Obviously, it does not cause any confusion at all because all the Windows admins always install the latest and greatest versions of Powershell into the environments they administer.
Why should somebody donate to somebody else's luxuries if they could spend it on their own luxuries?
Anyway, yes, direct donation is always better, be it to some random guy down on his luck in the street (unless they have just missed their bus and need ticket money for the next one and so for 3 years in the same bus station) or to some trusted person/group who actually does deliver the stuff to the area. Way too many random NGOs have popped up in Europe promising to do good things, just transfer money to their bank account and they will take care of it all for you.
It wasn't a few months, it was a few years of back-and-forth political and corporate shenanigans with a new narrative every few months that the $CURRENT_THING crowd happily ran along with.
January 2020: there is nothing to afraid of, the new disease is mostly harmless and affects only the elderly and immunocompromised. Closing down borders is xenophobic. March 2020: do not go outside unless critically necessary and if you violate the rules, we will severely punish you May 2020: it's fine to have large public gatherings for BLM protests.
February 2020: masks do nothing and actually are harmful unless you are trained to use a mask, do not buy any masks. April 2020: wear a mask if you go outside, or you kill everybody else. Your own fault that you don't have a mask.
Summer of 2020: look, it's actually so great that we are all working remotely now, the nature is healing, all the emissions are so much reduced, this is the new future! Summer of 2023: everybody back to the office, real estate is suffering. People who joined during COVID time? Your contract is now altered, pray we do not alter it any further.
The promises around vaccines, printing money and "loans for struggling businesses" are even more stories of their own. Beats me why after a few years of these kind of shenanigans people would generally get tired of other people.
I certainly got tired of the people who decided the answer was to become antisocial and not even try to mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I think.
And all those years could have been avoided by treating a new unknown disease as it should have been treated instead of trusting China's word on it. Go figure.
>I certainly got tired of the people who decided the answer was to become antisocial and not even try to mitigate the risks, and then shame anyone who did. Lost a bit of my faith in humanity. Well, more than a bit, I think.
The masks didn't do shit and neither did vaccinations. It was all scaremongering. Don't you get it? Israel had nearly 100% vaccination rate but didn't do any better than Gaza which had none. Masks don't prevent the spread at all. The 6 foot distancing rule was just made up. Why do people not understand this? Is it willful ignorance?
I think it might be. In my experience, the ignorance goes together very closely with political ideology. That also ends up being a pretty good predictor of who thinks masks were supposed to protect the wearer versus who thinks they were to try and slow down the transmission rate from infected people.
Anyway ...
West Bank and Gaza: 941.84 deaths per million people, 29% vaccination rate by end of 2021.
Israel: 887.20 deaths per million people, 64% vaccination rate by end of 2021.
>That also ends up being a pretty good predictor of who thinks masks were supposed to protect the wearer versus who thinks they were to try and slow down the transmission rate from infected people.
You're projecting. I fully understand the goal, but all the evidence shows they did nothing (air still escapes, people wear them incorrectly, the virus was never even proven to be airborne). They were telling people to take their masks off between bites/eating at restaurants. It was security theater. People who don't understand this just take safety in following the herd. They certainly aren't exhibiting critical thinking skills.
You also don't understand how to compare apples to apples. How did those death rates change from 2021 compared to previous years? I bet it was virtually unchanged. That's the point. Compare Palestine 2021 to Palestine 2015 and Israel 2021 to Israel 2015. The vaccine saved no one. If the vaccine was truly effective, you would see Israel vastly outperforming Palestine starting in 2021. Did it? And how is 63 per 1,000,000 a statistically significant number even if your argument were true? I would likely attribute that to other conditions like lack of resources compared to Israel. Otherwise, you're telling me Israel vaccinated more than 2x as many people and only saved 63 people per 1,000,000 and you think that proves your point?
Saying "google them yourself" removes the ability for people to refute you and your stated position here.
A surgical mask is most often used not to protect the surgeon but rather the patient from transmission from the surgeon to the patient.
