I think the quality of a language for shell scripting is often secondary. What’s of greater significance is where it is at. I.e., does it have it already installed? The answer with Linux and Bash is almost always “yes”. Not so with ruby.
The moment you start asking the user to install things, you’ve opened up the possibility for writing a program rather than a shell script. The lifecycle of a piece of software is almost always one of growing responsibility. This cycle is devastating when it happens to shell scripts. What was once a simple script slowly becomes creaking mass of untestable, poorly understood code playing in the traffic of swimming environments (which grep you got, buddy?).
I guess I’m saying that once you open up the possibility of writing a program, you generally take that option and are usually happier for it. In the “write a program” world, ruby is still good, but it becomes a far harder question to answer whether ruby is still the right choice. There are a lot of languages with a lot of features engineers like.
That's true of Python and Perl as long as you keep using only the features built in in the core language (standard lib or whatever they call it.) The same applies to Ruby.
My scripting language is bash in at least 99% of cases. I used to program in Perl when I need some complex logic. I stopped using it some 10 or 15 years ago when I switched to Ruby for two reasons: I became more familiar with it than with Perl and it's easier to manage data structures whenever I need something complex or classes. That doesn't happen often in scripts but as I wrote, I use bash for all the normal stuff.
I use Python for the scripts that start an HTTP server because it has the http.server module in the standard lib and it's very simple to write handlers for GET, POST and all the other HTTP verbs. The last example was a script to test callbacks from an API. I just implemented two POST and PUT methods that print the request data and return 200 and a {} JSON. I think that to do the same in Ruby I would need to install the webrick gem.
With a big difference -- Perl and Python will always be installed on these machines, whereas Ruby might need two deployment steps: (1) copy file, (2) install Ruby!
Perl is deeply underappreciated and needs a lot more love. One of the keynotes at the polyglot conference that I run is going to be Perl talk and I'm really looking forward to it.
That was the reason Perl was what I switched too from bash when I was working on Solaris boxes; it was miles ahead of what was possible with bash AND it was already present. If I remember an older version of Python was also installed but by then Perl had already got me reeled in and I felt Python to be too "verbose" compared to Perl (I eventually changed my opinion when I got a bit more experience under my belt).
Ha - I actually haven't changed my opinion about verbosity, Python is still more verbose and I will choose Perl for throwaway scripts even today; I just have a greater appreciation of readability of Python code compared to the free-for-all style-fest of Perl code (admittedly written by a bunch of devs with little code style enforcement). Perl is great for smaller scripts but I'm talking about many thousands lines of code and the lack of native object orientation, messy error handling, lack of a decent repl etc start to take their toll.
One usually needs modules to easily do something more advanced, but yes, Perl is almost always installed. Although I find Ruby much more ergonomic, I still reach for Perl as well because I know it better and don’t have to open the documentation so often.
Sure, especially every bash script that goes over 200-250 lines is super readable. /s
Or when you have to start using all the combinations of characters to achieve f.ex. proper iteration through an array without word splitting. Etc. to infinity.
I've danced this dance hundreds of times and got sick of it. Gradually moving away from scripts and to Golang programs and so far it has been an improvement in almost every way, I'd say easily in 90% of the cases.
It's tongue in cheek, and he's right. I am a old man Sunos/VMS/Linux admin. Having root used to be my god given right.
However I haven't worked at a company in years that gives anyone access to root anywhere except your own local machine or maybe in rare cases a dev box that is destroyed and rebuilt at will.
yea as soon as I read through the post, I ssh'd into one of my many Ubuntu servers, ran `ruby -v` and then noped out. From past experience I want nothing to do with trying to wrangle RVM or rbenv and then making sure the paths work properly.
Nowadays `apt install ruby` on an ubuntu box will give you a reasonably up to date ruby that's more than adequate to run scripts. This is not like the old days where a script written on Ruby 1.87 would break on 1.9.
Notably Diamine’s Registrar Ink and Rohrer & Klingner’s Eisen-Gallus-Tinte inks are relatively easy brands of iron gall ink to acquire and the modern formulas are less harsh and useable in fountain pens.
They’re nice in that they’re naturally waterproof inks. They’re a bit on the dry side though in terms of flow.
I’m not really excited about this; Meta has no strong incentive to be a long term good neighbor in the fediverse, but plenty of incentive to engage in poor behavior. No matter how sincere or well meaning leadership is now, a quarterly loss or stagnant profit will eventually push them to turn to some market capture or embrace, extend, extinguish behavior.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. A number of instances are prepping to partially or fully block Threads from the get-go.
