Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

6mo ago

What industry secret are you aware of that most people aren't?

642 comments

The majority of technologies that power the internet were developed in the 80s and refined in the 90s. Everything since then is built as a layer of abstraction on top of those core technologies.
- Also, the development and evolution of these open technologies relies on human interest and attention, and that attention can be diminished, even starved, by free, closed offerings.
  Evil plan step 1: make a free closed alternative and make it better than everything else. Discord for chat, Facebook for forums and chat/email, etc.
  Step 2: wait a few years, or a decade or more. The world will largely forget how to use the open alternatives. Instant messengers, forums, chat services, just give them a decade to die out. Privately hosted communities, either move to Facebook, pay for commercial anti-spam support, spend massive volunteer hours, or drown in spam.
  Step 3: monetize your now-captive audience. What else are they going to use? Tools and apps from the 2000s?
  
  We are facing a very real possibility of the end of the web browser as we know it. Google owns the chromium engine. Mozilla is on ever more precarious footing. It's become logistically impossible to build competing products except for tech giant. Even then everybody else gave up and went with chromium.
  
  But nntpd is still out there. Rebuilding Usenet will suck. But it's not impossible. Start from the net2 sites again.
  Old mail RFCs included an instant message channel. I'm sure I saw code in either sendmail or uw-imap for it too.
  I like the fediverse, but the old ways are still valid for their particular payload.
  
  Usenet:
  
  Edit: I'm talking about step 3
  
  aka Enshittification
- The key word is "majority". I think IPFS will gain more popularity moving forward especially if fascism and censorship continue to rise.
  
  And IPFS is not build on 90s tech?
  Also compared to TOR, IPFS has 0 censorship resiliance.
  I was a bit exmited for IPFS for a moment, but th more i tried it and thought about it, the less I saw a reason to use it.
- An example of the flip side? Something built on the newest technology from the bottom up?

If you value your privacy and you have a choice between using a browser to access a service vs installing their app, use the browser.
Online services can get much more information about you through an app vs the browser. Browsers are generally locked down more. Apps in general have access to much more information from your device.
- Department lead.
  The website team is small, but incredibly effective. Everything works. Everything is mobile friendly, responsive, fast. It's a way better experience.
  I love my app developers, but they're always behind. Not their own fault. Mobile development is complicated. There's so many screen sizes, iOS vs Android differences, platform permissions, etc.
  The big reason for us to push the App on people was to get more brand awareness on the App Store. But the website is so much more better.
  You literally can use it as a web app right into your phone and get a better experience.
  And it'll be such a dark day when I have to dissolve the App team (and hopefully convince them into web dev)
  
  Why not a responsive web app packaged into native viewer app? Depending on your utilization of native components of cause.
  My team had the same issues you described so we build the web responsive and made that the "Apps" on the App Store + Google Play. There is still a tiny native components that hook into the web so you still need those native developers knowhow, but yes they will have to switch in large to web based development.
  Less maintenance, more devs for the main product, faster progress, fewer headaches with Apple and Google tooling.
  Edit: forgot to app that our customers loved that more features are available now on the "Apps" and that things work the same between devices
  
  But where is has the compromise happened? The Kotlin/Flutter/swift code written? The database? not being sarcastic just unaware.
- This is the main reason why I quit Facebook and other services. Anytime you access them from mobile via a web browser it corners you into a "download our app" page. Facebook started doing it with messenger and I knew I had to get out.
  I'm not giving Zuckerberg that level of access to my data.
- Its all useless if the very operating system ur using is collecting info about you. Stop using windows
  
  Stop using windows
  lol I'm sure OP meant mobile apps.
  I hate windows, but c'mon. Stick to the main point.
  It's like saying "I prefer oranges over strawberries" and then in comes someone and says "Trump prefers mangoes. Fuck Trump!!!!!"

The interview is a vibe check first and foremost. If you vibe with the team we will overlook other things in your application. If you made it to interview, we already think you're good enough so don't stress trying to impress or apologize.
Managers are mostly people who get tired of watching other people do things badly and decide to try to do better. You don't need a special degree or any magic to be a good manager, you should like people though.
Everyone is faking it to some degree.
- The „you have to like people“ part took me nearly 20 years to figure out. I hate people in general with possible remedy for people who are nice. I‘m exceptional at managing people, I just dont vibe with them. This leads to absurd situations where everyone is happy, professionally but folks just hate my guts.
  So, I now work alone and am happy with it. :)
  
  As a fellow non people person, god I wish I was part of your team!
  
  If people hate your guts chances are you're not a good manager.
- people are generally ok. put them in a situation where they can climb over other people to advance and watch the rot begin.
  so, while people are generally ok, corporate people are generally not.
  
  Or any business, not even corporate.
  You see the same crap in SMB.
- Personality, presence and confidence
  Natural self confidence, but NOT an arrogant selfish confidence.
  Some people naturally have confidence and presence and some people need to build it as a skill.
  I know guys and gals with little to no knowledge or skill build up careers because they just knew how to talk and connect to people.
  I also know guys and gals with years of education and degrees but have little to no way of politely or easily getting along with people.
- Everyone is faking it to some degree.
  Most valuable lesson I was ever forced to learn.
- Can confirm with a very condensed anecdote: I once applied for a job that required engineering degree in electronics or mechanics. I'm a hischool dropout. Interview went well, and I got a job offer a month later. I got the impression that they were more interested in the right type of person with relevant hands-on experience, and in my case that experience meant IT/Linux (I was always a hobbyist geek)and being used to operating heavy machinery (Grew up on a farm).
  I'm still in the same industry, and I earn more than my friends with masters degrees.

Former process engineer in an aluminum factory. Aluminum foil is only shiny on one side and duller on the other for process reasons, not for any "turn this part towards baking, etc" reasons.
It's just easier to double it on itself and machine it to double thickness than it is to hit single thickness precision, especially given how much more tensile strength it gives it.
Also, our QA lab did all kinds of tests on it to settle arguments. The amount of heat reflected/absorbed between the two sides is trivially small. But if you like one side better you should wrap it that way, for sure!
- The amount of heat reflected/absorbed between the two sides is trivially small.
  Your particular choice of wording here makes me very curious: Do you mean that there really was a measurable difference (which was trivially small)?
  
  Yup, the lab could tell a difference! Shiney side (so mill roller facing, as opposed to the dull side which faces the other layer of aluminum) was marginally more reflective, but I believe (and a former coworker also remembered it as) it was less than a tenth of a percent (<0.1% for the visual folks)
  Anyone who says it affects cooking time or something is mistaken, I'd wager.
- Okay, my buddy is gonna take foil tomorrow and run it over the profilometer (?) tomorrow and see. I'll report back with more numbers and less hand waving when I have it
  
  I'll be here to read those numbers
  
  I'm an engineer in a totally different industry but I want to know what the numbers are
- Matte side isn't non stick?
  
  Correct. Just a manufacturing decision. It looks a lot more different than it actually is.
- Update: sorry to be an OP who didn't deliver. My buddy never made the measurement. I'm hoping he will. Sorry everyone!
- Reynolds wrap literally has this as a faq on their website because so many people think it.
  
  This is all I found on their site about it, which aligns but isn't as much detail as I hoped
  With standard and heavy duty foil, it’s perfectly fine to place your food on either side so you can decide if you prefer to have the shiny or dull side facing out.

