Bahnd Rollard

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 26th, 2023

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  • Raised Catholic, left ASAP, and am not 100% on what label fits best now, but most of the non-religious ones work fine enough. Atheism implies that you are an active non-believer in any higher power, agnosticism is a label for those that do not know if there is one, I feel like a label is needed for those who simply dont care. (Insert XKCD: standards comic here)

    At this point in life, I view religion as a sort of entertainment for the masses that people identify with (like being a fan of a sports team) and something I really just dont want to deal with in life. But due to family ive set some rules where ill show up to a service/event if asked.

    • It is a wedding.
    • It is a funeral.
    • Someones grandparents are involved.
    • I am bribed (will accept food).

  • Most white hat pen testers apply their trade under contract for security audits. A lot of companies, especially those that work for governments, have requirements to get security audits regurally. It is not outside the realm of reason to hire a company, lay out the rules of engagment, have them assign a team to try, try to break in, detail what they did and any vulnerabilities that were found.

    The flip side is that these people are paid very very well to do this (especially people who will risk their skin on physicial security). They take a very “defense against the dark arts” methodology, the best way to teach people how to defend against attacks is to actually attack them and tell them where they messed up. For that reason, you get conventions like DEFCON where security experts from alphabet soup agencies, private sector, white, black and grey hats all meet to see what the others are doing. The presentations are a blast to watch, if you can undertand the arcane runes and rituals of the worlds best security wizards.


  • As soon as a politician attempts to do so in a serious fashion, they will have to fight the entire lobbying (see bribery) might of the insurance indistry.

    Thats why im amazed Mitt Romney (IIRC he was governer at the time) was able to do what he did in Massachusettes (state mandated healthcare with a state run insurer, along with private entities not wanting him out of office). That system threaded the political needle, the dems got their state run healthcare marketplace, and the repubs got their “this is good for business” from their handlers, and once the paint dried, he still had the clout to move to up to congress and make a run for the white house. Later, the ACA/ObamaCare was based off that system, yah kids, ObamaCare is technically a Republican invention (say that at thanksgiving and see which relatives squirm).

    Thats about the most “for the public good” model we could make at the time to make most everyone happy, and its not great. Some of the regulations like “no pre-existing condition denials” are pretty damn important now, to the point that .95 cant throw the baby out with the bathwater without pissing a lot of people off.


  • Happens all the time in US school districts. Random student does something life ruining, parents demand a sacrifice, so the butcher the principal or superintendent on the alter of public education and find someone else to run the show. You could also listen to a local radio staion, there is always some scandal in local government in any stations coverage area, but these are all small fry.

    Also to your first point, that is literally the message at the end of South Park 200 & 201 and that was made over a decade ago. I dont agree with it… But they right.




  • For the longest time my white whale was a meme video that could not be found online. In 2010, at the summit of Mt. Washington, I was on a camping trip with a large summer camp group. There is a tourist trap/weather monitoring facility and at the time, in the basement, was a little history exibit about the place. There was a TV in the lobby that had a clip of a video made by the meteorologists called “The Breakfast of Champions”, and I wanted to see it. Only problem is that it cost 2$ to get in and teenage Bahnd had no cash.

    The video consists of two of the people who worked at the facility and a very brave camera man, attempt to wait a table outside on the patio. For those who do not know, Mt Washington NH as some of the worst weather in the northern hemisphere, firstly because it is the highest mountian in eastern north america, and because they bother to write it down there. The video shows one person attemping to serve cereal+milk and toast to another guy attemping to hold down a card table & table cloth in ~140 mph winds. Footings are eventually lost and the table is blown down the mountian.

    I returned to Mt. Washington, I want to say I went back in 2019, with a fresh 2$ bill (shut up, I can be weird) to finally see the video, only to find the building had been renovated and the exibit had been removed. I asked the staff and in 2017 it had been uploaded to the internet. Link to The Breakfast of Champions.

    Now you all can see the meme that was almost lost to time, and I never saw until long after it was already moved online.








  • My last expirence with XMPP is very dated, my old groups in EvE online used it and it was perfect for its role as a sort of internet pager to summon the horde of nerds. Im aware there are many new related projects, discounting it seems a bit premature now, if you have any recomendations I would love to read their docs.

    My concern is that I would have to pitch what ever project we landed on to a semi-technical group of gamers with a handful of admins to run things. (Trying to avoid a platform that gen-z would complain about, and they already roll their eyes at me when I mention spaceships and spreadsheets).