Even without Meta, I’m not excited for another 1M+ instance. My experience is that the larger an instance is, the worse it is. Less community, worse moderation, more bad actors hiding in plain sight. You just can’t toss people into a generalist million people scrum and expect them to form a digital community.
If you’re on mastodon.social, you’re not experiencing the best of the fediverse IMO. Find a small instance of your interest (<500 people) and interact with the local timeline. People on my instance recognize me, make in jokes, I chat with the admin and mods, it’s like actual digital neighborhood. It’s really the closest we’ve gotten back to forums and I don’t think dumping a bucket of FAANG-style corporate water on it is the answer.
You have to have been raised pretty sweetly to not have known this kind of racketeering was a 'thing' for a very long time. Pressure to hire cops is rampant. 'rent-a-cop' is not aimed at the fact that security companies apply aggressive mimicry to their people, but that these people are themselves often off-duty cops. Security companies are strongly "encouraged" to hire off-duty cops, and find themselves left out to dry or otherwise 'convinced' if they try to resist.
Before you add 'Why don't [you|they] do...' responses, recognize for a moment that the police in the U.S. are largely out of control, have undue control of local government and politics, and have an ideology that enforces self-righteousness and an 'enemy at the gates' siege mentality, and oh yeah, are able to apply violence at a level unmatched in society. These are not polite people, and the way one 'deals' with them has far more in common with radical militias rather than state bureaucrats. If you haven't encountered that, you're just lucky enough to have never threatened their interests.
It's pretty eye opening to watch every bill pushed through in the name of firearm safety turning out to have massive exemptions for off duty and retired cops. They're such a powerful political force that it's outright expected they should have a disproportionate ability to deliver force even after they're retired.
My favorite part is that California has a roster of handguns approved for sale. The pretext for its existence is consumer safety (it is entirely separate from bans on stuff like assault weapons or large magazines), but the actual effect is that you have a very limited selection in stores, and most of the designs are very dated.
But if you're a police officer? You get an exemption! Apparently, the state has no regard for your safety as a consumer, and allows you to buy whatever you want...
And importantly, as a cop, you're allowed to buy off-roster (modern) handguns and then turn around and sell them to the public at a profit. You have to be slightly careful because the ATF doesn't like non dealers buying and selling tons of guns, but it's a huge racket where cops will make a few thousand dollars a year selling modern/desirable guns to the pubilc (through FFLs).
Another reason why I left California. You can't buy a Canik's as a non-LEO. Also,
criminals get whatever guns they want and carry them while law-abiding citizens can't do anything except wish not to be mugged or murdered with strong objections. It's completely absurd given how violent America is.
There's a saying, "An armed society is a polite society."
The reason is because of perceived threat. If very few people are armed, people are more likely to act a fool because they don't fear the consequences from npcs. Risk taking along these lines increases as does the physical delta. But as the probability of random npc folks carrying approaches one, suddenly there is a very real chance that acting a fool carries permanent consequences.
And now consider other situations that tend to be heated where folks overreact: road rage, etc. Folks may be less likely to escalate things when they believe the other party has the ability to respond with deadly force.
This same hypothesis applies to mugging. While the mugger may get the drop on their victim, others nearby that are armed may be able to appropriately intervene to stop the initial assault.
Allowing the general public to not only be armed but carry the same stopping force as the baddies reduces the imbalance, leveling the playing field.
And as usual Americans fail to spot that they have one of the best armed and least polite societies in the world. I'd put the case that a polite society is unarmed.
> I'd put the case that a polite society is unarmed
The supreme irony lies in the fact that this statement is completely reversed from the real state of things: it is a pathologically impolite society that feels it necessary to arm itself, against itself. Unhealthy tolerance and passivity toward mundane, petty assholery and dominance-seeking behavior is going to destroy this country.
This is not actually true. The level of violent crime in 99% of the USA is the same or lower as most other developed countries.
For reference, more people kill themselves with guns in the USA than are killed by other people with guns. If gun violence were truly a huge problem, you'd think that suicides would be outnumbered by gun murders, but they're not.
The numbers look big because it's a country of 330 million people, but ultimately the number of people killed with guns is pretty low (and it's something that can actually safely be completely ignored if you remove gang-on-gang and drug trade related violence, which is the vast majority of firearms deaths). For example, Obama killed more children with drones in 8 years than children were killed with guns in the USA in 20 years. (In both cases we are talking about absolute figures <1000.)