There is no financial motive for software to work well. The people who sign the check for it almost never have to use it.
- That's where you need people like me who give a fuck about nothing but customer experience and if my employer manages to make a buck, good for them. My employer is generally just a middle man who siphons money out of both our pockets. And makes me fill out a second, useless timesheet while you're paying me to work.
  Jokes on me though because I've been out of work for 3 months, so take my suggestion of fuck your employer with a grain of salt.
- If they do a bad enough job they'll create a niche for a competitor to fill.
  
  That's a dream. The googles and such just buy them out and shut them down. There is always a bigger fish that spends more money preserving the status quo than making a product.
  
  I would love to see exactly how many people dropped Adobe after the latest drama, I would bet it would look exactly like the Netflix micro dip after shutting down password sharing.
  
  That's why a lot of us are here after all.
- That is true for outsourcing companies, but not true for product companies usually.
  
  I think it's equally true for product companies. Do you know how hard it is to get a company to prioritize bug fixing over feature work? Shy of a user revolt, or a friend of the CEO reporting an issue, bugs are almost always second priority or lower.
  
  No idea what you are talking about. Product companies are exactly what I am referring to. Some director signs off on the purchase, probably has never even seen the software. But he has seen the sales pitch. That is what the C suite of small companies are for, mingling with the decision makers.
- I mean that describes most things. For example, if I worked for a dentist to make oral braces for people, that doesn't mean I myself am going to ever need or use them.
  
  No.. the decision maker on the purchase is the user in that case. For software, the decision maker is almost always someone who won't use it. Like ticket tracking software. The people filing the tickets, and the people responding are not the people who decided which ticket tracking software to buy.
- This is why Dog Fooding is important.
- Found the Sonos employee.
  
  Sonos has pissed me off. After the latest update, the app cannot locate the speakers in any of my rooms. The TV speakers still work with a signal from the TV, but the speakers in all other rooms basically cannot be used.
  I've factory reset them, set them up in the app, and as soon as that is done, they disappear from the app again.
  They worked fine for years, then this bullshit. I'm researching a home theater setup that doesn't use Sonos and am planning on selling it all once I've found replacements.
  It feels like I don't own the very expensive hardware that I have bought. I guess since they are software controlled, I really dont.
- I don't really get this point. Of course there's a financial motive for a lot of software to work well. There are many niches of software that are competitive, so there's a very clear incentive to make your product work better than the competition.
  Of course there are cases in which there's a de-facto monopoly or customers are locked in to a particular offering for whatever reason, but it's not like that applies to all software.
  
  Software just has to be good enough that people put up with it. Once you get users on the system, you make it difficult to move your data out which acts as a lock in mechanism. The company that can make a minimally usable product that people are willing to put up with will typically beat one making a really good product that takes longer to get to market.
  
  When the buyer isn't the user (which is most of the time), no there isn't. Competitors try to win with great sounding features and other marketing BS because that is all the director will see. The users are then left with the product that has all the bells and whistles, but is terrible at doing what actually needs to be done. And the competition is the same, so they don't really have much choice. Bell's and whistles are cheaper than making it work well.
  
  I support accounting professionals using one of perhaps four or five highly complex pieces of software that handles individual, corp, trust, and other misc tax forms
  The churn rate is very low YoY, because it’s what they know. They have the freedom to move their data, and we will help them to the extent possible, but at most they’ll get a subset of client data and lose the ability to query agai t prior year datasets, etc.
  They’re not locked in, but between 10/15 and, say, 2/15 is a damn short time to implement and learn a new piece of software with that level of complexity.
  Interestingly, I’ve never seen a long-standing calculation bug in the program. The overwhelming majority of support is d/t user error or data entry error. From that standpoint, there is of course a financial incentive for it to work well - arithmetic errors would be unacceptable - but in terms of UI/UX, no one cares and if anything were improved folks would just whine about the change anyway - even if it made their life easier
  Not a CPA/not your CPA, just a software guy who got lucky enough to be in the right time/place when I decided I didn’t have the energy for the startup world anymore.
- I mean, no? If you are at a SaaS company the software working well is the most important aspect. Loss of quality leads to loss of subscribers.
  
  Subscribers? 90 some odd % of SaaS is sold to businesses, not individuals.
- Depends on business model. Saas - quality is very important. Non-profit insurance/bureaucratic type - they'll burn millions to hire plenty of QA then treat them like shit, ignore them, and push trash software all day
  
  Quality is meaningless in SaaS. Only features matter.

The cost of digital advertising cannot be justified by its effectiveness (or rather lack there of). We've collectively spent hundreds of billions of dollars creating the infrastructure for invasive hyper targeted ads that do not get better results than simple billboards and terrestrial TV ads even now. We've created a global economy of marketing, media, advertising and sales solely reliant on technofeudalist overlords who've provided very little actual improvement of anything.

The use of chatgpt for writing is so widespread in higher ed, it will cause serious problems to those students when entering the workforce.
Lots of fancy stuff is written about how we just have to change the way we teach!, and how we can use chatgpt in lessons! blablabla, but it's all ignorant of the fact that some things need to be learnt by doing them, and students can't understand how they hurt their own learning, because they don't know what they don't know.
- There are a lot of entry level jobs that basically assume new employees know nothing, anyway. Seems like this will just further devalue degrees and emphasize work experience for hiring.
  
  Yeah, we don't need higher education, just low skilled workers. That'll sort things out. /s
- I bet AI detection is going to get a lot better over time.
  I wonder if there's going to be retrospective testing of theses as time goes on.
  Could really damage some careers down the line.
  Edit: guys, retrospective testing means it was done later (i.e. with a more up to date AI detector).
  
  Once a detector is good, you can train a model to adjust its outputs to cause false negatives from the detector. Then the cycle repeats. It's a cat and mouse game basically.
  The only proper way I see is a system that is based ob cryptographic signatures. This ia easier said than done ofc.
  
  I bet AI detection is going to get a lot better over time.
  I doubt it. ChatGPT 3.5 is good enough to rewrite small snippets of text with better phrasing, ChatGPT 4.0 can write a paragraph if given enough support. Good enough as in "the output is indistinguishable from what a human would have written.
  Of course you can do even more with the currently available tools - and get found out.
  There is a way to make AI generated text detectable: by slightly pushing the output towards a consistent pattern a detector can reliably judge long pieces of text as AI generated.
  Imagine if the AI is biased towards consecutive words starting with consecutive letters of the alphabet (e.g. "a blue car" instead of "a navy vehicle".). Not strongly biased, but enough so that when there are 1000 words you can look at the probability of consecutive words starting with consecutive letters of the alphabet and get a clear result.
  There are two problems though: this only works with proprietary systems and only with long texts.
  
  Or we're going the other way and just accept it as a tool for performing tasks that would otherwise take too much time.
  Granted that it makes the problem of teaching students the basics even more important.
  
