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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 11th, 2023

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  • Because like so many things Trump/MAGA related, we’re in untested territory. No judge wants to be the one to figure out how to prosecute some law that was last invoked in the 1800s, if ever at all. There has to be a trial of some sort, otherwise what’s to stop one political party from declaring the other “insurrectionists” in areas where they have a supermajority?

    We already blew past all the “right” ways of handling this shit, but spineless dipshits refused to convict him in either impeachment, which would have been the sanest way to keep him off the ballot. They literally lived through the evidence, but here we are. (Ok maybe not all the ways, there’s obviously trials in process for Jan 6, and he could actually face jail time, but we’re still in untested territory because that may not actually preclude him from holding office)


  • I’m glad to read that! I hope it helps. I would also recommend joining a credit union if you’re eligible and not already a member. They will typically have much better rates and lower fees on various services. Also, doing this math can be depressing - I remember having weeks where I had like $30 to cover gas and food. If you find yourself in that situation, dried beans and a second-hand pressure cooker are a much healthier alternative to the usual ramen packets.


  • That’s 100% true. After a certain point, I migrated from using my “bills” checking account for everything to using a credit card with cash back rewards, and paying that off every pay period rather than using the checking account. But, that is only useful advice if you are already out of debt - if you’re carrying a balance on your credit card, rewards are likely not going to out pace your interest accumulation. It’s also a good idea to try to fit in as much savings as you can - any little bit in a money market account making you money is a good thing, and invaluable when an emergency comes up. But again, that is very very dependent on your financial situation, and may not be realistic to many people.


  • Hey man, first off I’m sorry for the situation you’re in. I’m not sure if you are looking for commiseration or advice, so if I offer some please know comes from a place of love.

    I was in a similar spot to what you’re describing. I am not going to suggest that you can budget your way out of poverty - that’s absurd, the only long term solution (aside from fixing a lot of broken systems) is more money.

    That being said, this is something that made my situation more bearable. I cut up all my credit cards. I created two checking accounts, one for bills and one for everything else. I added up all my monthly bills and divided them by the number of pay periods in a month. I split direct deposit so that one checking account got the bill money and the other the rest. I never touched the bills account outside of depositing money and paying bills - I kept the physical debit card locked in my closet.

    This helped me keep on top of my bills and keep an eye on how much discretionary money I actually had to spend. I found the alternative was piles of late fees when I forgot that x bill was coming out of this pay check and I stupidly bought a donut that week or whatever (man it sure is expensive to be poor).

    Like I said, it’s not a solution and I don’t know your situation. No amount of budgeting is going to help if you don’t have the income to cover your expenses, and I wish that that fact wasn’t treated as a moral failing by so many people.


  • I very briefly worked for one of their competitors a few years back. These devices are pretty much limited to whatever you can do with root on android or jailbreaking iOS. If a person has a modern phone and a good sense of op-sec, chances are they can’t get much. These things basically work by doing backups then analyzing those backups offline, searching in known locations for non-encrypted databases and images. On android they can also do things through adb, like automated screenshots.

    If you hand the cops a powered off non-rooted,locked bootloader, non-jailbroken phone and use e.g. signal, there’s not much they’ll be able to see. Of course, there seem to be other firms that operate at a higher level, and have some encryption breaking capabilities, but that’s not going to be accessible to your average cop.


  • I agree 1,000%. I have been remote for the last five-ish years; I can count the amount of times I’ve actually needed to go into an office on one hand. At home I have: a giant ultrawide monitor; a quiet, private, office; gigabit internet; dog. How would I be more productive commuting to an office to listen to sales people banging gongs and ringing bells all day while I work in a cubicle on a single 19" monitor? All my teammates are in other cities and states, my code is checked into GitHub and mostly deployed to IaaS - and even our “on-prem” infrastructure is in another state.