The "USA has a gun violence problem" is one of those "everybody knows" memes, however, so good luck convincing anyone to the contrary.
You make it sound like suicide is totally fine and harmless. Isn't it shocking that lots of people kill themselves with guns?
Because that's the thing with guns: they make killing easy. They also make suicide trivial. I know people who have struggled with depression and survived multiple suicide attempts. If they had access to guns, I don't think they'd be alive right now.
The numbers don't just look big because the US is a large country. Corrected for population size, gun violence in the US is still at least an order of magnitude larger than in other countries. I know of no other country where schools practice shooter drills.
> For example, Obama killed more children with drones in 8 years than children were killed with guns in the USA in 20 years. (In both cases we are talking about absolute figures <1000.)
That does not seem to be even remotely true. Not for any part of that claim. Well, maybe the part about children killed by drone strikes being less than 1000, because I can't find figures about that, but the number of civilians killed by drone strikes in the last 20 years seems to be 10k-20k.
According to [0], 31780 children have been killed by guns between 2000 and 2020. According to [1], the number of children dying from firearms is rising and now larger than the number of children dying from cars or cancer.
Your entire suggestion that people killed by guns is not really a problem sounds incredibly callous about human life.
You want to talk about callous? Calling people who commit suicide "Killers" is callous (https://concealedcarrykillers.org/). Using suicides to pad statistics to push magazine capacity bans or bans on ergonomic features is callous. You pretending that children being pushed to take their own lives is the same as being killed as bystanders in gang violence or killed in school shootings just so it can be all called "gun violence" is callous.
I am not the person in this conversation who was suggesting that people killing themselves was not so bad. Are you suggesting it's callous to take suicide seriously?
Sorry, but your rhetorical trickery over people's lives is sickening.
So, just so I understand, bad guys all have guns. And you wish you could have one too, for protection against said bad guys. But why is a firefight preferable to a mugging?
There's that little something called "dignity". You know, trying to do something about your situation instead of rolling over and praying for the meanies to be lenient with you.
This. I used to live in an area that was overrun with a biker gang and had friends who had slight involvement with them and ended up getting intimidated into giving them their nicer positions like furniture and TVs. Classic bully shit but a grown adult coming into your house and taking your shit.
I had a retail shop in the community and also lived next to a bar and a property where they would congregate and some would roll into town and stay there. Very tense environment. When I first moved there I had no idea that it was like this.
At that point I armed myself and made the decision I was not going to take any crap off anyone.
Thankfully, no one gave me any shit but I have plenty of more stories from my time there.
The only choice for me was to arm myself. The cops were scared shitless and were unreliable for other reasons. One of the gang members had already opened up on one of the cops with an AK-47 in front of my store. He lived because it jammed.
No idea. However, this area is a lower income blue collar country area on the edge of a really nice suburban area, but it certainly isn't without VERY nice homes and farms. It's just hard to say. Lots of drug issues, you get these pockets. I have lived around the area for my entire life but it wasn't until I got involved as a merchant in the area and really got to know people that it escalated like this. Having a small business of just about any kind will expose you to nearly everyone in a smallish town. Lots of drama can come of that.
I got robbed several times while I was there and I ended up in jail myself. Most of this stemmed from drama emenanting out of the opioid and heroine epidemic around the early 2000s.
The whole notion of using a gun for self-defense sounds insane to me. The criminal is the one starting the violent interaction and is therefore prepared for it, probably has their gun ready or within easy reach. For me to then want to draw my gun sounds like a recipe to get shot. Being not a threat to a dangerous idiot and getting out alive sounds far preferable to me than dying like a wannabe John Wayne.
Everybody being armed ups the stakes for everybody, and I'd expect criminals to be more likely to shoot in that situation. And having guns for everybody, but only the best guns for criminals, sounds like the worst idea of all.
Best of all would be to make it harder for criminals specifically to get guns by having every gun and gun transaction registered and verified. Every loophole is going to be abused.
The United States was founded with the principle that (from a legal sense) the primacy of power and responsibility belonged to individuals, not government. The lack of connectivity between different societal groups allowed relatively peaceful interactions between groups, (unless you were a Native American or a slave, sadly).
From this framework, people (men, largely) were expected to provide for themselves and their families. Food, shelter, “retirement” (or putting provisions in place for old age), and yes, personal security from threats, both from other individuals and from any future possible oppressive government, as well as being responsible for being personally armed to repel foreign invaders.
