sylver_dragon

Samsung partnered with Oculus sometime back and released the Gear VR. It was actually pretty cool for the time. By strapping your phone to your face, you could watch some VR content and play some basic games. Between the low resolution and limited field of view, it was pretty easy for it to induce nausea. The biggest downside was it was Samsung. So everything about the device was locked down, and proprietary. Once you weren't on a supported phone, it was just a hunk of e-waste collecting dust. As for the service, Samsung is no doubt receiving a good amount of money to pre-install Meta's spyware on your phone.

I owe my soul to the company store.....

Brother told me he doesn’t want that and thinks it’s too dangerous and overall screen time is very bad for children. I understand what he means but can’t that be regulated with lets say 1-2 hours per day limits?

It can. But, why create the conditions for the problem in the first place? They may see it as just another thing to manage which provides no benefit. Realize that what you are effectively asking here is, "why can't they take on another responsibility to manage that they have said they don't want to manage?" Yes, parental controls exist (and almost universally suck); but, it's yet another demand on the parents time.

When I turned 5 years old...

Ya, this is a complete non-starter of an argument. There is a lot about how I was raised which I have zero intention of replicating with my own children. Just because you "turned out fine" does not mean that the way you were raised was necessarily the right way. Your brother and his partner are making decisions they think are best for raising their children today. The past will inform those decisions; but, they may have also concluded that some of the choices made by your parents weren't the right ones and they want to provide their version of a better environment for their children. They will almost certainly get some stuff wildly wrong, but this is part of being a parent.

I just don’t understand why most parents nowadays are so extreme.

Is this their first kid? Unfortunately, the after-birth for a child does not include a manual. While parents do get a lot of advice from the people around them, a lot of that advice is just outright bad and much of it contradictory. There's also loads of "conventional wisdom" which ends up being nothing more than societal programming which can be very wrong or outright dangerous. Parents get to navigate all of that, usually with a lack of sleep, and heightened stress levels all while adjusting to a new and very vocal demand on their time. Taking a few shortcuts is to be expected. It is often easier to give an outright "no" to something than to try and figure out how to integrate a new demand on your or your child's time.

I don’t know what they are doing with my nephew it’s hilarious cause he can’t even hold scissors and he is 6 years old.

Different kids learn different skills as different rates. For some, the fine motor skills may come later, scissors being a good example of that.

As of now my nephew never touched a phone...Imagine when he is in school and his friends tell him to scroll and he has no idea how to even scroll? Isn’t that weird?

Not really, no. While he will almost certainly grow up surrounded by technology, he's not going to suffer because he didn't get a phone until he was a bit older. People adapt to the technology around them all the time. And there is no guarantee that the user experience on devices in 10 years will be anything like it is today.

If I had a kid I think I’d...

Hoo boy, this is just a fun statement to see from the other side. I know this will come off as condescending, and I apologize for that; but, it's really hard to really understand how much your thinking changes when that first kid comes screaming into the world. This isn't to say that you would completely change your mind. But, sometimes you can find yourself in the moment of making a decision and realize that you just don't agree with what you used to. Maybe you will; but, having kids running around changes how you think. It's a good exercise to think through how you might react. But, it's tough to be completely sure until you're actually having to do it live.

But I understand him and respect him, I won’t buy it and I will save my money

Good on you for respecting those boundaries and for being a loving enough uncle that you wanted to do that for your nephew. Seriously, one of the best gifts you can give both the kid and the parents is being a supporting family member. Maybe in a year or two they will have changed their minds on the console and you can get the kid started on gaming. Until then, just go for something electronic, "learning focused" and loud. Might as well still have some fun at the expense of the parent's sanity.

I work remote and my work has a pretty loose policy on webcams for meetings. If you don't want it on, don't turn it on. That said, when I am presenting or speaking, I like to have my webcam on. I personally find that the level of engagement is higher for speakers with their camera on, and so I try to extend that back to the people I am speaking to. I also find that the inclusion of visual cues helps with communications.

As for political spaces, my local congress person holds a regular townhall via telephone (not sure if she'll keep this up if she wins the governorship this year) and I have never really felt the need to stare at her as she talks. I actually like the format as I can listen with my earbuds while doing something else. So, different situations can merit a different response.

Honestly, I think some folks make far more out of using or not using a webcam than it really merits. For those of us who are more introverted, having a camera on us can make us feel self-conscious. Though, I think using the word "trauma" to describe this is being overly bombastic. At the same time, I think there are some folks for whom the visual connection with a speaker or listener is also important and the lack visual of feedback from the other participants in the conversation makes the conversation more difficult. It's just another of those areas where we are each going to need to make a decision based on the particular conversation and context. Interacting with other people is messy and is going to involve some level of discomfort from time to time.

When looking at artifacts like this, I can't help but wonder if that center jewel was originally set like that? And, if so, did someone make a comment to the jeweler like, "Ishtar's tits Bob, the King is going to be wearing this. Could you at least get the front gem, the one everyone is going to see, straight?"

I've lost track of how many times I have grounded my boat on the plains, in the fog, at night. Just merrily mapping a coastline and then "crunch", now we're scrambling to not die.

Perfect, we'll just spin up an image of your machine in EC2, give it a public IP, set the default network rules to "allow any any" and we're good. And I have no idea why the security team just all quit.

