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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I have a relative that, while working as a police detective specializing in fraud, lost a lot of money in a Ponzi scheme. It was his belief that he would always be able to tell if something was a scam that sunk him. Definitely embarrassing, but it always reminds me that anyone can be scammed by the right offer.



  • I first played it on a 5 year old computer and could barely get 10 fps on the lowest settings. I upgraded knowing that pretty much every other game now is wanting crazy hardware to run. I now have a very expensive top of the line rig that can run the game on max settings with a silky smooth 40 fps…which seems to be the max anyone can get even in benchmarking videos. I haven’t played this patch so not sure if that’s fixed yet.

    Other than the ridiculous hardware requirements, the game is very much like all the other STALKER games. You wander around dreary forests and swamps completing quests or searching for items. If you liked the other games you’ll like this one.

    Annoying parts for me have been all the walking and the mutants being bullet sponges. Walking takes up a lot of game time and I wish there was an option for fast travel. I know not everyone would want that but I’d personally like the choice. Sometimes I just want to get back to the settlement to trade my loot and don’t want to spend 20 minutes walking through an empty forest. I often run from mutants when I can because it’ll take 100 rounds to kill one and they don’t drop any loot.






  • Alaska was settled by Russian colonists in the 1800s but the colony didn’t do so well. The Russian emperor at the time decided to sell the territory to the US hoping to weaken the British Empire by preventing them from taking over the territory in the future (ie. to avoid it becoming part of Canada). The Russian emperor had hoped the entire West coast of North America would be US territory eventually but that never happened.

    After all the gold was taken from it, Alaska’s benefit to the US is now extending its reach into Arctic waters which are being eyed as a potential international shipping route since climate change means ice breakers might not be needed to escort other ships through the Arctic. The US (via Alaska), Canada, Russia, Denmark (via Greenland), Iceland, Finland, Sweden, and Norway are all currently arguing over which parts of the Arctic ocean belong to them. They’re hoping to ensure any cargo ships that pass through will have to pay them a fee similar to how Panama and Egypt charge for the Panama and Suez canals respectively.



  • Error messages are a common way for hackers to gain information about a system. Useless error messages are recommended for security.

    If you enter your username as Robert’'); DROP TABLE Students;-- giving the error “Oops, something went wrong” is better than “NoSuchTable: ‘Students’ Table doesn’t exist in the database” because now the hacker knows you’re using a database that interprets SQL commands and inputs aren’t being sanitized.

    Hacking programs like Burp Suite have functions that spam sites with all kinds of garbage data and uses error messages and delays in response times to highlight potential vulnerabilities.





  • I watched this video essay by Benn Jordan on American Capitalism that suggests the ultra wealthy are trading their net worth for control. Companies don’t want to make more money, they want to have more control over your life. They’ll buy out every competing company and give out their products or services at a loss even if it means losing a billion dollars a year with no plan to turn a profit anytime soon. They do it with the goal of becoming the only company that provides something people rely on.

    Musk’s net worth has dropped $100 billion but he now controls what government programs get funding and who gets government jobs. He traded his net worth for control.