In modern times, being armed either in or outside the home (or place of business) gives us a few things. It continues the principle of being responsible for one’s own personal security, rather than relying on societal pressures for bad behavior (!) or dependence on the timely and enthusiastic response of local law enforcement.
I think we would agree that part of the responsibility for firearms ownership is safe storage, mental and legal preparation for an event, and continuous training. With rights come responsibilities. Not everyone will choose to own a firearm, and that’s ok, each person should be allowed to make their own decisions.
Law enforcement efforts are reactionary, not proactive, the negative effects of which are exacerbated by out failed criminal justice system, the full fruits of which have been on display since the 80s, depending on who you believe.
Simple possession of a firearm does not make every (legal) defensive use a quick draw contest or result in a hail of bullets. There is a deterrence affect in locales where lawful weapons carry is legal. FBI statistics, depending on year, will tell us that “civilian” display of a weapon will stop a threat upwards of 93% of the time, without any shots fired. When the “civilian” fires a weapon in self defense, the average number of shots remains less than 3 (although trending upwards..) Law enforcement fires far more rounds per encounter, with the resultant display of (excessive?) force and possibility of downrange consequences.
There are people who would rather draw their weapon to defend themselves and / or their family than depend on the rationality of a person threatening them, who is statistically likely to be in an altered state of mind, mentally ill, or has been released from the criminal justice system un-rehabilitated (or any combination of these).
In a country that can’t even keep drugs out of prisons, as well as other failures to enforce public safety, trying to restrict firearms from being possessed by anyone is not a reality.
As the public failures to enforce existing laws continue to be documented and published, most citizens develop a jaundiced view of the law in general. I think it was societal and family expectations that reinforced morality, not laws, and substituting laws for morality is folly also, given who writes and influences the laws, as well as the tyranny possible by governments selectively enforcing laws.
As you say, everyone being armed does up the stakes, but it ups the stakes for the right group of people - those people who would prey on others.
That's a lot of great theory but the stats just don't play out, an armed society does not in practice make a polite society.
Americans seem to not believe me when I say my fear of being shot is zero, but it's literally true. I don't even recall if I've ever even heard a gunshot outside the vicinity of a firing range.
There are some criminals with guns, but they almost exclusively use them against other criminals. I have zero concern that someone breaking into my house will have a gun, and everyone I know who has ever actually spotted someone breaking in to a place has had the criminal run away immediately rather than initiate any kind of violence.
Which is why you should practice carry and conceal, and hopefully never have to draw on it.
You can always just give the muggers everything, including your gun.
You can't barter back your (or your family's) life, and putting the massive asymmetry in the benefit of the doubt of a known assailant is maddeningly naive to a point of near literal cuckoldry.
If I'm always giving the mugger my gun, why carry it? Seems like the danger from having a gun on my person and in my house vastly outnumbers the chance I become Dirty Harry for an evening, no matter how thrilling that thought is. And I won't be Dirty Harry, I'll be Bernie Goetz. No thanks.
> asymmetry in the benefit of the doubt of a known assailant is maddeningly naive to a point of near literal cuckoldry
Don't try to impress people with words, impress with ideas.
Do you put your seatbelt on when driving? I do. Not because I expect to be in a situation where I'll need it, but because if said extremely rare situation happens, I'll be happy I did; the consequence:probability ratio is just too big, as my life (and that of my family if I had one) has a value of ∞.
Having a weapon on yourself in preparing for the worst case scenario. "Hope for the best and plan for the worst", you know.
Not really a good comparison. Seat belts save lives, guns take it. The fact that a gun is a real threat to the mugger, makes it a threat to you. Because the mugger knows that you might be carrying a gun. I'm pretty sure that muggers and burglars in the US use a lot more deadly force than elsewhere, exactly because of the chance their victim may be armed.
Of course given that muggers expect you might be armed, you might as well be. But I'm still not convinced they actually make you safer; lots of Americans get killed by their own gun.
> If I'm always giving the mugger my gun, why carry it?
That's just your perspective and talking point. Parent was clearly trying to say that there may be a situation where you DO need it to protect yourself or family from being killed/raped/etc.
It started as a program where you had to pay the state a pile of cash to have them carry out a number of tests, like repeatedly dropping the gun to see if it goes off on its own. They kept adding stuff, culminating in microstamping requirements that no manufacturer could or wanted to comply with - so only a small subset of pre-2007 semi-auto pistols could continue to be sold.
