digi59404

“They should have diplomacy to resolve it”

You can’t have diplomacy with a group who systematically rapes and murders entire families.

You can’t have diplomacy with a group who purposefully targets civilians with reckless abandon instead of legitimate military targets to kill the people.

You can’t have diplomacy with a group who doesn’t believe you exist or should exist. That it would be better to execute you than negotiate with you.

You cannot have diplomacy with a group who brought mobile crematories to disappear your citizens. Who had lists for who should be be killed.

You cannot have diplomacy with a group who does not want diplomacy.

Early in WW2 the Jews would stand in line for hours to wait and be shot. They would queue politely to be executed. That is what “diplomacy” looks like in this case.

Ukraine was on the verge of surrendering early in the war. Then news of the Bucha atrocities reached the Ukrainian Leadership and they refused to surrender. Because surrender means certain death. That’s the thing folks don’t seem to get.. if you’re fate is to die.. or to fight and have a chance at not dying.

You fight.

Was watching a video from GitLab, posted 7 months ago about something similar.

You might find it interesting. https://youtu.be/TRpQW-TFTfw

I don’t recall the model. I had bought a new Samsung Monitor, my wife left the fridge door open and it had started alerting on my monitor while I was in game.

So I went digging in UniFi, found it, and blocked it. Same with my HP Printer that sent almost a gig of data to Google Print Services daily.

It’s really not that far fetched. What led me to investigate was that I got a Samsung 49” smart monitor, my wife left the kitchen door open and it displayed alerts on my monitor.

UniFi is not misrepresenting the device ID; while you’re right that happens. It didn’t here.

The Mac ID is 1c:e8:9e:3d:c4:ad and is registered to SJIT who makes IOT Devices Samsung and smart fridges.

I appreciate your skepticism, but the device is still connected to my WiFi. It has been since 2024, the Mac ID has not changed nor has its identification. I’ve also done packet tracing to determine it IS in fact the smart fridge.

As for the “clandestine hardware to non-smart fridges”. Streamlining of production lines is nothing new. Being able to datamine people’s networks is worth the 20$ hardware chip.

I have a Samsung fridge. It’s not a smart fridge, it doesn’t have a screen, bluetooth, or any way to connect to it.

I logged into my UniFi stack to monitor devices and it showed up. It had gotten the connection details from my wife’s phone, the other Samsung device and was transmitting data back to Google and Samsung.

Interesting. I wonder how those who were laid off by the Government feel about this. Or those who are harmed by ICE Agents. Maybe those who are stuck in limbo because their visas aren’t going to be renewed.

You’re point about /effective/ governance makes sense. To that I agree, often the EOs are overturned or have little affect.

However, the damage EOs cause is very real, lasting, and can be disastrous. For example Trumps tariffs, while ineffective at their (stated) goal, were eventually overturned. But the damage they caused will be very long lasting. Supply chains are organic, they respond to outside forces, when those forces cause them to shift and change. Rarely do they on their own shift back.

Insurance companies often have a parent company. That parent company owns healthcare providers and pharmacies.

So it goes something like this

United Health Group -> United Health Insurance United Health Group -> Sunshine Hospital.

United Health Insurance has a profit cap, it’s a % of revenue. Sunshine Hospital has no cap. So Sunshine Hospital charged United Health Insurance X$ and that profit rolls up to United Health Group.

You have valid points. But context matters. Today with a 1100$ 32GB AMD GPU someone can run Qwen 3.6 as a model without problem. On the same machine they’re using, or a small server. Almost zero increase to the destruction of the environment. If their house has solar.. even better!

But the slopfest and verbose code is where you’re missing the bigger picture. Model written code can be understood by other models. That means future models could improve that code even more in the future.

But the biggest thing you’re missing? If that code compiles, works, and is secure? The value to people between now and a new model making it better is something gained, not lost.

Progress doesn’t happen over night. But just because it doesn’t, doesn’t mean we stop the presses and write all the books manually because we don’t have the internet yet. It means we work with what we have, derive value from it, to use that value to invest into the future.

Drops in crime are not related to Flock and Policing. The crime statistics have been dropping for a long time. Since its peak in the early 1990s. This has been occurring since before smartphones, before flock, hell before DVDs became mainstream.

Crime is cultural. The US’s culture has changed significantly since the 1990s and continues to do so.

