devonkim (u/devonkim)

devonkim commented on Red Hat confirms security incident after hackers breach GitLab instance bleepingcomputer.com/news... · Posted by u/speckx

elicash · 3 months ago

"The hackers stated that they attempted to contact Red Hat with an extortion demand but received no response other than a templated reply instructing them to submit a vulnerability report to their security team."

Just hilarious

devonkim · 3 months ago

This whole process happening is exactly what happens in a quest in Cyberpunk 2077. There’s an e-mail chain where a gang tried to extort a corporation and gave up after being unable to reach a person.

I sincerely hope that the game doesn’t become prophetic in the manner Idiocracy has.

devonkim commented on U.S. hits new low in World Happiness Report axios.com/2025/03/20/us-n... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

NooneAtAll3 · 3 months ago

I wonder what's happening with Switzerland, as it seem to also be dropping on the graph

devonkim · 3 months ago

Switzerland has a slightly high suicide rate (not the best inverse metric of happiness but a correlation on unhappiness at least) for a country with such high standards of living, so if we look into suicide rates over time we also see a conundrum that over the past 20+ years the suicide rate is overall decreasing but has mostly flattened out. But from what I've observed anecdotally it still has problems like other developed countries with legacy industries declining (see: watchmakers and other artisanal crafts trades rather than mining) where boomers in the country are pretty miserable and that will probably be noticed in macro level statistics.

devonkim commented on Seattle, Tech Boomtown, Grapples with a Future of Fewer Tech Jobs wsj.com/tech/seattle-tech... · Posted by u/mooreds

glimshe · 3 months ago

Leaving Seattle 10 years ago was the best decision of my life. Awful weather, high prices, physical isolation, traffic. It had a good job market, though... Without it, I don't know what's left.

devonkim · 3 months ago

The irony of the fabled Seattle complaints of the “freeze” is it’s not unique to the region whatsoever and due to so many transplants in the past 15-ish years along with so many locals forcibly relocating out of the city people are more likely than ever to be interacting with those that moved as adults / other transplants.

For me as someone that grew up in the region the people, nature, and weather are sufficient enough for me. Having lived in several other large metro areas in the US I’ve pretty much felt like an alien species even though it’s not like I don’t feel welcome. In the PNW being weird and unconventional is kind of celebrated regardless of socioeconomic castes historically, but that’s certainly eroded as the problems of hyper growth have strained everyone.

devonkim commented on My thoughts on renting versus buying milesbarr.me/posts/my-tho... · Posted by u/milesbarr

bombcar · 3 months ago

A condo somehow combines the worst aspects of buying and renting.

devonkim · 3 months ago

That would be an HOA moreso than the features of a condo, although a condo tends to imply an HOA in the US. The irony of my experiences with an HOA is that its actions tended to suppress my property value rather than preserve or grow it.

devonkim commented on States and cities decimated SROs, Americans' lowest-cost housing option pew.org/en/research-and-a... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin

baggy_trough · 4 months ago

[flagged]

devonkim · 4 months ago

When I talked to people in shelters before that was literally the top reason they were there. Oftentimes it starts from car trouble or a health episode causing loss of income. Without friends or family that can take them in they go to a shelter if they can (those with pets oftentimes go directly to the streets or their cars). Many are able to find employment again soon but many don’t and a downward spiral begins quickly. Somewhere around 30-40% of Americans cannot afford an emergency $1000 expense and it’s probably only going to go higher.

devonkim commented on Shortest-possible walking tour to 81,998 bars in South Korea math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/kor... · Posted by u/geeknews

mofunnyman · 8 months ago

If you spent 40 years of your life on this path, you would still be visiting 5.616 bars per day. Nuts.

devonkim · 8 months ago

That’s also not considering whether they’re open or existing anymore after so much time has passed.

devonkim commented on Navajo Code Talkers get DEI label as military info disappears under Trump order msn.com/en-us/news/us/nav... · Posted by u/moonlet

throwawaymanbot · 9 months ago

It’s DEI hiring to hire people who were hired to speak their own fairly unstudied Native American language?

It’s clear (and this is yet another case) that this whole DEI non issue is a fabricated propaganda dog whistle to certain people.