I would suggest by refuting Unmasking the surgeons: the evidence base behind the use of facemasks in surgery - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4480558/ which describes several studies about transmission from the surgeon to the patient.
Face masks were suggested not only for protection of the individual wearing them, but also as a layer of defense for transmission from someone who may be asymptomatic at the time. As such, face masks were in part to prevent transmission from someone who is in public and might be contagious and not know it in addition to than preventing someone wearing it from contracting an airborne disease (though this may require a higher grade of filtration).
> Wearing a mask can help lower the risk of respiratory virus transmission. When worn by a person with an infection, masks reduce the spread of the virus to others. Masks can also protect wearers from breathing in infectious particles from people around them.
> ...
> Generally, masks can help act as a filter to reduce the number of germs you breathe in or out. Their effectiveness can vary against different viruses, for example, based on the size of the virus. When worn by a person who has a virus, masks can reduce the chances they spread it to others. Masks can also protect wearers from inhaling germs; this type of protection typically comes from better fitting masks (for example, N95 or KN95 respirators).
Note that the first point is that the mask is to prevent the spread from the individual wearing the mask.
> Reducing disease spread requires two things: limiting contacts of infected individuals via physical distancing and other measures and reducing the transmission probability per contact. The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high. Given the current shortages of medical masks, we recommend the adoption of public cloth mask wearing, as an effective form of source control, in conjunction with existing hygiene, distancing, and contact tracing strategies. Because many respiratory particles become smaller due to evaporation, we recommend increasing focus on a previously overlooked aspect of mask usage: mask wearing by infectious people (“source control”) with benefits at the population level, rather than only mask wearing by susceptible people, such as health care workers, with focus on individual outcomes.
> Johnson et al. (70) found that no influenza could be detected by RT-PCR on sample plates at 20 cm distance from coughing patients wearing masks, while it was detectable without mask for seven of the nine patients. Milton et al. (71) found surgical masks produced a 3.4-fold (95% CI: 1.8 to 6.3) reduction in viral copies in exhaled breath by 37 influenza patients. Vanden Driessche et al. (72) used an improved sampling method based on a controlled human aerosol model. By sampling a homogeneous mix of all of the air around the patient, the authors could also detect any aerosol that might leak around the edges of the mask. Among their six cystic fibrosis patients producing infected aerosol particles while coughing, the airborne Pseudomonas aeruginosa load was reduced by 88% when wearing a surgical mask compared with no mask.
No, I have no burden of proof because I'm not writing a scholastic paper and I made my argument using critical thinking that you can easily infer if you just think about it.
People aren't wearing masks anymore, do you see a dramatic increase in COVID deaths? Then your point is self-evidently wrong--no further analysis needed.
You're conflating so many different things. Surgery with an open wound is not the same as spreading COVID which was never even proven to be spread airborne. You're either intellectually dishonest or naive. Either way this is pointless. You clearly just like being told what to think. I get it, there's safety in feeling like if you just follow the rules you'll be safe. You can follow the school into the net, because freedom is not what you actually want.
They just wanted to sell you masks. Don't you get it? It's just about the money.
Yes, networking and sysadmin are hard, because the Internet is a much more hostile place than it was 20 years ago and the consequences for getting things wrong are much more severe. Early 2000s, ISPs had ports open by default and getting a static IP-address was a question of just asking. With dyndns, we were hosting websites off home computers. I remember a comment on HN saying that some US university provided publicly routable static IPs to dorm room port. Not even sure I could get a static IP-address nowadays as a home consumer, never mention the willingness to host something that is not behind a WAF.
And when you got things wrong back in the day, you came home from school, saw a very weirdly behaving computer, grumbled and reinstalled the OS. Nowadays it is a very different story with potentially very severe consequences.
And this is just about getting things wrong at home, in corporate environment it is 100x more annoying. In corporate, anyway you spend 80% of the development time figuring out how to do things and then 20% on actual work, nobody will have the time to teach themselves something out of their domain.
