The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. -Mark Twain

I’ve been to protests; and I’ve volunteered for political campaigns. The second actually flipped a (US House) seat from red to blue (obviously the work of many people; I’m not thinking I was the deciding factor but it was a close election). The first left me with a pink hat and no noticeable change in how elected leaders acted.

I need to be convinced the protest will achieve measurable changes; otherwise I’ll spend my time looking for the upcoming elections where there are close enough margins to feel my actions make a difference.

Yes, if this is an issue you have: you should start taking steps to address it!

There are a number of online services to get you started, or see a therapist for personalized help from a professional. Mental health issues are real, but can be addressed with the right treatments. They won’t likely go away on their own, you’ll need to find the right strategies that work for you and then put in the effort & time to address it.

I’ve been looking into this (along with some other options like tankless) since my water heater is the next major appliances due for replacement.

Depending on the efficiency of your HVAC and water heater; it might still be cheaper to heat twice (water heater makes water hot & inside air cold; then HVAC makes inside air hot & outside cold). If your efficiency at the HVAC stage is more than double (most modern heat pumps give 3x to 4x efficiency; that’s both in the water heater and HVAC). It gets a bit complicated; but the short answer is when it’s efficient enough the switch between modes for the hot water heater might not be necessary.

Longer answer; is you need to know the difference in performance of the water heater. Ex. your heating costs go from $10/mo with heat pump to $20/mo with electric element (obviously if gas is the alternate heat source that adds another conversion…). If the marginal increase in HVAC cost is less than that $10/mo difference, there’s no need to switch the hot water heater between modes!

Undecided (you tube channel) has a few videos covering the basics that are worth a watch if you’re starting to look into the topic, but since you’ve already been doing research, maybe it’s all material you know? Quick link: https://www.instagram.com/undecidedmf/p/C4IrcBOsT_p/

Edit adding a better link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abGiNL9IT54&vl=en

Yes, it’s for a water heater being inside with sufficient ventilation. If your water heater is currently in a garage or separate area the benefits change.

I’m in Texas, and over 90% of the houses I’ve seen have the water heater in a closet somewhere inside. Some older builds have it in an attached garage. But if that is the case, there’s a good reason to move it when you next replace it, as the garage gets much colder in the winter, costing more to heat the water!

Given he put tariffs in place his prior term, good chance he actually does it again.

Things that can be done via executive order are highly likely … Because one of his staff will draft it and he’ll sign based on what they tell him it’s about.

Some lackey: “this is that tariff thing”.

Actual EO: contains whatever

Also use a towel or cloth on top of the rubber band so it’s gentler on your hand / skin.

Why it works: this fixes the problem of poor friction; metal doesn’t grip well against skin (especially if your hand is wet or oily). The rubber band grips well against the metal of the lid and your skin (or towel).

60% Local; 30% All; 10% Subscribed (still building out my subscribed list)

Use a secret manager?

Cert is a secret, add a small agent to your containers that pings your secret manager and gets back the current cert. Then saves / imports it (or whatever is appropriate).

I’m enjoying what they released this year too. Beautiful People is now on my regular playlist.

Hackers and hobbiests will persist despite any economics. Much of what they do I don’t see AI replacing, as AI creates based off of what it “knows”, which is mostly things it has previously ingested.

We are not (yet?) at the point where LLM does anything other than put together code snippets it’s seen or derived. If you ask it to find a new attack vector or code dissimilar to something it’s seen before the results are poor.

But the counterpoint every developer needs to keep in mind: AI will only get better. It’s not going to lose any of the current capabilities to generate code, and very likely will continue to expand on what it can accomplish. It’d be naive to assume it can never achieve these new capabilities… The question is just when & how much it costs (in terms of processing and storage).

The reality of Texas green energy is so detached from the political rhetoric from politicians… The state making the most wind energy has leaders in the capital demonizing it while the state finances (and citizens) clearly benefit. I wish the voters of Texas paid more attention and called out such obvious gaslighting :(

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/01/13/cost-raising-child

Usually these costs are including education and childcare. In the US you can easily expect to pay around $1K / Month for full time child care between the ages of 6 months and 5 years (when they’ll start public school). Here’s a recent summary for major cities in Texas reflecting that amount: https://tootris.com/edu/blog/parents/child-care-in-texas-can-cost-up-to-10000/

That’s over $40K just in childcare costs before entering school. Now, many people don’t have to pay this because they have family (or a non-working spouse) who assist; but from a cost perspective it’s fair to include.

Add on to that food, clothing and such… between ages it’s easy to see how some estimates can reach over $200K through age 18.

Your vote is sending a signal to future elections. If Ohio has a 20-point red margin, it’s unlikely to get any attention from blue candidates. If it has a 5% margin, that changes, and suddenly the next campaign considers spending time & money to try and move the needle.

Remember the old Roman adage: “you’re not defeated until you admit defeat”. If you don’t vote: you’ve lost. If you vote, you might still lose that election but there’s a better chance to win in the future.

Both strengthening relations with Russia recently too.

Reference Modi’s recent trip to Moscow: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd91pe5r9go

If you want a fun karaoke night, first song(s) need to be something that will get most everyone singing. Younger crowds: something like Tayor Swift “Shake It Off”. Middle age crowds, something like Nirvana or Aerosmith. Older crowds any Beatles #1.

I personally like Cyprus Hill “Jump Around” if you’re willing to learn it well enough beforehand as to not butcher the lyrics. I’ve seen Vanilla “Ice Ice Baby” also get a similar reaction of everyone knowing the song and enjoying it enough to give you kudos for choosing it.

After everyone’s over the initial hesitation, go belt all your love songs and power ballads; but get the party started first.

For those not keeping up: this is the fallout from Erdogan ignoring economics and keeping interest rates low for years; only in the past year or so having conceding to reality and finally letting rates rise. They’ll likely continue suffering fallout from his prior stance on interest rates for the remainder of the decade.

From last summer:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/22/economy/turkey-hikes-interest-rates/index.html

and

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/14/turkeys-erdogan-agrees-to-monetary-policy-turnaround-under-simsek.html

Since the other reply was unhelpful: apps are supposed to have limited privileges and isolation from each other, yes… But the whole point of malware like this is that they figure out ways to break those restrictions and get escalated privileged.

You can get more technical detail from reading the report, in this case it looks like the app does not contain malware, but instead requests an update after install that contains the bad code and then breaks the app limitations and scans for the target banking applications and copies the security certificates.

*Senator