activistPnk

My data has been exposed in data breaches at least 3 times now (probably more). Every motherfucking corp breached thinks they can offer credit monitoring service and that this somehow compensates victims. Bullshit. You don’t remedy data leaks by exposing data even more.

If I sign up for the credit monitoring, then yet another psychopathic entity¹ gets my sensitive data creating more opportunities for breaches. Then these motherfuckers put the credit monitoring site on Cloudflare, which foolishly forces the exposure of more data (IP address) to yet another reckless entity.

¹ all corporations are inherently psychopathic

So new rule:

Breach victims who opt out of credit monitoring get $100. They can spend that on a credit monitoring service of their choice, or just pocket the money as compensation for their time, stress and inconvenience dealing with the situation.

Victims also get an automatic right to have their credit reports deleted. They never rightfully gave consent to the credit bureaus to collect the data in the first place.

When people call their bank/CU, they often have to navigate a shitty menu with missing options, wrestle with a poor quality signal, subject themselves to voice-print collection without consent or choice, only to reach an operator who potentially lacks competence and who might decide to spontaneously interrogate with irrelevant but intrusive inappropriate questions that waste the both the customer’s time and the customer’s phone credit. If they go online, they must wrestle with Cloudflare bullshit, cookie walls, and a shit-ton of 3rd party JavaScript.

The fix should be: write a letter. What should happen: you clearly and precisely articulate your request. It should be passed along and reach someone who can read and execute the request. Instead of re-explaining the situation to 3 different people and getting transferred around, you are off sipping on a mojito while they pass your letter around until it reaches a competent banker.

What really happens: some lazy as fuck jackass reads some part of your clear, well-articulated letter which makes a simple request that they should be able to handle. Then they press a button that spits out an email or postal letter that simply says:

“Call us.”

Mother fucker. I took the time to give you all the info in exact unambiguous perfect English, in writing, and some presumptuous lazy mother fucker makes assumptions about my phone situation an my patience with using their bullshit system.

Who is serving who? Recent generations of subservient consumers are happy to solve CAPTCHAs for suppliers and also provide irrelevant info. In recent years the consumer is expected to bend over backwards and work for the supplier. And strangely, it’s working (for the corporate overlords).

So new rule:

If a bank/CU does not respond to a letter with a letter, or a portal msg with a portal msg, it is legally deemed as a refusal to perform the task requested. If the bank/CU is contractually expected to act on a request, the customer need not dance for the supplier. The customer gets an automatic statutory reward of $500 or actual damages, whichever is greater.

(edit) Would someone please ship some counterfeit money through there and get it confiscated, so the police can then be investigated for spending counterfeit money?

If you open a PDF document in the browser (thus in pdf.js) and click the down arrow (↓) to save it locally, it redownloads the document instead of simply saving it from the cache. If you lose network connectivity or disconnect then try to save the PDF locally for later viewing, the browser reports connection issues when there was no need for the network.

Tor Browser (Firefox based) does not have this problem.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/12826007

Is this a thing?

I always have spare keyboards out of use either from old machines or pulled out of the trash. Many of them have a dead key which ruins their purpose as a primary keyboard. It’s probably not worth the effort to bypass a bad trace. So why not have a 2nd keyboard just for symbols and emoji? ATM to enter a €uro symbol I have to type 3 keys ($specialkey+c+=). Or more importantly, the properly angled single and double quotes (’ ‘ “ ” ) each require typing 3 keys. That shit is annoyingly tedious. And consider all the superscripts¹.

I attached a qwerty keyboard and azerty keyboard at the same time (Debian, wayland + sway). The AZERTY board was treated as QWERTY. So that’s bizarre. Sure it’s useful that the layout is controllable by software, but strange that the keyboard’s native layout is not the default. It seems as if the layout choice (man xkeyboard-config) is universally imposed on all attached devices. Is it possible to configure a QWERTY or Dvorak layout for keyboard 1 and a totally custom or symbolic layout for keyboard 2?

¹ all the digits on a secondary keyboard could be superscripted like this footnote. E.g. ¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹.. typing each of those requires 3 key presses.

update

Possible answer: I hear this project enables different layouts to be assigned to different physical devices:

https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd

Bit annoying that that project has not made it into Debian official repos, but at least there are deb files.

Is this a thing?

I always have spare keyboards out of use either from old machines or pulled out of the trash. Many of them have a dead key which ruins their purpose as a primary keyboard. It’s probably not worth the effort to bypass a bad trace. So why not have a 2nd keyboard just for symbols and emoji? ATM to enter a €uro symbol I have to type 3 keys ($specialkey+c+=). Or more importantly, the properly angled single and double quotes (’ ‘ “ ” ) each require typing 3 keys. That shit is annoyingly tedious. And consider all the superscripts¹.

