Our News Team @ 11 with host Snot Flickerman

  • 17 Posts
  • 3.74K Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: October 24th, 2023

help-circle
  • I can’t be the only one who recognizes that making people in foreign countries, like say, Austria in Europe, have to file this is in King County Courts in Seattle seems a little fucking dubious. I say this as a Washington State resident. Because it’s super easy for me to commute to Seattle to sue Valve… but it’s not for everyone else.

    I don’t know what, if any, options King County Court offers for people from other countries filing suit to be able to do it remotely. I get the distinct feeling this is a “fuck you, show up on our turf or fuck off.”


    Looks like District Court might have remote-access options, but I’m not sure if you’ll still have to retain a local lawyer. It says any state or federal courts, but I’m not sure if District court counts more as a city-level court than state-level.




  • I’d say the biggest, most glaring hole is that, much like in Windows, most users don’t really understand the file system and user and group permissions.

    Linux, as an OS, requires a lot more on the users part in understanding basic security right out of the gate.

    A lot of folks out here dropping chmod 777 all over the place just because they haven’t had any education on how any of it works.

    Source: Years ago, being a newb without knowledge or education, dropping chmod 777 all over the place



  • I think it’s rather corporate targets get bigger results than individuals.

    Hacking an individual is good if you need a zombie for a botnet.

    Hacking a hospital and hitting them with ransomware? Hospitals got some damn money. Regular people do not.

    Further, while users might be installing FOSS left-right-and-center, unlike corporations who are installing FOSS, most of what the average user installs doesn’t need secure networking and access control rules behind it. Most corporations use a variety of different FOSS all together in one package, and most of them are internet and network oriented, to function at scale, and as such, they have way more easy ways to get in and have way more valuable assets.

    I think, even if it had major market share, that most attacks go after big entities these days because the risk just isn’t worth it with small potato people like me who are broke, comparatively.



  • Most Linux malware/viruses target corporate servers.

    It’s not that there isn’t Linux malware or viruses, there’s plenty.

    It’s rather that you and me as individuals just aren’t that important nor do we likely have enough assets to justify us as a target to begin with.

    Corporate servers are more likely to have a large combination of technologies that allow hackers to infilatrate to begin with, whereas the average home user might not have many programs installed, especially not a large number that need network access and thus complex access control rules.


  • Thanks, John Oliver, but I really wish we didn’t have to turn to comedians to publicize such serious issues.

    I can never marry my partner without her losing all the benefits she needs to function. I worry about us getting separated in old age because we’re not legally married, like being sent to different homes, or her ending up in a home and me ending up on the street. Ugh.

    Also, changing that was one of Biden’s campaign promises that everyone forgot about apparently. It seems mostly wiped from the internet, too, except for a few references from news articles around the time.









  • Having known some people in elder care, the reality is that some old people are nasty, brutish, mean, racist, misogynist, creepy, violent, you fucking name it, there’s some old person you’re going to have to take care of who matches that horrible personality. You’re paid the same whether you’re helping someone you like or someone who is rude and assaults you every time you enter the room.

    I agree with you, elder care should still exist, but I can see why some people get tired of taking care of terrible old people who were likely terrible people all their lives and who are just allowed abuse you. Why are they allowed to abuse you? Because most people who do elder care and underpaid, overworked, and don’t have a lot of other options that pay nearly as well. Basically you’re accepting middling but better than fast-food pay to have abuse dumped on you. I can see how someone feels like its a karmic freebie because there’s no responsibility in any of it, generally management won’t do anything about “problem elders.” Get to be a fucking asshole your whole life and then get to be a fucking asshole to the person wiping your ass before you die.

    I have a similar story from another friend who ended up at a mental health hospital in a violent youth ward. He was underpaid, overworked, and responsible for about 30 violent and dangerous kids with unstable mental health issues that made them difficult to approach. If he was busy helping one kid take their meds, and another kid on the ward was in the same moment trying to take their own life and succeeded, he would be the one responsible. He was not being paid enough or had enough support to justify taking full responsibility for things that are outside his control when he cannot magically manage 30 dangerous cases at once. He left the job after two months of assaults and scares. I don’t blame him, and he doesn’t blame himself, and we also understand that those 30 cases deserve better care than they’re getting but it’s not his responsibility as an individual to make up for the shortcomings of government funding for this.

    Same with people who work elder care. It’s not their individual responsibility to make up for the fact that these companies don’t give a damn about the people they’re caring for, and each elder is just an income stream in a database. The number of people I know in elder care who now have permanent back problems because they’re being expected to lift 300lb old people off their beds and they’re not being given proper equipment for it is too damn high. These people do not deserve to have their bodies broken and paid pennies on the dollar to be abused by the elders in their care, not given the right tools to do the job, with a prevailing attitude of “they’re just old people, how bad can they hurt you really?” Pretty fucking bad, shockingly.

    Elder care needs to exist. Does it need to exist as it exists now in the USA? Abso-fucking-lutely not.




  • Probably more accurate to say “Democrats fooled themselves with their social media echo chamber” and really only if you are referring to the national Democratic Party and groups like Correct the Record. Doesn’t really apply to the voters or state-level Dems.

    The Clintons and using media to “massage” the message goes back to the '92 election and using satellite feeds back to the campaign headquarters in Arkansas to do things like communicate with their campaign team on the ground at events to say “Hey, can you pan the camera to the right just a little bit, then the protestors won’t be in the frame.” This is well documented by the 90’s documentary film Spin.

    So Clinton signed up to use Correct the Record to massage the message on the internet, fooling themselves into thinking that was enough. It’s also why we’ve seen very little progress on making laws to force paid political operatives to have to state that they’re paid advertisements online, because both parties participate in this practice and don’t want to stop. Which is part of why its hard to stop other nation-state actors from doing it as well, because we won’t even criminalize it in our own political parties. It makes no sense that a political ad on television must disclose its funding and who endorses it, but when it’s a sockpuppet online it’s a fucking free-for-all.