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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Its what literally changed my life. I was really socialy awkward, spend most of my lide behind a computer, and when I managed to go out to parties in a subculture scene parties I loved, I couldnt talk to anyone, had a few beers awkwardly in a corner and went home.

    Then I met someone who introduced me to MDMA. That happened almost 8 years ago, and now I am an organizer of 2/3 of the same scene regular parties in our city, Im helping and DJing on a festival that happens here, and am living my best life in that regard. All thanks to that one best friend who got me something that made me talk to, and get to actually know people in the scene in the extent that I always wanted, and get comfortable enough that I no longer need to be high to interact with anyone. Since now they are friends and regulars, and not random people I wanted to talk to, but was afraid of approaching.

    But, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I was always trying to be responsible and cautious, and In did get bordeline to addiction in the process, which I was fortunately able to recognize early and put a stop to it by getting help in a adictiology nonprofit. It was never bad, more like a precaution. And I caught it in the best possible moment. I’ll never forget my first group session, where literally everyone else said “I’m 35+, I used to take stuff at parties for fun when I was 25, and then I ended for 10 years in meth…”.

    Everyone had similar story. And I went “Well, I’m 25, and I take stuff on parties for fun…”. And that was a really strong lesson, where I realized I’m stopping a really huge problem at exactly the right time.

    So, it might help. It is definitely fun, but it is so hard to not end up badly. You will need a lot of luck, especially if you are exploring it on your own. I still take things on parties, but with personal experience about the dangers it has. And getting that, is something that no one can give you, unless you see it for yourself. And for most of the people, that comes too late. I was lucky, you probably won’t be. But in conclusion - drugs are amazing, and have changed my life. Its a shame that personal experience will probably vary.



  • Crypto is doing kind-of ok. But what about other blockchain apps and startups, or blockchain integrations into every tech imaginable? There were so many popping up, just like there are with AI now. Business models and use-cases that are based solely on the hype of the tech in question, without any consideration about whether it’s actually a good fit for the tech. That is the point, and what it has common with AI and other “buzzwords”.


  • I’m not sure about other countries, but here in Czech we actually have a mandatory subscription, that’s absolutely bullshit.

    So far, the law is that if you own any TV or radio, you have to pay monthly fee for public service broadcasters (national Czech TV). It’s bullshit, the channels are full of ads anyway, and the shows they run and create is insultingly bad. Sure, it is important to have public service broadcasters that are not dependent on the state (because state-owned TV is reeaallly bad idea), but FFS can they just reduce costs and stick to news, instead of doing another stupid series, and stop forcing us to pay for something I don’t care about or use?

    You could just not pay the fee, if you state you don’t have a TV capable of receiving it (which I don’t). But now, they are changing the law that everyone who has any kind of internet-capable device has to pay the monthly fee, while also rising prices to something like 6 EUR per month. Fuck that and fuck them.




  • Ever since I played watchdogs and shadowrun, I wanted to work in cybersecurity, especially as a Red Teamer, which is literally Shadowrun - you run complex ops that have to break in, and steal stuff from largre banks without anyone but the management knowing about the test, with almost nothing being off-limits, as long as it doesn’t cause some kind of damage.

    Five years later, I do work as a Red Team Lead. Hpwever, our company was just scrambling to start doing RT since thats the buzzword now, and while we did have amazing pentesters, unfortunately pentesting and Red Teaming requires vastly different skills. Ypu never need to avoid EDRs, write malware with obscure low-level winapi, or even know what kind of IoC ajd detections will a command you run create, when you are doing a pentest.

    But since no one knew better, and I love learning and researching new stuff, while also having Red Teaming romabticized, my interrest in it eventually led to me getting a Lead position for the barely scrambling team.

    Mind you, I was barely out of being a junipr, with only three years of part time pentesting experience. It was NOT a good idea.

    I quickly found out that RT is waaay harder and requires the best of the best from cybersec and maleare development. We didnt have that. Also, turns out that I love to learn now stuff and take on a challenge, but being a Lead also means you are drowning in paperwork and discussions with client, while also everyone from the team doesn’t know what to do and turns to me about what should we do. Which I didn’t know, and barely managed to keep learning it on my own. Our conpany didnt want to give us much time for learning outside of delivery, I was only working parttime, and I was slowly realizing that we don’t have almost any of the skills we need.

    We were doing kind of a good job, most of our engagement turned out pretty well, but it was atrocious.

