We had one, his name was Aaron Swartz.

He did great work, had awesome projects. But he pissed off some of the powers that be, and they decided to litigate. They did what they could to crush him and it worked. Ultimately he committed suicide in prison.

I think we never deserved him and he knew it.

Now I think the best we have is Cory Doctorow, but he’s more of an open source tech evangelist than a hacker. He’s fighting the good fight, but not by building things.

Well, while I agree with that sentiment, you may be looking at it the wrong way.

It’s not that locking your doors gives them permission, it’s that they’re just doing it whether you lock your doors or not.

Imagine you’re the NSA, imagine you’re already spying on every American who isn’t using a VPN (not because you have any legal right to, but because you can). Now ask yourself, where’s your biggest blind spot?

This is why they want legal permission to spy on people using VPNs. If they can do it legally, they can just walk right into a VPN’s server room and install whatever eyes they want on the inside.

All I’m saying, is that there is no constitutional justification for this, they don’t care. Their plan is simple, spy on everyone, fuck the law.

Drug cartels seem to have more power than authorities. For a while they were blatantly killing political candidates they didn’t like (and beheading them if I remember correctly…), that shit is scary.

You’ll notice that wasn’t actually said.

I was always talking about me.

Well, I think Russia is another one of those places where my ethnicity or language could make me a target. Truthfully, I think I’d be more worried about the govt/police than the average citizens.

There are totally safe parts of Mexico. I’ll stay out all the same.

Heh, I did skip right past NK, I guess I didn’t figure it needed to be said.

There’s a Spike Lee film called “The 25th Hour”, great movie. It takes place in NYC and has this one line delivered by someone playing a Russian Mob boss, a real intimidating character:

I have been in three different prisons, Montgomery. Three different countries. And you know what I learned?

…

I learned prison is a bad place to be.

But I’m sure Norway is nice 😉

It certainly appears so.

I’ve tried to be civil here, but I’m not sure he’s on the same page. It may not be worth continuing the conversation any further here, trolls don’t argue for the same reason most users do, they’re playing a different game.

I would actually love to know more about the mechanics of all of this. Like how did he do all of this? What kind of prosthetics does he use? What kind of modifications did he make to his car to accommodate his abilities? Does he have some kind of custom gun grip to use a firearm at all?

You can make admirable choices that also put you in danger, that’s entirely valid, but that is making a deliberate choice. Routinely making poor choices however will put you into dangerous situations whether you intended to or not. Again just to be clear, I think doing humanitarian work like working with the homeless is absolutely a fantastic way to give back to your community and is in no way a poor choice.

All that said, I’m not certain I believe you. My mother did a lot of work with the homeless too, as part of a meal program run by her church. As she did that, I used to spend evenings at the church several times a week. All that is to say, I know that community fairly well, I know the kind of people who helped out there. I know they were all kind, forgiving, understanding people. They understood that people can end up needing their service for all kinds of reasons. You on the other hand, came out swinging, ready for an argument. You called me a coward without really having any idea what kind of person I am. It didn’t strike me as “kind” or “understanding”.

To sum up: “dude, chill”

Uh, I think it says nobody can predict the future. My system is not guaranteed to work, it’s aspirational. But it has worked for me up to this point, so I’m calling it a success so far.

I’m glad you do work for the homeless, that’s great.

Alright, well I appreciate the direction there, that’s really helpful.

You can also take any desktop you already have, fire up an OPNSense VM, pcie passthrough your WAN NIC + WiFi card, bridge to a separate LAN NIC, go through the setup, and there’s your router.

Although, I gotta be honest, for someone who doesn’t regularly use Linux, that does sound like a lot of potential issues getting this working.

Oh man, I hadn’t noticed that aspect, that’s hilarious!

It’s these racist paramilitary maga fanatics that are taking real Americans’ jobs!

That’s how Handsome Jack runs a company!

“I’m… not… choking you! This… is called… strangulation.”

As a person of color, I make it a point to avoid the south altogether. But Virginia’s not even that far south, it’s practically DC area (which I view as the border on the east coast).

I actually have a major life goal to that effect, “live my entire life without being stabbed or shot”. This is partly because I don’t want to be stabbed or shot, but also partly because I feel it’s an indicative event, that if my life has led to a point where stabbing is a serious concern, I have already made some poor choices. In my efforts to achieve this goal, there are now a lot of places on my no-go list.

• All former Confederate states
• Mexico
• All of the middle east (especially Israel)
• India, Pakistan, Afghanistan
• Egypt
• Sudan
• South Africa
• Congo (and surrounding area)
• Russia, (honestly most former Soviet nations)
• China
• Prison in general

I could probably consolidate the list by saying “any place where my ethnicity or spoken language would cause people to instantly distrust me, or where violence is widespread or indiscriminate”, but truth be told, that’s most of the world.

I also try to avoid bars & pubs.

Sounds… like a bit of a pain in the ass.

So, I imagine we’re talking about a linux micro-pc with perhaps 1 or 2 additional pcix networking cards?

Yeah, I think that pushes them apart, keeps them from actually occupying the same space. So that’s definitely involved. But why do molecules moving past each other lose momentum? I could make a guess, but I’m not actually certain. Like I said, physics tends to be pretty unintuitive at this scale.

(Technically I suppose they’re not losing momentum, they’re exchanging it for heat)

You know what… I’ve never seen this before, but I fully endorse this solution. This is mostly what we already have in place, but favoring consistency rather than flattering Roman emperors.

For those who didn’t know,

• August - named after Augustus Caesar
• July - named after Julius Caeser

Also, a few others are named after Roman gods. It’s cool, but not super relevant to anyone today.

How does this line up with lunar cycles? Is the solar year closer to 12 or 13 months?

Edit: I decided to answer my own question. It turns out there are about 12.4 lunar cycles per solar year, so it does fall right between 12 and 13, meaning that (in my opinion) both 12 and 13 months seem like reasonable systems.

Unfortunately it also means there’s no way to really sync the months with the year perfectly.

A side note on the solar year/lunar month not lining up… I know that planets in a star system tend to fall into resonant orbits, so you’ll often see common ratios in planetary orbital periods, making occultations more common (when planets all line up). But I actually don’t know how this relates to a planet’s moons.

It seems more like a case of one layer inducing mechanical work in the other, which in turn results in loss of efficiency due to inertia and actual friction within that layer.

Now, define friction.

I know that sounds like just a pithy response without much thought put to it. But actually, that may be what friction is. I’ll also note that nothing about physics and the interactions of matter is actually as intuitive as it appears. For example one might say, “well friction is when two materials touch and rub against each other” but remember, materials never actually touch, the molecules of each material are only ever near each other at best. So what is happening that causes that resistive force?

I’m so old I still get the newspaper daily.

What a stupid proposal.

“If you stop sharing data (which we won’t be able to verify), then we promise, we’ll totally stop sharing data too (which you also won’t be able to verify). Do we have a deal?”