  But over time looks like the snake eating it's own tail as AI iterates over everything. Someone will have to create fuzzy AI to dilute the writing down.
- When I was a kid people said the same about typing, homework has to be handwrittena because no boss will ever accept a typed report.
  We had the same when media studies became a lesson, everyone freaking out that kids learning to watch TV is stupid but of course that's not what they're getting taught - media literacy turned our to be a hugely important subject even for those that don't go on to work in the huge and ever growing media sector.
  Teaching kids to use AI tools effectively is the same, you hear it and imagine 'they put homework prompt into chatGPT and hand in the output' it's the same as imagining media studies as being nothing more than watching TV. AI is going to be an ever more present and useful tool in our lives so kids need to learn how to leverage and utilize it or they'll be at a huge disadvantage.
  You can't hold back time by denying your kid a full education, they need to know how to effectively use the tools everyone else will be using.
- The younger kids are using it as well, it's a problem starting at an earlier age. I don't see how chat gtp is gonna help those kids learn. AI sellers want us to think differently. But like silicon valley, their kids are not gonna be using it. Sell it to the poor schools as the future!

Chocolate production is infested with slave labor, child labor and child slave labor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwHMDjc7qJ8
- i don't think this is a secret anymore though
  
  I used to think that at least the parts that are Fairtrade wouldn’t be affected as much.
- So is banana production. And here I am with a bowl of banana-topped chocolate ice cream. Dammit.
  
  So what are you gonna do to stop it? 🍫🍌
  
  Hehehe. That's just plain mean.
  
  Chunky Monkey by any means necessary
- If I'm not mistaken Nestlé, the firm that makes various brands of chocolate, are known or at least have been known to include slavery in really poor parts of the world.
  When I look at a bottle or a cuddly packaged bit of chocolate, I shudder to think the shit conditions that a person, a child even was forced or on crap pay to produce that from the cocoa farming..
  
  Ne*tle also does this thing where they lie to mothers in 'third-world countries' (I hate that term but can't think of a better one rn) by telling them that their baby formula is better than actual milk, then give them some, which the mothers mix with dirty water, and when they can't afford the formula, they'll just give the babies plain dirty water.
- Glad i basically dont eat the stuff ever.

The world is littered with fake empty buildings used to obscure phone line junctions and internet provider stuff.
Almost every neighbourhood has one. But they look like normal houses, so you can never tell unless you know where to look for.
- Underground railways use houses for ventilation as well.
  
  Can't believe Harriet Tubman got all that infrastructure up.
- Los Angeles had hidden oil rigs.
  https://lamag.com/lahistory/hidden-oil-wells
- There's a power utilities building disguised as a house just down the street from me. You'd never know it wasn't just a house besides the industrial equipment behind it, the lack of a car in the driveway and the warnings plastered on the front door.
  
  We have them here in Toronto. Some of them have been removed, but there's about 3 near me.
- What do you look for?
  
  I know of two buildings sort of like that, they both look like a bungalow office building with an empty parking lot and a card reader by the door, one building has plastered over windows, the other has normal but dirty windows
  
  Here's one on Google maps https://maps.app.goo.gl/55qqbQRYY7abKPVy9 I drove past this for years without thinking about it until one day I drove under it.
  Now that I know what it is, it's pretty obvious, but how often does the average person really inspect houses as they drive by?
  Edit: maps links suck, 3911 Frances St, Burnaby, BC V5C 2P4
  
  Someone shared a video upthread.
- Can you share the address of a specific one? (Does it count as doxxing if nobody lives in it?)
  
  https://youtu.be/VQz9JwtmLy4?si=WmRY1M6tiy-IOOlK
  This video shows a bunch in Toronto.
- The YouTube channel The Tim Traveller has covered a few (along with a bunch of other esoteric sights, I really enjoy his stuff).
  Example: https://youtu.be/iXSkjw0Kytk?si=J_X-3rbCluOcXRyz
- Bruh...

Building HVAC engineering (equipment sizing, ducting design, etc.) has been largely handwavy bullshit for a very long time and only recently has moved towards any sort of precision. Not uncommon to find boiler plants that are 3-4 times the maximum heating load in the winter, or fans running at 100% 24/7 when code only requires half of that.
Costs just get passed on to tenants so there was never much motivation to do better, the only reason building owners are moving now is because of government regulation and incentive programs.
- I used to work in HVAC. I remember we had a small cold room that was struggling to maintain temperature, as in, design was supposed to be 0°F but it couldn't get below 36°F. There was a large hole in the box that was undoubtedly the cause of the problem, so I asked the installer how they accounted for that. "Oh, I doubled the infiltration value." When I tried calculating the actual losses it was way, way higher than the infiltration value. Like, the room needed someting like 3-4 times its total refrigeration capacity to reach target with a giant fucking hole in the box.
  No idea who thought putting a giant hole in the box was a good idea.
  
  "Sealed" is also a vague suggestion with HVAC. Every ducting join, every piece of equipment, all of it leaks. I shudder to think how much heating/cooling is wasted that way.
- I work in building science. It's obscene how little actual design and quality control goes into residential homes.
  The typical design is just one step above being illegal, and people are often scared off of doing anything more than that by the threat of increased cost. However, they don't realize that they pay for it either way; either on their mortgage, or on utilities. Only one of those you can actually own in the end.
  
  So how does a homeowner fix it? The duct work is already in, so is it just about choosing more wisely when replacing the furnace/ac/heat pump?
- I loved that Technology Connections video.
- Technology connections did a video on this, it's actually insane how much wastage there is
  
  nice TC plug. One of my favorite channels and one of few reasons I use YouTube via new pipe and download the video. Let me also recommend Asianometery and Plainy Difficult.
- Talking about energy wastage, next time you're walking around commercial buildings, pay attention to how many lights are on during the middle of the day.
  Drove by a closed car lot the other day. The place has been abandoned for months. Weeds growing up everywhere. The entire lot is fenced off getting ready for demolition.
  The only building on the lot is small and completely surrounded by glass walls, so you can see right through it. The red neon around the outside of the building is still on 24 hours.
  
  condo had a fire and later I could see lights on every evening. I called it in but nothing happened. Seemed dangerous to me that power was not shutdown from going to it.
- Ugh. Yup.
  I learned that after buying my house. My furnace is 3x what my house needs and is expected to be an expensive repair someday.
- DARN THOSE EVIL REGULATIONS!
  
  Ironically in this case doing the job properly reduces costs significantly.
  Everything in the chain from the outlets, ductwork, damper, valves, condensers, pipes, tray, fans, component ratings & switchboards can be reduced to a reasonable size.
  Which then has peripheral benefits like reduced transport costs, crane lifts, space in service zones between floors/risers, materials & running costs of the completed building
  
  they're filthy communists i tell ya

Most of hacking is done by mass effort with maybe a couple percent of people that aren't doing basic things to protect themselves being affected. That couple of percent is enough to keep the hackers flush. (So please, follow basic cybersecurity steps, people.)
The plain truth of the matter, though, is that if a hacker or group of hackers is targeting someone individually for reasons, that person is in real trouble.
This has been a PSA for everyone chasing fame and clout.
- I miss the days of Anonymous (there was a sub group of the actual hackers whose name I can't recall and a bunch of wannabes I guess providing them a crowd to lose themselves in) doing justice hacks. Not that they were always on the right side of things, but now everything is state actors trying to bring us all closer to Armageddon.
  