    Turns out, I’m not good at managing and planning projects, or leading people. I’m better just as a line member.


  • I also have a dual-boot, with fresh install of Windows I debloated as much as possible, that I use for games that I can’t get to run even after trying protondb.com. However, it has only happened one or two times since I switched more than half a year ago, and I usually just give up on and refund games that I can’t get to work on Steam. I have a lot of other things to play, and usually I wasn’t that much dead set on playing that particular one. I do make sure to post on the forums of the game when that happens, though.

    I’ve also recently stumbled upon https://windowsxlite.com/24H2ProV2/, which should be a debloated and minimized Windows (4Gb installed size is mindblowing, considering that all my Windows VMs have like 40Gb freshly installed). The site looks shady, but it was recommended to me by my coleague who works in cybersecurity, so I hope he knows what he’s doing. I haven’t got the time to test it yet, but it does mention that it should work for games, so who knows.


  • My favorite windows update was when I was attending an onsite coding competition hosted my Microsoft. We were all in this large meeting hall that looked like a theater, and we spent first 10 minutes or so at the start of the competition just looking at Windows update, with the Microsoft rep apologizing to us, because his pc decided to do the “Forced update restart you cant postpone any more” literally two minutes into the presentation



  • I suppose it’s written in a way to sound way worse and alarming than it actually is, due to the upcoming elections. It sounds almost unreal, i mean “EU secret plan to ban any kind of encryption or privacy” can’t be reallistically happening, right?

    I know about Chatcontrol, so I wouldn’t be surprised, but this article sounds pretty overblown, to the point of sounding more like a wild conspiracy theory. Does anyone have more resources or info about this, that don’t read like an election ad?

    I’m not trying to dismiss or disrespect the author, and I trust that it was written with best intentions, but it’s a really worrying topic about which I’d like to get more information about.

    However, thanks for bringing it up, I contacted our local Pirate party about the topic, because they don’t have anything related to crime prevention vs. privacy in their programe. I suppose that I know what the answer would be, but getting a confirmation before I vote for them would definitely be nice.


  • Mikina@programming.devtoMemes@lemmy.mlts moment
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    2 months ago

    Serious EVE players are something else. The mention about IT security isn’t a hyperbole, some EVE players take the espionage meta-game very seriously, and even though it’s not only against the rules but also illegal, that’s not gonna stop them. I mean, once they literally got someone to turn off electricity for a whole town just so they can win a fight (I tried to find a link to the article, because I’m 90% sure I did read about it somewhere, but I can’t manage to find it anywhere, if anyone has a link. Maybe it was just a rummor, or an unexecuted plan?)




  • But a paid licence will affect users that are all right abd for whom you’re doing it.

    I understand that using something with a risk of loosong access because you’ve upset the developer is something that will turn away a lot of people, but then again, I’d say that “don’t be a dick” is a pretty reasonable requirement. The only issue I see that it’s a pretty vague definiton, but maybe just limiting it to profanities and insult towards the contributors is something more concrete, which would be easy to fulfill and also enforce.


  • I wonder, is it possible to create a license that would allow you to simply ban people who are being a dick about something from using it? Sure, it may turn away some people, since there’s always a risk of abuse, but it’s your work and as far as I know, you are the one who sets the terms.

    If I’m not mistaken, most of the FOSS licenses (or maybe even laws?) guarantee you that you would be able to use the software even if the project later decides to change to proprietary license. But I assume you can simply specify in a licence “Everyone can use it, expect X.Y.Z”.

    Would that be legal? Sure, it would probably be pretty hard to enforce, but in some cases it could make for a pretty satisfactory (and petty, of course) C&D letters, for people that really deserve it. You insult the devs of a software your company depends on, demanding something while being a dick about it? Well, fuck you, no library for you and your company.



  • I do feel kind of simillarly betrayed. Watch Dogs were my forst point of reference into what hacker subcultures look like, and it has shaped a large part of my life - next month i’s going to be 5 years I’ve worked as a Red Teamer in a cybersec company. I’m also mostly a poser, and the aesthetics simply makes it way more fun - making art that’s tied into what you do is great, assuming you dont take it too seriously, of course. Not that I do it, but the way Watch Dogs portraied it, it was fun.

    Is it neccessary? Of course not. Is it a shame there aren’t many hackerspaces with cool street art, and hacktivists making over the top manifests ajd cool streetart around our town? A little bit.