Monument

Can openers is what did it for me.

In 2015 I needed a new manual can opener. The local big-box stores had two basic styles. A cheap, all metal one that was just stamped from a single sheet, and a more expensive one with better handles.
The more expensive one had previously rusted and began to look nasty within a few years.
Amazon had a bunch of different styles at less than the price point of the more expensive one.

I bought one. It was fine. I didn’t love the operation. It cut the whole top off from the side, rather than from the top in a downwards cut. The sharp edges were on the can rather than on the lid. It would catch the paper labels and sometimes wad them up into the can while you cut. Cans with no air space would leak when opened.

Anyway. Replaced it in 2019. Amazon still had a broad selection, but all except for obvious crap was as expensive as the local big box store’s expensive option. Wound up going to a smaller local(ish) bulk foods store and bought a cheapo restaurant one for less than Amazon’s/the big box store’s similar offerings. Minimal rusting to date.

A long time ago, someone said something really useful to me about oversharing online:
“I would like to fuck you, but I’m afraid you’ll write about it on your LiveJournal.”

And on that day, I became a lot more selective about what I shared online. At least when it relates to others. I’ll tell you all about my childhood trauma.

We already have Natural General Idiocy!

It’s also a few days into Ramadan, a holiday where Muslims fast while the sun is up. (It lasts approximately from fat Tuesday to Easter.)
So, you know, if you want to fuck up someone’s day, make ‘em work extra hard while hangry.

(Which is not necessarily true. IIRC, much of the religious understanding and forgiveness in Islam is about intent. They might be cool with breaking a fast when facing an existential threat. But it’s Iran, sooo…)

…. Oh!

You just explained a question I had.
I couldn’t figure out why a pin was considered more secure.

In my reasoning: How is a PIN (potentially numeric only), changed 1x a year, safer than a password (3 of 4: Alpha, Mixed case, numeric, special chars), changed 4x a year.

The answer, as you explained, is scope of trust. Machine only vs tenant-wide. That makes sense.

I could accept that it has to do with azure propagation delays, but the verbiage was explicit about our computers syncing to the tenant. (Vs. data propagating across it.)

I sort of reject the idea that there’s nothing nefarious going on. The misdirect is weird.

Unless they’re salting the hashed data with information they can’t access, they’re just creating a database of faces and fingerprints.
Sure, maybe if their cryptography is good the DB cannot be reversed but they can still use an unsalted database to give match/no match info on scans of faces and fingerprints submitted to it.
But also, I firmly don’t trust Microsoft. They’ve violated our ELA several times - mostly around applying analytics tools to our data without consulting us first. (Like rolling out MS Viva without telling us.)

My company just mandatorily implemented “Windows Hello”

No one seems to be able to tell me why the information from Microsoft says the fingerprint and face scans are both “local only” and may take 24 hours to sync after initial setup. Where are they syncing to?
(I opted for the ‘pin’ method instead of surrendering my biometrics.)

Of course they knew. It’s a Facebook joke. Why would the Macomb Daily News call itself MaCumb?

I’ve had to help users see the light when AI claimed it had the solution for a problem, but after 3 troubleshooting steps, it invoked menus from programs other than the one they were using.

The users then kept telling me that they had their original issue, plus their software was missing features.

And while that’s great when, I guess, it makes for more feature-rich software. It’s a nightmare when the answer is a solid and resounding “No, that doesn’t work that way” and AI doesn’t want to tell someone no, so it lies.

Not just that, but since they nuked everyone’s pensions and started investing retirement funds into the stock market, it has become both a measure of wealth transfer, and a way to ensure that if the market tanks, the folks with more liquid stock assets could get out first! The workers with their retirement plans are limited in how much they can move assets around.

Which is to say: It’s both a measure of wealth transfer and a giant Ponzi scheme!

My old apartment used to be set up in just such a way that after a midday shower, you would see a small Brocken Spectre’s centered around each of your eyes when you looked in the mirror. It was honestly kind of terrifying. The first time I noticed it, I wondered if I’d finally lost it.
Glowing circles around your black eyes in a fogged mirror.

I think that means I have the opposite of a pot of gold in me.

They were implying they had 144 nipples.