_bug0ut

_bug0ut, 6 months ago

• George Costanza

_bug0ut, 6 months ago

I mean, that’s not entirely accurate - a vote for a presidential candidate is a vote for the slate of electors tied to said candidate - effectively a vote for your candidate, albeit indirectly. Electors can, however, be required to vote according to popular vote as required by the state they’re electors in. Or they could have pledged to vote according to specific party. I don’t know for sure, but I assume state elector requirements override party pledges.

My understanding is that when it was devised, it was a compromise between direct democracy (which would honestly be potentially dangerous - how many people do you know where you can’t help but go, “Fuck… This guy can vote.”) and election via congressional vote. It certainly ain’t perfect and I have no bias towards it, but it’s a system like anything else that people tend to point at and blame when things don’t go their way or just ignore or even defend when things do go their way.

_bug0ut, 6 months ago

The long, drawn out metaphorical explanation was unnecessary and frankly kind of condescending.

I’m not over here trying to be some champion of the electoral college and I’d be more interested in seeing a real push for ranked choice or one of its cousins.

The point I was making was that if you sat at home and didn’t vote at all, your chosen candidate would never see the inside of the oval office and I went into my understanding of why it is the way it is. Ultimately, voting under the current system is not entirely worthless as you seemed to claim in the original post I responded to.

We’ve had something like 59 elections in total and 5 of them involved the winning candidate losing the popular vote but winning the election by way of the electoral college. Only one of those elections - the very first - involved anything even remotely close to your example (but still not42.3% vs 31.6%). The other 4 had a difference of like 2% or less between the two leading candidates.

The electoral college was devised as a compromise between direct democracy and congressional voting and I’m sure it was done in good faith to try to make sure everyone was represented, but this system seems to truly show its cracks when we’re facing an insanely stark national split like we see today and there’s no argument that we should probably shake things up and get rid of it.

_bug0ut, 6 months ago

No, that’s “predestination.” You’re thinking of a medical condition one had before they signed up for an insurance policy and then got denied coverage for.

_bug0ut, 7 months ago

How do they account for a service like privacy.com which allows you to generate multiple dummy card numbers for a single card?

If the cost of subscription is, instead, the barrier to entry then all we’ll end up seeing is parties who have the resources for wide spanning scams or propaganda or whatever it is - and if they’re paying then they expect to profit or score gains in some way that justify their costs, which likely means they’re effective at what they do

_bug0ut, 7 months ago

They’re there… err… the remains are, at least.

_bug0ut, 7 months ago

Edgy teenager shit, probably.

Like drawing an anarchy symbol on stuff.

_bug0ut, 7 months ago

I assume the accepted copout is something along the lines of, “You can thank us for making enough noise that they backed down. Sheepdogs, sheep, blah blah something something…”

_bug0ut, 7 months ago

For real. I still regularly lose the “make my own vs. takeout” battle, but a nice evening drive is better than paying $80 for a $40 2-person meal.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Holy fuck did we finally sell Florida? I wonder what sucker bought it.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Sneako and his “I’m a little teapot” lookin ass with those goofy ass ears. Holding a dickhead like him or the Tates up as some sort of goal to strive towards is synonymous with “rock bottom.”

I get it - like I understand the mechanism behind why some younger dudes become infatuated with these figures. It’s the same reason boomer housewives get into the Law of Attraction or why people who don’t have a single fucking clue think Trump is going to fix everything if he could just get one more term in office… but I don’t get it.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

I actually got this solely in YouTube shorts, but without having viewed anything related to it. Every few Shorts I scroll through, I’m met with something plucked straight out of the alpha/sigma/HKV trashbin and I’m assuming it’s because I likely got demographic’d. It frankly kind of pushed me away from the whole feature - not much of value was lost since a lot of Shorts are just teaser trash that gives you a portion of a story designed to drive you to the channel.

Oddly, my regular, non-Shorts recommendations are fine.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

I find it crazy that I didn’t really have any real male role models, but the media I turned to ended up being guys like Henry Rollins.

The “finding myself” period of my life pre-dated the existence of this manosphere/shallow-ass-masculinity shit, but the archetype has been around for far longer and there were plenty of slimy douchebags to look up to. Sometimes I wonder what spared me.

_bug0ut, 7 months ago

See? They were actually driving us toward the most drastic measure to end climate change this whole time!

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Passengers, reportedly including the one suffering diarrhea, were allowed to re-board after an eight-hour delay […]

God damn if I was the person who did it, I’m not sure I’d want to get back on and just have people stare at me with contempt and disgust for an entire international flight.

Alternately, I might feel obligated to suffer along with everyone else, all things considered.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

I just keep hearing “smell of vanilla shit” in my head and I’m like, “Naw, I’m good. I’ll sleep at the airport and try to catch an early flight tomorrow.” Haha

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

I don’t know if you’re chiding me or not, but in case you are: I quite literally put myself in their shoes in the post you’re responding to.