Flock and Police are not crime prevention; they are crime reaction. The police in the US do not exist to “stop crime” despite the public marketing they do so. That’s literally marketing and salesmanship on their part. Police have no legal requirement to protect individuals nor their property. A police officer could watch someone be murdered infront of them, do nothing, and they would suffer no legal consequences. Infact they might get fired, then sue for back pay and early retirement. It’s happened. Multiple times.

Going back to crime - Again, it’s cultural. The US has adopted a culture since the 1990s that “crime doesn’t pay” and that crime isn’t ok. The US has also changed its stance on drugs and addictive substances offering treatment instead of punishment in many cases. Weed is legal now, it wasn’t then.

Flock and Policing tactics have very little to do with the drop in crime.

Also, to add to this what we’ve learned about fires and houses is that.. it’s less about how the house is built.

Whether a house catches fire or not is almost always due to the landscaping, maintenance, and roof of the house.

Traditional house siding and roof will resist flames and fires. However, if an overgrown bush catches fire it will cause enough heat to the side of the house to break down that protection and set it aflame. Same with leaves in gutters, etc.

> Why do we permit such fire prone housing to be built just to save a few dollars.

I know you didn’t mean it, but this question isn’t a question. It’s a statement formed as a question. It’s a judgement. It’s not a curiosity legitimately asking why.

There are so many good reasons why houses in the US are built the way they are. Some of which are…

1. Concrete/Brick houses retain heat and are often harder to cool. They also don’t insulate well. US Houses have been built as a means of controlling moisture, humidity, and cooling efficiently.

2. Stick built houses cost less to repair. Brick/Concrete houses require much more demolition to repair, rebuild, or change. While replacing a load bearing wall in a stick house can be done easily, concrete and brick require the entire wall to be torn down.

3. Humidity, Moisture, and Wind matter. When moisture gets into concrete and brick then freezes it can cause huge structural cracks. Whereas in stick houses, it’s not as big a deal. I had a house with a raised driveway and a walkout basement. The basement and driveway had to be completely demolished due to moisture cracks. If the entire house was concrete it would have been a write off.

4. Soil composition matters. In some areas the soil is not capable of holding the weight of all the concrete and brick. Causing structure issues later and endangering folks.

Modern building codes today in most places are pretty solid. They require 2x6 framing, they require testing of the airways in the house to ensure proper air leaking/sealing. They require the structure of the house be built with specific bolts. They require the framing to be done in a way that resists wind sheer and twisting.

The US Building codes have been revised consistently over time. This started with the nuclear bomb testing in the 40s and onward. They built houses, and then bombed them to find out how to make them better. We’ve learned from Tornados, Hurricanes, and more. These all have resulted in major improvements to building houses.

Today in the US we have no shortage of housing methods. We have SIP Framing, ICF Concrete Framing, Recycled ICF, Modular designs, etc. Most still go with stick built because it’s the better option for the majority.

I lived in a 2x4 house in TN that was built poorly and improperly. I spent 200k in 4 years repairing that house. Now I live in a 2x6 built slab house. This house was built by a luxury builder properly.

The difference between the two is astonishing. The TN House couldn’t go less than 82 degrees when it was hot and humid. The luxury house is in Vegas, it can be 50 degrees inside when it’s 120 outside. You can cut costs on stick built, but you can also make some of the best houses with it.

It's worse than this. Their cap is 80% of the Insurer's profit. Not the Insurer's Parent company. So often the parent company will own the Insurer as a subsidiary and own the Pharmacy, Hospital, Healthcare etc under the parent company.

This way as costs go up, it's really just bypassing the 80%. Because the hospital can charge the insurance subsidary X amount, and then the hospital profits to the parent company.

There needs to be a law in the US that health insurance organizations cannot be owned by anyone who owns a healthcare provider. Nor can the insurance company own healthcare providers.

We've allows the Ma Bell of healthcare to exist.

Hinduism is not a cult. Absolutely not.

Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of Hinduism, and it is a cult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_Identity_Foundation

Two things to remember. First Tulsi Gabbard has significant Russia connections. She’s also a member of a prolific cult. She’s been protective of Russia for quite some time.

Second, the USSR had biolabs in Ukraine. Ukraine was a central hub for all their bio R&D. When the USSR collapsed these bio labs lost their funding. These bio labs contained many different pathogens and bio-weapons.

It was in the US and the worlds best interest to fund them and wind them down safely and securely.