California's Unsafe Handgun Act is ostensibly intended to protect consumers from cheaply manufactured handguns that might malfunction or otherwise be unsafe to operate.
Here is California's Attorney General explaining it:
> “California’s commonsense gun safety laws save lives, and the Unsafe Handgun Act is no exception,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Accidental shootings are preventable. The fact that children under five are the most likely victims makes these accidental gun deaths even more tragic and inexcusable. As weapons become faster, more powerful, and more deadly, this risk only increases. Flooding the marketplace with unsafe semiautomatic pistols that do not meet necessary safety requirements poses a serious threat to public health and safety, especially for children and young adults.”
> The UHA was originally enacted over two decades ago in response to the proliferation of low-cost, cheaply made handguns that posed consumer safety risks. Under the UHA, the California Department of Justice (DOJ) compiles and maintains a Roster of Certified Handguns that meet certain public safety requirements. Generally, a handgun must appear on the roster to be sold by a California firearm dealer.
> When the UHA was first enacted, revolvers and pistols were required to have safety devices and pass drop safety and firing tests at independent laboratories in order to be added to the roster. [...] The UHA has since been amended, adding additional safety requirements for semiautomatic pistols including that a new semiautomatic pistol must have:
> A chamber load indicator that indicates if the pistol is loaded; A magazine disconnect mechanism that prevents the pistol from firing when the magazine is not inserted; and Microstamping capabilities that allow law enforcement to trace a shell casing to the pistol that fired it.
So this law is ostensibly intended to protect people who buy handguns and those around them. But cops are exempt, because... cops never drop their guns?
It's worth considering that this is the same attorney general who recently doxed all law abiding concealed carry permit holders, applicants, and others (including but not limited to home address, phone, DL number, etc.) many of whom are victims of domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault.
My point was that a gun doesn’t make you more safe, but the opposite. Anyone talking about buying a gun shouldn’t be discussing safety, they are unrelated concepts.
You're [deliberately?] misinterpreting the stated intent of the law. A gun that goes off when dropped is substantially less safe than a gun which doesn't. People who buy guns are in fact justified in considering such factors.
I think there's a real case to be made that the Californian law is duplicitous and is actually intended to reduce the availability of handguns in California, but that's not the point being raised here. The point is that for some reason Californian cops are exempt from from the law. That's like exempting cops from the lawn dart ban, it makes no sense.
I don't know why you're jumping to nuclear weapons as your analogy when gun control laws in other countries make a far better comparison point. Australia is probably a good example here: they have urban and suburban centres in the cities, but they also have vast rural areas. Guns are not banned but limited and regulated. They do not seem to have had this issue where people have been left defenceless by crazy people with guns.
In fact, are there any countries that have implemented gun controls that have had this problem?
Australia didn’t have that problem before they banned them either.
For countries with major issues who do have strict gun control? Off the top of my head, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa. Plenty more if I looked, I’m sure.
If I could snap my fingers and make all the guns disappear tomorrow, I would. Until then, I've looked down the barrel of another man's gun and been attacked by neo-nazis and the police have disappointed me every time, so I'm gonna carry my own.
They were a group of local teenagers and young adults with a shitty little clubhouse along a trail in the woods with some swastikas painted on it. They tried to corner me and my friends with what ended up being air guns with painted tips (since I wasn't into firearms at the time I completely thought they were real) because they thought we got too close to it. They probably weren't part of any organized nazi gang, but when they identify their property with swastikas, I'm gonna call them what they pretend to be. The police took and melted the air guns, but it didn't go any further than that. They've still got their hunting licenses, judging by their Facebook pages.
The other incident with a real gun I was referring to was a man pointing his revolver at me while I was picking up his daughter for a date, talking about how a man has to protect his daughter. At that point, I wasn't even scared so much as I was concerned what I was getting into. But since he didn't directly threaten me I was told that it was "negligent use of firearms" at worst, and didn't want to push it.
We should just stop having the police cus I survived just fine without them.
At least having the option to defend myself would make me more comfortable standing in front of my friends trying to take a bullet for them. Made it easier to recover getting sexually assaulted knowing I could forcefully stop him if it truly escalated to a point where I had to.
The police pretty much never prevent crime, they investigate it after it happens. Robberies aren’t stopped by heroic police officers with their guns, despite what TV says.
And I’m not asking what would make you feel better, I’m asking if you truly believe that producing a gun in the situations you described would have made you safer?
Whatever your ideology it seems a little craven to not want guns that happen to be out in circulation to be as safe as possible from incidents like misfires from accidental dropping.
