• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • Look, yes avoidance is a valid behavior. We have it, we need it, and it’s useful at times, but like any behavior it can become a dependence. Wholly depending on an attitude of avoidance to deal with the outside world doesn’t build resilience. Desensitizing to the trauma and being able to face it, and act in spite of seems like a better goal.

    It’s a screwed up depressing world and I empathize with the horror, disgust, disillusionment, disenfranchised nature of the world.

    I struggle with it constantly, and maybe we should create a support group or a sub for this alone, as we need to find ways to cope with this, as it’s not going to get fixed in a vacuum. Yet we can’t fix it if we are overwhelmed and emotionally shutdown…


  • Not reading the news isn’t going to make the situation better or worse. I understand the sentiment, but don’t understand why saying it is useful. Hiding your head in the sand doesn’t mean your body won’t be harmed.

    There are better ways to cope with the emotional onslaught of this change. Focusing on your community, finding new digital communities, learning to cope in general, finding validating ways to feel liberated… In other words actions. Small perhaps, but beyond this notion of burying our heads in the sand.



  • If approved, it will affect all Safari certificates, which follows a similar push by Google, that plans to reduce the max-validity period on Chrome for these digital trust files down to 90 days.

    Max lifespans of certs have been gradually decreasing over the years in an ongoing effort to boost internet security. Prior to 2011, they could last up to about eight years. As of 2020, it’s about 13 months.

    Apple’s proposal would shorten the max certificate lifespan to 200 days after September 2025, then down to 100 days a year later and 45 days after April 2027. The ballot measure also reduces domain control validation (DCV), phasing that down to 10 days after September 2027.

    And while it’s generally agreed that shorter lifespans improve internet security overall — longer certificate terms mean criminals have more time to exploit vulnerabilities and old website certificates — the burden of managing these expired certs will fall squarely on the shoulders of systems administrators.

    Over the past couple of days, these unsung heroes who keep the internet up and running flocked to Reddit to bemoan their soon-to-be increasing workload. As one noted, while the proposal “may not pass the CABF ballot, but then Google or Apple will just make it policy anyway…”

    However, as another sysadmin pointed out, automation isn’t always the answer. “I’ve got network appliances that require SSL certs and can’t be automated,” they wrote. “Some of them work with systems that only support public CAs.”

    Another added: “This is somewhat nightmarish. I have about 20 appliance like services that have no support for automation. Almost everything in my environment is automated to the extent that is practical. SSL renewal is the lone achilles heel that I have to deal with once every 365 days.”

    Until next year, anyway.


  • Harris has said that she wants legislation implementing the tax cut to only apply to the people we traditionally think of when we think of tips: waiters, maids, caddies, and other service-industry customer-contact workers.

    Trump, on the other hand, has refused to limit his no-tax-on-tips proposal to such workers, opening up the possibility that big banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, and other companies that traditionally have paid year-end bonuses — sometimes in the millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars — could simply reclassify their bonuses as tax-free tips.

    **Adding to the confusion should Trump’s plan go into place, the Supreme Court earlier this year expanded the definition of tips when they ruled that if politicians or judges are paid bribes, but the payments are made *****after ***the politician or judge does the requested favor, they’re no longer bribes but, instead, merely tips.

    Jesus H. f#$k Christ, let’s not normalizing bribes.








  • While I agree, I have a hard time seeing how people will stop using it until the field changes. Maybe in 10 years it will the the MySpace of the sitcom era, but right now it’s still growing. That growth is giving it carte blanche to manipulate the users as it sees fit. Regulation might impact it, but it’s still a bit of a Goliath.

    • Compared to 2023, YouTube’s user base has grown by 20 million this year, representing a 0.74% increase. From Global media insights

    Also the active user base is 2.7 billion people in 2024 from the same source above.

    The alternatives are out there, but just not in the same league.




  • Economists at JP Morgan, the largest US bank by assets, published a research paper on de-dollarization in 2023.

    In reference to the global economy as a whole, they concluded that, “while marginal de-dollarization is expected, rapid de-dollarization is not on the cards”.

    However, they argued that, “Instead, partial de-dollarization — in which the renminbi assumes some of the current functions of the dollar among non-aligned countries and China’s trading partners — is more plausible, especially against a backdrop of strategic competition”.

    The JP Morgan economists added, “This could over time give rise to regionalism, creating distinct economic and financial spheres of influence in which different currencies and markets assume central roles”.

    This seems inline with the Chinese leadership game of influence, as well as the clown show that the US has become. Even with the interest still there from the US standpoint two decades of GWT, the lack of prioritize spending on following our so called values, the very high debt to GDP ratio we are running, the lack of real legislative ability, plus other challenges, all make the fundamentals seem less fundamental. Although China very much has it’s own issues such as an excess of manufacturing, a housing bubble, and a very steep demographic bubble. So their fundamentals are seemingly similar in question, but they have a marked ability to pivot quickly and do seem to be using their status as the 2nd largest economic to garner the same level of influence.

    Whether either has staying power of economics and global influence for the next 50 years is a very interesting question.

    I certainly don’t count the US out yet, but even if the election settles things down, there is some real work to do which has little to do with the current hotly discussed policy topics. I’d be curious about your opinions?