Most software is a terrible pile of unreadable code with no tests and horrible architecture choices, that somehow manages to keep working just through the power of years of customers finding bugs and complaining loud enough to get them fixed.
If you write any automated tests at all, you’re already better than most “professional” software companies. If you have a CI/CD pipeline, you’re far ahead.
75% of American drinking water needs treatment to reduce particulate and parasites, the source for which is a single chemical plant in severe flood risk. The next Katrina could give us the next brain-worms infestation via tap-water.
Are you saying the chemical plant provides the treatment or that one plant is somehow responsible for polluting 75% of American drinking water?
I think the former, based on my limited knowledge of the water treatment industry. There aren’t many manufacturers of low margin commodity chemicals, most people are in specialty chemicals with higher margins.
Nah, lemme reword that. Thanks!
I don’t know the details about alum production (assuming that is what you are referring to), but there are many alternative coagulants available now. Sure the supply logistics would be incredibly challenging and many people would have to boil their water or use point-of-use filters, but this take is pretty doomer in my opinion. Most plants use alum because it’s cheap and easy, not because it’s their only option.
Fractional-reserve banking. Most people have no idea what it is, probably a good thing. You could argue that it’s not a “secret”, but most people aren’t aware of it regardless. I don’t think most people would be fond of grinding for $15 an hour if they knew banks could just lend money they don’t actually have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
The world is littered with fake empty buildings used to obscure phone line junctions and internet provider stuff.
Almost every neighbourhood has one. But they look like normal houses, so you can never tell unless you know where to look for.
@protein Many things that you’d think would be under lock and key… are not. Credentials for, say, a database of subscribers to a telephone company? Just ask the team and say you’re working on an integration, they’ll happily send you the password in plain text
The NYPD does not internally call itself a “police force”, its always “paramilitary organization” or similar.
“F*** the paramilitary organization” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Just make it an acronym, P.O.
Maybe double up to make it sound cute
popo
Popo is a word used in German to describe a butt
In Portuguese, the suffix “zão” is colloquially used to represent an augmentative form. “Popozão”, in Brazil, means exactly what you’re thinking of.
Is it pronounced poopoo?
No, more like poh poh
I’d say it’s more like “Poppo”. The English popo for police would be “poh poh”, I think.
Fuck the junta
Wait what
[x] doubt
I actually worked there as an intern (unpaid of course).
Unfortunately you saying that still has the same credibility as your first statement. It’s just your word. I don’t doubt they do on occasion but to say ALWAYS refer to themselves that way is a lot to take on word alone.
I’m saying internally, they call themselves a police force for external (aka public) relations. Internally they feel no need to use pretty language.
Has this ever leaked out in writing or do they have 100% success rate of keeping this a secret?
~Things people don’t want to know~
Putting a layer of tissue between your butt and the toilet seat doesnt provide enough of a barrier against microorganisms over the time it takes to shit or piss to prevent transmission.
Keeping the air dry reduces both the length of time microorganisms can live outside your body and the length of time that vapor particles can harbor them.
The n95 (and other) rating(s) are over time in free, circulating, open air. Derate safe exposure time sharply for use inside or in spaces with stagnant or unmoving air.
How about TWO layers of tissue? Checkmate, scientists.
Signed, the toilet seat nest-builders of the world.
If you’re able to hold it long enough and you’re truly worried, folding a wet paper towel over a couple of times and using the hand soap to clean the seat and then folding it over again to get a “rinse” before you sit down is a better way to go about it.
“I’m worried about germs on the toilet seat”
“Well, they gave you paper towels, soap and running water, why not clean the motherfucker?”
“Nah, imma just put the thinnest material known to man in between my butt and the seat”
If you’re going to take advice on what to use to protect your butt from a toilet seat, taking advice from bloodfart is the best option.
Most public bathroom tissue is exactly one molecule thick.
I like to put shiny things in my nest.
Try a dozen. Public toilet paper is the thinnest substance known to man.
Idiots. The toilet seat tissue layer doesn’t do anything, that’s why I lick the seat clean first. Saliva has antimicrobial properties, use your brain.
Keeping the air dry reduces both the length of time microorganisms can live outside your body and the length of time that vapor particles can harbor them.