  Alt2600?
- Tips for being secure online:
  Use your browser's password manager to generate random passwords.
  In the rare case you need to manually enter your password into a site or app be very suspicious and very careful.
  Never give personal information to someone who calls or emails you. If necessary look up the contact info of who called you yourself and call them back before divulging and details. Keep in mind that Caller ID and the From address of emails can be faked.
  Update software regularly. Security problems are regularly fixed.
  That's really all you need. You don't even need 2FA, it is nice extra security but if you use random passwords and don't enter your passwords into phishing sites it is largely unnecessary.
  
  Im not so sure about your number 1. Fine if otherwise they won't use one but personally I use bitwarden online for unimportant ones and a local keypass for important ones.

The quality of education at college and university is in free fall.
- I went to college before the internet was ever considered a valid source for any material. But using the internet made research extremely easy if I could determine the book source for reference.
  I went back to college right around that time the internet just became the default source for everything. It was staggering how little information was expected to be known. The implicit ubiquitous access to information was a staggering foundational shift.
  
  https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/wait-what-new-research-says-internet-use-is-killing-your-memory/#:~:text=That%E2%80%99s%20the%20main%20takeaway%20from%20new%20research%20by,technologyso%20ubiquitous%20that%20opting%20out%20is%20nearly%20unimaginable.
- I fear too many universities are businesses designed to fund seminars; and students graduating are whether an afterthought or an actual negative for them.
  It was related to me that, because they want to keep their customers, one can solve any problem at uni - grades, minor victimless crimes, etc - simply by offering to take more courses. The only problem money can't solve is the one where the student has no more money, and it's over quickly after that (saw that one happen).
  
  It is far worse than that.
  Universities have a lot of metrics that they are judged against that don't lead to a quality education. Research doesn't lead to good undergraduate students. A good pass rate just means the curriculum is soft enough to keep don't students from failing.
  So you have university presidents who are incentivized to increase prestige and they aren't going to focus on the quality of education because that doesn't lead to better metrics. If presidents try to defend their universities' way of teaching, they get replaced by those who follow the system.
- Worked in higher Ed for a decade. Can confirm.
- US universities are pro football teams with a sideline in education.
- Everywhere? or in what country/place?
  
  In Quebec/Canada at least. Haven't teach in another country but I fear it's similar.
- Was it ever good?
- lol education? you mean terrorist chanting camps.
  
  Yep it only took 1000 allu akbars to get my mechanical engineering degree 🤡

Most problems are being solved by turning it off and on again.
- The navy manual for troubleshooting equipment in the field includes "lift 3-6 inches and drop"
  
  Percussive maintenance can help sometimes. It's not a permanent fix but you can't always do the right fix in the middle of the ocean. Things it can help with: dislodging debris in mechanical components, reseating electrical connections that are corroding, and making yourself feel better.
- What? Did I turn it off and on again? I’m a very smart technology person, of course my big brain already thought of that. I develop software for a living. It couldn’t be that simple or I wouldn’t be calling you.
  . . .
  Turning it off and on again worked. My shame is immense and I have wasted everybody’s time.
  (And that is how I learned to embrace my own idiocy and do the recommended, simple troubleshooting tasks without questioning them.)
  
  Dude, I just had my mechanic call and tell me my car was out of oil. I've never felt so dumb and ashamed.
- Well it didn't work, my grampa is still sleeping, i'll try the unplug for several minutes trick, I'll let you know
  
  Try a force restart....or there is always the possibility that he is stuck in a boot loop
- And if that doesn't work unplug it for a while and plug it back in.
- I have anxiety and depression. Gonna give your idea a try.
  
  isn't that what they are researching with psilocybin? I could use that big time to reset my head. I have severe health anxiety.
- A good chunk of my work is scheduled turning off and on again in the right order so things don't break
- This is a funny joke and all but it's so far from actually true.
  Source: 27 years working in I.T.

These aren't secrets, but may not be well known (unless you watch LPL):
Sentry Safes aren't safes, they are fire boxes with a fancy lock.
High security locks are not high security because of the lock design, but because the keys are very difficult to have duplicated.
No one (except maybe intelligence agencies) breaks in to a house by picking a lock, especially in the US. Windows, weak door frames, and, in a pinch, making a hole in the wall are all faster ways of getting in.
Car keys are so expensive because many manufacturers charge a subscription or per-use fee to access and program the keys to the ignition. These costs are passed on to consumers
No one is picking your locks just to move things around or steal small, insignificant items. You are either suffering from a mental disorder or a trusted member of the household is gaslighting you (it's not gaslighting though, ~~you're~~ your grasp of reality is slipping. Don't call me for a pick proof lock, just get help please)
Some manufacturers (you know, in China) will put any sticker you want on the products they produce, including UL and ANSI stickers. Before buying a product that is supposedly fire-rated, such as a fire safe, check the UL website to verify the item is actually listed with them.
"Grade 1" door hardware sold in stores like Lowe's or Home Depot is, at best, Grade 2, and is likely Grade 3 (residential grade). These grades are really just about how durable the product is over time, and how much abuse they will endure by the public.
And just a little practical advice. Find a qualified, honest locksmith before you need one. We're like plumbers. If you wait until you have an emergency to find one, the quality will be questionable. There are a lot of scammers out there. If you don't have a resource for locksmiths beyond Google, look on the ALOA website for members in your area. The good ones will know who the other good ones are, and won't be shy about sharing that info if they are unavailable or too far away

A lot of the "generic" or "store brand" packaged foods are literally the same exact product as the name brands, only in different boxes/bags
- I'm not so sure about food, but for many mass market products it is indeed true that the same manufacturer can be engaged to make the same product under different branding. The difference then comes down to the corners cut to meet the client's pricing. Crappier boxes, thinner bags, packing material, and quality inspection. Assuming the core ingredients are not compromised in some way.
  
  I would like that.... Saving on a smaller package for chips and cereal sounds great, most of it is air anyways.
  
  I can tell the difference between generic and real cocoa pebbles. Fuck cocoa krispies too.
- The one example I'm familiar with is a name brand ice cream company that produces the store brand ice cream too...in that case the recipe is different, cheaper ingredients to cut costs to the bare minimum. But using the machines for a higher volume saves money.
  I'm sure 'same exact item' does happen too but just 'same manufacturer' doesn't mean exactly the same item.
- My sister worked at a dairy for a while, they both made the name brand version of cottage cheese as well as the off brand. They made several brands of cottage cheese, so you are abolutely right that different brands of product are made in tye same factory, but depending of the brand or country it was shipped to the recipie was changed slightly based on the customer's request.
  
  And those recipe changes were probably aimed at lowering costs, not increasing quality.
- For foods, they usually use cheaper ingredients, but it is the same recipe from the same factory.
- Where this isn't true, it's extremely effective propaganda
- I'd expect that to be damn near all of them because most stores don't run their own production companies
- here in Canada, generic cereal is NOT the same as name brand.
- Butter. I read somewhere sometime ago in a galaxy far far away that there is only a handful of US butter manufacturers which make all the butter for all the brands. Just different packaging. I have 0 proof or evidence and going entirely off memory of prolly a reddit post 10 years ago so google it and lmk if it's true.

In the UK, slot machines fall into 4 main categories. Of particular interest are category C machines, as these can remember a fixed number of previous games. I.e. the "myth" that a machine is "about to pay out" because "someone lost a lot to it" can hold for these games.
Cat A and B machines are completely random, previous games can have no impact on probabilities of winning (though pots can climb).
Online games have different rules, not always fair ones!
Oh, and ALL games (in a physical location) must (by law) show "RTP" (return to player) somewhere. It usually gets stuck it in a block of text in the manual since no-one reads them. (If it's below 97.3% just go play roulette as it offers better returns).