And for the record, without going into the horrifying details, I lived a very similar situation at a really nice hotel on a work trip. I had the luck of being alone and able to clean it up on my own without anyone noticing but for that 45 minutes where I frantically ran to a 7/11 to buy paper towels and hand sanitizer as a stand-in for proper cleaning product and then frantically cleaned it up like MacGuyver was just handed a single thread and a thimble to diffuse a bomb, I dreaded more than anything that someone would see before I had a chance to take care of it.

I agree that it would be cruel to treat that person any differently because they had an unavoidable accident that caused all this, but people suck. And even if everyone was super understanding, I’d still be absolutely mortified as the person who did it.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

An auditor with this level of scrutiny and attention to detail? Say it ain’t so.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Oof, i can relate to that.

What’s really sad here, though, is that it was so easy and effortless to assume it was the auditor himself lmao

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

See, that’s a common mistake for novice whittlers. Had he been paying attention, he could have made it into a decorative spoon or even a nice little squirrel.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Probably because windows and Linux users aren’t searching for free Mac apps. While I agree that it would probably be difficult to implement an attack like this for Linux (partly because it’s Linux and partly because it’s userbase is generally more technically apt), Windows has been susceptible to viruses since the dawn of time because users just install random shit on autopilot and click through installers without checking what extra bloat is included (which is often malware disguised as an extra third party program). I don’t think I agree that this specifically is Apples fault. No one blames Windows or Linux distros for user error and poor security practices.

Google’s fault for not vetting the ads they let through? For sure. The users fault for not paying attention while installing the app and just clicking through the request to bypass Gatekeeper and then entering their system password when a pop up randomly asks for it for no discernible reason? Absolutely.

What should Apple do to fix this? Lock the machine down to the point where users aren’t allowed to have admin privileges on their own machine?

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

I’m not sure where I said anything about the reason any of those platforms get viruses because you’re right, Windows was often more targeted because its footprint was massive by comparison (whole lotta end users out there, but also tons of domain controllers and enterprise systems running it) - I’m not arguing that.

AMOS itself is distributed in all kinds of ways including phishing, being bundled into crap no-name software, shady ads, tainted torrents, whatever. You still have to be tricked into downloading whatever it is that infects your machine with it.

As to this partially being Google’s fault, from the article itself:

The ads are legitimate and paid for but disguise themselves as the website or software the user is searching for.

In the given example, it sounds like the ad was for Trading View, a pretty popular stock market charting platform, but the ad itself took users to trabingviews.com and it looked like a clone or Trading View’s site or some kind of landing page that purported to be a download for a desktop client. In the Malwarebytes article I share below, the fake URL purporting to be Trading View’s website is actually tradingsview.com

I’m not exactly sure where you’re getting the idea that this was a fake ad caused by malware pre-existing. These are “legit” Google ads that are bought and paid for and not quality checked by Google before they display them.

Here’s the article directly from Malwarebytes, the folks who kindly did the write up the author of the above article is talking about:

malwarebytes.com/…/atomic-macos-stealer-delivered…

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Eh, “legit” as in “paid for, payment accepted by Google, displayed in search results without proper QC.”

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

My guy, I don’t know what you want from me. A Google ad is purchased in a legitimate manner, but the ad itself actually links to a page where you download malware.

You answered really fast, so you clearly didn’t read the actual source material I linked at the bottom - specifically the Distribution section.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

The “original” article is the one I linked - the one written by the actual security researchers at MalwareBytes who did the research on this malware and then provided the detailed write up (which is what security researchers do). The one shared in the OP is referencing that article.

But it’s all good. All you had to do was tell me you can’t read and I would’ve backed out of this thread like 2 responses ago. :) Have a great night!

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Explicitly by the users negligence, same as any negligent user installing some freeware on windows and ending up with BonziBuddy and 34 search bars in their browser. Or alternately, by clicking “Ignore” on on an alert in their AV and proceeding with the installation anyway.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

My main PC is a windows PC (mainly for video games and music production). I also have a Macbook for my work as a (currently) Lead Systems Automation Engineer for a large global company (14 years in the industry, 3.5 of those was me “taking a break” and going into Infosec specifically to first do endpoint/end-user security, then moving into container and cloud security) a personal Macbook, as well as a few Linux laptops I use to write code and do other tech-related things because I prefer MacOS and Linux for that kind of work. I’m well-exposed to most operating systems and have a working knowledge of how security works, both in a professional setting as well as a personal one.

I mention BonziBuddy and search bars because they’re funny and to illustrate a simple point. The reality is that browser hijackers still very much exist (though they’re not as prevalent as they used to be because browsers themselves have become more resilient over the years - nowadays, they’re usually found in add-ons/extensions because its easier to fly under the radar that way).