Pretty sure this is only true for some microorganisms. Well, I’m not sure about length of survival time, but I’ve definitely see studies that have shown that lower humidity causes respiratory droplet evaporation, resulting in more airborne virus particles and increasing spread. There is some evidence that this increases infection rates
I mean yes you’re right but also most microorganisms that cause disease die quickly without their little droplets and particles to cling to.
On the other hand, procedure masks rely on those droplets to be the microorganism carriers that they can more easily stop instead of falling back on electrostatic attraction as the lil guys float through em.
In conclusion, infectious disease is a land of contrasts and while hospitals can rely on technologically advanced hvac systems to maintain a narrow range of temperature and humidity that represents a trade off between reduced micro environments, reduced airborne transmission and safely storing all their poultices and potions, normal people need to just do our best and maybe should accept the reduced mold and microorganisms over all in exchange for more chance of airborne transmission when cleaning our homes and workplaces (which are all fucked if there’s airborne transmission anyway because no one has appropriate air cleaners in their home or workplace).
the oh so well kept secret of the software and services (surrounding it) industry that people seem to think is worth paying money for.
Yet time after time these paid software companies produce the most vile awful, dysfunctional, and garbage software (and services) that have ever been created. While somehow a group of people who aren’t being paid, and aren’t doing this for any sort of reason other than “why not” manage to create the most functional software ever, while also managing to somehow catch the single biggest potential software vulnerability in this decade (other than wannacry) purely because ssh has slightly sus behaviors when running the infected payload.
Please stop doing web dev, it isn’t real.
Most problems are being solved by turning it off and on again.
I have anxiety and depression. Gonna give your idea a try.
isn’t that what they are researching with psilocybin? I could use that big time to reset my head. I have severe health anxiety.
The navy manual for troubleshooting equipment in the field includes “lift 3-6 inches and drop”
Percussive maintenance can help sometimes. It’s not a permanent fix but you can’t always do the right fix in the middle of the ocean. Things it can help with: dislodging debris in mechanical components, reseating electrical connections that are corroding, and making yourself feel better.
High velocity decommissioning also satisfies that last item.
To be fair, you may not always want a permanent fix for everything. Mostly because the most permanent solution will always be a temporary one. :v
This is a funny joke and all but it’s so far from actually true.
Source: 27 years working in I.T.
And if that doesn’t work unplug it for a while and plug it back in.
What? Did I turn it off and on again? I’m a very smart technology person, of course my big brain already thought of that. I develop software for a living. It couldn’t be that simple or I wouldn’t be calling you.
. . .
Turning it off and on again worked. My shame is immense and I have wasted everybody’s time.
(And that is how I learned to embrace my own idiocy and do the recommended, simple troubleshooting tasks without questioning them.)
Dude, I just had my mechanic call and tell me my car was out of oil. I’ve never felt so dumb and ashamed.
Well it didn’t work, my grampa is still sleeping, i’ll try the unplug for several minutes trick, I’ll let you know
Try a force restart…or there is always the possibility that he is stuck in a boot loop
A good chunk of my work is scheduled turning off and on again in the right order so things don’t break
Emergency Medical Service/Ambulances are a ridiculously low qualified in a fair shair of industrial nations, especially the US,France, or Austria.
Even in the countries with more training/physician based services (Germany, Belgium, Italy)the actual qualification of the responders varies widely - most of them wouldn’t be allowed to care for a single emergency within a hospital on their own.
I want to comment here so bad but given that I am one of two people that know and one of maybe a dozen that suspect, it would definitely violate multiple NDAs.
ProTip: Invest in off-grid solutions for your home.
In what time frame would you say we’ll all know?
Hopefully never. I am trying to solve the problem by relieving this single point of failure, but I am not having any luck.
Worst case scenario: let’s say that what I fear happens tomorrow. Given what I have seen so far, some people (regional) will notice system degradation within a week, and nationwide within one or two months. Time to find a work around is about a year, but that could be me just applying hopeful thinking to cope. I have not idea how long a permanent fix would take.
So you’re not describing the issue where internet connected EV chargers can be easily hacked, and potentially told to dump the charge of the connected vehicle’s battery on the grid en masse, causing overloads and transformer explosions.
But a slow moving issue like that sounds like a frequency or voltage issue - something goes under or over enough and isn’t detected via monitoring, causing premature equipment degradation, and potential system collapse. Definitely a lot of expensive damage, though.