The market failed to innovate on safety for years. And the issue with a market based solution is it can be much cheaper to just not include any of those safety features.
Some things can be below your personal risk tolerance, but be well above the acceptable risk tolerance at a social level.
The market based approach states that if the demand is there, supply will come online if profitable. In this case it doesn't seem like the cost is more than $100-200 incremental, which isn't outlandish.
If enough people buy unsafe firearms and then are subsequently jailed for negligence, or the companies are sued out of existence, I would imagine the safe version would organically emerge.
Harm reduction is not a single tactic. For gun safety harm reduction means requiring guns not to fire by accident, AND having gun owners take training that includes all the information about the risks that go up once you own a gun (especially to others in your household), AND requiring or encouraging gun owners to lock their guns up AND to store ammunition separate from guns AND ideally even to store them somewhere not in the house, AND reduce the number of guns in circulation.
When it comes to drug abuse, harm reduction can mean providing clean needles and other supplies to the user. The person isn't going to stop just because they're denied clean supplies. In the same way that you can't stop people from acquiring guns, but you can help prevent them from purchasing guns that are fundamentally unsafe to operate.
No, you literally cannot stop people from acquiring guns in the United States, as it's baked in the Constitution. Please make arguments based in reality.
I agree with all of the points you just made, and don't wish to be anywhere near a gun, personally. This does not change the fact that there are some people that feel the opposite, and will obtain a firearm regardless. If I can, I'm going to incentivize them to choose the safer option.
Most of the reason for cops being security and being excluded from most firearms safety bills is because rhey already have a credential that was more strenuous to achieve than what the proposed bill is. That training, whether effective or not, is also seen to mitigate risks around litigation when they work security due to how our courts work (how things look can be more important).
Although there are other laws that do illustrate what you are saying.
In many cases (especially magazine capacity laws, the stupidest of all restrictions), cops are exempt while nobody else is exempt. They're simply a caste above you.
Yeah, but I wouldn't consider stuff like mag restrictions as safety or security training. I would say that falls under the "other laws" part of my comment.
True. The point is to eliminate waste. For example, if you already got a psychological evaluation as part of being a cop, they use that one for the security license requirement in my state. At least in my state they still make you get the license, but they trim out the redundant portions.
You have a citation for your interpretation of "rent-a-cop"? I am intrigued but cannot find any use of the phrase other than something to the effect of "wannabe cop". Even the 1987 movie by that name is a former cop who works private security (fair warning I have never heard of the movie until reading the wiki summary a few minutes ago).
I live in a different country where this sort of racketeering would be extremely illegal and a national scandal if it happened. I find this article far too mild in calling out the blatant crime that these police officers openly engage in. With full knowledge of the city. People should be going to prison for this. A lot of people. That this is allowed to continue so openly is incomprehensible to me.
Don't forget if none of that gets them whatever it is that they want then they can just lie about whatever until they get it. Supreme court stamp of approval.
Yes, but this epidemic of urban crime is very new for our generation. We haven't had these "catch-and-release" policies with violent criminals. We haven't legalized shoplifting for sums under $950 before. We haven't had DAs in many major cities that are opposed to jailing violent offenders for "diversity and equity" reasons.
> We haven't legalized shoplifting for sums under $950 before.
One of the main reasons for this is because mobile phones keep getting more expensive, and high school kids frequently steal other high school kids' phones. The limit keeps getting raised so that 18 year olds don't end up with felonies on their record.
> have undue control of local government and politics
Now, some facts:
In North Carolina at least, the Council-Manager form of government provides that the police chief is hired/fired by the city manager-- who is hired/fired by and reports directly to the city council. Depending on the city's charter, the manager may hire/fire the police chief with or without approval of the council.
Apparently there are a few city councils who have a charter that requires the police chief to be hired/fired directly by the city council.
This council-manager form is by far the most popular form of city government in NC. IIRC, there are only two other forms allowed by state law-- one is a city council without a professional manager (only an administrator with the elected council making all the important decisions), and one other one which I can't remember atm.
So on the local level, local sheriffs are hired/fired by the local government-- either directly, or by a professional manager who reports directly to the council.
County sheriffs are elected in NC. But the day to day goings on in a municipality-- i.e., any politics related to businesses hiring 'rent-a-cops'-- would be handled by local police officers. (Outside of perhaps one or two counties out of a 100, and unincorporated towns.)