Nice try Boeing, you're not going to get me that easily
- boeing:

A whole bunch of welds in nuclear reactors are visually inspected using cameras duct taped onto the end of incredibly long poles which also get duct taped together. This would be the inside of BWR plants near the fuel and jet pumps. There is also an "art" to moving the cameras and poles around to get the shots you need. And if you get stuck the talented people know how to get you unstuck. There are also cameras just duct taped to ropes that the camera handler "swims" to certain spots.
Don't get me wrong, we have cool ultrasonic inspecting robots as well, but I was absolutely blown away by what visual inspection looked like in practice.
PS: The high dose fields make the camera look like it is being blasted with colorful confetti because of the high energy particles bombarding the camera module.

Many game companies specifically target vulnerable people, who end up spending their entire pay check every month, and are called Whales.
- I'm on a game, Whiteout Survival, you've probably never heard of it. I haven't spent a penny, but I was curious about how much one obscure "upgrade" cost. Mind you, there are hundreds of purchases in the game.
  It was $100 US, and it said 29,000 had been sold... in the last WEEK!
  2.9 million dollars a week for NOTHING. And that's just that one obscure item, far from their biggest seller.
  And that's just in one game you've never heard of.
  
  You're a non-monetizer, just like 95% of the players. The game will make you some form of offer in order to convert you into a paying minnow, dolphin or whale. Whales are rare, less than a percent of the players, but they generate a significant amount of the revenue.
  Companies compare their conversion rate with each other and have specific goals to meet. 5% for example is good. If your company has say 3%, you'll want to focus on improving that. Each product will have a specific goal here, and otherwise is shut down because there's a customer acquisition cost. Games easily cost more to market than to develop.
  A lot of effort is spent on the first offer. This is where you'll see a screen that makes an amazing offer you'll seriously consider. It'll have something that is high value but incredibly cheap and so temporary. This isn't to earn money, it's simply to convert you. Because after you've spent your first dollar you're likely to keep spending.
  
  I knew multiple people who spent several ten thousands USD in State of Survival. A fucking mobile game.
  
  It's highly likely they fudge those numbers or outright lie.
- I was suckered into the shark cards on GTA Online, I worked terrible hours and it was my escape.
  I bought shark cards for thousands of SEK ocer a year or so, not much in compared to normal whales, but I did feel the addiction drawing me in harder.
  Then one day I had just had enough, and uninstalled the game, else I knew I would continue.
  I am glad though, the money I spent was not wasted, it taught me a valuable lesson about what to look out for, and how to recognize sinkholes like this.
  
  It's good that you managed to wake up and take care of yourself. Players with that pattern are called dolphins.
- They’ve just learnt it all from Vegas.
  
  They hire behavior specialists.
- They have ARPU targets (Average Revenue Per User) and UAC targets (User Acquisition Costs). Whales contribute significantly to the game's bottom line. Non-paying customers are vital, because player population is a game quality, and Whales need a population to notice how awesome they are.
  But game companies don't tend to separate Whales from other players (at least not the ones I've worked for), they tend to care about ARPU, which is more stable, and a much easier target to shoot for. And they want to keep UAC down, which lowers the required ARPU for a successful game.
- Here's an industry talk about how to prey on whales
  https://youtu.be/xNjI03CGkb4?si=1sjNUt8VX4Z5wky2
  
  That's a great link. There's just so many people exactly like him.

I don't know how well known this is by now, but just in case, I'll add it.
The quality of your speakers is not affected by the cable from your amp.
The connectors are more important in terms of physical contact, but almost any new connector will do. The wire itself makes no difference. Pay as much as you want but the sound will not be any different than if you used metal coat hanger wire.
- Adding to this, you probably don't know how good your speakers are or not because you're listening to your room, not your speakers. If you have given zero thought to acoustic treatment where you listen to music, you definitely don't need to upgrade your audio equipment in any way. No amount of money you spend on equipment will help you enjoy music more until you treat your room
  
  Who the fuck is up upvoting this dumb take? So you're actually trying to argue there is no difference between a pair of $20 speakers and a $500 surround sound system with amp if they aren't in the perfect room? That's some music snobbery on a level I've never seen before.
- Gauge matters in some setups, especially over longer lengths, this is overly generalizing.
  
  Not really. Most home hifi won't be affected. I think that's a reasonable generalisation.
- Master Handbook of Acoustics is your friend if you want to learn what to do to your room. Overkill for most, admittedly, but it contains everything you need to know.
  
  Here's the pdf to the 4th edition.
  What improvements did you make based on the book? I'm skimming through it.
- Isn't conductor diameter important to supply proper wattage?
  
  Not quite, conductor diameter is important to supply proper current, which will change depending on the impedance of your speaker. There are other values like inductance and capacitance in a wire that could affect how your speaker sounds. The good news is that you can pretty much buy any cheap 16 ga copper speaker wire and not worry about it, as it would take effort to make a speaker wire that sounds bad (and those companies are the type to try to charge you $1000/ft for it!)
  
  Yes! What he said is certainly a generalization for most speaker setups. Low resistance, larger gauge wire is of course better, but won't be noticeable on your average sound system.

75% of American drinking water needs treatment to reduce particulate and parasites, and the treatment additive used to render the water safe is produced at a single chemical plant located in an area of severe flood risk -- which means that a flood could take it offline for a day or two, or damage it for weeks.
(Efforts to build a second site recently fell through due to ever-changing regulations. Of course they're stockpiling it in some mountain bunker, I'm sure)
The next Katrina could give us a brain-worms infestation via tap-water.
- Are you saying the chemical plant provides the treatment or that one plant is somehow responsible for polluting 75% of American drinking water?
  
  Nah, lemme reword that. Thanks!
  
  I think the former, based on my limited knowledge of the water treatment industry. There aren't many manufacturers of low margin commodity chemicals, most people are in specialty chemicals with higher margins.
- I don't know the details about alum production (assuming that is what you are referring to), but there are many alternative coagulants available now. Sure the supply logistics would be incredibly challenging and many people would have to boil their water or use point-of-use filters, but this take is pretty doomer in my opinion. Most plants use alum because it's cheap and easy, not because it's their only option.
  
  I work at a plant that uses one of those alternative flocculants (due to our source water chemistry). Our logistics are incredibly shaky at the best of times, due to the extremely limited number of producers.

With the exception of at large buildings in dense city centers, just about everywhere else, utilities enter a building at just some point on the back, out in the open. This includes utilities that feed alarms and security cameras.
While some places will have systems in place for situations where these outside connections have been severed, like independently operated cameras on an intranet, cellular data backup for alarms, electrical generators, etc., most places don't, so successfully circumventing their security is just a matter of cutting all the cables on the back of their building at the same time, and then being gone before they notice
- I'm not an expert on modern alarm systems but it seems that it is very common and fairly inexpensive to have cellular data backup. Not every system has it, but many do. In that case cutting the main connection will likely result in someone appearing on site fairly quickly.
  Many cameras also have some form of local buffering. So even if you are gone before someone does show up you still may find yourself recorded.
  But at the end of the day just put a bag over your head and you can be gone by the time anyone shows up without leaving a meaningful trace. Other than the very top-end system security systems just keep the honest people honest.
- This is dependent on where you live though. In the Netherlands most utilities are buried under ground and enter buildings subterranean.
  
