VicQQ

[VicQQ @Brassmsb]

1 Corinthians 3
Explains the denomination question btw

[VicQQ @Brassmsb]

@BasedMikeLee Who wrote Common Sense?

Who is Silence Dogood?
Richard Saunders?
An Englishman?
Publius?
A Farmer in Pennsylvania?
Anonymous?

Who is Patriot front?

[VicQQ @Brassmsb]

@fleshsimulator Aren't you just feeding center lefties to the right?
His daughter started crying

[VicQQ @Brassmsb]

@fildoforfreedom @Gruntpa I have something like that but I always feel like it's so niche I'd be identified from it. I need a plain black one paid for in cash lol

[4nt1p4tt3rn 🏴‍☠ Appalachistan Wolf Lodge #47 @4nt1p4tt3rn]

Ever notice that every "don't shoot fireworks. Veterans. PTSD!" post is from some liberal white woman who never served?

[Capauri @capauri]

maybe deleting in the morning but america from an immigrant’s perspective. i came here 2 years ago.

i began actively disliking europeans since coming here. every attitude except the american attitude sucks. i had to stop walking around with noise cancellation turned on in case somebody drive-by complimented me on the street, because it happens so often, and i’d hate to be rude and to not respond. do you even know what kind of stares you get when you speak to a stranger on a european street?

everyone in america wants everyone else to succeed; in europe, everyone wants you to remain comfortably within the crab bucket. in europe i was told everyone on america was just fake nice. that’s giga cope. americans are smarter than you, europoor - americans understand that if you succeed, they succeed by proxy. you get nothing from poor, defeatist neighbors. if everyone’s successful and everyone’s generous, then everyone succeeds. this mindset is the only objectively correct mindset on earth - everyone else is wrong. everyone else thinks success is a finite resource , which is incorrect. if i succeed, then obviously all of my friends succeed, because i love them. i obviously love you, dear reader! you are on this platform like me, you think like me, you want humanity and civilization to persist forever like me, you live near me! i want you to do better than me! you doing better than me benefits me! if i do better than you, it will only benefit you too, because i love you, and want to share with you!

i want everyone to do better than me - it’s not a finite resource, afterall. if you’re better than me now, that’s great, that just means i have more to learn from you while we both shoot for the moon. this is just not the case anywhere else on earth and it’s too easy to take this mindset for granted, and that’s what i found makes America so unique.

[Mr. T @MrT]

Happy birthday America! I am very proud, No, I am extremely proud to be a Christian American! Born and raised in this beautiful land, which I love! Yes, I love America! #USA

[Christian Heiens 🏛 @ChristianHeiens]

Being in DC in person yesterday, where an estimated 300,000+ people were on the National Mall despite suffering through both a heat wave and a thunderstorm, has helped me better realize something that I had known all along, but which I rarely ever had first-hand evidence to confirm.

All these people do is lie about everything for the sole purpose of demoralizing their ideological enemies.

[Kiwi Farms @KiwiFarmsDotNet]

Sometimes fixing something requires showing people just how bad the problem is.

The DMCA has a mechanism to dox anyone without filing a lawsuit. Federal subpoena powers are a few clicks away from anyone willing to file two forms. Nobody is safe.

[eigenrobot @eigenrobot]

we gotta make it gen bravo this is unfair to them

[VicQQ @Brassmsb]

@TomWoodstom I got a hanging shoe organizer and labelled every slot, then filled up each section according to audio, video, power, network, etc. if I had too many multiples (couldn't fit any more/slot), I got rid of them, but it was only like 1 or 2 cables that I didn't need after organizing.

[memetic_sisyphus @memeticsisyphus]

Pick a seat anon.

[VicQQ @Brassmsb]

@wylfcen @Devon_Eriksen_ This one
https://t.co/pIzyXk8Z99

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Okay, time to explain the Imperial system, the metric system, and why attempts to replace either with the other are all retarded.

They have two different purposes.

The metric system is designed around precise measurement of objects. Its goal is to make engineering and scientific calculations simple.

The Imperial system is designed around humans. Its goal is to make calculation unnecessary.

