Notices by SYN-ACK :facepalm: (synack@corteximplant.com), page 2

@feld On paper, maybe it's individually not a threat to the grid. But it's certainly not going to be the first thing to be told (or made) to shutdown when the grid IS "running hot" and tenuous. Plus, ERCOT is all helmed by business people who are out to make money and it's them and the politicians that are dragging their feet to make the improvements that are necessary to ensure more reliable power.

Instead, they tell individuals to "live with" their houses being 80 degrees inside, not washing clothes or dishes, and limiting other things to "keep the power on".

Meanwhile, half-empty office buildings light up the night sky like giant beacons of wastefulness and these shitcoin farms keep chuggin' away because, you know, capitalism.

And now, come to find out, not only are they wasting power that could be used instead to make the lives of average citizens more comfortable but their usage is actually causing physical harm to these people?

Don't even get me started on Dan Patrick. That's just lip-service and you know it. If they were that concerned, why am I still getting notices to "conserve energy" 4 years down the line from the first big electrical disaster while cryptofarms like this are allowed to keep running?

Dan-o is also one of the major opponents of renewable energy around here, too.

@feld I was not aware of that, so thank you for sharing it with me. I would be interested to know how soon it kicks in before residential customers are asked to conserve.

But it does still rub me the wrong way that ERCOT will pay them to shut down, and pay them ludicrously more than they actually would have made as a business ($22 million, according to that article). Seems like that money could be better spent being put towards that growth and expansion that you mentioned earlier. It's like those ridiculous farm subsidies where farmers get paid NOT to produce certain crops.

And that's just ONE business. How many others is ERCOT subsidizing? Where's MY check to not wash clothes?

IMO, the whole privatization of the electric grid here in Texas has been a huge mistake, because we can't draw power from the National Grid(s) when we need to without paying massive fees. And now, finding out that this business which makes far, far less than the resources that it consumes cost is now also having a physical effect on surrounding individuals, it seems to me that shutting them down and making all that energy that they consume available to everyone else - primarily individuals - will make the grid more resilient since it's only going to get hotter (and colder) as time moves on, at least for the foreseeable future.

@chaotin Well, Granville, TX, is right in the path of Tropical Storm Beryl, which has been pounding the Texas coastline and is reportedly responsible for the internet outages across the state yesterday. We can only hope that the storm did enough damage to this facility to take it offline.

Otherwise, I may have to see if I can't rustle up some hacker friends to see if we can somehow knock their power offline.

It's fuckwads like these that are making our power situation down here even worse, and if I were Governor, I'd come down on that cryptofarm like a sack of bricks. But since our current governor is a Trumpkin, that's never going to happen. :bec_sigh:

@pluralistic spreading some truth in The Bezzle:

America will never make life better for the millions of souls it has imprisoned. Never. It is not in our character. To be an American is to live with the festering background knowledge that you are in a land that imprisons more of its people than any country in the history of the world—a land with more prisoners than Stalin’s USSR or Hu Jintao’s China or P. W. Botha’s Apartheid South Africa.

With so many in prison, either you have to believe that you are living in the midst of a great many secret criminals, or you have to confront the fact that you live in a place where the only thing standing between you and decades in a prison (running at two or three times its nominal capacity) is luck … and connections.

I'm so cautiously optimistic about this that I'm trying hard not to celebrate because I have this crushing, cynical streak that tells me that this will either a) somehow get prevented from going into effect or b) not be around long enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

But if it stands, and if it survives the 2024 US elections, then this is a HUGE moment for US workers, especially white collar and primarily tech workers. I'm currently under a 1-year non-compete myself and this will essentially nullify it the day it goes into effect. I could call up all of my contacts and go work for them immediately with no fear of reprisal.

And my former company is one of those that chooses to pursue non-compete agreements, so this would free up so many of my compatriots that still work there to go find something else. I really, really hope that this stands!

RE: https://press.coop/@NPR/112322456404917951

Time for another STICKER DUMP!!! Placed some of my new influx of stickers from @thegibson and @jadedtwin to get in the hacker mood. Can you spot them?

Listening to CD 02 of the Hackers 25th anniversary soundtrack (2020) where they finally released all the cool-ass instrumental tracks from the movie that should have been released on the soundtrack in 1995.

Like the music from the scene where they are trying to reconstruct the worm.

Or the track for the music where Joey is hacking Elingson and finds the worm in the garbage.

And of course, "Grand Central Station" from the "kill the Gibson" scene and end credits.

