Holy shit, I see Lemmy make jokes about guillotines all the time, but it turns out, that may actually be the answer!

I’ve been wrong before, this wouldn’t be the first time. But what part of it was wrong? Genuinely, can you clear it up?

As far as absorbing IR light, I’m not even sure how that would work, wouldn’t it just be emitted again as heat?

Absolutely right! And to be fair, sometimes you can get that tangible satisfaction in tech hobbies. You know, I’ve hacked some consoles, installed custom router firmware, built a crypto miner. Stuff like that can absolutely be personally satisfying.

But I think you hit the nail on the head, however you get it, I think we really do need some kind of tangible product of our efforts sometimes. You need to be able to say “yeah, I did that”.

I worked in IT for years, I’m good at it, I like problem solving, I like fixing things, I like building things.

But as time went by, I found myself in a more managerial role and truth be told, that’s not really my jam. And when I wasn’t doing that I was the specialist who could support some of our organizations’ worst and most troublesome systems. I was also put in charge of training people to use the company’s new web app (which was supposed to make people’s jobs easier, but really didn’t). Let me tell you, I do not like supporting shitty software or hardware, and I really do not like encouraging users to embrace useless web apps that don’t work well and serve no real purpose. I hated my job and it was time for a change.

So at that point I decided to completely shift my career and learn to code. I figured, if I hate supporting shitty software, why not just build good software. So I took some free classes through MIT’s open course ware, and learned to code. I spent a couple of years coding, picking up skills, learning languages, working with different compilers, taking additional math classes. And by the end of it all, one of my major takeaways was that I do like building things. But… as a professional software developer, I probably wasn’t going to be doing a lot of that. At the end of the day I might be able to say, “I squashed some bugs in some code that I didn’t write and don’t really know the greater purpose of”. Or if I’m lucky, “I wrote some functions that took in some inputs and produced some outputs”. But that doesn’t really feel like building something, that just feels like being a cog in a machine.

Over that same period when I was learning to code I was also picking up a second set of skills. We inherited the home my wife grew up in (which to be sure, is a pretty great deal). But it’s a fixer upper, it needed a bunch of attention. And since I was basically home schooling myself I thought I’d earn my keep by doing a lot of that maintenance myself rather than hiring a pro. I collected power tools, I learned to use hand tools, I made a lot of trips to Home Depot. I went through the basement full of rusty tools and restored many of them, replaced handles, sharpened blades, greased gears. I learned how to replace drywall, how to install an electrical outlet, how to repair a dryer. I replaced thermal fuses in kitchen appliances to bring them back to life, I mixed cement and rebuilt a crumbling retaining wall in the backyard.

Over time I got good enough at this that I started helping some of our friends with their homes. I could strengthen a rickety front step, or repaint a room, or replace a toilet. I had skills that people needed and actually, I generally liked doing it.

TLDR: In the time it took me to discover that being a programmer might somehow still not allow me to build things, I also learned that being a handyman would allow me to build things.

So yeah, career changes are scary, and it rarely looks like a good choice, but it is an option. And honestly, I’ve been a computer guy my whole life, but seriously, working with wood and screws and PVC has been super rewarding. So yeah, I guess I’m saying keep an open mind, and consider trying something different, you never know what might work for you.

Smarter every day did a video on this topic recently. As I watched this video I felt like I saw the moment Destin started to become a socialist.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6HEes8daw&pp=iggUQAFKEGpXMkZUWTlLQkxpcFZaSUM%3D

Have they tried painting a fire hydrant a truck and and a bicycle on the back? Let’s test if these cameras are a robot or not.

To me, this looks a lot like taking one dose of a prescribed antibiotic. All it really succeeds in doing is training dazzle resistant strains of cameras.

Trying to trick the cameras is playing into an expensive game of cat and mouse. And sure, fine, that may work for a little while, but it’s not a solution.

Not really. We don’t have materials that absorb or reflect infrared light. It’s one of the reasons it’s hard to beat inferred-guided (heat seeking) missiles, the only real solution is to drop something hotter than your plane, aka a flare.

So… get ready for a new era of commercial automotive flares I guess?

Honestly, that’s too risky to stage. I don’t buy that for one second. Long shots like that are fucking hard, wind will make or break a shot at that distance. Even someone as dumb, irresponsible, and delusional as Mr Trump wouldn’t go forward with a plan that had a very real chance of killing him instantly. Planning to have someone shoot you in the ear with a high powered rifle just for the publicity/sympathy? No.

This sounds a bit cliche, or like just a joke, but it’s really quite true.

If you’re worried about the damage deposit, don’t paint. At $60 a gallon the paint and other materials can easily add up to be greater than that deposit anyway.

But on the other hand, if you do want to make your space your own and your willing to put in the time and money to do it, that deposit is just one little additional cost, and it’s deferred to “later” ^tm .

If you want to hide dirt, go with paisley, or something comparable.

Honestly, nothing is better at hiding a stain than a Hawaiian shirt, that same principle can be used anywhere.

Wtf is strava?

Man, parking in downtown is no joke, that is going to be pricey. But this could be an opportunity. If we know what spots they’re leasing, we know where to find them, which cars to mess with.

Haha! That is hilarious! And you know what, not a terrible idea. And hey, no reason to stop charging them for the spots.

And we’ll pass another one.

Quick question, how are these flock cameras generally connected to the Web?

Is it via Wi-Fi, perhaps 4g radio?

What frequencies would one need to jam (completely theoretically) to know that the camera wasn’t able to send back video of a person cutting it down.

Honestly, it’s video taken from a public place, the files should probably be public.

Can confirm. Just check his mobile location data, he was there.

Minimal. I’d be surprised if it’s more than 1gb and it’s definitely soldered to a main board, not a discrete module.