  But they are not buried particularly deeply. If you have drawings, or just some sense of where the meter boxes are in a particular set of houses, you can make quick work of them with a spade and ten minutes or so.
  And that’s why you want a camera on your front yard.

_{Things people don’t want to know}
Putting a layer of tissue between your butt and the toilet seat doesnt provide enough of a barrier against microorganisms over the time it takes to shit or piss to prevent transmission.
Keeping the air dry reduces both the length of time microorganisms can live outside your body and the length of time that vapor particles can harbor them.
The n95 (and other) rating(s) are over time in free, circulating, open air. Derate safe exposure time sharply for use inside or in spaces with stagnant or unmoving air.
- How about TWO layers of tissue? Checkmate, scientists.
  Signed, the toilet seat nest-builders of the world.
  
  If you’re able to hold it long enough and you’re truly worried, folding a wet paper towel over a couple of times and using the hand soap to clean the seat and then folding it over again to get a “rinse” before you sit down is a better way to go about it.
  “I’m worried about germs on the toilet seat”
  “Well, they gave you paper towels, soap and running water, why not clean the motherfucker?”
  “Nah, imma just put the thinnest material known to man in between my butt and the seat”
  
  Try a dozen. Public toilet paper is the thinnest substance known to man.
  
  I like to put shiny things in my nest.
- Idiots. The toilet seat tissue layer doesn't do anything, that's why I lick the seat clean first. Saliva has antimicrobial properties, use your brain.
- Keeping the air dry reduces both the length of time microorganisms can live outside your body and the length of time that vapor particles can harbor them.
  Pretty sure this is only true for some microorganisms. Well, I'm not sure about length of survival time, but I've definitely see studies that have shown that lower humidity causes respiratory droplet evaporation, resulting in more airborne virus particles and increasing spread. There is some evidence that this increases infection rates
  
  I mean yes you’re right but also most microorganisms that cause disease die quickly without their little droplets and particles to cling to.
  On the other hand, procedure masks rely on those droplets to be the microorganism carriers that they can more easily stop instead of falling back on electrostatic attraction as the lil guys float through em.
  In conclusion, infectious disease is a land of contrasts and while hospitals can rely on technologically advanced hvac systems to maintain a narrow range of temperature and humidity that represents a trade off between reduced micro environments, reduced airborne transmission and safely storing all their poultices and potions, normal people need to just do our best and maybe should accept the reduced mold and microorganisms over all in exchange for more chance of airborne transmission when cleaning our homes and workplaces (which are all fucked if there’s airborne transmission anyway because no one has appropriate air cleaners in their home or workplace).

The ice in your drink at the bar is very very dirty.
- Not if your bartender is properly trained and not a lazy piece of shit.
- I used to work at a nice bar. It was just a side gig for "fun". I was always very careful with the ice and ice machine, because i find ice gross in general. I still found it very odd how many people just demand "questionable" ice. I'm glad if i don't get ice, please don't ice adds nothing but grossness to any drink.
  
  Not to be judge mental here, but why do you find ice "gross"? I get it if you've seen what the machines look like, but ice in general?

The company that provides your banks phone system has full access to pretty much every piece of information your bank holds on you, including call recordings, phone numbers, addresses, debts, credits, and your phone password. We can trick our own systems into thinking it’s you on the phone.
Avoid calling your bank at all costs, and if they call you say “no thank you I’ll do that online or in branch”, as soon as you pass security the phone system is accessing all your data. If possible go into branch or do everything on a banking app which has far better security.
- Now tell banks to stop requiring SMS 2FA holy shit
  
  You actually want them to do this, it’s terrifying easy to set up a cell tower or call centre and convince banks and people you are customers or banks.
- call recordings
  your phone password
  Can you explain more about this? You're saying the bank app is grabbing this data from your phone, or what are you saying?
  I'm not saying you are wrong, necessarily, I'm just surprised to hear it
  
  Not the password to unlock your phone, but the credentials your bank may require to verify your identity over the phone. A security question/answer, a passphrase or a sequence keyed during the call.

The NYPD does not internally call itself a "police force", its always "paramilitary organization" or similar.
- [x] doubt
  
  I actually worked there as an intern (unpaid of course).
- "F*** the paramilitary organization" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
  
  Just make it an acronym, P.O.
  Maybe double up to make it sound cute
  popo
  
  Fuck the junta
- Wait what

Fractional-reserve banking. Most people have no idea what it is, probably a good thing. You could argue that it's not a "secret", but most people aren't aware of it regardless. I don't think most people would be fond of grinding for $15 an hour if they knew banks could just lend money they don't actually have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

Nice try FBI
- Nice of you to think the FBI gives a shit investigating corporate malfeasance.
  
  It's more likely to be a sb like me who just gathers stuff like that for future use in (maybe) questionable way.

the oh so well kept secret of the software and services (surrounding it) industry that people seem to think is worth paying money for.
Yet time after time these paid software companies produce the most vile awful, dysfunctional, and garbage software (and services) that have ever been created. While somehow a group of people who aren't being paid, and aren't doing this for any sort of reason other than "why not" manage to create the most functional software ever, while also managing to somehow catch the single biggest potential software vulnerability in this decade (other than wannacry) purely because ssh has slightly sus behaviors when running the infected payload.
Please stop doing web dev, it isn't real.

I feel like most people have a feeling one way or another on this topic because it has become quite political, but the facts are the facts. Most new electric vehicle plants in the US are only working at most 50% capacity due to lack of customer demand. People can blame lack of parts and lack of workers, but one thing I know about this industry is that if people want them then they are going to keep building them regardless of circumstance.
- Most people can't afford new cars, let alone new cars priced way above average.
- Here's my perspective, but it might be pretty wrong:
  I think the reason for the low demand is due in large part to the pre-existing gas industry, at least in the US. Not just because of marketing advertising gas-powered more, but also because people don't like to change, and buying a new car is not cheap. Not to mention that the US infrastructure is so heavily solidified in gas. It's just easier to continue buying gas-powered because it's already so supported across the country. Then the industry benefits from this because they can say, "oh, huh, looks like people still want gas-powered! ¯(ツ)/¯" and so the cycle repeats.
  I think a lot of people don't really understand how much power corporations really have over what the people do or don't do, like or don't like, etc.. 99% of the time people will take the easy option, and corps take advantage of that by making the easy option the cheapest and best for themselves instead of what's best for the people. Corporations only do what's right for them, and are masters of making it out to be that that's what the people want.
  
  True. And the nepo-babies that lead these corporations are making millions off dollars each year simply by showing up to work.
  Switching over to electric vehicles is inevitable. But who's going to do that work and take that risk? What if they screw up? Ain't no nepo-baby gonna screw up that cash cow. They're going to continue showing up to work every day, sucking up the income and when the end of gasoline happens, they'll throw up their hands and say, "No one could have seen that coming."
  (To be fair, it's not just management. There are tons of people at every level who don't want to risk losing their job with an uncertain outcome over just showing up to work every day and doing the same job they already know. But it's the "leadership's" job to do that anyway for the long-term health of the company.)
  
