seem. Some of these drones are large: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk

I know a military drone isn't the same as a passenger carrying airplane, but for cargo I think the only reason this isn't already a thing is because drones are military tech and most governments don't want that falling into the wrong hands.

Whenever I see mail trucks I think "Neither rain nor snow nor glom of nit"

Brave is based on Chromium, not Firefox.

There are Firefox derivatives, but most "alternative" browsers are based on Chromium.

What do you have? Almost all computers can run docker.

How is you posting about your music on a forum not an ad? You saying you only reach people who might already be interested is just saying that you target your ads.

Do you consider it different because you're an individual doing it manually?

I like this sentiment, but giving the US intelligence apparatus what amounts to a veto for elected/appointed officials feels like a recipe for disaster.

The only way I see that being workable is if the clearance grantors are transparently beholden to elected officials or the people directly. Which are essentially what elections and the congressional confirmation process are supposed to be. But both of those processes feel like they've been subverted. (Elections by the two-party system and the fact that half the population seems intent on electing a dictator, and the other by the senators/representatives that come out of that electoral system).

Not trying to defend Jeff here, but generally these kind of space megaprojects rely on manufacturing materials in space. I.e. capture an asteroid and use its material as the radiation shielding. Not that that's currently anywhere near feasible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How does it stream things/what's the point of a Roku if it's not connected to the Internet?

4 more...

Ah, for some reason I thought you were referring to a Roku stick/box, not a smart TV, my mistake 👍.

Congrats! Check hop water if you haven't already!

I used to work in a brewery and we used hot caustic followed by acid for cleaning most things but some pneumatic (spent) grain systems got pigged in freezing weather to avoid the wet grain freezing into a plug.

Zigbee mostly uses 2.4Ghz, so it's not helping remove congestion from that band anyways but I guess the other protocols do. Can't the devices phone home as soon as they're connected to a hub that's internet connected? Even if the hub has to cooperate with the device, they're made by the same manufacturers so I wouldn't trust tleither of them.

With wifi I can spin up a separate iot vlan that cannot access the internet. That vlan doesn't require my ISP, it's entirely local. I get to control exactly who connects and even who they connect with. I don't see that same control with the alternatives.

I guess I do see an argument for very low power devices using a lower power protocol, but I guess I just don't have any of those devices so it hasn't been an issue for me. And like you said traffic congestion is a valid problem, I've just never experienced it.

1 more...

I don't understand why smart devices don't all just use wifi. What problems are these competing standards solving?

4 more...