A company I used to work for is big enough that everyone reading this has heard of it. They had this wonderful security nightmare going on:

When you were hired, the company would issue your user credential with a standard password that was “CompanyName1” and require you to immediately change it at first logon. Everyone knew this password because everyone got it when they were hired.

Password policy required everyone to reset their password every 60 days. Not the worst ever but still pretty aggressive. And with the rise of all the mobile devices connecting with your corp account it was getting to be a worse and worse experience.

Can you guess yet how these two policies are linked in my story?

Well, some of the C-Suite executives didn’t have time for any of these security shenanigans. So they would have their executive support person log into an administrative console and reset the exec’s password every 59 days to the same value that it currently had, thereby bypassing the password re-use filter.

That value they were continuously setting was… “CompanyName1”

I know of at least two executives that were doing this while I worked there.

I have a Xanax script and I use it as prescribed (for sleep). I don’t like the way it makes me feel if I have to be awake, so abuse is not a temptation.

I think he’s trying to say it’s marketing’s fault.

“We merely test for models’ capability to realize that they need to instrumentally preserve themselves in order to achieve their goal. Notably, we find instances where models take additional steps to further their goal, for example opus-3 attempting privilege escalation when confronted with followup questions”

They think it’s cute.

Thankfully that’s one I’ve only heard about and was wise enough not to watch.

The thing is, none of that stuff bothered me much at the time because I was young (early 20’s) and naive about the long term impact that kind of thing can have on a person. It was voyeuristic thrill seeking and I got my thrills and had no regrets for a long time.

It was later in life as I matured and began to appreciate the complexity and wonder of the world, and my sense of empathy truly blossomed, that the things I saw and heard back then started to weigh on me. And that’s where my “you can’t unsee things” comment serves as a warning.

Yes, everyone is different and will be affected differently by viewing such things. But I think most people are going to suffer trauma from seeing that stuff. I don’t think being negatively affected by it makes someone better, worse, more or less empathetic, etc, than someone who is ‘immune’ to it. People have different strengths. The problem is, it’s hard to tell which way your brain is going to go with that info ahead of time, and your reaction to those memories can change greatly with the passage of time. That’s why I say it’s not worth it. This late in life I don’t need the images of mangled motorcyclists, violent suicides, videos showing scattered burning remains of airshow accident victims, or the untold horrors of wars I never fought in, all seared into my brain. The hilariously ironic part is that I have aphantasia, so while I can’t visualize these things, I can still REMEMBER them and be bothered by them when my mind wanders that way. And aphantasia does nothing about remembering the screams of the people who just lost loved ones in horrible ways.

That stuff didn’t ruin my life. But I’d be better off not having sought it out or seeing so much of it. People should think hard before they decide to put that stuff in their head. It’s hard to get out, sometimes impossible.

That and rotten.com have been responsible for a lot of my insomnia, and probably a good chunk of my misanthropy.

You can’t unsee things, folks. Don’t give in to the temptation. It’s not worth it.

I call it my ‘Make a Wish’ Day.

you had to pretend you were dying of cancer

I don’t think he did. Just a joke.