An IP ban also created the risk of banning others unintentionally. ISPs which use CGNAT will have a large number of users coming from the same IP address. So, banning one IP could ban a large number of users.

And through inaction said public is consenting to be ruled by nasty Christian predators.
How (and/or what) should thoughtful people think about the public’s consent to be ruled by elite Epstein class pedophiles?

The world isn’t quite as black and white as you want to make it out. And the range of possible responses do not exist in isolation.
Let’s start with the absurd response of “Annie, grab your gun and let’s go overthrow the government”. This would stupid on so many levels. First and foremost is the simple unlikelihood of success. While the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan have demonstrated that the overwhelming force of the US Military has problems dealing with a dedicated insurgency, such insurgencies require a fanatical level of dedication on the part of the insurgents. Do you really think you and a million of your closest friends area ready to get blown apart by an Apache Gunship to force Trump out of office? So this is just a dumb idea.

Moving on, you could always just go for targeted assassinations. You can be John Wilkes Booth all over again, though I don’t suspect Trump is as much a fan of live plays as Lincoln was. Maybe stalk him to a McDonalds? Ignoring all the logistical issues of actually getting to and assassinating a sitting President, it’s not like you would get much done. JD Vance isn’t all that much better (couches everywhere beware!), and the GOP has demonstrated that they are quite willing to keep coughing up horrible people for leadership positions. Really, the problem here is that we have a very divided country at the moment and a significant enough part of the electorate is just fine with a rapist, pedophile grifter as President.

So, let’s take political violence off the table. The best outcome it offers is a civil war with maybe your side winning and maybe the US under the direct control of Ya’ll Qaeda. Or worse, a balkanized US locked in a modern version of the Hundred Years War.

That leaves us with civil disobedience, general strikes and other protests. And I don’t want to downplay the impact these things can have; however, the US is a large, diverse place. A general strike in one State is unlikely to have a major impact in another. And coordinating a general strike across the entire US is very, very hard. Maybe that is the answer to your question, but the fact that it hasn’t been done yet lends some credence to the idea that it’s not really possible. If you think this is what is needed, then by all means, get out and start trying to organize one. Or work with existing groups to try and get one going, I wish you the best of luck, but I’m not going to be putting money down on your chances of success. Protests and civil disobedience can get attention, though that will only get you so far.

All that above leaves the quiver pretty empty. And I’m going to point out the answer you don’t want to hear and will complain about: organize, advocate and vote when the option becomes available. Yes, the GOP has been running full throttle trying to hijack elections. And working within the American Democracy is slow, marginally effective at best and endlessly frustrating. But, unless you think you have the gumption to win a civil war (you almost certainly don’t), this is the system of government for the United States for the foreseeable future. It’s a terrible system, but better than the other stuff humans have tried.

Of course, that means you are also stuck in the situation of “through inaction said public is consenting to be ruled by nasty Christian predators”. And that is partly true. One of the downsides of democracy and elections is that the people you disagree with will occasionally get into power and be able to push their ideas on society. That’s part of what it means to live in a functioning democracy. That the whole thing doesn’t devolve into civil war the minute one side or the other loses. We have boundaries written into law which define exactly how far any one party can go in implementing its agenda while in power. And we have some levers for the out of power party to push back on. But, the system is built on the idea that the peaceful transfer of power between parties who disagree is a far sight better than the non-peaceful transfer of power whenever one side of the other manages to out-violence the other.

So ya, I hate that it’s true, but since I value a stable democracy, I consent to the orange shit running the country. Because the alternative isn’t some left-wing utopia, it’s constant civil war. If we want our country to look more like a left-wing utopia, we need to win enough people over to our ideas and implement those ideas when we hold power. It’s not hopeless, and it all entirely possible. But, it’s easy to just complain, give up and scream into the void that “voting never fixes anything”. But cynicism doesn’t solve problems, hard work does. And hard work isn’t fun, it isn’t sexy and it doesn’t play well on social media.

Like most complex things, the answer is: it depends.
In this case, it’s mostly about what the alleged crime is and what the role is. If someone was convicted of sexual assault of a minor and I’m hiring for a daycare, possible licensing issues and laws aside, I’d probably pass on that person. If I’m hiring an auto mechanic and the person was convicted of smoking weed, I’m only going to care that they aren’t operating heavy equipment while intoxicated.