For all the shady shit I’ve done on all of the above platforms, I’ve never had an issue. Specifically in Windows, Defender - which is still the de facto/standard security tool that comes bundled with Windows under the Windows Security tool suite - has not once flagged malware for me. I’ve found it with Avast and BitDefender, but Windows Defender simply isn’t great for the things I do.

I also run ClamAV on the Macbook for ad-hoc scanning of things I download prior to running them. Why? Because I’m not a negligent user and I do at least the bare minimum in regards to good security practices.

In every one of the above cases/operating systems/platforms, there is always some kind of security tooling or framework involved (whether that’s ClamAV on Mac, BitDefender or ClamAV or MalwareBytes or whatever on Windows, SELinux or AppArmor or ClamAV on Linux) that can and should be leveraged if you really want to be “safe.”

In the case of AMOS and Macs, users are purposely bypassing Gatekeeper and proceeding without knowing wtf they’re installing. As soon as Gatekeeper pops up like that, you should be on alert unless you know the software you’re installing isn’t signed, trust the source, and are willing to codesign it yourself.

You, on the other hand, clearly seem to have some kind of gripe against Macs (based off of your comments in this now far-too-long comment thread) and that kind of weird quasi-religious brand loyalty (or hatred) is a thing I’ll never understand.

The fact that you’re out on a public forum, spewing bad info/misinformation really says everything. Not that you care, but I’d have respected you more if you just admitted you were wrong and misread the bit about the Google ads. Instead, you decided to be confidently dumb and jump from hill to hill, prepared to die on each one of them.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

I’m not defending shit and frankly, I give up. That “a lot of words to summarize” was an offer of my credentials and experience doing engineering and information security work and you clearly showed, once again, that no one ever actually taught you how to read.

You’re either incredibly stupid or trolling for responses and I’m not interested in dealing with either any further.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Alright, quiet down, dummy. Conversation’s over and the only thing you’ll find by continuing to come back here is me further insulting you for not being able to read a simple sentence, understand it, and then getting all pissy about it when someone calls you on it. Go find an actual Apple fanboy to pull your shit with.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

An intellectually dishonest take at best. Just toss it on the pile of other undesirable qualities you’ve been shamelessly displaying in this thread.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Pull off request, on the other hand (ha-HA!), approved.

Not like that bitch Stephanie is gonna be helping out with that anymore.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Genuinely curious why you think Apple Music is better. When I got my first iPad in years last year, I decided to try to go “all-in” on Apple services partly to consolidate and partly to save some money. After about 14-21 days, the only service left standing was Apple News+ (and only because the only other option was NewsReader which is 3x the price and I just generally didn’t love the UI and the way it worked overall).

Apple Music seemed to have slightly less of the music I searched for (I don’t have specifics, it was a year ago) and also seemed to be slower/shittier overall than Spotify. It was just generally unpleasant to use - this, coming from a guy who has plenty of gripes with Spotify’s user experience.

I’m all for ditching Spotify (I have all kinds of issues with their general business practices and how they stiff artists, among other things), but like @dinckelman mentioned elsewhere in these comments: “every bit of competition is even more incompetent and greedy than they are.” I’m not going to say Apple is more greedy in this case, but they felt less competent.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

Alcoholism will do crazy things to people and their brains.

I keep going back to how the guy who wielded RICO so cleverly to wreck the mob, ran an effective “PR campaign” post 9/11 that dubbed him the “Mayor of America,” and was a serious potential presidential candidate ended up leaking oil out of his scalp in front of a landscaping place, being the mouthpiece for a sort-of wannabe mafia-esque organization and eventually getting bitchslapped with RICO charges himself as a result.

I think it’s one part alcoholism, one part grasping wildly for the glory days, and possibly one part dude just getting wackier with age. You can see the glory days stuff in action during his time trying to get the GOP nomination in 2008 and how everything with him was about 9/11. There’s probably a feeling of invincibility he has from the highest highs he reached in his life and maybe even a bit of smug “I know what’s best for this country, I was it’s goddamn Mayor for the love of fuck!”

Whatever it is, fuck that guy. Time to piss off, Rudy. You’re embarrassing yourself and the rest of us by extension.

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

The amount of “innovation and debate” I’ve seen during remote meetings is no different than when I used to work in an office. Meetings are either exhausting and dead (when they’re the usual bullshit administrative meetings that no one wants to be in and could’ve been handled via email) or they’re fun and engaging (when its something like a working session where the participants want to be there).

This guy is an idiot and, as others in this thread have already stated, he’s got ulterior motives beyond “innovation and debate.”

_bug0ut, 8 months ago

I feel like this was a missed opportunity to use Dhalsim for the fire one instead of Sagat.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

mistakes in design… unrepairability

Who… Who’s gonna tell em?

