Hiker, software engineer (primarily C++, Java, and Python), Minecraft modder, hunter (of the Hunt Showdown variety), biker, adoptive Akronite, and general doer of assorted things.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 10th, 2023

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  • People typically aren’t stuck on minimum wage because the powers that be won’t let them have a decent wage. Most adults are not on minimum wage ( in the US, less than 2% as of 2022; in the UK, low pay accounts for less than 4% as of 2024 ).

    There’s something to be said for the rich taking advantage of folks, but … bothering worrying about abstract rich guy metrics like making the GDP go up is not going to help anyone get out of their situation.

    Sure, focus on other aspects of politics like making education affordable, strengthening unions, etc things that will help you achieve your goals or help you once you’ve achieved your goals. However, there’s a lot one can directly do to address their situation that’s a lot less abstract than “vote for a representative, to write a bill, to potentially help you, to possibly get passed by your legislature, and possibly get passed by your executive branch (or your equivalent process).”

    … and even then that latter concept has little to do with “why someone on minimum wage should pay attention to the GDP.”


  • So… Regardless of county, I would say minimum wage workers should not worry about the economy. Instead put that energy into finding a career path of some sort.

    That’s not me bashing minimum wage workers, it’s just … the best thing a minimum wage worker can do to improve their circumstance.

    Worrying about the GDP or stocks or anything else isn’t particularly helpful, especially if you’re living paycheck to paycheck (which at least in the US where I live, most minimum wage workers are).

    Even for middle and upper middle class, worrying about GDP growth and how the stock market is doing day to day (unless you’re on the verge of retirement and trying to time cashing out stocks) is not a particularly helpful exercise.

    Maybe it has some abstract effect on what social services you get or whether your employer survives another year… but you can probably find better indicators of that (e.g. in the days where computers were reducing paper usage, it should’ve been increasingly obvious that working at the paper mill probably wasn’t going to be a great long term plan).








  • I recommend against hosting a password manager yourself.

    The main reason is self hosted systems require maintenance to patch vulnerabilities. While it’s true that you won’t be on the main list if e.g. bitwarden gets hacked, your data could still be obtained or ransomed by a scripted attack looking for e.g. vulnerable VaultWarden servers (or even just vulnerable servers in general).

    Using professional hosting means just that, professional hosting with people who’s full time job is running those systems and keeping people that aren’t supposed to be there out.

    Plus, you always have the encryption of the binary blob itself to fall back on (which if you’ve got a good password is a serious barrier to entry that buys you a lot of time). Additionally vaults are encrypted with symmetric crypto which is not vulnerable to quantum computing, so even in that case your data is reasonably safe… And mixed in with a lot of other data that’s likely higher priority to target.




  • I agree honestly. I’ve gone through the exact process op has described several times now and flew even more before the process started.

    I think the lines are worse than they used to be. I have not seen the scan improve anything. The only time I’ve seen things move slower for me is recently the agent hadn’t done an opt out in a while and had to remember how to do it. The TSA precheck line I was in did not have opt out signs posted. I just politely asked anyways (and they did comply).

    I had a similar situation happen with customs where the guy was confused by my request and hadn’t done one it the old way in a while but honored it without argument.



  • Can’t comment on the DOCSIS, I don’t know enough about it to not be making stuff up.

    Regarding WiFi though… The simple answer is if you’re not having trouble accessing the WiFi in the places you use the WiFi and you’re getting the full speed that you’re paying for, there’s not a ton of a reason to upgrade the router.

    The exception to this is that most routers only get a few years of security updates like most phones… That can potentially leave your network more vulnerable as the router might not properly block unsolicited traffic from making it to your devices. There’s a solid argument that you should just have your devices secured via their own firewalls though.

    The Google routers are nice for the average Joe because they just kind of work and keep themselves updated (and Google tends to keep the hardware they sell under the Nest name receiving security updates a VERY long time compared to the competition). Netgear has been my go to for years but their update mechanism is … fairly manual in my experience.

    I’ve since moved to having a pfSense box for the firewall and routing side of things and using my old negate router in access point mode (I’m much less concerned about this setup).

    I’ll add that I don’t recommend WiFi for gaming… And that most people have more download speed than they really “need.” Files really haven’t gone up in size much (sure games have) but evening else… meh (?). Video streaming is more popular but unless you’ve got a lot of people in your home or you stream at 4k, it’s really not going to be that noticable between 30Mbps and 1Gbps. So like, by all means if you don’t want to spend money, don’t… you’re probably fine.



  • Honestly a huge portion of the problem is asshole drivers that just don’t turn off their brights and their fog lights or that tailgate the vehicle right in front of them while their headlights are mirror level.

    I’ve seen brand new trucks with LEDs that were so easy on my eyes then I’ve seen the exact same model of truck via rearview mirror only after I passed it because the lights were beyond blinding.

    They need to enforce maximum luminosity laws with an iron first; it’s ridiculous that people get away with this stuff.