(Basically, a stuxnet-style attack on the utility grid - and we’ve already seen evidence that SCADA/PLC’s can be hacked in the water supply system.)A destabilizing push, rather than a hit with a hammer.
The reason the problem I am talking about exists is because it is terribly boring and mundane. It is also 100% a cost center, meaning that it provides only cost and no possibility of profit. Things that explode or can explode are very high profile and people notice them. Mundane problems go unchecked until after the shit has hit the fan and politicians are looking for a scapegoat.
I deal with information security. Initially when I type that people instantly think “hackers”. True, information security does deal with a lot of “keep out the baddies”, but more than that we also make sure that data reaches its intended destination when it is supposed to reach its intended destination. For example, you might want your fire suppression system to trigger as soon as a fire is ignited and not after everyone in the building is burned alive or dead from smoke inhalation.
Right now I have a situation where everything is working well but I know that if something happens to this one thing, a very mundane system is going to collapse and literally nobody can fix it adequately. For the past five years we have done everything within our power to add redundancy but as I mentioned before, this is a mundane cost center. Nobody wants to spend money to fix something that works. So, when the thing no longer works, service will be tremendously degraded, people will figure out that it cannot be fixed, and the search for a replacement will begin. Eventually they will succeed but in the meantime things are going to suck and some people might die.
“Greed is good” – Gordon Geko
" Greef is self-defeating " – JoMiran
It’s the final decommissioning of 2g/3g and how it’ll affect monitoring tools!
(I don’t know, now I’m just being silly.)But, yeah. I get that. The profit motive/cost to build in redundancy, or a failure of imagination for future technologies so certain kinds of redundancy or features aren’t included is problematic.
Not saying it is your issue, but the 3g issue is on my mind because it was a big deal in my neck of the woods last year when local carriers shut it down, and it is again because a utility failed to update their meters in a timely manner, causing them to estimate on customer utility bills for longer than is allowable, resulting in statutory violations and customer overcharges. They got a pretty hefty fine and an order to refund the overcharged customers. I could see how similar foundational technology issues could completely fuck a utility for… whatever impacted systems are involved. (Also, going to be editing out this part of my comment in a few hours, because I don’t like how much specific info is in there, even though everything I just described is public record.)
I’ll also delete this purely hypothetical, definitely did not happen, scenario in a few minutes.
Imagine a smart gas meter. Regulations state that said gas meter shutdown and alerts crews if a leak is detected within two minutes of fault. The automated system might have missed the requirement by almost 45 minutes before issuing the command. People died…hypothetically.
People don’t understand how flimsy everything we depend on is. It’s easier to imagine a 13 year old bullshitting and trying to be cool than a man, tired of sounding the alarm, venting on Lemmy.
Scary.
Sounds like e911 or pots lines.
When everything works: “What do we even pay IT for?”
When everything’s broke: “What do we even pay IT for?”
“When you do your job right it’s as if you didn’t do anything at all”
- God to bender in Futurama
When they start looking for a scapegoat, I hope you find yourself far away from the eye of Sauron there.
I’m smelling an awful lot of bullshit here. If the power grid (or any other major infrastructure) had a known single point of failure that would cause the entire system to collapse, there would be more than 2 people who know about it, and they certainly wouldn’t be vague-booking it to Lemmy.
It’s less bs than you think, still unlikely sure, but not a non zero chance.
For awhile their was a single point of failure in telcom for the midwest in the us. Because the core router was so old and didn’t play well with failover. It took them several months and a lot of intermittent issues to get it replaced and working as expected.
The power grid does have a major point of failure, in that vital components are on backorder for years out so most places don’t have the spare parts to get back up and running if widespread attacks on the grid occur.
I’m gonna be honest, this sounds about right for 2024. Skeleton crews a dick hair away from disaster as far as the eye can see.
That would be the sane assumption, yes.
There are more than 2 people that know that Texas’s power grid is a teetering disaster waiting for the right event to crumble and break in unfixable fashion
(Or water, water’s probably even more sketchy. Look up the incident in the UK where they accidentally put a shitload of treatment chemicals in the main water supply and a whole bunch of people got poisoned. Harder to do off grid solutions for though.)
There are more than 2 people that know that Texas’s power grid is a teetering disaster waiting for the right event to crumble and break in unfixable fashion
OP asked for a secret. The Texas grid sucking is not a secret.