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

Can’t believe he chose THAT instead of just wishing for more wishes.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

My background is not on STEM and I was always passed the notion that without roots in hard math I can’t go far in programming.

I swear this is some BS repeated by people who have no idea what they’re talking about. I got told pretty much the same when I was younger - don’t believe it. It may have been true to some degree at some point in the distant past, but it’s outdated advice at best.

Your main general skills when it comes to writing code are the ability to think logically and to think about abstract concepts. Creativity and imagination can definitely help. The ability to keep organized in your thoughts can also go a long way. Just about everything else comes in the form of knowing the language you’re working in, exposure to common coding and software design principles, and knowing your coding environment.

Math can figure into a lot of different types of programming careers… Shit like writing video game engines and other complicated things that model physics and stuff come to mind. But it’s not so much that math is intrinsic to programming, but rather that those types of software just require a lot of advanced math.

For example, I’m an automation engineer. It’s just a sysadmin who writes a decent amount of code. Most of my programming work revolves around sending requests over our company’s local network to servers or internal websites to do shit like remotely power up or shutdown machines or trigger a task or open up work orders. There is very little actual math, if any, in the entirety of my work.

At it’s core, programming is just the storing, moving around, manipulating, and keeping track of bits of information. Especially in a language like Python (which is my primary language).

EDIT: I should probably add my background isn’t STEM either. I’m a two time college dropout who got a break 14 years ago and left the restaurant industry to go into the tech sector instead.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

These dickheads always think they can translate the power they hold in civilized society to the wild post aoocalyptic free for all. Makes you wonder what will be going through their heads when some brutish psycho decides it’s his turn and is about to stomp their heads into the tightly packed wasteland dirt.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

Nostalgia? I’m nearing 40 and all I have to do is switch out “room” with “home office” to make this applicable to me.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

This is a very interesting point and I can see it throughout zoomer culture when it comes to the down and dirty technical stuff, but I think there’s a distinction to be made between being technically apt and being able to grok whatever the hot shit consumer-grade tech paradigm is right now.

In the former context, a lot of zoomers have already “failed” but that context is the territory of people who reach out to learn it - in other words, the nitty gritty tech stuff will always be for the technical types. In the latter context, I imagine millennials will probably mostly be fine and zoomers will, too. I say “mostly” because we’re already seeing millennials start to kind of skip the latest trends (TikTok comes to mind immediately). Zoomers are already coming to grips with not being able to understand Alphas sense of humor via memes. Whatever the next social media platform is, I imagine it’ll be primarily a home for Alphas, leaving zoomers and millennials where they are.

Will there be spillover across the board, with members of different generations populating the other platforms? Sure, there are always exceptions.

As far as physical tech goes, like how millennials got the smartphone and zoomers grew up with it? It’s highly dependent on how ingrained it becomes in society. Hard to exist without a smartphone these days, so everybody has to know how to use one. Boomers have more trouble because they got it later, but there are plenty of them who are just fine with current phone tech precisely because they need to be for professional AND personal use.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

Kenshi is one of those games where I had it wishlisted for like 3 years, finally bought it, spent 300 hours soaking in the utter horror and brutality of it, resorted to shameless save scumming, put it down, and now, 2 or 3 years after my last session, I’m afraid to pick it up again because I have shit to do and nothing will get done until I’ve lost another several hundred hours to it.

EDIT: Oh, AND there’s a sequel coming and that’s even scarier to me than picking up the original again. Send help.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

Oh, I can’t ever just pick up an old save on a game like that. Although, with Kenshi, it might be easier in some ways to just pick up the save and go into an established, geared, and prospering character vs. becoming instantly disemboweled 10 min into a new save by a dust bandit lol

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

his legacy*

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

Shrek is love, Shrek is life, Shrek is high fashion.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

I think in a lot of cases, it’s less about them having a lot of money and more about how they’re able to effect change using that money or the power/influence associated with that money. Unfortunately, this can often happen at a relatively large scale, like by upending a popular social media platform or disrupting the automobile industry (for good or ill) or discussing futuristic public transportation ideas to take the wind out of the sails of more realistic/attainable projects and efforts.

All things considered, I wouldn’t mind hearing less about these people - a lot less. We’re well into mud slinging territory and some of these dickheads absolutely thrive on that. I’m sure the worst of them feel egged on when the media talks about them so they say or do more crazy shit very publicly to draw attention from fanboys and detractors alike. Call it a vicious cycle… or a hyperloop or something.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

fair enough and fwiw, that’s what i was kind of echoing. “we’re” in mud slinging territory as a culture, but journalists/opinion-piece-writers/whatever are massive drivers of it.

_bug0ut, 9 months ago

exactly. a little bit of elbow grease and greed is what got us all to the fairly awful future we find ourselves in, who’s to say it can’t get worse? never let the hope die. lol