I'm hosting from my home with a static ipv4 right now. It's been running for years without a single problem. I just put in a basic pf config. Everything is fine. It's not that scary.
I've hosted stuff at home for almost 30 years, never bothered with a WAF. I have several VMs exposed with public IPs. If you keep your OS updated, it's hardly the end of the world. Sure, if you put up an unpatched OS from 10 years ago, you're going to have problems.
I have 2gbps at home and open ports and IPv6. It’s a dynamic IP but it changes maybe once a year. I could host a site here, sure. It’s infinitely better than it was 20 years ago.
OSes are more secure. Isolation is better. Languages are better. Hardware is vastly cheaper and faster and more reliable. Everything is easier and faster and better.
In the corp world we have this absurd embarrassment of riches. There are like ten choices in every category. Half of it is free. It’s easier to set up and run than it was back then. Way easier. Hosting is silly cheap if you compare cost / performance.
People are just incurious and brainwashed with this weird sense of helplessness.
This security phobia is so overblown if you take some basic precautions and don’t run crap service software.
If I were hosting something controversial that might draw the ire of one of the insane political cults out there I’d run it through a free CDN maybe. That’s easy.
It doesn't matter how easy something is to set up and run from technology side if actually being able to set it up and run it takes half a year or more coordination calendar time, justification to several different departments, their review and approval. It's completely understandable, regulations and audit requirements are what they are: but then it is strange to read that modern developers somehow are paralyzed with terror. Well, the ones who were willing to try new things got shitcanned long time ago, this is the people who you have.
Isn't it anyway better for admin and security folks to have developers not get any ideas and stick to the bounds of the box?
There is quite useful content in there, but the writing style makes it very annoying to read, it feels as if the original text went through some kind of LLM filter and made it corporately soulless, as seems to be the good practice now.
Author again here. I'm sorry to hear this. I wrote the whole thing in a mix of French and English (mostly English), and yes, it went through an LLM, but only to correct mistakes and translate French parts. I'm limited in my ability to write beautiful/delightful blog posts as English is not my main language.
Using an LLM wasn't about rewriting the whole thing, many sentences were left as before, so the style is definitely mine. It's okay if you don't like it, I'm trying to get better at it!
Trying to paint Russians as the good guys, in 2025?
> The most extensive and destructive of the Soviet air assaults was carried out on 9–10 March 1944 in connection with the Battle of Narva. A week before, the mayor of Tallinn had given an order to the city dwellers to leave the town, but the evacuation failed, as the extent of the attack was beyond the expectations of the local people and the German Army Group North. The first attack, from 6:30 – 9:00 pm, saw 300 aircraft drop 3068 bombs, 1725 explosive and 1300 incendiary.[4][5][3] Bombers hit the capital again at 2 a.m. for an additional hour and a half.[3] The fire brigades were scarce on water, as Soviet saboteurs had blown up the city pumping station before the air raid. A large part of the wooden suburbs went up in flames, and the city centre suffered major damage. In all, about twenty percent of the buildings in Tallinn were burnt to the ground.[3]
> Military damage was minor, with a few military installations and supply stores destroyed. The major military loss was the burning of a million litres of fuel in the fuel depot. Of the enterprises with some military importance, the "Luther" plywood factory and the Urania-Werke-run cable factory were destroyed. Most of the bombs fell on the dwellings and public buildings, including the Estonia Theatre, St. Nicholas Church, the city synagogue, four cinemas, and the Tallinn City Archives.[6]
> According to the official report, 757 people were killed, of whom 586 were civilians, 50 were military personnel, and 121 were prisoners-of-war. 213 had serious injuries, 446 had minor injuries. Amongst the injured were 65 military servicemen and 75 prisoners-of-war. Later, more victims were found, with the number of deaths estimated at up to 800.[5] More than 20,000 people were left without a shelter in the spring thaw, while the military objects were almost untouched.[4][7] Immediately after the bombing raid Finnish air force bombers followed returning Soviet bombers to three military airbases near Leningrad and bombed them.[8] During the attack, fuel tanks were destroyed and ca 25 Soviet airplanes were shot down in Tallinn with an additional ten destroyed by the Finnish Air Force (Ilmavoimat) later the same night.[3] Finland's actions prevented a third attack wave, likely saving Tallinn’s old city from complete destruction.[9]
Shameless plug for Tallinn but as I used to live there I have to also mention that despite the Soviets efforts the old town is well-preserved, lovely, and definitely worth a visit! I put together a visitors guide after a monthlong visit this May in case its useful: https://www.rebootinganation.com/exploring-tallinn
It makes no sense to have a high risk of getting blasted all over local Facebook groups/Instagram/Tiktok for daring to approach while being ugly when they can use dating apps for zero risk. And if dating apps feel expensive to use, then there is Photofeeler also to validate your attractiveness.
