A person with way too many hobbies, but I still continue to learn new things.

  • 1 Post
  • 100 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 7th, 2023

help-circle


  • I’m still on the fence about W. just because he didn’t really do anything on his own, he just took the excuse to continue his daddy’s war. I think if Sr. had gotten another term in office he would have ramped things up, but either way I think the family as a whole pushes up there on the list.

    For the rest of the list… yeah it’s not hard to find a lot of presidents who have killed a lot of people. However the original question was about the worst president overall, which to me includes the damages done here at home. Trump is high on my list simply because of how far back he has set us in terms of equal rights, moving beyond the pettiness of racism, dealing with important things like the unfolding climate disaster, and his nonchalant attitude that Palestine and Ukraine need to just surrender because being in the news cycle is inconvenient to him. Looking at Trump’s agenda of just how much he wants to destroy things here, I find it concerning that the only thing stopping him is a few Republicans that still have a moral compass.


  • What’s wrong, snowflake, are you triggered by this conversation? Don’t worry, if his cabinet succeeds in their plans to eliminate vaccines and shut down life-saving agencies such as NWS, you’ll get to see genocide at home. And even though he hasn’t eliminated the department of education yet, there’s a chance you may already be one of the victims of the conservative agenda.




  • Honestly I’m not really sure about that. What I’ve seen on the idea of damage to children usually has the caveat of “more study is needed”, but of course nobody wants to subject children to such a study on purpose. On the other hand, I haven’t seen any studies yet that concluded long-term use in adults would cause any permanent damage. I suspect there could be outlying cases of extremely heavy usage but in moderation it so far appears to be perfectly safe.


  • The current belief is that it can affect the brains of growing children, but they’re not sure to what extent. In my state the legal age is 21, the same as for drinking. In adults, straight cannabis will not harm you in any way other than the usual effects of being under the influence and not always making rational choices. Worst case, you sleep it off. Do keep in mind that smoking it can slowly damage your lungs, the same as breathing any find particulates over a long period of time. I personally prefer edibles for long-term use, but the baking process does reduce the potency.

    Now, like any drug, the reason you want to take it can be very important. If you need something to escape reality on a permanent basis, obviously you have a larger problem that no drug is ever going to solve. However the occasional evening can be quite entertaining, much like a trip to the water park. Other people (like myself) take it on a regular basis to help with medical problems, usually pain relief or sleep issues, where CBD is the answer rather than the THC component.

    For myself, I’ve had sleeping problems for the past 16 years (since a bad car wreck). I worked with my doctor for awhile trying to find something that would help. The problem is, I’m a computer tech and I need my mind sharp for troubleshooting or writing code. All the prescription drugs leave your brain in a fog through much of the next day, and then what use am I? It turns out that marijuana has a fairly quick drop-off, so it can provide help through the night, and is pretty much out of my system by the time I head for work. As with anything, it takes some time to find the right dose. I take it along with other prescription medications to address different issues, but I’ve been getting good restful sleep for the past 9 years and feeling much more like myself again. For these purposes I highly recommend it, but talk to someone knowledgeable to guide you to the right strains and give advice on what to expect.







  • I’ve been reading some discussions this week about fake polls claiming Republicans are winning to make Dems think there’s no point in voting. Apparently it was a technique used in a previous recent election? It would explain all the results I’ve seen in the last few days showing them with a strong lead, where a week or two ago other polls showed an even race. Doesn’t really matter though, everyone should remember that the only thing that counts is getting out and casting your vote no matter what the polls might suggest.




  • Who said anything about it being standard? I said I know this CAN happen, and I said it was quite some time ago. We can only hope this insanity isn’t still in practice anywhere, but I learned long ago that expecting a corporation to NOT do foolish things will give me the same disappointing results as expecting money to come out of my ass. If there’s a manager involved, then something on the tech side is going to get fucked up in the name of saving a buck. Therefore I cannot just assume OP gets a normal NAT address, nor can I assume they have any other firewall type device between them and the internet. With limited data, the best I can do is try and provide some general information, hopefully encourage them to ask more questions or provide more specific information, and just hope they don’t have a ridiculously stupid ISP that makes things needlessly complicated.


  • Most of my experience is with iptables, but yeah, I think until you start adding rules nothing is implicitly denied? Once you enable a couple of initial rules then you should have good blocking from the outside while allowing internal traffic to connect freely. It doesn’t get in your way until you start using it, but then it doesn’t take much to get it going.


  • You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense. And it didn’t make any sense at the time either. After setting up the router with a laptop, I moved the connection to the firewall but it refused to connect. When I finally got ahold of tech support they said the connection locks into the first machine that logs in and they had to release it so I could connect the new machine. And just like that the firewall was given a routable IP address and connected to the internet. Stupidest thing I ever heard of, but that’s how they were set up. Now this was around 15+ years ago and I would certainly hope nobody is doing that crap today, but apparently that was their brilliant method of limiting how many devices could get online at once.


  • What are you talking about? You’re assuming that every residential router is going to have some kind of firewall enabled by default (they don’t). Sure, if OP has a router that provides a basic firewall type service then it will likely block all incoming unauthorized traffic. However OP is specifically talking about a linux-based firewall and hasn’t specified if they have a router-based firewall service in place as well so we can only provide info on the firewall they specified. And if you look at UFW, the default configuration is to allow outgoing traffic and block all but a very few defined incoming ports.

    You’re also making the assumption that OP is using NAT, when that is not always the case for all ISPs. Some are really annoying with their setup in that they give a routable IP to the first computer that connects and don’t allow any other connections (I had that setup once with Comcast). In this case, you wouldn’t even need to define port-forwarding to get directly to OP’s computer – and any services they might be running. This particular scenario is especially dangerous for home computers and I really hope no legitimate ISP is still following a practice like this, however I don’t take anything for granted.

    Regardless of what other equipment OP has, UFW is going to provide FAR better defaults and configurability when compared to a residential router that is simply set up to create the fewest support calls to their ISP.