You mean the bad neighbor whom Iran has constantly funded attacks on from those other neighbors? The bad neighbor who has IRGC Funded terrorist and militant cells along its very border? You mean the bad neighbor whom comes under rocket fire on a routine basis?

Are we forgetting that Iran is the one who has funded Hamas and Hezbollah and provided them safe haven?

Maybe that bad neighbor wouldn’t be a bad neighbor and be attacking the other neighbors. If the other neighbors did not provide shelter for those who wish to burn down the bad neighbors house?

Point is - Iran plays a SIGNIFICANT role in the destabilization of the region. That bad neighbor might be a good neighbor if Iran wasn’t attacking it via proxies.

But I suspect we’re not ready to have that nuanced conversation yet.

Yes, but also no. For example in GitLab a user who’s infected could push code to a branch. Then it could even make a merge request to pull that branch into main (if main is protected).

But then someone else on the team should have to manually approve that MR to allow it to be merged to main.

This kind of defeats the ability of malware to push stuff out automatically.

I believe you’re right, it’s not great to assume this beforehand. Many things are negotiable, but there are a whole lot of things that aren’t.

When you’re faced with convincing someone of $TruthA or $FactA and one of those two collides with a persons worldview, makes them uncomfortable, or causes them pain. Sometimes that truth or fact will be thrown out because of its ramifications.

For example, if we’re in Iowa, and you prove to me that plastic straws don’t kill turtles.. but as a kid my first trip to the ocean resulted in seeing a dead turtle die to a straw. It’s going to be very difficult for me to believe otherwise.

My statement about a person not accepting something because they won’t want too… is less about them.. and more about the person trying to argue/explain/etc.

It’s important to identify when a topic won’t be accepted by an individual and to move on. It’s something I’ve struggled with in life. If you don’t identify it, you can risk overstaying your welcome. Which can lead to losing a trusted advisor status. It’s far better to keep the trusted advisor status and tackle the issue another time.

There is no guarantee of this. The only guarantee is that if you put yourself in a vulnerable state, and someone abuses that, you now know their true intentions and can adjust accordingly.

I am biased in this answer on vulnerability, and I know it. I’ve lived a full life. I’ve nearly died multiple times, one instance was on my knees with a SWAT Team standing behind me with rifles pointed at back.

When you’ve lived through such events your risk calculus changes. Things that seemed terrible like being fired or laid off, tend to feel not as insurmountable or scary.

I say this to outline my bias, but also add evidence to my view on vulnerability. I’ve seen both sides, and while being concerned about abuse when vulnerable is a concern that should be seriously considered.. often people who are forced to make that decision miss the other part. The audience.

Vulnerability will almost always grant you the favor of the audience. If you work a job with half decent people, being vulnerable and abused when exposed will cause leadership to side with you. In my experience, most people are decent and want to cause the least harm to others in personal and intimate settings. So being vulnerable is almost always a win, even if it’s not the win you want.

And the place/scenario in which you’re purposefully vulnerable results in abuse/neglect without recourse for action… well.. then unfortunately you’ll know that situation is untenable and unlikely to change. So you can react accordingly.

Even here in the comments you see people who have read this article and fall victim to the very things it’s pointing out. It’s ironic.

Let me add a couple to this list.

1. No amount of knowledge or discussion will make a person accept something they don’t want to accept.

2. To truly listen means to place yourself mentally and physically in a vulnerable state. Because you will likely hear things that run contrary to your experience, beliefs, and worldview. Judging people is often a self protection mechanism; which means you will almost never listen to someone.

3. Listening often means not jumping to a solution; but absorbing and processing someone’s pain. Product managers for example are quick to jump to a solution, a new feature, or they’ll push the request off as “oh, ok, we’ll make a ticket for that ”

When in actuality, they should be listening to the use case, looking for the pain, and finding a way to solve the pain points. As opposed to trying to understand what feature the user wants to request.

What OP said is true. You’re forgetting that health insurers are just one organization in the corporate chart. They often work to own the providers as well to funnel money to parent corporations.

So if United is the insurer they’re owned by an umbrella, that umbrella takes 20% or less. However United makes special deals and steers people to providers owned by the Umbrella. So that the Umbrella makes more money as well. This is true for medicine as well. For example Cigna requires all maintenance medication be purchased through express scripts as a means to retain or increase profit.

United has a history of also squeezing organizations by forcing them into pre-payment review when they’re high volume. This causes the providers to basically not have no revenue for months on end until it gets sorted. Then they might get a chunk or settle out of court. Often they go bankrupt and are purchased by the umbrella.