Honestly if you are ugly the only chance you have of getting a partner is in real life. Dating apps only serve the top 10% of men, and this isn’t even red pill incel conspiracy, this is fact corroborated by studies done by companies such as okcupid.
Second, if you talk to a stranger in line at the coffee shop nobody is going to put you on the local creeper list, maybe just don’t comment on how smooth their skin is.
I recommend being very honest with yourself here, whether or not you want to share it in a reply.
Is the low chance of bad consequences the only factor keeping you from talking to strangers? There’s a low chance of bad consequences when you cross a busy street, too.
Is fear of rejection by an individual or group a factor, too? There’s a much higher chance of that happening, but it’s far from life ruining.
Are you worried that you have social behaviors that make it more likely you are considered creepy in social interactions? If so, are there ways you can reduce those behaviors?
Are there other areas where acute awareness of severe potential negative consequences makes you avoid activities that lots of other people in your cohort might enjoy?
Source: it me. If you’re in a similar situation, know that it can get a lot better. Just takes time and work, like everything.
The risks and consequences of crossing a busy street are nowhere near as unknown or potentially severe. Wait until all the traffic has stopped, look to your left and your right and behind your back (typical situational awareness during bounding overwatch), cross the road. Even if something very rare and extreme happens, nobody sane will blast you on social media for failing to dodge a meteor or a suddenly exploding car.
When it comes to social context, you might miss some kind of sign and the worst cases there are pretty terrifying, might even get arrested in UK, which will lead to losing a job, failing any background checks, might even become homeless — and nobody sane will have any empathy for your mistake.
So I really do not get why people are against dating apps, when those are the best thing ever to avoid catastrophic consequences for initial approach.
I agree with the adjacent commenter: therapy would help with this.
As someone who has similar anxieties, I was pleasantly surprised in two ways when getting professional help:
Surprise one: the advice for confronting anxiety--specifically social anxiety around forming connections--was actionable and specific rather than woo-woo and "just be present/mindful/listen to your thoughts and they go away"-flavored.
Surprise two: therapists identified specific areas where I had broken or atrophied social skills and helped to build them. Just like crossing a street, most unprompted social interactions:
a) Have an expected script which, if followed, reduces the risk of severe negative consequences to near zero. If you didn't know the script you mentioned ("Wait until all traffic has stopped..."), then crossing a street would be dangerous indeed.
b) Have a higher likelihood of minor, non-lasting negative consequences: getting honked at by oblivious drivers, playing do-I-go-left-or-right chicken with oncoming pedestrians, bumping into people, and so on.
c) Have a lot of rules that are contextual (local traffic laws :: mores about what is acceptable in a park vs. in a pub). Some of those rules can be researched, but a lot of them are unspoken/gained through practice--and practice with others is most effective.
d) Are not practiced perfectly by most people. Those apprehensions you have? Those awkwardnesses and anxieties and hyper-awareness of the consequences of failure? Those are shared by tons of people! Even women in the dating scene--hell, especially women in the dating scene--are screwing up, recovering, bailing out, gathering themselves, and trying again constantly.