The other thing to consider is how much time has passed since the conviction. To use a real, related example, I knew a guy who held a US Government TS/SCI clearance and who had been through a full scope polygraph. For those unfamiliar, this basically means that he had access to highly classified material and he had also been through a multi-hour polygraph. And despite the dubious nature of those, they often winnow out a lot of people. He was also a major drug user in the 1970s and '80s. The list of drugs he didn’t do was probably short than the ones he had done. But, between being honest about it and the amount of time which had passed since he got clean, he had no trouble getting and maintaining that clearance. Who you were then and who you are now can be pretty radically different.

Like any hiring process, it’s going to be a case by case basis. I’m actually involved in interviewing people for my current employer and the selection process hinges on many little things. You can have someone who is great on paper, but they have the personality of a raging walrus and that just kills their chances. You can also have folks who just have an off day, but it kills trust in that individual on the part of the interviewers. Hell, I’ve interviewed folks and immediately thought, “they don’t fit this role, but goddamn I wish they had applied when we were looking for this other role six months ago.” Interviewing people is weird, but I haven’t seen a better solution for selecting a candidate for many roles.

If that “national service” includes Mangione’s service to the country, perhaps we should have that conversation.

Seems people have to relearn this lesson every few years:
If you don’t want something to be public, don’t put it on the internet. “Privacy” controls from these companies fail regularly, sometimes by design. If you put something on the internet, it will be public eventually.

Or two decades fighting an asymmetric war which President Bone Spurs personally managed to avoid.

By “de-shitify” they meant removing all the shit which isn’t owned and controlled by Microsoft.

nasa is about to remote into the computer

I’ve dealt with slow RDP sessions while fixing servers in the past, but the lag on this connection must really suck.

Yup. Being young and stupid, a group of us were lighting those rose fireworks (the kind which spin and light up on the ground), putting them in a water balloon launcher and flinging them into the sky. While we were aiming for a river, this also meant we were aiming for some brush. Unsurprisingly, we eventually had one land short while still burning and started a bush on fire. We ran down and started trying to put it out with dirt. This wasn’t going well until we remembered we had a small container and a ready source of water (the river) and managed to douse the fire.

Given all the troubleshooting you have done, let me ask a potentially stupid question:
How old is the nozzle?

A worn out nozzle can result in all kinds of odd printing behavior, especially around inconsistent extrusion. I chased my arse for way too many hours on my previous printer, on;y to have a nozzle change resolve nearly everything.

Along with that, have you taken a good look at your extruder? A worn/broken gear can cause all kinds of headaches.

I’m not familiar with the Snapmaker U1, what I am finding is that it’s a tool changing machine. So, does the problem persist across multiple tool-heads, or is limited to a single tool-head?

I regularly use CoPilot to search Microsoft documentation for me. E.g. I needed to find a particular interface in Entra and couldn’t remember where it was. So, I asked CoPilot and it got me to the right spot. I’ve thought about asking it about Microsoft licensing, but I figure that might result in CoPilot becoming self aware enough to kill itself.

I also use a number of AI agents built into the cybersecurity tools I use on a daily basis. Generally stuff along the lines of “find all the cases related to this system/IP/user/etc” type queries. It’s also good for questions like “how do I tune this alert” so I don’t have to remember whatever bullshit process this vendor put together for tuning false positives. Our primary SIEM/SOAR tool has an AI which does initial triage and investigation work and it’s not terrible. It struggles with correlations for more complex events, usually highlighting events which have no bearing on the event in question. But, it often provides a good first pass and description our first line analysts can use to start a real investigation.

AI is a tool. And like a lot of tools, it has it’s benefits and limitations. The problem is we’re still figuring all those out and the people marketing these tools don’t want to admit to the limitations and they over-sell the benefits, then blame the user when those benefits don’t materialize. Given how much modern economies are based on information and knowledge, I do expect AI to have some lasting impact, but I also expect that we’ll adapt and it will just be another way of getting things done in a generation or two.

If you have the time, put some resumes out before accepting the first thing to come along. I don’t know how things are in Germany, but I’ve always believed it’s easier to find a job while you are still working. That said, if the new position, pay and work culture seem good, taking the position for now may be a good choice. You can always job hunt later.

As for how you conduct yourself, I’d always suggest conducting yourself in a professional manner. While you may have zero intention of coming back to this organization, you never know when you are going to run across the people you work with again. And the next time they may be in a position to help or hurt you. For example, I worked for a company really early in my career which started falling apart quickly. Towards the end of my time there, they announced they were closing the office I worked at and basically gave my department a big “fuck you”. I could have gone out causing trouble or just worked my time until I left for greener pastures. I did the latter. Years latter, I was applying for a job I really wanted and an important member of the hiring team had worked with me at the first job. Not as my boss, just someone in another department. He remembered my work and work quality and had effectively said, “yup, hire this guy”. While I have long since left that job as well, his confidence in me changed the trajectory of my career.