Apparently, the council-manager form of government comes from a template for local governments that is used by many other states in the U.S. The only way I can think of that NC is special is that there are no county roads-- only state and town (which, again, puts citizens in contact with local police way more often than county police).
In conclusion, the very popular form of council-manager government is counter to your claim that local police have "undue control over local government and politics."
> These are not polite people, and the way one 'deals' with them has far more in common with radical militias rather than state bureaucrats. If you haven't encountered that, you're just lucky enough to have never threatened their interests.
I don't have the stats on radical militias. But I'd wager at least two orders of magnitude lower chance of being killed for threatening retaliation to a police officer in the U.S. than for threatening retaliation to a member of a radical militia.
Edit: threatening retaliation, as in their job/livelihood, to fit with your general statement "threaten their interests."
I agree, AWS (and Amazon Alexa + Ring) seem to be skirting and/or choosing active silence on that "Lambda" outage that took out us-east-1. Alexa had at the very least two full scale outages this year, and Ring was successfully hacked as well.
Amazon's response: "looks like a Lambda... more later" then nothing, nothing, and "it must be a 3rd party skill."
AWS health page: GREEN.
AWS Post-event summaries: non-existent after 2021.
This is quite troubling when you consider what AWS holds in its coffers, along with the number of customers AWS currently has. No transparency, not even strategic transparency, is a definite red flag.
Wait, do you have more details about this? I see a Vice story[1] about a ransomware crew's claim that it hacked Ring, but it includes this:
> It is not clear what specific data ALPHV may have access to. In a statement, Ring told Motherboard "We currently have no indications that Ring has experienced a ransomware event." But the company added that it is aware of third-party vendor that has experienced a ransomware event, and that Ring is working with that company to learn more. Ring said this vendor does not have access to customer records.
There are similar stories with similar invitations for Ring employees to leak details, but the lack of updates usually indicates that the event isn't as juicy as the gang claimed.
Yea. In the spirit of NDA, I bring you OSINT. There were people on Reddit confirming ongoing issues related to decryption following the initial report by Vice (13 March 2023) [1][2].
Also important to highlight is the Twitter comment "It's believed a third-party supplier without access to customer info was affected. Ring is investigating"[3].
And, why not. While we're at it, I'll go ahead and highlight the concerns called out in an adjacent Reddit post (29 March 2023)[4], along with @Cloudguy's post on Mastodon (24 April 2023)[5][6].
It's not that people don't report the issues. It's that a big giant company uses its power to make those issues "disappear," without ever informing the public or fixing them. Scary stuff.
I'm having the same problem. Videos from 3/16 and more recent give the error UnsuccessfulDecryptionException (except Live View and Live View recordings). Videos from 3/12 and before are fine. (So the problem occurred sometime between 3/12 and 3/16.) Just started working with Ring Support by telephone. I escalated to Advanced Technical Support. They will email me when they have further information. They did credit me $10 towards my next $39.99 annual bill.
Also Ring refuses to comment on the status of this issue, which makes me believe it was/is more serious than we think. And since the issue is "not resolved", according to them, they refuse the question about the compensation. OK, if they insist, the issue is still ongoing!
CarbonFreeFuture ·4 mo. ago
Seems like I now have the same results as everyone else.
I received an email from Ring support this morning (Tuesday, March 28th), saying that the problem was resolved, for new videos.
I can confirm that new videos starting 3/21 can how be viewed in the Event History. But videos between 3/16 and 3/20 still show the same error ("UnsuccessfulDecryptionException").
Muted_Sorts ·4 mo. ago
> "I think there is a fair bit of security via obscurity/low profile here"
I don't think so, unfortunately. There's a huge amount of posturing. But it costs money to maintain security standards. This is why Amazon took away basic features for Ring owners that don't pay a premium. Even then, it appears there's problems that keep happening (e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/Ring/comments/11vqnie/ring_app_star...).
When we can't trust Amazon, it becomes a very serious issue. And when we are talking about tech like home security items and voice assistants, this becomes crucial to critically evaluate the overseeing company. When there is a proven track record of inability to trust Amazon due to Amazon pushing lies, deceit, manipulation, and gaslighting onto the customer, please second guess your decision to link your home security to Alexa.
Between the companies I've worked with and the incidents I've been through, I'd say AWS is well-known to be "very slow" at updating their status reports when something goes down.
Even had AWS liaisons tell us that things were definitely down even though the status page was completely green.