Fair enough. I read your other comments and my current guess is abysmal cyber security coupled with clear indications that hostile state actors are trying to fuck it up, and showing no sign of having any more trouble than would an NFL team pushing past the volunteers who have signed up to work the door at the senior center social hour
In which case if that’s accurate I would say that yes that fits the brief
All the cybersecurity in the world won’t matter if a handful of
manipulated idiotspeople shoot a bunch of unguarded and remotely located substation transformers.
Just get tor browser, make a throwaway account, post your comment and delete the browser.
The Bucees logo tells me this is probably going to affect Texas more than other regions.
Ha! I used to live in Austin and I don’t fly, so Buc-ee’s and Cracker Barrel hold a special place in my heart. Unfortunately what I am talking about is a US thing, not just a Texas thing.
Sure, not-13-year-old-kid-trying-to-sound-cool
As an NDA signer, they could be legit. I would like to comment also, but I don’t like law suits.
law suits
But without the suits for law people, how will tailors stay in business?
Water, electricity, or both?
Water, electrical, sewer, gas, trash, internet, cable, mail, plumbing, drywall, stairs, air. It’s all the government man.
Offgrid Internet… Hmmmm
Water, electricity and gas but I am sure this type of problem is present in many other sectors.
As an indigenous person who grew up without running water or modern plumbing for the first ten years of my life in Canada … I always appreciated this quote …
Will Durant Quote: “From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.”
so you’re saying a fire sale is coming… got it
The use of chatgpt for writing is so widespread in higher ed, it will cause serious problems to those students when entering the workforce.
Lots of fancy stuff is written about how we just have to change the way we teach!, and how we can use chatgpt in lessons! blablabla, but it’s all ignorant of the fact that some things need to be learnt by doing them, and students can’t understand how they hurt their own learning, because they don’t know what they don’t know.
Governments don’t pay consultants to do work, but to leave when the work is done.
You pay a consultant to take liability. Sure, you could do this in house, but wouldn’t you rather have someone outside of the organization use their liability insurance?
Liability insurance just becomes part of the cost.
What do the consultants do while someone else does the work?
A lot of consultants and contractors do the work for different governments. A reason why governments like this is that private companies find hiring and firing a lot easier. So, if a company performs poorly, it is really easy to fire them. In some cases, governments can also get individuals working for the consultant or contractor to stop working on that governments’ jobs, effectively firing them.
It can be a lot easier to get rid of a poorly performing consultant over a poorly performing government worker.
That’s when the company doesn’t do kicks to the project lead, or when you bring your full extended family. In those cases see how everyone will despair while working double and wondering wtf is “company” still working in our project.
Sounds like prostitution.
“This is just a consultant, your my full time babe”
/s
In the UK, slot machines fall into 4 main categories. Of particular interest are category C machines, as these can remember a fixed number of previous games. I.e. the “myth” that a machine is “about to pay out” because “someone lost a lot to it” can hold for these games.
Cat A and B machines are completely random, previous games can have no impact on probabilities of winning (though pots can climb).
Online games have different rules, not always fair ones!
Oh, and ALL games (in a physical location) must (by law) show “RTP” (return to player) somewhere. It usually gets stuck it in a block of text in the manual since no-one reads them. (If it’s below 97.3% just go play roulette as it offers better returns).
IT, more specifically user support.
Let’s talk passwords. You should have a different password for every site and service, over 16 character long, without any words, or common misspellings, using capital, lowercase, number and special characters throughout. MyPassword1! is terrible. Q#$bnks)lPoVzz7e? is better. Good luck remembering them all, also change them all every 30 days, so here are my secrets.
1: write your password down somewhere, and obfuscate it. If an attacker has physical access to your desk, your password probably isn’t going to help much. 2: We honestly don’t expect you to follow those passwords rules. I suggest breaking your passwords down into 3 security zones. First zone, bullshit accounts. Go ahead and share this one. Use it for everything that does not have access to your money or PII (Personally Identifiable Information). Second zone, secure accounts, use this password for your money and PII accounts, only use it on trusted sites.Third, reset accounts. Any account that can reset and unlock your other accounts should have a very strong and unique password, and 2FA.
Big industry secret, your passwords can get scraped pretty easily today, 2FA is the barest level of actual security you can get. Set it up. I know it’s a pain, but it’s really all we’ve got right now.