This will go down in American history for all the dreadful reasons it deserves. Absolutely dark and disgusting times America has entered.

devonkim · 9 months ago

History is written by the victors unfortunately and world history gives me little reason to believe things will be different this time around. Part of the point of erasing all these things is quite similar to destroying the past to control the future. But from their perspectives this is all corrupt, immoral, unethical information barely distinguishable ethically or even worse than Mengele’s experimental data. Except even people left of absolute insanity somewhat concede the relative scientific validity of all the data obtained while those ordering the deletions and redactions now have zero authority nor experience in the fields.

It’s a pity that creating anything of value takes at least an order of magnitude more effort than to destroy something, but I suppose this is why we’re funding back-ups and archives of all this data out there.

devonkim commented on A Letter to the American People 18f.org/... · Posted by u/erentz

TrackerFF · 10 months ago

It's the age old privatization trick:

1. Defund and cripple gov. services

2. Point to those, and say "See? it doesn't work. We should get private sector to provide those services, as the private sector is much cheaper and more efficient."

3. Hand out contracts to your buddies.

4. Years later, down the road, another sitting government will revert back to the original state - due to the private contracts turning out to be much more expensive than anticipated, and delivering sub-par service.

5. Next pro-privatization government is elected, goto step (1).

devonkim · 10 months ago

There's 3a which is "cherry-pick customers / clients to make it appear that privatized services are more cost-effective than public services that are by default providing services." Picking and choosing one's customers already makes it an invalid comparison if one wants to talk about value.

But essentially creating self-fulfilling prophecies or moving goalposts is one of the oldest tricks in the book by dishonest folks of any ideological alignment. In an alternate universe where socialism / central planning is the default ideology if we wanted to make as unfair of a comparison demonizing private sector we'd have asked half of Silicon Valley companies to forego VC funding, not allow them to do M&A, demand that they be able to serve the general public for even the most obscure of problems, and so forth. That sets them up for failure out of the gate by measuring them against the criteria of the status quo and eliminates any of their advantages over a centralized planning system. And in fact, a large part of these ridiculous restrictions is exactly why NGOs are structured to fail to make much progress on any of the important societal problems they work on.

devonkim commented on Natrium 'advanced nuclear' power plant wins Wyoming permit wyofile.com/natrium-advan... · Posted by u/chiffre01

karaterobot · a year ago

The reason nuclear isn't price competitive with renewables—or anything, really—is because of the amount of safety regulation and lack of experience building plants. Both of these emerged, at least in part, from decades of protests from well-meaning people with a laughable misunderstanding of how radiation works. So, you get people saying "don't build nuclear, it's unsafe!" and then you demonstrate that it's as safe as any energy technology in existence, so those people say "okay fine... don't build nuclear, it's expensive!" when they are the reason it's expensive. Meanwhile, we managed to create an irreparable 1.3C rise in global temperatures while waiting for solar, wind, and battery to catch up to where we could have been 70 years ago.

devonkim · a year ago

There needs to be generalized a term for NIMBYs for resisting various solutions to a number of issues because this pattern in liberal democracies around the planet isn’t exactly helping anyone make progress on the more core issues these folks seem to also be interested in.

devonkim commented on University of Alabama Engineer Pioneers New Process for Recycling Plastics news.ua.edu/2024/10/ua-ch... · Posted by u/thunderbong

Over2Chars · a year ago

Getting the recycling into the recycling location is just one of the problems.

recycling plastics is not cost effective (another random article) https://greentumble.com/is-recycling-worth-it

the real "solution" is reducing use, not recycling, and re-use, not recycling. Recycling is what should happen with what's left over after the other two "Rs" (remember the 3 R's?).

Instead the plastics industry says "use as much plastic as you want, we'll pretend to recycle it" and everyone pretends that it's actually happening, and it's not. I think that's called "green washing"

devonkim · a year ago

The three Rs were in order of priority but because reduced consumption didn't exactly translate into what works for a sustainable economy under current incentive paradigms almost anywhere in an economy with lots of consumption we kind of wound up with the least important of the guidelines being what we could more reliably practice (the reasons are another discussion entirely).

Almost all the most pressing problems for the human species seem to be Wicked Problem classes and it's part of why I don't have a lot of expectation that any of them will be solved even _if_ catastrophic events like constant war and mass deaths happen. I also have doubts that whoever survives any of these kinds of events would be more genetically predisposed to solving these problems in the future either.