  Similarly how plastic pollution is 99% made by companies. So we banned plastic straws.
  That's the equivalent of yelling at me to turn the ceiling lights off to save power, but you have the AC running 24/7 and all the windows are open.
  I hate it.
- At least one of the big 3 isn't meeting production demand due to battery assembly. Long series of management and integrator fuck ups where their solution seems to be just throw more engineers at it. Can't build EVs if they can't build batteries.
- I would love an electric vehicle.
  But we have two gasoline cars completely paid off and I can't imagine adding a car payment (or two) just to go electric. I'm more concerned with continuing to afford food and shelter.
  If I could just magically swap them out I would.

Dog groomers get almost zero legal repercussions for mistreating dogs. It has to be undeniable that the groomer injured the dog on purpose before anything really happens. That's why it's SO important to trust the person grooming your dog if they're the type of breed that needs it.

All your fancy shampoos, body wash, and dish soap are exactly the same. Just different smells, colors, and water contents. Also, all mainstream brands are owned by a total of 3 companies.
- Yes, no, sort of.
  I mean shampoo is definitely not the same as laundry soap.
  And even between shampoos, there are differences (as anyone with skin conditions can attest).
  Are products in any one category largely the same? Yes. But there are differences.
- I don't think this one is true. I've definitely had different brands and types of shampoo and conditioner give better and worse results for my hair.
- Wash your hair with conditioner instead of shampoo. Both have detergent so they will both clean your hair, but conditioner is less harsh.
  
  This is only really beneficial for certain types of hair, and definitely don’t do it with conditioners containing sulfates, parafinss, or silicones. This site has a comprehensive list of products that aren’t filled with garbage what’ll leave your hair drier than it started.
  
  Depends on hair type. Conditioner can be heavy on baby fine hair. I almost never condition my chicken feathers.
  
  Shampoo is for cleaning your scalp...not your hair.
  
  Most conditioners contain silicone. Why would you put that in your hair?
- If you’re using CG approved products this isn’t necessarily true. Highly recommend for anyone with even a tiny bit of natural curl, you might actually have some beautiful ringlets in there if you care for em properly.
  
  Oh hell yeah, the shampoo I use is on here!
  
  Is that like EWG SkinDeep?
- What about baby shampoo? Isn't it better for you than regular stuff?
  
  They are generalizing, because if you delve into non major brands some are glyvlcerine based some, have aloe base , oatmeal etc rather than ethylene glycol and sodium laurel sulfate type standards ingredients (coconut extract is that nautral source of sodium laurel sulfate, some natural branda might be actual cocunut milk, but many use manufacture chemical additive)

IT, more specifically user support.
Let's talk passwords. You should have a different password for every site and service, over 16 character long, without any words, or common misspellings, using capital, lowercase, number and special characters throughout. MyPassword1! is terrible. Q#$bnks)lPoVzz7e? is better. Good luck remembering them all, also change them all every 30 days, so here are my secrets.
1: write your password down somewhere, and obfuscate it. If an attacker has physical access to your desk, your password probably isn't going to help much. 2: We honestly don't expect you to follow those passwords rules. I suggest breaking your passwords down into 3 security zones. First zone, bullshit accounts. Go ahead and share this one. Use it for everything that does not have access to your money or PII (Personally Identifiable Information). Second zone, secure accounts, use this password for your money and PII accounts, only use it on trusted sites.Third, reset accounts. Any account that can reset and unlock your other accounts should have a very strong and unique password, and 2FA.
Big industry secret, your passwords can get scraped pretty easily today, 2FA is the barest level of actual security you can get. Set it up. I know it's a pain, but it's really all we've got right now.
- Good luck remembering them all, also change them all every 30 days, so here are my secrets.
  Password expiry hasn't been considered best practice for a long time (must be at least a decade now?) largely because of the other points you mentioned; it leads to weak easily memorable passwords written somewhere easily accessible. Even when it was considered good 30 days would have been an unusually short time.
  Current advice is to change passwords whenever there's a chance it's been compromised, not on a schedule.
  
  well, the only solution for that is to use a password generator based on length and complexity. I have used it once and am considering using it for all my accounts with each its own password. I live in a safe place so having them written down is not really an issue.
  
  For absolutely best security, you would change your password to a new, extremely long, randomly generated character string every time you logged in. What the best security options are, and what users are willing/able to put up with has a very small, if any overlap.
  As for writing them down, my advice is to obfuscate them. Apply your own secret code to the password, hide it in a poem, get creative. Once an attacker is at your desk, they pretty much own your shit. At that level, the only thing your password is providing is privacy, not security.
- Or, just use a password manager and simplify your life. Reusing any password is bad practice, even if the account doesn't seem important. Every account really should have a randomly generated unique password. A password manager solves all of these problems.
  
  KeePassXC is such a lifesaver. Back up that local database a few safe places, and even the BS accounts got like 32 char passwords. Good for keeping notes too like "Why did I make an account here again?"
  Like when healthcare or government stuff makes you have like 5 sign ups with various crappy contractors to access your basic crap lol.
  
  REMEMBER TO USE A LOCALLY HOSTED ONE, THE CLOUD IS SOMEONE ELSES' COMPUTER!
  
  I've been using a password manager for years, and.I'd be lost without it, but honestly I think this is a temporary solution. What I want to see is a no password future, and just use the code given by your MFA app. Forget having a password at all. Interestingly Microsoft has been pushing for this and you can already drop passwords for personal 365 stuff I think.
  
  Until the password manager gets compromised, or you lose access to your PW manager. In that case, you'll really wish you had implemented "Zone 3" of my plan.
- This is full of terrible advice. Password rotation is an outdated practice.
  Don’t ever reuse passwords with “zones”, just use a password manager to generate long and secure passwords for every account. Then enable MFA wherever possible, and Passkeys where they have been implemented.
  Then have a recovery method for the password manager stored in a secure place.
- Yeah, no. Computers don't care if a password is complex or not. It can't read "words". That complexity stuff was introduced because humans think like humans, and wanted to force people to use words not easily found in a dictionary. Security is about password length, so +@#£h&1g/?!:h&£( is equally as vulnerable to a brute force attack as abcdefgh1234567 because of how modern encryption works, it I length that counts.
  It is good advice to use a formula to build memorable passwords. I like a simple sentence you can type them without thinking about, as this also won't appear in a dictionary (avoid famous movie quotes, use something meaningful to you).
  Fact is complex passwords created a new security risk; the written down password. Also, frequent forced password changes made it worse. Most businesses only ask staff to change passwords every 3 to 6 months these days. And web sites.never asks you to change your password.
  The dirty (not so secret) secret is that, the biggest risk to security is not how complex your password is, but how easy it is to trick people into just giving away access to their accounts.
  These days MFA is what makes logon credentials safer and passkeys are slowly proving that passwords themselves are not worth it for most systems.
  tl;dr - complex passwords are a throwback and not better than long memorable ones like 1Verycrappycode!
- This is a method I heard once for remembering random passwords that I thought was clever.
  Create your own alphabet of words (or random characters). A is for Apple, B is for Boy, C is for Cat…etc.
  For every letter in the URL, you use the word from your alphabet. Ex:
  www.facebook.com
  F = Fog, A = Apple, C = Cat, E = Egg, B = Boy, O = Off, O = Off, K = Kite
  Next, you need a number if you didn’t use one in your alphabet.
  Facebook is 8 letters long so I might use 8. Or only letters repeated once. Or maybe you use the whole URL. Up to you, but you do it the same way for every site. You create a patter that you follow and can remember, rather than remembering every password.
  Need a symbol? Assign that to the top level domain. In my example, .com = # .edu = ? .org = * etc
  Put it all together and my example password would be “8FogAppleCatEggBoyOffOffKite#”.
  A password for google.com might be ‘6GolfOffOffGolfLogEgg#’.
  Obviously, you don’t have to do it this exact way with the alphabet, number, and symbol. The idea is that you create a set of rules that you remember and follow. If you write down “A = Apple B = Boy…” and someone finds it, it won’t be instantly obvious that it is meant for passwords.
  