I attached a qwerty keyboard and azerty keyboard at the same time (Debian, wayland + sway). The AZERTY board was treated as QWERTY. So that’s bizarre. Sure it’s useful that the layout is controllable by software, but strange that the keyboard’s native layout is not the default. It seems as if the layout choice (man xkeyboard-config) is universally imposed on all attached devices. Is it possible to configure a QWERTY or Dvorak layout for keyboard 1 and a totally custom or symbolic layout for keyboard 2?

¹ all the digits on a secondary keyboard could be superscripted like this footnote. E.g. ¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹.. typing each of those requires 3 key presses.

update

Possible answer: I hear this project enables different layouts to be assigned to different physical devices:

https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd

Bit annoying that that project has not made it into Debian official repos, but at least there are deb files.

Some large PVs for rooftops were at a street market for €35 each. I’m not deeply knowledgable about them.. I just know that there are two varieties of solar panels and that the kind that are used from small appliances (e.g. calculators, speakers, lawn lights, etc) are junk. And that junk variety is sometimes used in large rooftop panels. What I was looking at resembled the kind I see on a bluetooth speaker with a slight blue tint so I was skeptical. The info on the backside of the panel indicated “1000 V”. The other thing is, all solar panels degrade over time and reach end of life after like 15 years (though this is improving). They may have been a good deal but I passed on them because I didn’t want to buy them on a blind risk.

How would I know how much life a used PV has left? Would a volt meter give that info, assuming it’s sunny when I encounter them again?

Two Cloudflare-free tor-reachable articles:

① Australia gives millions of workers 'right to disconnect'
② Australia gives workers right to ignore bosses’ after-hours calls, emails

Those links are also popup-free (at least in my config). But note that ② is a little more junked up and has some video (but my image and autoplay blocking config seems to work).

The wording of the new law sounds flimsy.. leaves it to employers to define whether an interruption is “reasonable”. But nonetheless it’s a step in the right direction.

A Belgian woman told me she received a gift from a relative for €300 in cash. When she tried to deposit it into her bank account, the bank interrogated her over the source of the money, as if this one-time transaction is some kind of terror or money laundering.

In case no one is paying attention, it’s good to be aware of the extremes the #WarOnCash is evolving toward. Banks have become like police without training.. bullying people arbitrarily.

We are collectively like boiling frogs as cashless people are oblivious to what’s going on. Only cash users see the water boiling.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/12731397

Arizona has private school vouchers whereby a parent who wants their kid in a private school can redirect about $8k of public funding toward any private school of choice. The private schools are designed to indoctrinate kids into right-wing conservative ideology. One school in AZ even advertises their “anti-woke” agenda which is embedded in Christian religion indoctrination that teaches creation.

This new direction seems to really stimulate the Trump dream of division that will stoke two different polarized sets of facts in future generations. Also interesting to note that private schools raised tuition after the vouchers were implemented.

This move seems to be quite a victory for republicans. But I have to ask, isn’t there a constitutional church/state separation issue here?

Arizona has private school vouchers whereby a parent who wants their kid in a private school can redirect about $8k of public funding toward any private school of choice. The private schools are designed to indoctrinate kids into right-wing conservative ideology. One school in AZ even advertises their “anti-woke” agenda which is embedded in Christian religion indoctrination that teaches creation.

This new direction seems to really stimulate the Trump dream of division that will stoke two different polarized sets of facts in future generations. Also interesting to note that private schools raised tuition after the vouchers were implemented.

This move seems to be quite a victory for republicans. But I have to ask, isn’t there a constitutional church/state separation issue here?

Not sure if this has been scientifically studied but I’ve noticed a couple situations where continuous heat can be avoided.

My mom’s way of cooking corn on the cob: bring a pot of water to boil, lid off with two wooden spoons resting on the top to prevent boiling over. She keeps the heat continously quite high for what, ~30—40 min? Seems wasteful because with the lid off the pot is evaporative cooling the whole time so more heat is needed to offset the cooling. I just tried it this way: bring to boil with lid on. Shut the burner off as soon as it boils. The corn continues cooking as the water temp drops. I could probably improve on that even more by using a pressure cooker. (I’m stalling on buying one because I boycott InstantPot due to the fact that they have a closed source phone app exclusively in Google Playstore; it’s optional but InstantPot buyers are still financing that. I should probably get a 2nd hand manual pressure cooker).

Hydrating dried beans: soak overnight (which I skip because it seems to make little progress). So I do the “quick soak” -- bring to boil with lid on, turn off right away, and let them sit ½ the day in warm water. Pressure cooking speeds up the 2nd stage cooking for sure (I’ve tested with other people’s pressure cookers). Since I don’t have a pressure cooker, I end up doing the quick soak method ~3 or 4 times throughout the day.. which just means bring to a boil then shut off. Anecdotally this seems to reduce the time needed in the final phase of cooking.

Am I going OCD on this? This all might be a drop in the ocean.. cooking is not a significant portion of energy consumption. But maybe notable in the summer when cooling systems have to work against the kitchen heat. Which is one reason I like the electronic pressure cookers: I can set the pressure cooker outside.