GMs/directors of AWS services are judged on how many "dashboard posts" they have (i.e., how many times their service posts to the status page). Incidentally, these same people are the ones in charge of approving posts to the status page for their service.
Guess why this is an issue.
Everyone on the ground at AWS knows this, and most AWS employees hate it.
I write shell-scripts when the current tools solve the problem easily. I distribute shell scripts to colleagues (never customers) only when I absolutely do not want to install extra software on their system.
I avoid awk and perl because if I'm going to introduce a second language to a tool, I'm not going to pick the niche ones everyone only learns opportunistically if at all. At that point I'd rather pick something my colleagues are deeply familiar with.
And on a small level, writing these little binaries that truly do one thing and do it well and that I understand intimately is a private joy.
Awk and Perl niche? How about "reliably installed on every GNU/Linux box this side of the century". Their fault for not knowing their own systems. Anything pre-installed is fair game.
> Our concern would be that a professional educator would not only work for the district, but the district would also be their landlord
Employer:
* we don't want to wages in an amount to let the worker afford healthcare on his own, so we'll just tie the worker's health-insurance to his job.
* We don't want to pay wages in an amount that would let the worker afford housing on his own, so we'll tie the worker's housing to his job.
* Next step: We don't want to pay wages in an amount to let the worker afford necessities on his own, so we'll create a company store where he'll be able to buy things with our new innovative wage/credit scheme that will tie necessities to his job.
The implementation of this idea is terrible, one that will hold a further Damocles sword over the laborers, and if widely implemented, will absolutely be used against workers in future labor-disputes. We already have the history to show that. Your employer should not control your access to life-necessities.
Teachers will just leave. They have options due to what will be a decade long labor shortage (structural demographics inflicted). It’s why many school districts are starting to offer 4 day weeks to teachers; it’s one of the few retention mechanisms available for a terribly undercompensated role.
> Folks recommend the really cheap platinum preppy pens, but be warned they are super scratchy.
The reason people recommend the platinum is that its cheap and its cap system is especially good for avoiding dry-out. To me, the platinum preppy feels like a rounded pencil. I think its a good pen, but my reservation is that the plastic is a bit brittle on the preppy. I'd personally probably go with the Pilot Kakuno, or the more expensive Platinum prefonte, or if you're really worried about costs, the interesting and fraught world of Chinese fountain pens
> I would go a size up from what you normally prefer wrt to nib (if you are new, try M as F and EF are extremely scratchy IMHO).
This is a feature of all the Japanese pens - they tend to have a finer grind. The European and other pens (e.g., Lamy) are about what you expect.
> Finally, I don't love the metropolitan. Feels great in the hand but I always find myself reaching for the smooth writing I get from my Eco.
The Metropolitan is a love-or-hate pen for some people, due to hand feel. I personally like it. If you can hold one, that'd be best. I think a couple of things make the Metro a better beginning pen than the Eco, if you like how it feels in your hand. It's cheaper; its got a metal body and cap (can be banged around), its got better QC (The first Eco I was given had the infamous 'barrel crack'. The second just flat didn't write. I'm a bit miffed at the brand), It can take cartridges or its included converter-sac, and it is by far one of the easiest pens to tear down and clean. The Eco can be taken apart with its special wrench too, but people commonly crack it in the process.
I just wish pilot sold the nibs separately for repair, like Lamy does, of TWSBI does with their more expensive pens.
For the crowd around here: I'd also say that one of the joys of a fountain pen is that you can tune, smooth, and even grind your own nibs if you're that adventurous.
Commenting with the others: I'm a left-handed writer and an avid fountain pen user. It isn't so bad.
The best thing I can say is: try to learn to write under the line (under-hand) as opposed to hookwriting or sidewriting. Those make things pretty tough. If not, there are things you can try: Prefer extra-fine (EF) or fine (F) nibbed pens. Private Reserve and Noodler's make some fast-drying ink. This combo will often allow the ink to dry faster than your hand can get to it.
The moment you start asking the user to install things, you’ve opened up the possibility for writing a program rather than a shell script. The lifecycle of a piece of software is almost always one of growing responsibility. This cycle is devastating when it happens to shell scripts. What was once a simple script slowly becomes creaking mass of untestable, poorly understood code playing in the traffic of swimming environments (which grep you got, buddy?).
I guess I’m saying that once you open up the possibility of writing a program, you generally take that option and are usually happier for it. In the “write a program” world, ruby is still good, but it becomes a far harder question to answer whether ruby is still the right choice. There are a lot of languages with a lot of features engineers like.