  This is terrible. If someone gets a couple of your passwords it’s pretty easy to work out the patterns and gain access to your other accounts.
  Don’t complicate it. Use a password manager. I know none of my passwords and that’s how it should be.
  
  Not bad, but I could see that creating passwords that are too long for some systems, and it would be vulnerable to dictionary attacks. Also, what would you do when the site requires a password reset?
  Maybe do your strat, but only do every other, or every 3rd letter as a short word, and use a Caesar cipher, incrementing the cipher once each time you have to reset? Sounds kinda fun, but I don't think most sane people would do that... Open to ideas though.
- Is using a password manager for your phone recommended or no?
  
  As long as your phone is secure, and the manager only stores data locally, I'd say yes. I would still encourage you to have any "reset capable" accounts secured with a strong password and 2FA that is not in your PW manager.
  As with all things IT, there is a tradeoff between comfort/usability and security.
  
  Yes, as long as your master password is strong and you again enable mfa
- How do passwords get scraped?
  
  Shitty sites that store PWs in plain text, or they get compromised and the password is figured out from the hash. Probably the most common way right now is phishing, and with AI/LLM it's pretty easy to do spearphishing attacks on a large scale. The target enters their password on a seemingly legit site, but it's actually an attacker's site that logs the PW. There are lots of ways to get a password, and password-only authentication is considered pretty weak, even with a "strong" password.
- Have . and ; and / in the middle of your passwords. If a site is compromised and email + passwords are taken, these are usually stored in a csv file. If someone attempts to delimit the csv data, these characters can split you password into multiple cells.
  
  Anyone with the barest of skills will have escaped any of these characters.

Governments don't pay consultants to do work, but to leave when the work is done.
- You pay a consultant to take liability. Sure, you could do this in house, but wouldn't you rather have someone outside of the organization use their liability insurance?
  
  Liability insurance just becomes part of the cost.
- What do the consultants do while someone else does the work?
  
  A lot of consultants and contractors do the work for different governments. A reason why governments like this is that private companies find hiring and firing a lot easier. So, if a company performs poorly, it is really easy to fire them. In some cases, governments can also get individuals working for the consultant or contractor to stop working on that governments' jobs, effectively firing them.
  It can be a lot easier to get rid of a poorly performing consultant over a poorly performing government worker.
- Sounds like prostitution.
  “This is just a consultant, your my full time babe”
  /s

I want to comment here so bad but given that I am one of two people that know and one of maybe a dozen that suspect, it would definitely violate multiple NDAs.
ProTip: Invest in off-grid solutions for your home.
- Sure, not-13-year-old-kid-trying-to-sound-cool
  
  As an NDA signer, they could be legit. I would like to comment also, but I don't like law suits.
- There are more than 2 people that know that Texas's power grid is a teetering disaster waiting for the right event to crumble and break in unfixable fashion
  (Or water, water's probably even more sketchy. Look up the incident in the UK where they accidentally put a shitload of treatment chemicals in the main water supply and a whole bunch of people got poisoned. Harder to do off grid solutions for though.)
  
  There are more than 2 people that know that Texas's power grid is a teetering disaster waiting for the right event to crumble and break in unfixable fashion
  OP asked for a secret. The Texas grid sucking is not a secret.
  
  If you just want it for emergency purposes or irrigation, rain water harvesting can be fairly cheap and easy. Even a proper cistern, with a pump, and plumbed into your house is probably cheaper than whole-house off-grid solar. Probably want good filters for PFAS though.
- The Bucees logo tells me this is probably going to affect Texas more than other regions.
  
  Ha! I used to live in Austin and I don't fly, so Buc-ee's and Cracker Barrel hold a special place in my heart. Unfortunately what I am talking about is a US thing, not just a Texas thing.
- In what time frame would you say we'll all know?
  
  Hopefully never. I am trying to solve the problem by relieving this single point of failure, but I am not having any luck.
  Worst case scenario: let's say that what I fear happens tomorrow. Given what I have seen so far, some people (regional) will notice system degradation within a week, and nationwide within one or two months. Time to find a work around is about a year, but that could be me just applying hopeful thinking to cope. I have not idea how long a permanent fix would take.
- Water, electricity, or both?
  
  Water, electricity and gas but I am sure this type of problem is present in many other sectors.
  
  Water, electrical, sewer, gas, trash, internet, cable, mail, plumbing, drywall, stairs, air. It's all the government man.
- Just get tor browser, make a throwaway account, post your comment and delete the browser.

ITT: things that people may not be aware, but aren't exactly secrets.

Systemd was built by a guy who wanted to work at Microsoft with the help of someone berated more than once for an inability to work with others and generate decent kernel code. These are your gods
- No wonder systemd is basically implementing all the kernel functionality.
- I didn't know that, but I'm not exactly shocked to hear it.
- I KNEW IT

Emergency Medical Service/Ambulances are a ridiculously low qualified in a fair shair of industrial nations, especially the US,France, or Austria.
Even in the countries with more training/physician based services (Germany, Belgium, Italy)the actual qualification of the responders varies widely - most of them wouldn't be allowed to care for a single emergency within a hospital on their own.

Polystyrene is about as recyclable as any other type of plastic

Chefs can put as much butter, cream, salt, sugar and fat as they like into restaurant meals. That's why they tastes so good.

Not exactly secret, but not very well-known. In many states your credit score can be used as a factor in determining the cost of auto insurance for you. Lower credit scores can equal higher premiums.

We knew spooks were all up in the phone network. They'd show up and ask installers to run them some cables and configure ports in a certain way. I was friends with folks who were friends with the installers.

Soylent Green is people.

The IRS has what is called a first time abatement of penalties. So if this is the first time in a 3 year span you owe you can have the penalties (not interest) waived.

Most software is a terrible pile of unreadable code with no tests and horrible architecture choices, that somehow manages to keep working just through the power of years of customers finding bugs and complaining loud enough to get them fixed.
If you write any automated tests at all, you're already better than most "professional" software companies. If you have a CI/CD pipeline, you're far ahead.

Creamed spinach goes good with fish.

@protein Many things that you'd think would be under lock and key... are not. Credentials for, say, a database of subscribers to a telephone company? Just ask the team and say you're working on an integration, they'll happily send you the password in plain text

Fiat money isn't real.
- Any kind of money is an arbitrary store of wealth.

The entire pop culture is satanic. To get to the top, there are rituals you must commit to.

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