100 degrees is really hot. 0 degrees is really cold. Anything that starts with a 5 is cool, anything that starts with an 8 is warm. No computation.

6 feet is tall, 5 feet is short.

100 pounds is light, 200 pounds is substantial, 300 pounds is heavy.

A 1000 square foot house is small, a 2000 square foot house is medium, a 3000 square foot house is large.

1 mile is a short walk, 2 miles is a medium walk, after that it takes a while.

1 acre of land is a homestead, 10 acres is an estate, 100 acres and up is a ranch or a farm.

Do you see now why it is so strange and awkward to convert from miles to feet?

It's because converting from miles to feet is not something you're supposed to do in the first place. Yes, they are both measures of length, so they are technically convertible, and yes, on rare occasions, you might need to do that.

But feet are for measuring humans, and things built around humans, like doorways, and mattresses. Miles are for measuring travel distance.

You wouldn't measure the distance between Seattle and Portland in feet for the same reason you wouldn't measure the distance between Tokyo and Osaka in mattress-lengths.

It would be silly.

This is why Americans so fiercely resistant to any notion of "conversion" to the metric system. Because it makes no sense. We already use the metric system for what it's good for, which is doing physics and chemistry and whatnot.

But converting everyday measurements to the metric system would be less useful, generally inconvenient, and serve no purpose other than to make petty government bureaucrats happy that everything is now tidy, orderly, and worse, three qualities that bureaucrats love.

I thought about this carefully when I wrote my first science fiction novel. In the world of the 22nd century, extraterrestrial settlers ("Orbitals") use three systems of measurement.

They measure themselves in feet, inches, and pounds.

They measure the spacecraft and habitats they build in meters and centimeters, grams and kilograms.

And they measure space travel distances in light-seconds and light-minutes.

Each system has its own natural scale.

The sole exception to this is when Marcus doses himself with drugs for high-g resistance, Miranda objects that he has taken too much, and Marcus responds by stating his mass... in kilograms.

Why?

Because they're talking about drug doses, a engineering measurement. Drugs are dosed in milligrams per kilogram.

So, yes, the Imperial system makes perfect sense when you understand what it's for, and no, we ain't changing.

And, as a general rule, when an entire civilization of smart people does something for centuries, and it makes no sense to you, they're probably not being silly.

It's more likely there's something you don't know.

[VicQQ @Brassmsb]

@wylfcen I liked that post by @Devon_Eriksen_ where he said metric is for science and imperial is for humans (that's what I got out of it lol)

[Nikita Bier @nikitabier]

How it feels demonetizing accounts that pretend to be Americans and attempt to divide us

Happy 4th

[Arthur MacWaters @ArthurMacwaters]

The European mind simply cannot comprehend a random citizen playing the national anthem with a semi automatic rifle in their backyard shooting range

[vx-underground @vxunderground]

On Tuesday, June 30th, Jennifer Gibbons, Vice President of State Government Affairs for ESA (Entertainment Software Association) testified before the United States California Senate regarding Minecraft and Call of Duty private servers, which she claims are actually piracy.

Gibbons told the California Senate these private servers are unsanctioned. She is representing the video game industry in the United States and vehemently opposes the recently introduced Protect Our Games Act, the United States version of Stop Killing Games.

She referred to Minecraft private servers as "The Black Market".

[vx-underground @vxunderground]

Honestly, if you're wanting to get into malware development and malware reverse engineering (specifically in regards to Windows), I think the most important thing you can learn is the concept of a file.

1. What is a file extension? This is pretty obvious, .exe, .pdf, .mp3, etc.

2. How are file extensions handled? This would introduce the idea of the Windows registry and how extension querying is handled vs. the Windows loader

3. Which file extensions (or file types, rather) are used for payload delivery? e.g. .exe, .dll, .xll, .vbs, .ps1, .py, .lua, .docx, .vcproj, etc. The .exe, .dll, (and other native types, like .sys) will be sort of self-explanatory, but the others would introduce different malware delivery mechanisms (malicious files) and potentially wiggle in the concept of payload smuggling.

