pubutil

Your story reminded me of one of my own:

A few years back I was helping clear out my parents’ garage, as they were having plumbing issues and needed a path cleared for the plumber. Eventually I come across a strange looking box with some weird brown tubes poking out of it. I look up at the ceiling, and see the waste pipe from a toilet. There was not only a hole in the ceiling, but a huge hole in the top of the waste pipe.

Turns out that strange box was full of newspapers that had had raw sewage dripping onto it for who knows how long. Those “brown tubes” were actually some sort of fungus, and when I looked closer, it was quite literally spewing out spores. It looked like steam.

I was horrified at the idea of this fungus surviving on nothing but sewage and ran to grab a respirator before rushing the thing into a compost bin. Wish I’d taken a photo, but my mind was elsewhere at the time.

I found Krunner entirely by accident after switching from Windows. PowerToys has a quick launcher that's triggered with Alt+Space. Used the shortcut out of habit after switching to a KDE environment, and was pleasantly surprised to see a similar interface pop up!

I reluctantly admit that a friend recently tricked me with something similar using a website called “Peter Answers”

Same exact concept: you ask a question, your friend types a “petition” (which is actually the answer, disguised as another phrase), then types in the question. Then they submit and the site displays the answer your friend typed in.

Initially this had me freaking out thinking there was some AI super scraper pulling from the chasm of shadow data. Then the logical part of my brain kicked in and asked a question only my friend would have the answer to, then watched his fingers as he typed, which quickly cleared things up.

It’s a smart concept though, and a damn good prank.

I got around this limitation by adding my home NAS to the Files app. On the iOS side: set up the SMB connection in Files, hit the Share button on files I want to transfer, point it to a folder on the NAS, and transfer. On the PC side, I just grab the file in Explorer.

Airdrop works well for sharing files to other people's iOS devices, but I'd argue SMB is actually better for my use case. Airdrop sends files to a Mac's Downloads folder. SMB transferred files go exactly where I want them on the first try. The difference is just a couple extra taps in the 'Share' modal.

Though I must admit this isn't a solution for everyone. I doubt many iPhone users have a NAS stood up at home and would be happy to spend money on the 'simpler' solution of purchasing turnkey products and services from Apple.

I definitely believe that. Years ago, I had an interview scheduled with a bank’s IT department. Checked their Glassdoor page and it was littered with negative reviews, with obviously fake positive reviews peppered in.

I took the interview anyway because I really needed work at the time. Got some 1-on-1 time with the IT guys and the first thing they said was,

“You read the reviews on Glassdoor, didn’t you?” “Yes..” “Well, don’t worry, IT is pretty isolated from all that”

Cool, I guess?

Next, I got some time with a VP. He saw on my resume that I’d done some work for a Christian church. He said,

“Yeah, I love to debate religion at the water cooler!”

Had he taken some time to get to know me, he’d know I’m not religious and probably would have held his tongue.

I got offered the job. Naturally, I didn’t take it.

Like others have said, Glassdoor is good to see problem spots in negative reviews. Positive reviews are meaningless in my eyes.

For reference, the bank was called Bank of Internet at the time. They’ve since rebranded to Axos and I continue to recommend against them. I know nothing about their financial credibility, but I can’t in good faith recommend anyone support a company that allows people in positions of power to “debate religion at the water cooler.” That’s a hostile work environment.

This “hold an object while falling asleep” technique sounds very similar to a technique I read about maybe 15 years ago at an avant-garde sleep away arts camp. It was in the context of lucid dreaming and not increasing creativity, though.

That technique didn’t involve holding an object, but going to sleep with your elbow against the floor/bed and your forearm raised. When you started to fall asleep your arm would fall and wake you up as it hit the floor/bed.

It also suggesting sleeping with your head facing north, but that part seems less scientific to me. Nevertheless, very interesting how this came back around.

It looks to me that this is a similar concept to those malicious “virus alert” websites that instruct you to call someone in India. Then (after some fearmongering, and maybe bullying) they commandeer your computer, run netstat, and tell you that you have viruses that only an expensive yearly subscription can fix.

I also have to wonder how many people are outright ignorant about iOS’s subscription cancellation menus. The menu is kind of hidden away in the Settings app. Not only that, but in my experience, subscriptions through iOS show up as charges from Apple on bank statements; no indication of what you were charged for. Hell, even payments to the Apple Store for physical products show almost the same nomenclature, with no indication that it’s a different type of purchase.

That Stephen Malinowski link was great. I don’t know that song by name, but I could unmistakably tell what song it was just by looking at the visualization (even though I left the video muted)!