If you are worried about "missing some kind of sign and ... losing a job", that sounds a lot like either anxiety (therapy surprise one helps) or some missing/mis-functioning specific skills (therapy surprise two, and I cannot underline this enough, really helps here).
(Caveat: be aware that psych help, just like friends, car mechanics, or clothing stores, is variable in quality and highly preference-based; multiple selection passes may be needed before you find someone that you vibe well with).
I also really recommend Devon Price's writing on the subject. He has a few focuses that may be less relevant here (experiencing autism, being queer/trans), but also writes extensively on social/romantic interaction as a practiced, scripted phenomenon; I have found those essays to really help contextualize some of this stuff: https://devonprice.medium.com/
> I really do not get why people are against dating apps, when those are the best thing ever to avoid catastrophic consequences for initial approach.
I'm not against dating apps; I'm responding to the "unprompted social outreach is risky/a bad cost-benefit" claim.
In fact, you can get a lot more out of dating apps if you have practiced the skills required to be comfortable with ("comfortable with" is not the same as "good at") apropos in-person connection forming!
Also:
> nobody sane will blast you on social media
I agree. Raging about someone's social gaffe on social media is not sane/healthy behavior. Since jackasses raging online is nearly never as life-ruining as you might fear, framing it as "not sane and therefore not worth losing sleep over" is a good approach!
...and people on social media routinely rage about pedestrians, cyclists, slow drivers, etc. With pictures, license plates, death threats--the works. With dating, just like with crossing the street, it is not worth worrying about: be kind/do no harm, learn (potentially with help) the skills needed to progress, be willing to fail a lot while learning, and it will turn out well. I promise.
EDIT: Also, one last thing:
Avoid parts of the internet that use language like "daring to approach while ugly" and "on initial approach" when talking about dating. I've been there. I get how good it can feel to be validated by people with similar experiences, who explain that it isn't your fault/that thinking about dating as adversarial game theory is healthy. But those communities are toxic, self-hatred-reinforcing hostility factories. Seriously, go for a walk/watch TV/read a book instead.
If those are terms you came to use organically, consider avoiding them to avoid being associated with those places.
They are, but they're correct that attitudes have changed.
People largely do not want to be approached in public and actively take steps to make sure it doesn't happen. Simple things like not making eye contact, or wearing headphones everywhere.
The reason men don't approach women in public anymore isn't some crazy conspiracy or anything - it's because women have told them to stop. Both implicitly through behavior and body language, and explicitly by saying "do not approach us in public".
It's complicated, because a lot of men do not know how to be normal or respectful. So who can blame women for being wary? But, the result now is that if you do choose that approach, you're coming in with an implicit bias against that behavior. You sort of have to work harder to overcome that bias, and for a lot of situations you just won't. Which is fine, just try again later, but that's what's going on.
>it's because women have told them to stop. Both implicitly through behavior and body language, and explicitly by saying "do not approach us in public".
Its really situational. And definitely difficult to always identify. But there are avenues. I always found bars and clubs to be the worst way to approach women.
>actively take steps to make sure it doesn't happen
I used to do door to door sales, very briefly. And I was amazed at the fact that, risking fines, my coworkers would approach houses on the government no knock register, and reliably make sales. Not advocating for breach of consent. But there are multiple ways to "meet" someone that don't require a cold open at a bar when they have their headphones in. I always tell other men to go volunteer for a local club or charity. Or take a pottery class or something.
> The reason men don't approach women in public anymore isn't some crazy conspiracy or anything
Respectfully: no, this is just an excuse.
I don't know where y'all lost the plot but when I was growing up it was widely considered that how you talked to other people was a skill. Skills require practice.
There's a billion people out there. Not everyone you meet is going to be against you talking them up. Do the work, lol
I agree. That doesn’t mean it’s a conspiracy, that means society has changed. Not am I saying people shouldn’t approach others. I’m saying it’s harder, which it is and I think you agree with.
Obviously, it does not cause any confusion at all because all the Windows admins always install the latest and greatest versions of Powershell into the environments they administer.
reply