4. Each of the previous listed file types are different. How are they different? .exe and .dll (and many others) are native to Windows and handled by the Windows loader. Why are the others still considered executable files? This is when you slowly step into interpretive languages and VM dependency (JVM, PVM, etc).

Somewhere in this you would eventually stumble into the Windows PE format, how the PE format is different for .NET binaries, how Electron .JS executables act differently, weird stuff like .docx file internals, etc.

Basically, I think understanding files and how they're handled is an excellent starting point and sets the stage for what will happen next.

pic unrelated

[Spike Brehm @spikebrehm]

they did it. the mad lads actually did it.

i never talked about my time at DOGE last year because it was so controversial and contentious (remember that?)

early last year, @jgebbia recruited a handful of his most trusted early Airbnb engineers to embed at the Office of Personnel Management to solve the "retirement paper" problem.

processing a federal retirement took months, and in the extreme retirees could wait up to 6 months for their full pension to arrive. what was the holdup? paper. remember hearing Elon talk about "the mine" in Pennsylvania? we got to visit it. in deep underground caverns blasted out of limestone, there were literally acres of file cabinets, as far as the eye could see, storing files detailing federal employees' employment and paystub history. a simple "case" might be only a quarter or half inch thick, but really complex cases filled up whole filing cabinets. one famously took up a whole pallet.

each case was hand processed by case workers in cubicles deep underground. they checked calculations, made sure forms were filled out properly (many weren't), and handled a long tail of complex issues. we'd watch as they keyed data into a black and white terminal, transmitting to the COBOL mainframe built many decades ago.

since cases were processed by hand, there were multiple rounds of human review, and additional rounds for complex cases. case files were walked around between one worker's outbox and another's inbox. sometimes it would sit in one place for days, waiting to be picked up.

to OPM's credit, they'd done multiple rounds of "digital transformation" spanning decades, so some systems were newer than others. there was a big effort in the mid-90s. but the systems were disparate, and it was a total maze getting them to talk to each other. there was a big effort to build a web app where employees applying for retirement could digitally fill out the necessary forms — just to be mailed to the mine and stuffed into the paper file. and few federal agencies were even using it.

when we arrived, OPM was midway through a fresh attempt at digital transformation, delivered by a software contractor.

the blackpill was seeing the terrible quality of the software and interacting with the contractors. coming from silicon valley, i couldn't believe how low the talent and quality bar was for selling software to the government. it's clear, as the OG USDS people explained to me a decade ago, the primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. it's a huge moat. delivery of quality product be damned.

we fired the vendor and took over the project. they'd been working on it for more than a year, and there was another year before they were going to deliver it. at first we tried to bend it to our will, to actually connect all the various data sources and get to a decent UX for case workers in the mine to use, but we soon realized we were going to have to rebuild the whole stack from scratch.

it was around this time I had to go back to new york — i had a new job waiting for me, a four month old, and a wife whose patience was running out. but i got to watch from afar as the team cranked day and night, hitting early milestones. and now they've fully done it.

huge congrats to Joe and the team. @yatshitcray was the hero in the trenches. indefatigable, unrelentingly optimistic, and determined to see this project through. when i recruited him for "ok i can do two, maybe three months", he stuck it out over a year making this project a reality.

while the retirement project was under the DOGE banner, it operated different from what you heard from the breathless, negative media — we came in with the attitude of partnering with career OPM employees. we were team members determined to bring our software talents to bear on the problem they've been trying to fix for years, which they hadn't had the resources to solve before. they were wary at first, not sure about us, but they quickly saw how authentic and determined we were to work together toward the same goal. props to Joe for developing those relationships, setting the example of how to collaborate together.

what's the end result? lifelong federal employees, veterans, postal carriers get their full pension installments almost immediately. days instead of months. peace of mind for these people to devoted their careers to serving our country. massively streamlined operations inside of OPM. and NO MORE PAPER 🫡🇺🇸

[VicQQ @Brassmsb]

@martianwyrdlord The only issue for me would be because people are terrible at their jobs, and others are just stupid, innocent people go to prison. I'd rather have years taken than the rest of my life for some false accusation. I agree floggings should be more common.