43places, 43things, Last.fm, MySpace, Plazes, SuprGlu, Ta-da lists.
Fuck you, Web 2.0.
Sweetmorn, Discord 63, 3173 YOLD
In poker the term “drawing dead” refers to the process of drawing to a hand which will lose even if you make it, e.g. drawing to a flush when your opponent already has a full house. Learning to identify such situations will save you a lot of money and make you sleep better.
But I think it’s pretty important to apply this principle – and many others found in poker – to your real life as well. Don’t waste your time and energy chasing something that won’t win you the pot (e.g. make you happy) anyway. Don’t feel committed to something or someone because you’ve already made a big investment in terms of time, money, feelings or whatever, when you realize that you’re essentially drawing dead. Learning to let go at the right moment is a very important skill, and even if it hurts quite badly at times, it will spare you from far more serious trouble in the long run.
Boomtime, Chaos 52, 3173 YOLD
Since I was pretty busy with personal stuff during the last few days, I hadn’t noticed that two days ago German authorities started confiscating Tor middleman servers. That changed when earlier today I received an email from the owner of a confiscated system, who wants to get in touch with other Tor admins, in order to start a kind of “Knowledge Base” for people who were affected by the recent confiscations or who (still) want to set up their own Tor server. Since I’m also running such a baby (which never was an exit node though) on a virtual server in Germany, I’m of course interested in this recent development, so I want to share the informative links provided in his mail with you.
Articles/postings about the confiscations:
Anonymisierungsserver bei Razzia beschlagnahmt (German)
Staatsanwaltschaft beschlagnahmt Anonymisierungs-Server (German)
Erfolgreicher Schlag gegen die Privatsphäre (German)
Wie man die Anonymisierung kriminalisiert (German)
Re: confiscating middleman-tor-nodes [1], [2] & [3] (English)
Staatsanwaltschaft geht gegen Tor-Server vor (German)
General info on Tor/anonymity:
TOR web site (English, German and more)
Wikipedia article on Tor (English, German)
Sicher und anonym im Internet mit Proxys (German)
Onion Routing und Tor (German)
TheOnionRouter/OperationalSecurity (English)
Tor network overview:
Tor Network Status
Current Tor routers
Don’t get me wrong, child pornography is one of the worst crimes I can think of, and I wish the German authorities all the best in finding the people they are after. I do however feel that the route taken here wasn’t ideal, as it may well lead to a negative perception of Tor in the general public.
That’s why I’ve tripled the total amount of traffic Tor is allowed to serve on my system and donated some money to the project. I would advise you to do the same! Besides that I also encourage you to use Tor and promote it to other people, because anonymity is something that can’t be gained, only lost.
Pungenday, Bureaucracy 34, 3172 YOLD
1. You’ll turn into a bitter cynic. This in fact is probably the best thing about your job, which really should make you think…
2. Only wackos and smartasses work in this field. Depending on which group you belong to, this might even be fun. More often though you’re screwed.
3. If your boss screws up, it will probably get communicated to the customer as your fault. Given that you took the job in the first place, that’s even true.
4. Every job where people tell you things along the line of “An average day has 24 hours and if that isn’t enough, you’ll have to make use of the nights too!” and find that actually funny, is a good reason to spend the rest of your life in a zen buddhist monastery, a mental home or both.
5. The best thing about your average work day is that there’s always at least one person in the office who is worse off than you (see #1). However, he’s most likely also the one poor guy who’s neither a wacko nor a smartass (see #2), so you have to control your bitter cynicism and feel sorry for him.
6. The coffee is cold or bad and the coke is either warm or a diet coke. They’ve thought about everything!
7. After a certain amount of time you won’t be able to remember if the sentences “Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service us.” have been said by your boss or Locutus of Borg. What’s even worse is that it doesn’t really make a difference anyway…
P.S. I’m also planning on writing up some reasons for “Why working in Business IT rocks”. Yeah, right.
Pungenday, Chaos 38, 3172 YOLD
