With many subjects, I agree. But there are other subjects that have been politicized, which really shouldn’t have been. Someone’s sexual orientation shouldn’t be a matter of political debate. If a gay guy mentions their husband, that’s not “bringing up politics”, but many conservatives will treat it as such. I’ve heard all of the “shoving it in my face” comments just because someone dared to mention their partner when asked how their weekend was. In reality, that person is simply existing, and peoples’ existence should never be a matter of political debate.

That’s part of the issue; All of the “best” VPNs have stopped offering port forwarding. Mullvad and Proton are the gold standard for VPNs, but neither offer port forwarding. Private Internet Access still offers it, but they were bought out by a marketing company that was caught sneaking adware into their programs. PIA’s service is still good, but it relies on you trusting an ad company with your internet traffic. They claim to not save any logs or use your data, but they’ve also been found to be liars in the past with that adware scandal.

Sounds a lot like American sovereign citizens. SovCits believe America is a corporation that was set up on top of the Articles of Confederation, (which was the precursor to the American Constitution). They basically believe that they can refuse to do business with the “corporation” (government) and be able to break any laws that aren’t written in the Articles of Confederation.

It’s where the “I’m not driving, I’m traveling” memes come from, because the articles of confederation mentioned a right to freely travel. So the SovCits think they can drive without a valid license or vehicle registration, which leads to lots of police dashcam footage of SovCits getting tased during traffic stops when they become irate or try to flee.

Torrents only work if at least one side has port forwarding enabled. And you don’t want to rely on other people having their ports open. In order to ensure you can actually connect to a seeder/peer, it’s best practice to enable port forwarding on your end.

The issue with this is that many VPN providers have stopped offering port forwarding services, because kiddy diddlers figured out a way to use port forwarding to privately share CSAM. So it has become difficult to torrent with a VPN, because pedos somehow manage to ruin everything.

Proton or Mullvad are the two go-tos.

Private Internet Access used to be trusted (and still has good service, fwiw) but they were bought out by a company that was caught stuffing adware into their programs… So people have been hesitant to actually recommend them in the wake of that.

The true ‘90s dial-up experience: Watching your porn load one row of pixels at a time, only to find out it’s censored right as it gets to the good part.

Maybe I’ll just play a Flash game instead. Let me go make a sandwich while it loads.

Yeah, all the people will flock to free VPNs. They’ll google “how to get around blocked porn” and the free VPNs will be at the top of the list. And the issue with free VPNs is that if you’re not the customer, you’re the product being sold.

Though it would be a great way to catch a bunch of conservative politicians cranking it to gay porn. Because if they’re using those free VPNs, (because they’re all +70 years old and have no idea how to actually stay safe online,) then their data can be bought.

Yup, I work with 4/0 (0000) cable pretty regularly, for things like generators or powering large systems. We have a few trunks full of cable, and it takes a crew of 2 or 3 to actually lay it because it’s so heavy. Usually one person pushing the trunk along, one focuses on uncoiling it from the trunk, and one focuses on actually laying the cable. We use five conductors at a time (one neutral, three 120v hots leads, and a ground,) so it’s a big bundle. Each cable weighs a little over a pound per foot, and there are five bundled together. So a 150’ coil can easily weigh 750-800 pounds.

EICAR test strings are strings of text that can be used to test an antivirus. Basically, you bury the file somewhere, and see if your AV picks it up. The joke being that if they’re storing your password in plaintext (a big no-no from a security standpoint) then their AV will clamp down on the database once you create your account and the test string is embedded.

It wouldn’t work in this instance, unfortunately; EICAR test strings are only meant to work when embedded in files that are shorter than 128 bytes. And every database is almost certainly larger than that.

One group at work refuses to do it

Sounds like a huge liability to the company.

and they always get away with it

Until they don’t. All it would take is one malicious actor (competing company, spurned employee, data thief, etc) wrecking/stealing their entire database with an injection attack.

It’s an SQL injection joke.

Basically, when dealing with databases, you can use SQL to search or modify the data in that database. By default, you can do this by polling the database with an SQL query. But this introduces a vulnerability called SQL injection. Basically, imagine if instead of filling in a name in the “Name” field, you filled in an SQL query. If the database admins haven’t protected themselves against it, then the database will happily run that query; You have just injected an SQL query into their database. Maybe you’re a malicious attacker, looking to get a virus onto the system, or looking to extract the data.

Protecting the database from injection is done with something called sanitizing. Basically, you set up filters to disallow SQL, so it can’t touch your database. In this comic, the database admins didn’t do that, so they were unprotected.

The actual SQL uses the student’s middle name to search for any tables named “Students” and permanently delete it. The joke is that when the school admin staff enters his name into their database, it will delete any tables named “Students” and wreck their database.

Yeah, Harry just wanted to steal everything and vanish. His primary concern was simply getting away without any witnesses, so they could ghost with the money they had stolen. He wasn’t going to bother with petty theft, and was content to stay on the down low if it meant they’d be safe from the law.

Marv was portrayed as being the dumb one, but he was outright sociopathic in his actions, and had zero qualms about blatantly harming others if it meant he’d get famous. His primary concern was with garnering infamy and making a name for themselves as thieves. He wanted everyone to know that the Wet Bandits had stolen from them. And that is diametrically opposed to Harry’s goal of ghosting after their big score.

Worth noting that the masks in the cabin aren’t designed to keep you awake. They’re just designed to keep you alive. They’re basically just hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst, which mixes when you pull the mask down. The resulting chemical reaction produces a small amount of oxygen for a short time. This is also why the instructions say to put your own mask on before helping any children; You only have 15-30 seconds of usable consciousness before you pass out, so you need the mask to stay awake long enough to help anyone else. The pilots are the only ones who actually have masks good enough to stay awake, and that’s why they immediately dive to a breathable altitude.

Also, the entire cabin would immediately fog from the sudden pressure and temperature change. We’re talking “can’t even see your fingertips when your arm is outstretched” levels of fog.

And while we’re talking about it, the cabin would suddenly be cold. Like absolutely fucking freezing.

Lastly, your ears will painfully pop, and will likely ring for a while afterwards. The sudden pressure change will feel like you got slapped on the ears.