Maybe it’s different over there, but I’ve always heard that “it’s who you know, not what you know” that gets you hired. And I’ve run into that in my own career. You don’t want to be a pushover, but keeping professional relationships professional can pay dividends down the line. Do the job you are paid for, don’t make messes for other people and at least try to be professional in your dealings with others. You may be able to climb the ladder quickly today by being an asshole, but you never know if the fingers you step on today will be attached to the hand you will need to help you tomorrow.

Also, what idiot decided that only one settings window is allowed open at one time?

Microsoft engineers were worried that people missed the joys of MS-DOS and having only one application running at once. Next up, will be the return of base memory versus expanded memory versus extended memory. This ends when they devolve Windows to prove Bill Gates right that 640kB should be enough memory for anyone.

Simple, NoPilot can just erase all your files. Binaries can’t take up memory of they can’t be loaded.

This is one of the reasons vigilantism works better in fiction than in real life. In cases where some vigilante left a beat up suspect and some sort of evidence, any competent defense attorney is going to move to have the evidence suppressed due to issues around chain of custody and possible tampering. They would likely also push the narrative that the vigilante is the real criminal and left the evidence to frame their client. Between possibly getting much of the evidence suppressed, and building doubt around anything remaining, a conviction could be really hard for the prosecutor.

This also ignores issues around vigilantes going after the wrong person for something (see: lynchings) and applying wildly disproportionate, extra-judicial punishments for crimes (see: lynchings, again). Crime and punishment really are hard problems which don’t lend themselves to easy answers. And there is a reason the Code of Hammurabi is seen as such a big deal in history. Rule of Law is an important concept which protects people.

When you have a potentially volatile situation, lobbing bombs at it rarely makes it better. This wasn’t a “time bomb to explod[ing]”. This was a deliberate decision by Cheeto Mussolini to launch a foreign military adventure. While the current regime in Iran was far from ideal, it’s important to keep in mind why that regime was in place. The UK and US were directly involved in overthrowing the elected government in Iran in Operation Ajax. That resulted in a violent, repressive dictatorship. But it was friendly to UK/US oil interests, so that made it ok. When the Iranian people overthrew that government, the current Iranian government came to power.

That the current administration expects a different outcome this time around is the height of stupidity. All this will accomplish is creating another generation of Iranians who hate the US due to direct experience.

Ah yes, let’s use contractors. Anyone else remember when USIS was just faking background checks? I’ve been a Federal contractor, and while there are some great, hard working people doing government work as contractors, the companies behind those contractors are almost universally doing everything they can to skirt the line between “completing the contract” and “outright fraud”. They certainly have no interest in doing what is best for the organization, people or tax payers. It’s all money grubbing assholes looking to leech off the tax payer.

We need to realize that 90% of everything done in the wake of 9/11 were bad ideas. With DHS itself being a monumental fuck-up. We did need better inter-department communications. But, by creating one agency to rule them all, we put too much budget in one bucket and failed to let specialists in each area focus on their area of specialization.

Maybe it’s a regional thing, but I don’t think it’s a common phrase. I’ve heard “nothing-burger” a lot, and this may be someone playing off that.

Ya, the defense economics of a $50k Shahead drone being taken out by a $4 milion Patriot missile do not work in the defenders’ favor. If Iran can keep that up long enough, those conventional weapons will start slipping through. Still, this was a known factor with Trump and Bibi’s war and I don’t think a bunch of civilians getting killed in drone attacks was a significant deterrent (QED, that war is going forward). While I believe that could result in the US/Israel making some propaganda declaration of victory and quietly ending the war, I don’t think it would ever be a deterrent in the future. That’s why I would expect Iran to want nukes. If they want to ensure that the US and Israel don’t just randomly drop bombs on Iran when a US leader needs a distraction, they need a credible threat of Israeli cities disappearing in a mushroom cloud. That’s something that couldn’t just be ignored.

Between Trumps first and second terms, he has demonstrated the issue with any long term deal Iran might make with the US. Under Obama, Iran had agreed to international inspections and a general framework that would have ensured that they followed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (of which they are a signatory). Trump rolled up in 2017 and tossed that out the window. And now Trump has decided to further destroy any credibility the US had left by dropping bombs. I doubt there is any world left where the Iranian Government trusts the US Government. I’d expect them to go more the North Korea route, isolate themselves further and make a sprint for nuclear weapons. They will have to content themselves with being part of the BRICS system. But a nuclear umbrella, with a high likelihood of nuking Tel Aviv, seems the only way to ensure the US/Israel aren’t randomly lobbing bombs at them.