Em Adespoton

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • Take that money you were saving for university and buy Apple stock. Still move to the university town and hang out on campus, but skip the tuition fees and going to class; spend the time while others are in class working for a few years and putting more money into Apple stock.

    Cash out some of that money a few years later and use it for a cheap bachelor’s degree; leverage that to get into the field you want to be in.

    Then later, cash out some more to buy property… say, around 2008. But keep feeding more money in.


  • I think you may have missed the point I was making though— clubs and other pastimes didn’t make people less lonely; they only distracted people from their loneliness. Today the same distractions can be found via social media, so instead of all those other activities, people just need a phone.

    But the anonymizing nature of social media means people feel more free to discuss their loneliness when they do self-reflect.


  • I think you have something here. I grew up in the country where people had to actively seek out activities and relationships, including with people they may not otherwise choose to be around. In the city/burbs, I actively chose to travel by foot/transit/someone else’s vehicle, even though it would have been easier to drive everywhere (I mean, sidewalks that just… vanish halfway to a destination? No transit east-west on major arteries? City planners obviously are prioritizing vehicle traffic).

    But as a result, I’ve never felt isolated AND have the skills to connect with others who aren’t like me. It’s those skills that seem to have been going away as people hide themselves in their social media bubbles and behind their steering wheels. The same opportunities for socialization are still there, but they take more effort than people are used to making because there’s easier alternatives available than there used to be.


  • Here’s a theory. I’m sure it has lots of holes in it.

    Male loneliness has always been a thing. In cultures where it isn’t/wasn’t, there was a strong family relationship and older men modelling how to relate to others.

    To hide from loneliness, men were able to join clubs, hang out at pubs, volunteer, or bury themselves in work.

    In fact, those same pastimes are still available today.

    What’s changed is that it is now socially OK to talk about loneliness (at least in online forums like this), so more people are aware it’s an issue.




  • That’s… extremely useful to know and highlights the issues I have with databases like MySQL.

    IMO, a DB should always have a type defined for a field, and if that type is UTF-8, and it means just the mb3 subset, you should only be able to store mb3 data in it. Not enforcing the field type is what leads to data-based function and security issues. There should also be restrictions on how data is loaded from fields depending on their type, with mb3 allowing for MySQL transform operations and binary requiring a straight read/write, with some process outside the DB itself handling the resulting binary data stream.

    /rant




  • Along with the other excellent answers, both boards and chips may be designed general purpose, but often components are disabled in hardware or are unpopulated. Sometimes, a jumper needs to be applied, a trace re-routed, or a JTAG command sent to activate debug mode which allows physical access to parts of a board/chip that are gated by the JTAG controller.

    So your best friends here beyond fuzzing and probing are searching for similar schematics, painstakingly testing all I/O with an oscilloscope, and taking an electron microscope to things to see what’s physically there.

    Sometimes though, it’s as simple as thinking like the engineers who designed the component in the first place and asking yourself “If I were designing this, what shortcuts would I take, what would I want to debug / put in a test suite, and what would I make general purpose in order to cut costs on component placement and board reuse.


  • I think I covered this the last time you posted, but swearing isn’t a sign of maturity. It’s generally a sign of limited vocabulary.

    Also, “being treated like a child” is an interesting statement. I know I tend to go into any conversation with someone of ANY age treating them like they may be totally ignorant of the topic at hand, but are likely bright enough to pick it up pretty quickly. Age rarely factors into it.

    But if someone appears to be attention seeking and inauthentic, pretending they know things/people they don’t, and trying to act how they think someone else wants them to act instead of just being themselves… that’s when the “OK buddy” comes out. It means “I’ve discovered I can’t have a real conversation with you and you’ve used up my patience to coach you along.”








  • I think you’re conflating a few things there.

    Most people in North America and Europe under 30 today are likely to become millionaires before they die. My point was that being a millionaire is pretty much useless when you spend that much in groceries and rent in a year.

    Over 55s had a dream of becoming millionaires when they were younger and a million dollars was enough to live on for the rest of your life. The sad truth is that those who didn’t make it are likely to die in poverty, while most of those who did make it likely still can’t afford to retire at 65.

    The younger you are, the more the S&P will help you compound your savings to the point where you can afford to stop working before you die. Assuming you can save anything—which is really difficult and getting harder.


  • A large number of us CAN be millionaires. Which is a problem.

    It took me roughly 40 years to become a millionaire. 40 years of investing in stable stocks and bonds and scrimping and living well below my means. I was finally able to afford to buy a house. Then the market boomed and suddenly I’m worth over a million.

    Unfortunately, almost all of that is tied up in owning a small plot of land. If I sold it, I’d need to immediately use it to buy another small plot of land, or leave my city or go back to extortionate rent. And yet I need to pay monthly taxes on that land, or I no longer own it.

    Where I used to spend $90/month on food, now I spend well over $500/month.

    Essentially, if you’re over 55 and you’re not a millionaire and you’re living in a major city, you’re screwed because of inflation.