The more you know! 💫

Powerful oxidizers are dangerous stuff!

One I’ve learned about recently (and used) is potassium permanganate. One of its uses is for improving water quality in fish ponds. It oxidizes basically all organic matter. It can simultaneously knock out algae, bacteria, parasites, hormones, and other excess organic waste. And the pathogens it kills can’t build up resistance to it like they would an antibiotic or poison, so it can be used preventively without creating stronger bugs. You can’t really build resistance to BURNING outside video games.

But that also means that if you add too much, you can just as easily sterilize all life in a body of water, including fish and anything else you want to keep.

AND it means you need to be careful when handling it. If you burn your eyes or your lungs, it makes them stop working!

Sun Solaris was my first *nix, and I have very strong memories of hanging out in the cluster of Sun machines as well as running a remote x window session from whatever overlocked Celeron win2k machine I had in my dorm at the time.

A full English breakfast ain’t shit once you’ve had the full platypus breakfast!

Layers of protection. It’s worth it when we’re talking about life and death safety.

Fair enough. Thanks!

Fortunately with Linux, choice is the name of the game!

I’m curious why you wouldn’t recommend mint. Is it due to some kind of problem, or is it just a personal taste thing?

I use mint daily so if there are potential issues I just want to know!

I’m not sure if I saw it in the same place, but I saw the same recommendation long ago and have stuck with it ever since.

I don’t rely on it for changing lanes though. It absolutely helps situational awareness, but I always turn and look.

As an American, this line short circuited my brain:

Police there still carry guns on the regular

I live in a quiet but growing suburban town that’s closer to rural areas than the nearest city. When I walk my kid to elementary school (how European of us, lol) the police officer working as a crossing guard for the kids still has their gun, taser, bulletproof vest, and all their other gear on.

And it’s not a school-specific thing. You just never see cops without their weapons here. Armed and armored is just part of the uniform, essentially.

Yeah I agree with that. Relying on individual compassion to fix real estate probably makes even less sense than relying on churches and charity to fix poverty and hunger.

I’m still in favor of making things better in one’s little corner of the world, because even just looking at it selfishly it tends to make your life and your mental health better too.

The finance people (and sadly, many many others) think making the number bigger is a more important and worthwhile goal than making your corner of the world a better place. So good on you for being a compassionate human!

You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced the thrill of watching an air bubble go down the tube and in through your IV!

It’s not super dangerous in a normal IV unless it’s a lot of air, fortunately.

I think “quiet quitting” is just the white collar equivalent to the more blue collar “nobody wants to work anymore!”

I typically stay at work until 5pm because I make no effort to come in early and I take long lunch breaks.

This place is an absolute ghost town by 5, and it makes me happy to see that. It seems people mostly have their heads on straight here.

I might have the exception to this. I’m able to dual boot my work laptop, as can the other engineers in my department. So it’s effectively a Linux machine under my exclusive administration. The only request from my IT department was how to format the host name.

I’m still not taking chances with that thing though, even when on my home network. The rules exist even if there’s a 99.99% chance they won’t be enforced. I have nothing to gain from doing nefarious shit on it just to prove a point, lol.

We should all be decent, empathetic, and compassionate enough people that the demographic breakdown doesn’t create a negative effect like that.

I’m one of the many cis dudes here, and I just cannot get offended when it gets pointed out that other dudes can be assholes. Or that other Americans can be assholes. Or other humans, for that matter.

Can’t take calls? Don’t threaten ME with a good time!

This comment inspired me to go turn off microphone, camera, Bluetooth, and local network access for every app. I’ll reenable as necessary.

Yeah it’s right up there on the list of what shareholders need to survive:

Water

Food

Solid CAGR of investment portfolio

Shelter

Human contact

Etc

(CAGR being Compound Annual Growth Rate)

That’s a good point. AIs/LLMs will exist and will necessarily learn from copyrighted materials without traceability back to the copyright owners to compensate them.

Sounds to me like AIs/LLMs can’t and shouldn’t be proprietary systems owned by private entities for profit, then.