Most of the folks I talk to hear agree with me that things are going wrong

That's not surprising, though be careful on what the definition of "going wrong" is. For example, Emerson College recently put out the results of some polling part of which found that 67% of voters think the US is on the wrong track. It's highly likely that 67% includes voters from all over the political map. But, while both a hardcore Trump/MAGA voter and a Bernie Bro voter might each say that the US is on the "wrong track", we'd probably have trouble getting those two voters to reconcile on the color of the sky, let alone what the "right track" would be. Also, be wary of coworkers who actually just want to be left alone and will "go along to get along". They will tacitly nod and agree with just about anything, so long as you go away and let them get back to work.

or that x,y, or z is a problem, but not enough to do anything about it.

Ok, but what is the ask? What are you expecting them to do? And why do you believe that they should be the ones doing it? Again, going back to my previous comment:
Maybe they do care about your thing, but they have their own “most important thing” and if your thing and their thing are in contention, they are going to pick their thing.

You may view things as so bad that everyone should be out in the streets protesting 24x7. They may not see it that way. They may put "protecting themselves" at a higher priority than protesting whatever it is you are upset about. This might be especially true if they have families to care for and that can drastically change how people prioritize things.

Once again, I'd go back to understanding their beliefs and priorities. Why won't they do the thing you want them to do? It probably comes down to those beliefs and priorities being more important to them than whatever it is you are promoting. And again, I would note your complete dismissal of their point of view. They have given you some insight as to why they aren't taking action:
" I want to do something, but I have to protect myself."

It's clear they prioritize their personal well-being over the perceived value of whatever you are asking them to do. Why is that? What is it that you are asking them to do that they see it as risky? If your goal is to organize something, can you work to provide them the perceived safety that would get them over that hump? Do they have other issues and their answer is just a proxy to avoid an argument? I'm afraid I'm just repeating myself here; but, you need to really understand them if you want them to change their minds.

My main recommendation would be to try biscuits and gravy. Which must sound entirely disgusting, given how differently we use those words on this side of the Atlantic. However, you are in Chicago; so, you're not likely to find a well made version of them there. If you ever get down south, give them a try. Like most southern food, they are a heart attack on a plate, but you'll be happy as you die.

Speaking of southern food, BBQ offers a wide selection of dishes worth trying. You may be able to find something passable in Chicago, look for a truck with a smoker/kitchen in a trailer. Chain BBQ restaurants are usually just dens of sadness and disappointment. I'm partial to pulled pork, though I also won't pass up a smoked beef brisket. And this should be served with cornbread.

If you get any further west, In-n-Out is pretty uniquely American. Though, it's really just a fresh burger with "American Cheese Product" and thousand island dressing. And their fries are mediocre at best. Probably worth a try as a cultural icon, but not something you'll end up writing home about it (bring on the downvotes west-coasters).

To your east is the home of New England Clam Chowder (the cream based white one, not Manhattan/Rhode Island red/clear ones). There's probably some decent bowls to be had there in Chicago. Just fantastic on a chill day. Just be wary of upscale restaurants trying to fancy this one up. It's a simple classic, but some folks just can't leave well enough alone.

The first thing I would ask is, have you made any attempts to really understand what motivates them and why they believe as they do? Given your flippant dismissal of their belief systems, I suspect you have just mentally bucketed them and, instead of really trying to understand them, you fall back on your per-conceived notions of what you think they believe. Without that understanding, you will never be able to "make people care", because you are not treating them as fully formed people with their own beliefs and priorities. You expect that, if you just yell at them loudly enough, they will come around. They won't and, if anything, they will just dig their heels in further. To them, you're this guy:

Not everyone has the same priorities you do. What you see as "the most important thing in the world" may fall much further down the list for someone else. They may not even see it in the same framing you do. Maybe they do care about your thing, but they have their own "most important thing" and if your thing and their thing are in contention, they are going to pick their thing. This is part of the reason we have politics in the first place, once you start dealing with other people and trying to decide what and how things should be prioritized and run, you are going to run into differing beliefs and priorities. It's why most government polices generally suck and don't get everything done. Because those policies are the result of compromise between people with different and often competing priorities. And yes, it may be that some of those other priorities come from bad information, though more often they will come from radically different base beliefs. And not understanding what those beliefs actually are means that you will not have any sort of basis for convincing them of anything.

Changing peoples' minds is hard. But, it starts from a place of understanding people and not dismissing their beliefs. Step back from your outrage for a moment and try to really get in their heads. You may not agree with their position, but you need to understand how they got there before you have any chance of getting them out of it. And, maybe you can't. It may just be that they have some foundational beliefs which are completely at odds with what you want to convince them of. But, if you know and understand that, it becomes much easier to walk away from the situation and not waste time and energy on a hopeless fight. And while it feels good to yell at people, that basically never works and only serves to push them further away.

I'm kinda confused. This looks like really old information re-packaged as some sort of "exploit". Examining the RDP cache is an old trick. Here's a video on doing it from six years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnEOk5-Dstw

The tools for doing this, have been out for a long time. Here's the EnCase tool:
https://marketplace.opentext.com/cybersecurity/content/rdp-cached-bitmap-extractor

Here's an open source parser:
https://github.com/ANSSI-FR/bmc-tools

So, what's new here and how is this allowing "Attackers to Take Over Windows and Browser Sessions" other than, if they are on a system, they can dig through the RDP cache? Which, if they are already on the system which launched the RDP sessions, the horse is long out of the barn. Between credential dumping, keylogging and pass the hash, the attacker probably has as much access as the local user has anyway.