I’ve thought of this, but don’t have the wherewithal to actually make a project come to fruition.

I’m also not a lawyer, but I’ve read multiple articles on this, and it doesn’t seem like any legal violation. Corporation got lazy, didn’t confirm where 10m in royalties went and under what circumstance, and got burned.

Finally a corp gets scammed by the common man.

I say good on him.

We live in troubled times, the planet is overheating at a rate that it might affect my life more than being more uncomfortable in the summer. And that’s Texas summers at that.

There is an island of plastic refuse in the ocean bigger than some countries.

I saw the home computer come to the living room and the internet be birthed.

If you were to ask if I was jaded as a kid, already? Yeah. Around 7 years old.

It isn’t getting better. Corporations claw for more and more at the expense of the people and the planet.

I hope the younger generations can lead the charge of change, but for me… I don’t have the time or energy to play games most days, let alone change the planet.

And for those who will say, “Aren’t you just part of the problem then?” Sadly yes, I am. I try to make changes when I can, but I fear changing the small environment of my home will not be enough.

In my state, with my employer, yes absolutely NSFW.

I don’t agree, just saying what the GOP leaning corpos are making rules of.

Kali is still around, I last did an install ~6 months ago, I think?

That got put on the back burner though, not because of the flipper, just life.

I have one.

Its fun.

But on the subject of rolling codes, I was able to get through a security gate that relies on, essentially, a garage door opener.

The exploit relied on the ridiculously low amount of rolling codes it cycled through.

Capture one, and try it a few times to get through.

Cars are more robust. Despite tinkering with it for about 8 hours, I wasn’t successful with defeating it. That being said, I picked up the device, in part, to start messing around with various signals as an educational tool.

Time enjoyed is not wasted.

Of course, Tik Tok isn’t my jam, so it would be a waste of time for me.

I’ve often wondered how the world would cope without 24 hour IT support.

All I know is I would love to see the chaos unfold, sadly, I think more than a few lives would end as a result so I can’t condone that for all fields.

Don’t work in medical IT.

It has been literally life and death before.

Makes one want to sail the high seas out of principle.

With a pi hole, you’re basically setting up a DNS server that has built in abilities to stop ads.

What that means is, you can point your router (or any device really) at that DNS server (pi hole) to block ads.

Ublock is good.

Due to remote work constraints, a pi hole doesn’t play nicely with their stuff and I can’t be bothered to figure out a work around. Mostly because it’s my wife’s remote work, and their IT is hesitant to talk with me about it - I get it, I wouldn’t do that at work (I’m in IT).

So I use ublock on Firefox on both my desktop and phone, plus I run through a VPN that blocks ads and malware for everything else. The VPN is a separate use case, but that’s just an added benefit.

So a previous employer’s direction to store all of the bloated batteries together in a network closet WAS a bad idea?

Someone should have told them that. Oh wait, I did.

Just glad I’m not there anymore.

Social engineering, arguably, is one of the harder things to learn.

It’s a collection of soft skills, and if you’ve been paying attention to rank and file tech jobs, places are looking for people with soft skills because they’re so impractical to train.

This goes down to your basic help desk tech.

Anyone with an interest in computers can sit down and learn how to analyze and exploit weakness in code. In fact, it’s a fun puzzle. Dealing with other people, let alone establishing oneself as another person and fucking SELLING that character enough to get what you need?

People write off social engineering far too quickly. It’s quick, it’s effective, and if done well, the person you exploited doesn’t even realize they’ve been tricked.

The only code I fuck with is my own. I’m not a Dev, but I write things for my convenience.

Sometimes it gets the attention of those above me, and I get some sweet sweet time off the phones, blasting whatever music I’m in the mood for through noise canceling ear buds while I add a little form to the function, so to speak.

So mostly, its a challenge to myself while working night shift, also part of why I enjoy night shift.

That’s a symptom of capitalism as a whole.

The whole perpetual growth, and being legally bound to try to provide that to shareholders, means only “safe” ideas are given any traction.

The only time any “innovative” comes out is when billionaires have a pipe dream.

However, they lack the skills or expertise (or even common sense) to execute them.

Musk had ideas, bought his way into leadership, and essentially had to be corralled by handlers while other people did the actual hard work.

Then, at the platform formally known as Twitter, with no handlers… Well, the world has seen how an unleashed Musk handles that. Spoiler: not well.

I nearly killed a group of people one night.

Full on slamming of brakes and trying to not have another sort of accident.

Roughly 3am, a major major highway, and a group of people decides to dash across.

Dark clothing. Crossed between where any lights were.

Everyone involved was very lucky in that moment.

To be fair, Tesla is owned by a South African who immigrated to Canada, then the US - and had apartheid slaves do the hard part of precious stone mining.

Much like the former cheetoh in chief, completely removed from the realities others face, and never had to deal with consequences.

It isn’t a solely American thing, though we may be the world champs at it.

I know a little linux, but obviously I’m still learning. I’ve picked up everything I know on my own, for the most part - internet guides from the linux community tend to be pretty solid, and I know enough to not totally FUBAR my system.

Is there a listing of standard linux directories and what they’re for? Lite /etc, things like that. Because I seem to find bits of different stuff in a variety of directories.

I’ve recently moved to linux on my gaming rig, which is my daily driver - that being said, it is mainly for gaming. Anything can surf the web or play videos and shit, for the most part.

Performance isn't key. But I like performance, lol. I also wasn't aware of their more recent practices. So thank you.

I'll have to check out the HP mini. As I said, just barely scratched the surface on researching this, and its more of a thought than a project at the moment, lol.

I just can't afford (and cool) enterprise level stuff at home. It was free (to me) so no big loss other than buying a better CPU used ~50 bucks. I've spent more on worse ideas lol.

Cost and a personal bias, also I've seen more helpful communities amongst Linux and FOSS advocates than trying to deal with a big brand.

I've done a lot of IT stuff in my life, even before working in IT.

I've seen too many issues from big brands, and its usually caused by the company.

I have a Pi 2 from way back. I've thrown so many distros at that thing over time, and without fail I don't run into any problems I didn't personally create while learning or through human error.

I understand all too well that those big brands have support for businesses, warranties, etc. It makes them cost effective long term for business. At a personal level I just don't see the benefits outweighing the negatives.

Again, personal bias. Same core reason I avoid apple products, bias, though I mainly dislike apples cost combined with their closed off, well, everything.

I've got enterprise level hardware, rack moubtable all that jazz.

Between the cost of power, and the heat it generates (which uses more AC and thus power) its not feasible to run it.

I'm looking into clustering some raspberry pis for a more power (and heat) efficient hardware as my next project. Barely scratched the surface of research though.

So hey, if anyone has any tips or links, it would be much appreciated.