Been waiting for these tracks entirely too long! Hack the planet!

This is just one of my periodic reminders that the next time you're watching a movie with weapon fighting (or any #martialarts, really), even though the actors make it look easy, it certainly is not. Those actors are certainly athletic, but it's highly likely that they are not skill martial artists.

Those fight scenes are choreographed down to the last strike and the sequences are practiced over and over until they look good on film. In fact, many of them are choreographed specifically so that they DO look good on film. They are nothing like real fights with weapons.

Getting anywhere close to that kind of weapon mastery in real life requires years of training, dedication, and practice. There is no shortcut. And trying to fight while blindfolded is myth and legend and will get you hurt or killed. I'm just sayin'.

So by all means, learn #kobodo, #iaido, and whatever #martialarts interest you. Just don't expect to come out the other side an action hero, because they're not real. :holdthepain:

(Can you tell I've started watching Ahsoka recently?)

@kaiserkiwi @mhhhkathi I like the sort of industrial design of those. Very nice! And it looks like yours are the same colors as my fidget spinner. :spongebobsmug:

@aral Textbook case of the fox watching the hen house, I think.

@futurebird As someone who grew up Baptist, lived through the D&D/heavy metal/Satanists kidnapping kids on Halloween/etc panics, and now as an adult who still holds Christian beliefs, I can say that it comes down to two words: power and control.

In the Before Times when books, newspapers, TV, and word-of-mouth were the only sources of information (and the news media was still trusted), all it took was for the media to suggest a scenario and the rank-and-file would get all a-flutter because they couldn't fact-check it like we can now. If it was reported as news, well then it must be true!

IIRC, it was Ronald Reagan's campaign that figured out how to mobilize evangelical Christians as a political demographic (remember the Moral Majority and Focus On the Family?) and once the higher-ups in those religions got a taste of the power and control that politics can offer, the inevitable slide into today's Christian Nationalism was begun. Since power begets money (and vice versa), they would never attack the institutions that keep that power and control intact (and the money flowing), so they choose to use terrifying "spiritual forces" (that can't be rationally questioned) to generate fear in their followers and redirect their moral outrage towards other things in order to keep the money and power status quo.

@feld @drwho is this the Oregon Trail Reboot that I've been hearing about or a National Lampoon's Family Vacation video game that I somehow missed? That car looks an awful lot like a Family Truckster.

It was easy to joke with my parents when we were younger about "putting them in a home" when they got older or unable to take care of themselves, but now that it is becoming much more difficult for my father to stay at home, that's not a conversation I want to have. It's not a joke anymore. He's at the point where he needs regular, if not constant, supervision and motivation just to keep going and get moving every day, but he's still got the capacity to be active. He's not just laying there oblivious to the world and waiting to die. But family isn't enough; we're not trained to manage his maladies and we have responsibilities of our own that we need to manage.

Nothing is simple when it comes to healthcare in this country, and money has ruined it all. You can only really live out your life at home if you're unnaturally healthy or are independently wealthy. And you need dedicated people to care for you when you're unable to care for yourself, but those people need money to live on as well because they can't get healthcare for free either.

I wonder what will happen to me when I get to be his age or get diagnosed with a similar illness. We all need compassionate, personal healthcare as we age but I fear that humanity is not capable of the shift required to give every person their dignity until their last breath.

:rblobglare: HOW DID I TOTALLY MISS ARASAKA DAY YESTERDAY?!?!? :blobglare:

What am I gonna do with all these bombs now??? :awkward:

I am the worst cyberpunk ever. :cursedcry: :skippy2: :cursedcry:

@jdev958 welcome back to the #fedi, bucko. 😎

@jdev958 That's the spirit! The fediverse takes some getting used to since there's no algorithm to force feed you stuff, so you're going to have to spend some time following people, interacting with them, and getting to know your community and build your social graph all over again.

The first way to try and find some content for your timelines is to search for and follow hashtags of things you're interested in. Or, you can drink from the firehose and browse the Federated timeline - since you're on a big-ass instance, it should be pretty hoppin'. :bec_grin:

@jdev958 Yeah, that's the new thing. People are divided on how they feel about it. Next time I'm up there, I can give you a primer. 😁

You can always follow @feditips and scan the links in their profile and such to get a better understanding of how it all works.

How old is "too old" to wear cyberpunk gear and be able to pull it off?

@LevelUp not at all, you're good. :blobfoxsunglasses:

@LevelUp ¯⁠\⁠⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠⁠/⁠¯