In terms of Medicare/Medicaid another catch-22 is that insurance handles the claims for providers. The insurance can recode claims and pocket the difference without telling the provider. It’s on the provider to catch it.

There is a tremendous amount of dark money, shadow games, hidden corporate structures, Wyoming and NM LLCs with Anonymous owners, etc.

Insurance as a whole tries to own the entire feedback loop for healthcare. They don’t like you going out of their feedback loop.

FWIW - A whole host of the pre-IPO GitLab folks went to Chainguard. A lot of them, many in leadership roles. Most importantly, In Sales Leadership. These are people whom don’t really believe in high-pressure sales. Rather they aim to show the value and not squeeze customers for profit or making a number on a chart go up.

Do with that knowledge what you may.

That second paragraph is what scares me the most about pure public healthcare options. The following isn’t to compare/contrast systems.. it’s just a viewpoint.

My cardiologist went “tests look fine, heart looks fine, there’s no reason for you to take colchicine. No clue why you have issues, everything is fine. Just take this brand new beta blocker to manage your heart rate.”

Meanwhile, there’s no answer why my heart rate rises 30-40BPM randomly when I stand. Why my heart rate drops to a very difficult detectable rate when I sleep. No answers as to why two sips of wine causes my body to go into shock. - All resulting post-Covid.

That same doctor told me to discontinue colchicine; yet without colchicine most medications, inc. ADHD, are maybe half as effective.

These are items which deserve answers. Not an answer of “just take another pill”. Some of those “unnecessary” tests can provide inclusion/exclusion information. Yet just refusing that knowledge denies answers.

In the US I can just find new doctors. But in other systems it’s either difficult or impossible.

Provided someone told GitLab Support. This was likely fine. GitLab can handle this much load. The platform as a whole has increased and improved over the years as new customers are added.

Think about this… every CI/CD Job runs a clone. That’s a lot..

They’ll know because in the US and abroad the banks send the balances and transactions to the IRS. I get letters every year/6 months that I’m subject to additional withholding because they haven’t gotten any $$ but they show I have.

This isn’t true. The tax office will bother you, the client also will demand you have an actual company with liability insurance and more.

There is a tremendous amount of legal and paperwork once you start accepting money and working with corps. It’s a nightmare.

Can confirm; had a 210/110 legit BP reading. Multiple cuffs and sensors confirmed. I felt it too.

Walked into the ER because my Dr forced me too. After walking into and chilling for a bit. 130/70. $3000 later no answers.

So, it does happen to people.

My BP at home? 140/90. I walk into my cardiologists office, do my BP? 107/60.

It’s not the cuff position as I used multiple positions, cuffs, and sensors. All 140/90. Plus I feel it.

It’s wild. My BP/HR fluctuates alot outside of clinical, but inside clinical it drops.

Commenting to add - Insurance negotiated rate may actually be 1500$. If it is and they charge insurance 1500$. They legally cannot charge an individual a different or lower rate. Even if that person doesn’t have insurance and offers to pay cash.

This is one of those weird horrible traps health insurance puts you into. OP may charge insurance 1500$, insurance may only pay 20%. But that now means they have to charge individuals the full 1500$ price.

So honestly, Cudos to the OP for identifying this trap and then moving to just charging a reasonable flat rate.

This is a valid story, and I have no doubt it’s real. I’ve heard and seen many stories like this that have happened.

But… I’m going to say the dirty, quiet, and unlikable thing out loud.

That had nothing to do with DevOps or its philosophies, processes, or patterns. That was bad leadership from the top down plain and simple. It’s likely not even the individual engineers faults. It’s leaderships fault for not setting clear objectives, implementing them, ensuring that the engineers had a real plan before beginning, and making sure no individual was too in charge of things.

Leadership in your case was likely career management who knew very little about technical items. Managers who were technical were probably shot down for not playing politics properly, not producing the correct “metrics” and “kpis”. So they moved on.

That’s a company culture issue that has little to do with tech.

Self hosted GitLab with a self-hosted LLM Provider connected to GitLab powering GitLab Duo. This should ensure that the data never gets outside your network, is never used in training data, and still allows you/staff to utilize LLMs. If you don’t want to self host an LLM, you could use something like Amazon Q, but then you’re trusting Amazon to do right by you.

https://docs.gitlab.com/administration/gitlab_duo_self_hoste...